The Foundry | Chapter Two
Chapter Two of The Foundry
The Foundry
Daphne
Chapter Two
Late, as always, Echo finally settled among the dozens of fellow initiates who scattered the grand ballroom’s selection floor. Orator Coriseau had already begun their monologue and was losing themself in the intrigue portion. “It’s making my mouth literally water to see the false confidence in you fucking idiots who signed up—so willing to die you are.”
It was a speech Mx. Coriseau clearly knew well, with such flourishes shown through the drifting roam of their unfiltered words.
“To be clear—I don’t want you to die. I want you to pay for being so stupid to think this is going to be easy. You’re going to find that foolishness only gets you as far as a face flat on the ground—here at The Foundry.”
Echo would have known Coriseau’s speech by heart—their hair slicked back and tucked beneath the ground-skimming ceremonial robes, their supple face of curves which she would always see as most divine—if only the orator wasn’t so prone to improvisation. Still, Echo knew the beats.
Even before her first initiation, Echo bit and scratched for means to watch every smuggled and legally propagated vid she could of the incoming classes’ initiations. Time spent in Boreál was a plentiful thing for Echo before she’d taken first The Foundry’s challenge a near half-decade of long cycles back. A patience-borne notion was her chance gifted by fate of time. To be back for a second go-round was a rarity of rarities.
There were many vids of the grand ballroom, most shot from Foundry pilots and administrators looking down upon initiates, from cameras smuggled into the chamber, and very occasionally an official Foundry release which scattered clips throughout the local phase-net.
The bit coming up was Echo’s favorite; a note the orators always hit, yet none so well as Coriseau.
“Let me be clear! You will die here.
“One way or another. In some form or fashion. That much has been written by your own hand—by signing your name with such confidence upon our ledgers.”
That part always sent tingles down Echo’s spine, especially with the context to come, embellished as always with Coriseau’s sickest smile, barely seen from below in the darkness; the moment they lifted the veil on its farce.
It was a false bravado meant to stir the soul of fear before they turned everyone in the room soft for the truth of divine duality.
“If not in form, you will perish in spirit—in mind—in every bit of yourself not ready for this challenge you’ve brought yourself here to face. The Foundry will change you. You will find yourself—or lose yourself. And many of you will probably, actually die here. But you all know this, because that’s what we’ve told you, and you chose to ignore or think yourself beyond the warnings because you’re assholes who need to learn a thing or three like the rest of us.
“You’ve each signed more waivers than anyone ever should. My hand hurts for yours—but there’s a reason we have you do that. And there’s a reason you’ve been discouraged the whole time by our reverse-recruitment teams. It’s because none of us want to feel too poorly when you get killed while hooked into a machine.”
Orator Coriseau was clearly enjoying themself; looking down upon the silently stunned class below, surrounded by administrators, pilots, and previous initiates still climbing the ranks towards their own warships. Echo realized it with a smile, glancing around to see that false fearlessness upon the faces of those taking the plunge alongside her, reflecting a remembrance of her own foolhardy self-beliefs of ego held the first time around.
“We’re going to feel bad though—every one of us. And that’s something nobody but me will admit. Every one of us, in our own way. We’re not monsters. We’re people, just like you. And what you’re doing, what you’ve been called to do, is join us in our fight. We honor you for that. I honor you for that. We’re rooting for you all.”
Not everyone in The Foundry’s administration shined as beautifully from their soul as would Orator Coriseau, but their words weren’t false in the slightest. Everyone here respected the sacrifice of these youths, the young-adults, and the aging blowhards who couldn’t let their hopes go like Echo. The dream of every person here was the same, no matter how their fate would ultimately take shape.
Echo felt a surge in her chest, some intuitive happening, one she’d think most recognized—gaze snapping to the balcony above, landing firmly upon a shrouded figure standing near the Orator themself—that feeling: of being recognized.
While she couldn’t pinpoint their figure, there were only two whom Echo suspected might react in such a way, transmitting those levels of panicked emotion.
It was Rory Tyrell who would be the one her mind always chose first, as Echo missed her the most. Yet she knew Alan Undroth would react much the same way: that boy was in love with Echo, and had been from the moment he met her.
She often got these two quite mixed up in her heart. The line between friends and lovers was one Echo found most perplexing, and these two both seemed to draw that confusion out of her in abundance. For one of them, at least, it was feeling to have worked the same way in reverse.
Alan Undroth and her had spoken recently. Echo reached out to both he and Rory after landing back in Boreál, while the carrier ship shuttling her back towards The Foundry took to its reverse burn and after she’d submitted herself for re-initiation to the admiralty. False perceptions of the two were most apparent in the way Alan responded with such false and manipulative kindness, and how Rory lashed out with more cruelty than Echo ever could’ve imagined possible.
Rory just blocked her.
Echo loved them both as friends. She was bad at holding the line with people who wanted her in more ways than one, however. She’d not want to chase after someone who couldn’t say what they felt, and only truly hoped to heal what had passed between them all. Alan and her were having an ongoing conversation and becoming friends again. Yet she hadn’t warned him she was coming back.
All those above were chosen, committed to another, developing their mechs beside a partner; it was in pairs that Foundry’s initiates flew towards pilot hood.
Echo had been that rarest individual the first time around. One who’d proceed forward alone, without being chosen. Her hope was to survive despite the constant disadvantages, even thrive, and forge some fateful chance at re-pairing with one who would lose their other along the way. In that time, she’d found the youths beside her were most confused about how to hold their bonds; lines blurred for initiates regarding matters of friendship, romance, and sex.
It was a messy bunch who believed they could tame a Foundry warship, and Echo fit right in.
She made an impression upon many within The Foundry, and they were all indeed rooting for her. Although they’d not know how to support one who couldn’t ever find a pair; especially someone so committed to trying regardless.
Pushing herself beyond limits, refusing advice to stand back, Echo had taken on every initiate’s ultimate rite of passage; The Gauntlet; that final shot at becoming an accepted part of The Foundry was how she’d lost her place, and honor along with it.
The ways Echo lashed out at everyone in her failure had shown all of her worst sides, and the pleading she’d done in the ruinous aftermath was embarrassing. It had borne a stain of shame that she was still working to forgive herself for.
Regardless of who it might’ve been up there, knowing there was chance she’d misinterpreted the empathetic impression entirely, as always, Echo realized she did hope one of them had seen her; she hoped it was Rory.
She was hoping they’d gotten a really good look too.
“I’ve already got somebody.”
That’s what the last two had said, verbatim. Echo couldn’t believe this was happening to her. “Not again,” was all she could think as she’d searched for someone who felt appropriate that wasn’t already paired.
She’d try not to think about it, but she knew why this was hard for her.
Echo wasn’t like everyone else. Even among a civilization of such variation in humankind, it was rare to take on a challenge such as aspiring to pilot hood at her age.
“Hey, have you found a pair yet?” Echo asked some girl with tattoos all over her face. They’d looked her up and down, choosing to lie, and told her they’d found someone already.
Feeling the presence of those watching down from above, and a rising panic bubbling within, she’d not wanted to show signs of desperation. Echo chose to stop begging around and stepped away from the center of the chamber.
She had leaned there on a side-bar, and just let herself breathe.
There wasn’t anyone who seemed to be looking in her direction, though there’d been another one of those great surges felt in her heart. Echo looked up again to the figures above, that time on her own accord, searching for who it might’ve been to no avail.
Someone stepped up beside her in silence then.
Echo took a moment to realize the shadow she felt was in fact a person waiting for her to notice them. When her eyes fell upon the woman something happened in Echo’s belly, heart, and mind. There were holdings within her body from those she’d been so enamored with in the past who felt unbeatable in that regard, ties to the few in which she’d felt most present with by simply witnessing their beauty. All that fear had left her in a moment.
The woman was gorgeous; stunning, a way about her unknowably appealing to Echo, and they were smiling at her in a special way. No matter what they were to say, or ask of her, something in her knew it was to be a very good thing indeed.
Her name was Cameron.
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