Jaime took a drag off the weak foreign cigarette under the grey sky of an early-May afternoon. This part of the country didn’t really do “spring”; winter went from cold enough to snow to just barely warm enough to rain, and then the temperature just sort of shot up out of nowhere at some point in June to herald the arrival of summer. She threw the cigarette out without finishing it. They were in the States, no reason to suffer shitty cigarettes for no reason other than them being “exotic”. This was Jaime’s second year on the base and her third in the army. Her training year had been much better. Basic might have sucked, but she’d have gone through basic a hundred times over if it meant she wasn’t stuck in this godforsaken desert of decent dick.

The transport over had looked promising enough. The truck was a certified smorgasbord of strong young men and fit, sweet-looking boys for her to choose from. And all of it was for her, without so much as a shred of competition for their attention to be seen. She expected there to be at least some other women at the base, but there’d also be even more men, and she wasn’t so greedy that she’d be unwilling to share so long as she got a few rides from some of the favorites she’d already picked out.

That optimism faded as the truck came through the center of the town. They had been waiting for them to come through. They shouldn’t have known the transport schedule, but intel has a funny way of finding its way into hands and mouths it shouldn’t. The transport was headed straight into an ambush, one that Jaime was wholly unprepared for despite being fully armed and armored in the best equipment the taxpayers were willing to buy.

The enemy was out in sundresses. The sun wasn’t out, and it didn’t feel like it was coming just around the corner, but they were all wearing bright, short, and tight-fitting dresses paired with full and total makeup. Jaime couldn’t compete with that kind of firepower, not in bulky body armor and loose-fitting camo with nothing on her face to hide the bags that come with a military sleep schedule. She was still catching glances from the other soldiers, but they were far less frequent, and their expression had gone from: “There’s a girl in the army!” to: “There’s a girl in the army.”

She hadn’t been entirely dismayed at the time. Sure, she’d have to fight for her rides with the favorites, but she’d still have most of the face time with them. She’d see them on the base every day, and these girls would have to settle for their breaks on leave, and on leave, Jaime could wear all the makeup she wanted along with her brightest, skimpiest civies. Plus, it wasn’t like the town would be completely devoid of men. If her math checked out, there should be about one of them for every sundress-wearing insurgent that was trying to take out her male comrades, leaving her with more than enough of a beef surplus to get by. Jaime didn’t know at the time how quickly that excess beef would rot.

It was fine, at first. She caught some fish, released some, and kept a few around for more regular engagements. But after about a month, the releases weren’t coming back at their regular rate, and those that did had all developed some…bad habits. When Jaime tried to call them out on this change, they all answered her constructive criticism the same way: “Well, Jackie (or Katie, or Kiara, or Rosanna, or Emma) likes it.” She’d never see those ones again, both because they weren’t interested in changing, and because Jaime wasn’t particularly interested in seeing them if they didn’t. Again, she had her surplus. She figured she could afford to throw out some bad meat.

Then, her regulars started leaving her or developing bad habits of their own, answering in the usual way when she asked them to return to their earlier form. She tried to expand her net, but the new fish either weren’t interested in her bait, or were the kind who’d refuse to change the unacceptable behaviors in the bedroom that the local girls seemed to be ecstatic to accept. She turned to the local men in the hopes that they might be a fresh source of nourishment, but her math had indeed been off. There was maybe one single man for every three single women among the civilian populace. They were as ignored by the women of the town as Jaime was by the soldiers on the base. The men of the town who had the means, left, and those that remained wore their sullen bitterness like a bad cologne that could have used about four or five fewer spritzes when they put it on at the start of the night.

The problem was that the girls just adored the soldiers. They were fighting for freedom and justice and all that was good in the world, and it was the duty of a good citizen to honor the soldiers in any way you could. In their mind, that meant catering to every whim, sexual or otherwise, of their idols. A peer can’t compete with a worshipper; you’ll lose that fight every time.

Oliver Leftwich, the married man who was just oh so frustratingly faithful, was at least sympathetic to her plight. He had given her the crappy foreign cigarettes, and said they were supposed to help alleviate her “symptoms”. Instead, they simply half-muted them, which only served to piss her off about them more. She’d prefer to give them back, possibly.

He had also seen what the civilian girls were offering though. That was made plain and simple even to married men. His first night on leave, this tall, dark, and handsome brunette with hair down to her waist sits right in his lap and says, “I see the ring on your finger, and I respect that. What do you think your wife would like me to do with you? You can take all the time you want with that question. I’ll be right here waiting.” He said he’d ask his wife, but supposed the lovely young girl sitting in his lap was one of those things she might not prefer. He was kind enough to ask about Jaime as well, but not in so many words, or openly at all.

She stuffed the cigarettes he gave her back in her coat and took out a domestic. She lit up and walked her route. When she was done, she went and found Ol’ Liver and returned his smokes. “These aren’t helping.”

He held his hand up and flat, refusing to take them back. “No, you keep them. There’s no point in me having them.”

“I don’t want them anymore.”

“Then don’t smoke them. I’ll just throw them in the trash. You might as well hold onto ‘em. Better to have and not need, right?”

She begrudgingly agreed and tossed the pack back into her locker when she made it back to her residence. She’d just have them forever, always hiding among her belongings and clothes. She hopped up onto the bed and laid herself back onto the soft surface. She wasn’t tired, but she wanted to be comfortable, and maybe fall asleep. She wanted sleep for no reason other than that it meant she’d wake up another day closer to leaving this place. She didn’t know how much longer she’d have to stay at the base, but she knew it wouldn’t be forever. Every day forward was another day closer to the one where she’d get to leave.

She woke up and went to her mandated post, then watched and waited for her mandated relief to arrive at the mandated time so she could begin her mandated patrol. Once the time came, she set out on her mandated march in the mandated manner along her mandated route. Jaime didn’t hate the monotony of military life like some did. For her, it helped move the days along by letting her turn her mind off to making decisions while she moved through the day and around the base.

The base went deeper than most people thought. It was hard to tell, but there were huge swaths of land just over a ridge of small hills that the base encompassed. The populaces both on and off base mostly ignored that entire southern section. Even though it made up almost two thirds of the base, it was empty save for a couple buildings here and there. Jaime’s wasn’t allowed in any of the buildings in the southern section, but her patrol covered the ridge, so she saw the soldiers and people who worked in them. They were few and far between, but they were there, and they were regular. Squareface, whose head was as delightfully square-shaped as the rest of him, was gay. Pencil-neck, who was as close to a literal representation of his nickname as you could imagine, was a locals-only boy, and if he weren’t, would have been among the absolute last of Jaime’s emergency reserves. Others she didn’t have nicknames for, but she knew their real names and could talk to them politely for as much time as wanted or warranted.

As much as she hated life here, it could have been worse. She was somewhere with a name. This place might have been a figurative desert, but a real and possibly hostile one was far less appealing than the metaphor. She continued her safely dull ceremonial duty and changed the guard. Sometimes, she’d be treated to an exciting change of pace and get to escort people to and from particular locations on and off the base, but right now she was alone, escorting nothing but ghosts back and forth across some imaginary line, protecting them from the patches of fog that rolled alongside the hillcrest. She walked a handful more ghost squads across the line, and then another handful more. She walked another ten or twenty handfuls in total before she saw the new face.

He was new to this place. It wasn’t that she didn’t recognize him, plenty of soldiers were completely forgettable, it was that he didn’t recognize her. Not as someone he’d seen before, not as a soldier, not as anything but a woman in front of him. He saw the uniform, and probably knew she was a soldier in some part of his mind, but she was a woman in his eyes first and foremost. Those eyes of his told her in completely certain terms that he wanted to have sex with her as soon as humanly possible, and Jaime would be all too happy and willing to oblige him.

She moved first, set on him like an eagle dive-bombing a salmon midstream. This fish was not getting away from the reaches of her claws. She held out a hand and pulled him ever so slightly in on the shake, and had her thigh not so slightly rub up against his, “Hi, I’m Jaime.”

“Haha, me too!”

“Wow! Really?” He didn’t have a nametag, but he had a nurse’s apparel and badge. They didn’t usually have nametags, anyway. He also didn’t have a ring. She didn’t care if his name wasn’t really Jaime, it could be Alarcaine Diego Françoise-Chang, for all she cared. He had a solid chest, a flat stomach, and strong legs. He would do. “Hey, is your shift almost up? The guard’s about to change, and I’ll be free for a few hours if you’d like to join me…” she dragged the last words to let him know exactly what ‘joining her’ meant.

“It most certainly is, and I would love to join you.” He jumped right into her arms, and the two of them fell straight into a bed and the next two days. They each did their duties, on-base and off, with every waking moment of free time spent together in the bedroom. It was the first time she’d felt good in months.

He was new to the base, a non-military employee working with medical equipment and just getting used to the rhythms of military life. He hadn’t been to town yet, and Jaime instantly fretted about whether an employee who lived on the base was enough for the local girls to slobber over. Jaime hoped she’d never have to find out. The two of them didn’t need to leave the bed. He didn’t need to wander and see what was out there. They could stay there forever as far as she or the army was concerned. Someone would get transferred some day, but that would happen forever from now. Today, they could do anything, and there was so much they could do today. Until someday came for its reckoning, she was going to enjoy her new catch.

His body was long and strong, in all manners of speaking, all of it lithe and powerful and full-bodied. His face though, that was short and stumpy. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t great, either. That didn’t matter. The long and strong body was more than enough for her.

Refreshed, Jaime stepped out into the same cold mist she’d left for the refuge of her warm bed not ten hours earlier. It was a nice breather, to be honest. Some fresh air would do her some good. She took a brisk pace to her assignment, and completed it with similar brisk vigor. Life just went by so much better when you felt like this. It was sheer ease. Nothing bothered you, nothing mattered, nothing nagged, or irked, or chafed. She could just glide through the day and let everything roll over her like the fog over her patrol route. Nothing that happened would change the fact that she’d be going home to her delightfully adequate sexual reprieve. That one not-so-small thing was enough to wash away all the dull tedium of military life into an easily managed blur.

He was a delightful fuck: fun and playful and satisfying. And more than that, she even enjoyed his presence when they weren’t boning. He was at all times calming and exciting, bold and vulnerable, nurturing and willing to be nurtured. He was someone with whom it was worth it to spend your limited time. Of course, she felt that their time was best spent fucking, and thankfully, he agreed with her vigorously.

His schedule lined up with hers pretty well, which was nice. Too often enough in life, a perfectly good fling will only be free when you aren’t, and two possible soul mates have to go their separate ways for no reason other than poor scheduling. “Soul mate” was definitely not a term she’d feel comfortable throwing around this early, but it didn’t need to be thrown away, either. They were still early in the process. There was no reason to ruin things now by thinking too much about things later.

That day they had a security briefing. It was mostly just a pointless reminder about where people were allowed to go and where people weren’t and what to do if you found someone somewhere they weren’t supposed to be. Briefings rarely covered anything she didn’t already know, so Jaime mostly ignored them just enough that she wouldn’t miss anything that she could get in trouble for not knowing. The rumor going around was that someone had gotten caught shacking up with his girlfriend on-base. He’d been shipped out everywhere from the center of the earth to the surface of the sun if you believed everything you heard. The girl, they assumed, had either gotten off with a stern talking-to or had moved up the chain of command, still living on-base with some lieutenant or captain or whatever. Jaime took the same approach to rumors as she did to briefings: pay exactly enough attention so that you don’t miss anything crucial.

Anyway, she finished that chore and moved along with her day, going through her patrol and standing at her post. She kept up with her training exercises and performed some number of other menial duties. She decided to write back home. She didn’t mention “Other Jaime”. It was still a little early for that, and their relationship wasn’t exactly “allowed”, though it wasn’t entirely forbidden either. Fucking up and down in the chain of command was the only thing explicitly prohibited, and “relationships damaging to morale” was a phrase exactly vague enough to give command the freedom to punish whomever they wanted whenever they wanted for whatever they wanted. Fraternization was only a problem when you were making it a problem for someone else. As was true for all things in the army: as long as you weren’t drawing the attention of someone more important than you, you could do whatever your little heart desired.

She ran into Oliver at mess hall after the briefing and shared a lunch of salted beef and mixed vegetables. He spoke first. “You’ve been in a better mood lately. Finally find a decent screw?”

Jaime tore through a mouthful of beef, cabbage, and carrots. The meat was the cheap kind the army always got, but at least it was a cut that was supposed to be cheap. There was nothing worse than when the army tried to “treat” them to the fancier shit. Chuck is chuck at any price point, but sirloin bought at a price that made sense for the army was always coming from the absolute bottom of the barrel. “Mhm.”

“Local?”

“Civilian employee. New guy. Hasn’t even been into town yet. Works on the back half of the base.”

“He allowed to tell you what he does?”

“I dunno. We don’t really talk about job or army shit.”

“Do you even take the time to talk to him?

“I’ll do what I want with my new fucktoy, thank you very much. If I want to keep his mouth too full to have a conversation, that’s my pejorative.”

“’Prerogative’ you fucking grunt. It’s your ‘prerogative’.”

“That’s what I said you fucking bean counter.”

“It’s not, but since you’re the one of us who carries a weapon every day, I’ll let you have it.”

“Yeah, you better.” Jaime mock shot him with her fork. He was a good friend to have on base. Before coming here, she’d always considered herself a “guy’s gal”, but she learned that wasn’t so true when she wasn’t screwing or trying to screw at least one of the “guy’s guys” she was hanging out with. Their jokes suddenly seemed less funny, their stories less interesting. Oliver wasn’t exceptionally girly or anything, that’d be even worse. She already knew more than she needed to about how she got along with girly girls. No, he was right down the middle, and that was just how she liked her friends. She wished she hadn’t had to go through a bout of extreme dehydration to learn this, but it was always better to know more about yourself than less, and she’d had to learn a lot about the subject over her time at the base.

The recent transport must have been a full one. She’d noticed a lot more fresh faces than usual around the mess hall. Jaime wondered if word about the accommodating locals had gotten out to the greater military community, causing the more connected soldiers out there to call in favors to get transferred to the base. That was concerning. The new faces didn’t seem to be replacing any old ones just yet, but they would have to eventually. The base had more people than it probably needed before even her transport arrived, let alone after this sudden influx of manpower. Soon, someone in charge might notice that, and Jaime, being wholly unconnected to anyone important, would find herself shipped out on the next transport to the literal desert without her newfound figurative oasis in tow.

She asked Oliver if he knew anything about the new arrivals. His response: “No clue, I’m an equipment bean counter, not a personnel bean counter. I just figured it was the usual turnover.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.” She hoped not. She hoped there was some reason above her pay grade that would explain why this base in the middle of nowhere had almost twice as many people as it needed in order to function safely and securely. She hoped it wasn’t just because bureaucracy sells slower than it buys, and she hoped she wouldn’t be among the items sold to offset the cost of the new purchases.

She could try to reach out to the less rigid people in charge of such things, but she didn’t have anything to offer them in exchange for their favors. Her parents weren’t rich or important, and her usual coin had suffered a great deal of inflation in the current market. No, doing anything to avoid transfer would just get her noticed and put front and center in the minds of the people who made those decisions. Then she’d have to pay a price she couldn’t afford just to get off of the short list she’d put herself on. Flying under the radar and hoping to get lucky was her only move now. She could hopefully bank on command not looking further past her gender, but if an ambitious enough officer saw her marksmanship scores, she might be in trouble. Damn her professional pride. How hard would it have been to miss a few more shots here or there? No, she needed “expert” on her record instead of just “exceptional”. It didn’t even help her check or anything; it was just a vanity title, something concrete for her to say “See! I’m good at this!” It was out of her hands. There was nothing to be gained by freaking out about it. All she could do was hope and wait and enjoy what time she had left in the land of the living.

She did that, for a while. She enjoyed her days with their easy and repetitive patrols and treasured her nights with other Jaime like the fleeting luxury that they were. Eventually, though, the dread would creep back in. Then she’d have to jump through the usual mental hoops to keep her anxieties at bay, telling herself all the necessary lies to make the unbearable sound acceptable. Even if she got transferred, she could get lucky. Maybe she’d be shipped off to a noncombat post in a place where the girls didn’t salivate all over anything wrapped in a uniform. Being fought over again would be nice. It was definitely better than having to do the fighting. She’d miss other Jaime, and she wasn’t looking to stray in the slightest, but the reintroduction of variety into her life would sweeten the sorrow of parting some small bit. Long and strong was definitely her favorite flavor, but wide and strong had its place, too. As did smooth and limber, and as did unique and eager. What could she say? Monogamy had hardly been her usual practice up to that point, and she wasn’t going to act like eating the same meal every day for the rest of her life made sense to her.

To her surprise, it was other Jaime who got called away first. He just up and told her he had to leave one day, and then he was just kind of gone as soon as they gave each other their final goodbyes. There was no talk or discussion. She didn’t have a chance to ask where he was going, or why he was leaving. It didn’t even occur to her to ask him to stay and try to find work somewhere in the town. It was just so foreign to her that civilians could actually quit and do what they want, the thought never crossed her mind. She wouldn’t have expected him to agree, anyway. It was a pretty heavy ask. He’d basically be giving up his entire life just so they could keep fucking. The town didn’t have a whole lot going on outside of the base, and probably didn’t have any work for other Jaime doing…whatever it was that he did for work.

She knew it was something with medical equipment, but that was as far as her knowledge went. She didn’t know much in the way of details about what he did, or really any details about him at all. She didn’t know where he was from, what his plans for the future were, or even his last name. That stuff never really came up. They were having too much fun to bother with all of that boring stuff. She knew him though. She knew his sense of humor, knew his demeanor and nature, she knew his tendencies and his preferences. She knew how he talked, how he fucked, how he laughed, how he tucked her head into the crook of his shoulder. She knew that man.

It was funny; she was having a hard time picturing him now with total clarity, and the harder she tried, the harder it was to imagine him. She would recognize him no problem if he came back, but when she went to picture him in her mind, the lack of anything to compare with the image in her head left her unsure of its accuracy. Whether she could picture him perfectly or not, one detail was certifiably undeniable: she was going to miss him.

The first couple days she passed through in a dull haze. Where before she’d float through her routine on a fluffy cloud of post-coital bliss, this new cloud was dreary and grey and came from the shock of realizing she was going back to the old drought. She wasn’t even a week removed from their last screw and it was already worse than when she was over a full year past a decent lay before she met him. Now, she’d lived and lost her oasis and wasn’t so accustomed to dealing with the thirst. It was just such a sudden withdrawal. Just, gone. The gradual weaning last time sucked in its own right, but this sudden loss hit in her in the gut hard enough to make her want to puke.

She had too much pride to try reclaiming any of the army men. They had their worshippers attending to their every need, and those worshippers had no needs of their own. Or, if they did, kept them dutifully to themselves. No, she was no worshipper and wasn’t willing to play the part. The whole point of engaging with them was to satisfy those needs the civvy girls pretended not to have or care about. Besides, they all had this insufferable cocky and sure attitude these days. Any modesty or humility they might have had before coming to this stupid town had been, almost literally, sucked out of them.

Maybe she should try to get transferred. Even a warzone would be better than this; at least she wouldn’t be bored. The emptiness was killing her anyway, might as well die with some excitement in her life. Why join the army if you don’t want to fight? Wasn’t that the whole point of being a soldier? She’d go to her CO at her next opportunity.

She told Oliver about her decision to set the wheels in motion to getting her transfer. “No you’re not,” he said when she told him, “and they wouldn’t let you leave if you asked, anyway. You want to. When was the last time the army let you have something you wanted?”

“They might! You don’t know that.”

“You’ve just got a little bit of heartache. Don’t go running off and doing something stupid, because you miss your squeeze.”

“He just…disappeared! Like, I don’t even know how I’d contact him. I don’t even know his last name!”

“Shit, you didn’t even learn his last name and you’re this broken up? Dick must have been on a whole ‘nother level.”

“It WAS!” She was exaggerating a bit. She missed it more than any others, but it wasn’t exactly the best she’d ever had. It was the best of anyone she actually liked. That empty-headed boy back in basic had the best one, but she’d felt herself getting dumber with every second spent with him, so she moved along shortly after that. “I miss him, though. It was more than just the sex. I never learned his last name, or where he was from, or other stupid bullshit, because I never had to ask him about those things. The conversation never got so boring that we had to do the ‘who are you?’ ‘where are you from?’ bullshit.”

“You could ask squareface or someone who works over on that side of the base. Someone over there might have been bored enough to ask where he’s from or how to get a hold of him.”

She hadn’t thought of that. It had barely even occurred to her that other Jaime would have interacted with anyone else on the base. They’d spent so much of their time together that it was almost like no one else in the world had existed to either of them. She’d try asking around before she played the dangerous game of trying to manipulate military bureaucracy. It wasn’t like knowing more about other Jaime would make her feel less lonely and horny. Even if she could get a hold of him, she wasn’t getting him back, but it’d be nice to have a last name, and maybe some means of contacting him. She wouldn’t mind having him as a pen pal, or at least getting a goodbye that didn’t feel so abrupt.

She was lucky Squareface was also on lunch at this time. “Specialist Browning?”

“Still gay, O’Lanson.”

“No, I was wondering about someone who used to work on the other side of the base. His name is Jaime, he said he worked with medical equipment. Do you know him?”

Squareface’s square jaw kept chewing as he spoke. He barely looked up from his meal to address her. “Can’t say that I do. Only Jaime I know is you, O’Lanson.”

Jaime did her best to pull up the fading picture in her mind. “He was tall, lean but not skinny, kind of a protruding forehead, bit of a lumpy kind of face.”

He looked up at that and stopped chewing. “I might have seen him before.” Browning stood up from his meal. “Come with me.”

“It’s not a big deal. I still need to fi…”

“That’s an order.” He said it in a hushed tone, like he didn’t want anyone to hear it. Jaime wasn’t sure whether to push the issue. Squareface did outrank her, but he wasn’t in her chain of command, and if she missed lunch and her next work assignment, she’d be disobeying her standing orders. He must have seen her hesitation. He called across the mess hall to her immediate supervisor. “Sergeant Schofield, I need to borrow private O’Lanson regarding a procedural matter. It might take up a section of her day.”

This didn’t feel like a procedural matter to her, and that seemed like an odd way to ask to borrow her, but Ol’ Schofield waved his hands without a care in the world. “O’Lanson, go along with specialist Browning. Report back when you’re done.” Well, that was that then. She wasn’t going to get to finish her lunch. Ah well, she’d eaten most of it already, and she’d probably grabbed too much to begin with. She was feeling kind of stuffed.

Specialist Browning walked her from the mess hall to across the ridge and towards the other side of the base. Two newcomers Jaime didn’t really know joined them shortly after the mess hall. She didn’t remember Squareface asking for anyone to come with them, but here these two were. Jaime didn’t know what was going on, but it probably wasn’t just to help her find a civilian employee. They took her into one of the buildings on that side of the base. There was a front desk, a hallway with doors, and not a lot else.

Specialist Browning spoke first to the soldier she didn’t recognize sitting at the front desk, “Three.” The number was answered with a nod, and they led her through one of the doors. Inside was a table with a single chair, and like the previous hallway, nothing else. The stranger gestured for her to sit down.

Specialist Browning spoke to her first as they walked out the door, leaving her alone, “Wait here.”

She was in trouble. Nothing good ever happens in empty rooms. The question was: how much trouble? Was other Jaime fleeing the base, because he stole something or did something illegal? No, she’d have heard about that. A civilian breach of that magnitude would have been a huge story around the base. She’d been kinda coasting through the past two or three months, but not even she could ignore that kind of rumor. Hell, that would have caused at least twenty security seminars and special briefings. What the fuck did you do, Jaime?

She didn’t know how long they were gone, but with nothing to do, it felt like hours. There were no windows in the room, so she couldn’t judge based on the sunlight. She was getting really bored, though. And, for someone who spent most of their day walking back and forth or standing still, if she was getting bored, it meant she’d been there for a long time. She was also hungry again, but that could have been her unfinished lunch’s doing.

Browning came back in with one of the strangers that had walked with them after the mess hall and a new stranger she’d never seen before. Specialist Browning spoke first, “Do you know this man?” He placed a picture of other Jaime’s face on the desk. It was a small picture, maybe just a touch over the size of a postage stamp, but it was him. Jaime’s mental image had suddenly been given more clarity.

“Yup, that’s him.” She was in a tough position. She didn’t want to be connected too closely to other Jaime right now, but she knew better than to try lying. She wasn’t going to volunteer that she had been banging him nonstop for the past few months, but if they asked, then they probably already knew.

“When was the last time you saw him? Be as specific as you can.”

“Last Tuesday. I believe it was some time around 1900 hours.”

Browning turned and whispered something to one of the strangers, who quickly left the room. “Ok, and how, where, and when did you meet him?”

“It was about two months ago at the end of my patrol. He came out of one of these buildings, and we started talking.”

“When, specifically?”

“Uhhhh, that shift ended at 1600. I don’t remember the date. If I could see a calendar I could figure it out.”

Browning gestured at the remaining stranger. He opened the door and shouted down the hall, “Can we get a calendar in here?” It was the first time she’d heard any of the strangers speak. She’d heard this one’s accent before, but she couldn’t quite place where it was from or what it was called.

A few seconds later, the calendar was relayed from a hand outside the door, to the stranger, to Browning, and in front of Jaime on the table. She turned the pages back to the month in question and counted back as best she could. She pointed to the date in question, “It was this one.”

The stranger spoke first in his almost-familiar accent, “So right after then?”

Jaime didn’t realize the question wasn’t for her. Browning answered before she tried to ask for clarification. “Immediately after.” The next question was for Jaime, but it was given as an order, “Show me each and every time, and location you saw him between this date,” he pointed forcefully on the calendar, “and last Tuesday at 1900 hours. Be as specific and thorough as possible.”

“Well…that’s a lot of times…first we…”

Browning interrupted her, head fallen back in frustration, “Oh fuck, of COURSE you were fucking him.” He started pacing, “And you didn’t once think to check his credentials? Or were you just too horny to give a fuck?”

“He had a nurse’s uniform and a clearance badge. Half the nurses walk around without nametags, anyway. If someone has a badge, they’re cleared to move where the badge says they can move.” She didn’t want to sound so indignant, but she’d followed standard protocol, if they wanted her to check every person’s info, they should have sounded a lockdown or made that the standard operating procedure in the first place.

“Alright, alright, that doesn’t matter.” Browning was trying to stay calm, he was visibly struggling with his anger, but he was winning the fight for now. “How often were you fucking him, and at what hours?”

“…Wellll…Pretty much whenever I didn’t have something else I had to do.”

“So if I pull your schedule, any time you’re not on duty, I can safely assume he was spending in your quarters?”

“More or less, yeah.” She explained his “schedule” and how it usually lined up with hers and pointed out where it didn’t and did her best to fill Browning’s timeline of when other Jaime was accounted for. Embarrassment didn’t even come close to what Jaime felt right now. This was outright humiliation. Security was the only thing she had to do on the whole base. She hadn’t done anything wrong exactly; she’d followed proper procedure and followed her orders dutifully. This was a system failure, not an operator error. She had just happened to be the operator involved when the system failed. Unfortunately, the army didn’t care much about that distinction. If it looked like you fucked up, you fucked up.

“Ok,” Browning gave a nod to the stranger, who leaned out the door and said something to a person in the hall she couldn’t see. “so what else do you know about him. Did he say anything about himself. Even things that might seem small or unimportant can be helpful.”

Jaime recounted a hundred details of varying significance. Helpful or not, important or unimportant, Browning recorded every last utterance she spoke about the subject of other Jaime and her time with him. She didn’t know which details would be useful for specialist Browning, but she knew which details she’d remember years from now and which ones she’d forget tomorrow. After an hour of her telling details, answering questions about those details, and seeing new and familiar strangers come and go, Browning and the strangers left her to her lonesome in the empty room. She didn’t need to try the door to know it was locked, and there would be at least one stranger waiting by the door in case the lock failed.

It wasn’t like she was going to try to escape. She didn’t seem to be in that much trouble. She wasn’t getting out of this feeling clear, but the grilling she was getting wasn’t hot enough for her to think she was facing anything worse than a shitty transfer and a bad mark on her record. She might get docked some pay, or pick up a few shit jobs here or there, but it’s not like she was facing a tribunal or something serious.

She wandered around the room, looking for something to look at in a room that had anything but. She went wall to wall looking, but found nothing. Only the chair and the table were different from the three walls, and the door was the only thing different about wall number four. The emptiness of the room was almost dizzying, and the sensation was starting to make Jaime feel sick to her stomach. Thankfully the door opened to relieve the pressure, and more strangers came through.

There was a lot different about these strangers. For one, it was the first time a group of strangers had ALL been strangers. Usually Specialist Browning was with any strangers she saw. Secondly, these were nurse strangers, not soldier strangers, but something told Jaime that they were not here to heal the sick. Finally, every one of them had an ID badge with a new design feature Jaime hadn’t seen before, but instantly knew its purpose. Each stranger’s badge had the bearer’s corresponding portrait, large enough to be recognizable even at a short distance.

These portraits, and the faces they depicted, were the last faces Jaime would ever see. Well, almost the last.

End