Washington thinks that there's something to be said for being dead. The Director doesn't know where he is, for once in many camera-infested days. Prisoner 6-19 B has escaped. Officially, he has been listed as KIA, and recovered.

Washington sits outside Blue Base on a metal floor, one leg stretched out and the other knee pulled up to his chest. He hasn't quite progressed to being able to relax completely. He's wearing armor that he's going to have to give back to Church one of these days. The sun is shining, which seems to be a standard for simulation troopers. Unless, of course, it's perpetually snowing. The Director made all sorts of worlds for his people to play in.

(He made worlds for Epsilon too, torture chambers and false memories and barrages of emotions each in a row onetwo so fast, all colliding and compounding far too fast for a brain to deal with.)

Years ago, Wash would have reacted to a slew of memories like that somehow. He would have gritted his teeth or felt his hands clutch at the back of his neck even if they held still, or he would have shook just a little bit, enough not to set off the armor and show it. Even in the jail cell, he had reacted to the memories.

Now, Wash sighs with relief. The hit he had grown used to expecting hadn't come.

His nerves have forgotten Epsilon.

But then, in a natural, human way untouched by neural lace, the dead start prodding through his listless memories. They don't hurt, and he's hoping that's because he's on his way to recov...to reconciliation, instead of just being done with the whole emotion thing. Although that would be nice too.

At least he can tell they're his own memories. They have names and faces and footsteps, some more shuffling than others. Not being able to tell his own memories from Epsilon's hasn't been a problem in a while.

Sitting in Valhalla, half relaxing (which is about the best he can do so far, it's going to take some practice), Wash remembers the dead.

Wash, Maine, and York worked together like a machine. Maine wasn't on the top six for very long, but he was as efficient as a computer at following orders. Not the greatest leader, but you told him to kill something and he'd freaking well do it.

York matched Delta. You tell him to do something and he'd think through it so fast, but so obviously that you could almost see him do it. His eye would go unfocused and then the plan would come out in quick analyses and directions. Everybody else would just have to keep up. York, though, could also act as relaxed as if he were sitting on his own couch, even in the middle of a battlefield.

Tex blew into their lives like a tornado, and although she settled in well enough, there was the occasional dust devil of a time when the Director so clearly favored her, so clearly gave her more attention, that it dizzied the rest of them.

CT was hard and worried and there were two parts to her really: the rebel, crying through her anger, and the one whose body Wash had dug up and had the Meta recover for parts in the desert.

Then there was the Director. Leonard Church hadn't meant to do anything wrong. That's what Wash thought at first, and for a very long time even as other people were asking what the Freelancers were supposed to be, if they weren't supposed to be a team. The Director was the head of the organization. He was the reason it existed, and therefore it had to be what he wanted it to be. There was no fighting that. It would be like telling someone that two and two didn't make four.

First plan. Hang Grif's horribly desiccated corpse from the ramparts. When the undead hordes gather around to eat, escape around the back.

Second plan. Hang Grif's horribly desiccated corpse from the ramparts. When the undead hordes gather around to eat, escape through the teleporter. Attack zombies from behind with shotgun and remaining Red troops. Keep an eye on the corpse for maximum morale.

Sarge treasures his zombie plans.

The plans become words only after they become numbers.

First it's y = mx + b and x= -b +/- b^2 - 4ac/2b and v = d/t . And then, slowly and laboriously, they become catchy phrases. He can translate the numbers to the world pretty well now. He knows the angles of the sides of the base and the angles of their shadows, with a little help from Simmons and Lopez. Numbers are nice and clean and zombie-proof.

And then, he can enjoy the endless possibilities of inserting these undoubtably anti-Grif phrases into everyday conversation, plus having workable plans.

Sarge has had to modify his plans slightly because of the switch to Valhalla from Blood Gulch. There were new equations, and far more places for zombies to come from. Both teams were down one man, Donut in stasis and Church gone. The Blues had a pet Freelancer now, though, and Sarge knew that Wash would bargain for favors.

He could deal with that tomorrow, though. For now, it was getting late and he still had zombie plans to double-check. It would be a stupid way to die if you calculated that it was so far from the Warthog to the projected origin of the zombies and it turned out wrong.

It takes some time to adjust.

The Blues have their own mourning to do. Every day, Wash wakes up to some kind of crashing sound as Caboose tries to build himself a new best friend. It's going to be half Church, half Tex, half tank, and part ghost, Caboose says. They've been back in Valhalla for an untraceable number of days, and everyone has been pretty quiet. Occasionally, Sarge shouts something incoherent and magnified.

I never should have taught them about that particular capability of the armor.

Wash sits up and rubs his eyes. Light is bouncing off the ground into the base, leaving a slatted yellow square. He hasn't fallen asleep on the job, of course not. He hasn't fallen asleep outside the base, both legs finally succumbing to gravity and hitting the ground. Freelancers don't do things like that. That was for...Wash yawns...simulation troopers...

At which point, Caboose ambles around the corner.

"Caboose."

"Washingtub."

They look at one another very solemnly.

Wash says, "Wait, what?"

Caboose says, "Are you okay."

Caboose's lack of inflection is normal, but it manages to convey an unusual seriousness.

Wash says, "Sure. Why?"

"Well, you're sleeping. Outside the base."

Wash stands up. "I guess I just got...preoccupied."

"I got preoccupied by an AI once."

Wash looks sharply at him. "That's different."

"I think it was O'Mally. My vision got all wobbly and there were lots of blurry lights and, oooh, murder. But don't worry. He's gone now."

Wash nods. "I know."

Caboose asks, "Was Epsilon like that? Was he..blurry."

"No."

"What was he like." Caboose tips his head.

Wash is surprised enough by the fact that he is having a coherent conversation with Caboose that he continues having it."You know how they say your life flashes before your eyes when you die? It's like that, except it's not my life."

"Whose life was it, Agent Washington."

"Epsilon's."

"Was Epsilon's life interesting."

"Uhm yeah, Caboose. You could say that."

"Okay. I...am going to go."

"Okay."

Caboose went.

"Shut up, man, please. This is getting ridiculous."

Wash wakes up like he usually does, with his arms out in front of him warding off something that isn't really there and that he can't stop. It's so quick. He crosses his arms and eases his back down against the pillow before anyone notices. He hopes.

It is the middle of the night, or so it appears from the amount of dark.

Tucker is face-down on his own bunk with two blankets and a pillow over his face. He says something along the lines of "Fffff."

Caboose is lying on top of his neatly made blanket with his fatigues on. This is normal. The fact that he's staring at Wash is not.

Wash blinks. "Sorry."

"It's the same as it's been before." That's Doc. "You keep yelling names of Freelancers. I'm sorry, but psych workups aren't part of my training. And I think you need one."

Caboose says, "We were dead people once."

Wash looks sharply at him. "What?"

"We pretended to be dead. Me and Church. And Tucker, and Tex."

"You were zombies," Doc said.

"I miss Tex too. Even if she was scary." Caboose sits up with his legs crossed, rocking slightly.

Wash says, "Sorry."

Doc looks at him from across the room. There's concern there, and a curiousness that Wash doesn't like. Stockholm Syndrome was a freaking burden.

Wash says, "I'll fix this."

Caboose says, "Or we could just stay awake. We've only been sleeping for three hours."

Doc turns over. "I think sleep would be good. Good night, Caboose."

"Good night, Doc. Good night, Agent Washington. Good night, Shiela who isn't here any more. Good night, best friend Church where ever you are in somebody else's brain."

Tucker says something along the lines of "Rrrgggh."

The next day, Wash runs outside to the sound of his own name being hoarsely garbled over the loudspeaker.

"Washington!"

Wash looks up and shouts to no one in particular. At this point, the person irately and short-temperedly calling his name might as well be God. "What!"

"Washington!"

This time, Wash recognizes the voice as the Red sergeant. Wash still hasn't been able to find anybody who can tell him that man's name. He looks around at the cliffs and over the field with its rough patches of grass before finding a patch of Red armor in the shape of a person. Wash activates his own amplifier as he starts trudging across the field. The fact that it's no-man's-land doesn't even cross his mind. This isn't a real war.

"Are you looking for me?"

"No," Sarge says. "I just enjoy shoutin' about states!"

Wash pauses on the slope leading up to the caves. He's close enough to speak normally, albeit loudly. "...Really?"

"No, Bluetard." Sarge still has the amplifier on. "I want. To talk. To you!"

Wash muttered, "I should never have taught them how to use that."

Sarge gets the hint and shuts it off. He starts walking toward the Red base, and Wash follows. "I wanted to talk to you."

"About what?"

"Oh, about...stuff. You having bats in the belfry, for one."

"What?"

"You're crazy." Sarge is gesturing and leaning, completely into his own diatribe. "The Freelancers might have taken that AI out of your skull but the remnants are still there, like some...remnant thing."

Wash hackles. His voice, though, goes to a cold, absolute flat."It's not something I talk about."

"Yeah, well you should. Because Church is going to come back at some point and he's going to bring somethin' else crazy flying out of that Epsilon unit like a bat out of-"

The Warthog roams up beside them. Sarge raises his arms against the dust as the other Reds in the car lean over. "Stop right there!" Simmons shouts.

Grif nervously says, "Did someone say bats?"

Simmons says, "We noticed that the Freelancer was trying to get into the base sir! We're here to, ah, stop...him."

"Well he's with me!" Sarge growls. "Move off. We're gonna have a talk."

Grif says, "Can this be a...all of us going along talk? I heard there were bats."

"No! There's boatloads a' bats, Grif. Tons a' bats. You wanna follow us you'll just walk into a cloud of 'em."

The Warthog starts to roar away.

"Come on, son," Sarge grumbled. "Let's get you in out of the rampant idiocy."

Wash trails after Sarge as he heads back toward the cave.

Simmons is still yelling from the Warthog. " He could be dangerous! What happened to 'I knew he was a Blue', sir?"

Sarge looks over his shoulder and yells. "Shut up, Grif!"

Grif shouts, "That was Simmons, sir!"

Sarge says, "Like I said, shut up, Grif! I can darn well talk to the Blues on neutral territory if I want to. And the afterlife is neutral territory!"

By this time, Wash and Sarge have passed under the shadowy entrance to the cave. Simmons, in the distance, gives one last yell. "You're not dead, sir!"

Wash has to agree with this as Sarge stomps further into the cave. "The afterlife? We're not in the afterlife. We're headed toward a cave system that runs under the bases. It's standard."

Sarge says, "I thought I was dead in the Blood Gulch afterlife for at least a few minutes, Blue, and that has got to count for somethin'."

"And how is the afterlife neutral territory? You're either one place or the other-"

They are far enough underground now that the entrance is small and distant. They are standing under the no-man's land. Sarge stops, and turns to look directly at Wash. "Or you're not sure which one you're in and so have a much more clarified-like view of the situation. Do you want me to help you or not?"

Wash says, "You brought me down here to help me?"

Sarge nods. "Yes I did."

Wash is silent for a moment. He let the cold, absolute flat pass through him again.

Wash says, "I guess."

"Hmm." Sarge looks at him and tips his head and doesn't sound like he thinks that was the right answer. But he starts to talk.

"So, if you want to be a Blue you gotta act like this." He sticks his chin up and starts prancing around. "Look at me, being' a namby-pamby worryin' warrior who can't shoot straight and occasionally knows a tank from a torpedo-"

Wash steps back. "I don't quite think they act like that."

"Or, " and Sarge turns around. He looms a little. "You can be you, a darned tired ex-Freelancer that keeps hearing voices, even though they knocked all the voice-hearing parts out of your head years ago."

Wash doesn't step back. He says, "I think there has got to be something between those two options."

Sarge steps back, out of dangerously close to Wash's personal space. He folds his arms. They are thick like Maine's. Sarge says, "Now you're thinkin'."

They meet again on the no-man's-land, Sarge propping his shotgun against his leg like he's not afraid Wash is going to steal it. Sarge's attitude is that of a man who thinks he can take anything back.

Wash's right shoulder still aches sometimes.

They stand there.

Wash says, "Aren't you going to ask how I'm doing or something? Ask what the doctor said?"

"No. I'm not your darn therapist. You want heart-to-heart time talk to Donut."

Wash said, "Ah, I don't think that's the best idea."

He does it anyway. Donut is lying on the hood of the Warthog, painting a red stripe on the nose. He rolls over languorously when he hears someone approach, but that disappears when he sees it's Wash. Donut stands up so fast that he has to sit down on the hood of the Warthog again to recover.

"What are you doing here?"

"Ah." Wash stands still, and clasps his hand behind his back. "Sarge wanted me to tell you that I'm sorry. I mean, I'm sorry."

"You, you killed me. You thought you killed me." Donut wrings his hands together.

"Yes," says Wash. "Yes I did."

They looked at each other.

Donut said, "Oh, okay."

Wash says, "Ah, so what are you doing?"

The Warthog creaks as Donut swings his legs over the other side of the hood and gets the car between him and Wash. He's not walking so tensely now though. He picks up a paintbrush that was lying next to the Warthog and gestures circles in the air. "Painting the front...so that if we run over zombies, you know, the blood won't clash with the color scheme."

Donut sounds like he's really, really pleased about this but is a little too scared to show it.

Sarge is bellowing again. "Blue. Blue!"

Wash turns around. He hadn't even seen Sarge over near the base. Wash walks over there rather quickly. "I assume you mean me."

"Yeah. What in the wide world of Disney do you think you're doing over here? Get back over to your base."

"You told me to talk to Donut."

"That's enough talkin'. Get lost! Or I'll shoot ya."

Wash shrugs and starts walking. "Well that's normally how you people communicate around here, so I guess it means I'm part of the gang now."

Wash is sitting on the edge of Blue Base again, leaning his chin on his gun. He is, technically, on watch. Church, Caboose said, sometimes assigned watch.

Wash thought about Donut saying okay.

Sometimes the best it gets is okay.

Blue Team hasn't complained lately about Wash talking in his sleep.

And then Wash actually goes looking for Sarge one day, because it's nice to have someone to talk to who seems to have things organized at least into what's dead and what's not. Sarge is good with rules and ranks and orders, and those things, Wash understands.

But then of course, Red Team is always reminding him of things he does not.

"You know what I've always wondered about command?" Sarge is stalking through the cave.

"Ah, what."

"Did they really name it the Warthog?"

"Umh, yes."

"I was just checking. Because who knows, if you have AI and ghosts and all that up there then y'might have mythical animals too, I don't know, and if it had all along been a walrus I don't know what I would've done."

"You sound...unsure of yourself. That's unusual."

"Huh? I'm not unsure. I'm just gathering information. So, Agent Wash. How do you feel about zombies?"

"What? Does this have to do with Donut and the Warthog?"

"The hordes of undead! If they were to spread their horrific invasiveness over the canyon, what would be your first line of defense?"

"Er, which direction are they coming from?"

"Well, in scenario seven they come from the north. Scenarios eleven through thirty-two disregard direction because the undead are in such numbers that they seem to come from everywhere."

"I never really thought about it."

"Well, that's the sort of thing we're going to fix."

Wash asks,"So, why exactly are you helping me?"

Sarge sounds infinitely proud of himself. "Sos that you get indebted to me and tell me all the Blues' plans, hehhehheh."

"I don't think they have any plans."

"Well then. That's good information. Come back next week."

And then one day Caboose is out on patrol and wanders a little too far, and soon enough somebody is shooting at him and Sarge, Simmons and Grif are out in the Warthog with the red paint still drying on it. They whoop over the frenetically strumming Tex-Mex music and wave their arms in the air. Wash feels a sympathetic sting in his right arm, an unconscious shift in his right leg to change the balance of his hips. He had seen his own medical data on the Meta's screen after Wash had been thrown from the Warthog all that time ago.

Simmons yells, "Get out of the way!"

Grif is crouched in the passenger seat. "Yeah, stinkin' Blue!"

These niceties from the Red soldiers and some incoherent grumbling from Sarge heralds the Warthog coming around for another pass. It rears over the nearest hill, spitting dirt from under the treads. Wash steps back a bit. There was a little rock on this side of the hill, just a small thing...

One tire grabs it and bumps. Grif flies out of his seat and rolls down the hill, clattering and cursing. Sarge whoops. Simmons makes an uneasy sound and doesn't take a hand off the turret gun, but looks back as Grif gets dizzily to his feet. The Warhog careens toward Wash.

He jumps forward, grabs the side of the windshield in one armor-assisted hand, and lets momentum carry him into the empty seat.

"What in Sam Hill are you doing?"

"I've been thinking about what you said."

"Sarge, watch out for those Blues!"

Some unenthusiastic shots from Tucker in Blue Base arc over the car. Wash can briefly see Doc and Caboose standing behind Tucker as Sarge hauls on the wheel to bring the Warthog around. The world is shaking and swishing past so fast that Wash wraps his hand around the edge of the windshield again almost as soon as he'd removed it.

Sarge says, "What things? About the zombies?"

"All that stuff about deciding who I want to be."

"Oh, that!"

"Sarge!" Simmons yelps. "That tree-"

"There ain't supposed to be any stinkin' trees in this part of my canyon-"

However, there are.

Simmons understands this. "What?"

At almost the same time, Wash yells, "Bail!"

They land not far from Grif, who is sitting on a knoll. He waves.

Was sits up slowly, feeling not even a twinge of pain from his right side- or his left, which he landed on, for that matter. Church's armor is good.

Sarge sits up a couple feet to his left while Simmons crawls a few steps in the background. "Was that part of your plan, sir?"

"Everyone alright?" Sarge barks. It's nearly an order.

Simmons stands up. "I only bruised my dignity, sir."

"The Blues think this is very funny," Grif yells.

"Gr-r-if! Are you so selfish as to skip a car crash with the team so as to have your own car crash?"

"Uhm, apparently!"

Sarge grumbles. He sights on the Warthog, which is on its side eight feet or so away with one tire spinning and its tusks capped with dirt. Sarge looks at Wash. "So. You thought about all that."

"Yes."

"So, are you ready to defect to Red Team?"

"What? No!"

Sarge goes silent. Wash can almost see the helmet adopt a shrewd expression.

Sarge says, "Now you're thinking like a, whatdoyacall'em, simulation trooper."

Wash is taken aback. "Is that why you were helping me?"

"Well, I thought about it."

"I can't believe this." Wash stands up and starts trudging back to Blue Base. He has to go around the Warthog. " Sarge, I suggest you take a look at your car. There's a little fire over here that's not getting smaller."

"Why thank you."

Wash stops to see Sarge sit up and dust his armor off. The orange visor stares.

Sarge says, "You gonna be part of this thing now, Agent Wash?" He pronounces it Warsh.

Wash says, "I guess I am."

He keeps walking. Doc and Tucker are arguing about whether to send a search party for him, Grif and Simmons are arguing about who knows what behind him, and Sarge is looking at the Warthog and leaning a foot against it like he's wondering either how to put out the fire or what to name it.

Wash wonders whether CT had had one moment of fulfillment before she died, where she realized that she had, all those years ago and for so many years in a row, been right.

She had known all along, with the surest conviction, that she couldn't succeed. Success, for her, was very clearly defined. It was also the only sign of success.

(Had any of them done any good, really? What standard were they supposed to judge by anyway? Certainly not that board.)

There is no twang from memories. The bleeding form of Epsilon moaning for his brain has been driven off.

Caboose isn't debating. He gives Wash a small wave as he crosses into Blue Base. "What were you doing over there, Agent Washington? Don't you know them? They're Red Team. We fight them."

"I, yes, thank you, Caboose."

Tucker is still halfheartedly shooting at the Reds, but they're starting to fall back. The sun dapples down on everyone's armor. Wash feels the change as he steps from the grass onto the metal floor of the base's exterior.

Wash sits down beside a wall and leans his head back against it. He doesn't have to think about not drawing his knees up like a second shield. Even with all the noise, it's easy to relax.