Chapter 7 - Mason Had Recognized My Name On Day One
Mason admitted it.
Not gracefully.
Captain Brooks sat between us in an interview room.
He looked at the table.
“Yes.”
I stared.
“You knew.”
“I wasn't sure.”
“You saw Rachel Carter on the roster.”
“Yes.”
“And thought of Fort Alden.”
“Yes.”
“Then what?”
“I looked at your age.”
Twenty-nine.
Right.
Eleven years earlier, eighteen.
“Same.”
“Yes.”
“You looked at my file?”
“Basic course information.”
“Photo?”
“No.”
“So when you met me?”
“I thought maybe.”
I laughed quietly.
Nine days.
Wrong room, sweetheart.
Aviation jokes? no. Different story.
Light lane.
Sweetheart.
Public corrections.
“Why not ask?”
Mason looked at me.
“Because if you were her, I didn't want you thinking it mattered.”
I stared.
“You made sure it mattered.”
His jaw tightened.
“Yes.”
Brooks spoke.
“Sergeant Reed, were your interactions with Carter influenced by your prior connection to Sergeant Major Vale?”
Mason took too long.
“Yes.”
I sat back.
There it was.
Not all of it.
Enough.
“What did I do to you eleven years ago?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why?”
He looked irritated now.
“Because Vale used you to tell everyone I was a bad instructor.”
“Were you?”
“I was twenty-seven.”
“Stop using your age like an alibi.”
His face hardened.
“I wasn't what I am now.”
I almost laughed.
“What are you now?”
Mason looked away.
Brooks said:
“Answer.”
He didn't.
I did.
“An instructor who grabbed a female soldier’s bag and threw it on the floor because he wanted a room to laugh.”
Mason's jaw tightened.
“Yes.”
The answer came quietly.
Brooks wrote.
I asked:
“Why?”
Mason stared at the table.
“I saw the name.”
“Still not enough.”
“I remembered him standing in a staff meeting saying my whole method was built around needing someone weaker.”
My chest tightened.
That sounded like Vale.
Mason continued.
“I remembered people looking at me.”
“So you found me.”
“I didn't plan it.”
“You did it for nine days.”
He looked at me.
“I kept waiting to see if you'd move like him.”
That was new.
“What?”
“The first few days, nothing.”
Because I had hidden it.
I rarely used Vale’s stance in formal drills.
Military combatives had given me other habits.
The canteen changed that.
No time to think.
Mason continued.
“Then today.”
“And when you saw it?”
“I knew.”
“Before you asked who trained me.”
“Yes.”
“Then why ask?”
His face tightened.
“Because I wanted you to say his name.”
I stared.
“Why?”
“So I could know I wasn't imagining it.”
Brooks looked at him.
“Then Vale appeared.”
“Yes.”
Mason laughed once.
“Like the universe had a sense of humor.”
No one joined him.
I looked at Brooks.
“Can I ask one more?”
She nodded.
I turned to Mason.
“Did you decide to humiliate me because of Vale?”
He thought.
“No.”
I almost interrupted.
He continued.
“I humiliate people.”
The room went still.
“At first you were just new.”
He rubbed his hands together.
“Then I thought you might be Carter from Alden, and I pushed harder.”
That answer was uglier because it did not make me uniquely targeted.
The behavior existed already.
Old resentment sharpened it.
Mason looked at me.
“I’m not going to tell you I was testing you.”
“Good.”
“I was being an asshole.”
Brooks wrote that down too.
I almost admired her.
Then Mason looked at my hands.
“You still use his stance.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
I frowned.
“Because it works.”
He nodded.
Like that answer offended him somehow.
Then:
“You know he changed it because of you?”
I looked at Vale through the glass outside.
“What?”
Mason continued.
“The stance.”
Brooks started to stop him.
I raised a hand.
“Let him.”
Mason looked at me.
“He didn't teach it that way before you.”
My pulse changed.
“What way?”
“Left hand low. Open shoulder.”
I stared.
Vale had always told me the stance was old.
Something he'd used for years.
Mason shook his head.
“That part was yours.”
I looked through the glass again.
Vale was standing in the hallway.
He couldn't hear us.
I thought about the reflection.
His hands matching mine.
May you like
Maybe I had spent eleven years thinking I was carrying his technique.
Maybe he had been carrying part of mine.
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