Rule Four - Callahan

One month later.

"Soldiers, we"ve made a decision." Cecil stormed into the rec hall carrying his clipboard. This was the first time in weeks we"d had a moment to relax. "We are officially ceasing all missions for Milton. We need to resume collecting. However, if upon your regular training missions, you come upon any hint or clue of Milton"s whereabouts, dead or alive, you are fully expected to report your findings directly to me."

We exchanged silent looks. It was a fine line. On one hand, we were relieved to be done running twelve-hour missions up above, knowing we weren"t going to find anything. On the other, Milton was Cecil"s bloodline, and acting too excited to stop looking for him would get us beaten.

"You will resume your training tomorrow. Well, all but one of you."

Confused murmurs flooded the room, and Cecil cleared his throat.

"The decision has been made that one of you will be moved up, replacing Dale as Eleanor"s Daddy."

The room erupted into mixed comments.

"Sir, this has never been done before."

"Whoever gets paired with her is not going to have that parental-like bond with her."

"She"s a bitch." The room stopped abruptly, my comment echoing throughout the room. I shrugged innocently. It was true.

Ever since Eleanor"s Daddy died, she"d been insufferable. Cutting the line at mealtimes, bawling loudly in the halls. She"d been using the excuse that she was grieving over the loss of her Daddy as a reason to be an absolute... cunt.

"Bro," Russell scolded, "you can"t say that."

"Why not?" I stood up. "She is. She"s always been this way, and now, it"s just gotten worse. Whoever gets assigned to her is going to be fucking miserable."

"Oh, how ironic," Cecil said with a disgusting grin. He raised his clipboard and tugged a manila folder from the clip. "Congratulations, Callahan, you"re a Daddy."

"This is absolute bullshit!" I shouted at Cecil and Dorothy when his office door was slammed shut. "Why me?"

Dorothy took the folder from Cecil and began flipping through the large stack of papers.

"You"re top of your class. Your marks were all better than Milton"s." She gave a side glance to Cecil. "Your trainers all list you as the best marksman with both a gun and a knife. You have the highest kill count of all the DITs. Frankly, you"re the only one we can trust to handle Eleanor."

"There"s no handling that girl." I shook my head. "She may be a Young Lady, legally an adult, but she"s got the personality of a spoiled eight year old."

Cecil sat behind his desk, facing me. We stared at each other a moment before he burst into laughter.

"What?" I demanded.

"And you think your attitude is much better? Son, I have watched you grow up here in the bunker, and you are just as bad as her. I tried to persuade Ms. Dorothy not to pick you because of how you two fight, but she insisted the paperwork doesn"t lie."

"It doesn"t. You"re the best for this job," she insisted.

"She"s going to get me killed too." I leaned forward, gripping the arms of the chair. "With all due respect, sir, you make me go above with her and one of us ain"t coming back."

"Is that a threat?" He stood, looming over me. "This isn"t a game, Callahan. It"s been decided. They"re stripping your quarters as we speak and moving you up to her floor. You don"t have a say in this."

He leaned forward, his face so close to mine I could smell his toothpaste and the whiskey on his breath. "And if you let her die, your fate will be worse."

"Yes, sir."

I"d heard horror stories about what they did to people who they deemed punishable past death. They"d be pushed above, with no PARA suit or gas mask, and left to the elements. Without anything to protect them from the chemicals in the air, they wouldn"t die; they"d turn into a creepie or a crawlie.

"I have one request, sir."

Cecil sat back down. "And that is?"

"Let me clean up my own space."

He raised an eyebrow. "Contraband?"

"I am a young man, sir."

He laughed and slid his hand over to the telephone. "You got a hold of a magazine from above, didn"t you? It"s okay, I have a small stack myself." He picked up his phone and called someone, giving orders for them to leave my room alone.

"Anything else?"

"No, sir. But I still don"t think this is going to work. Eleanor is beyond my capabilities."

"See, this is where I have to disagree with you, son. You"re her Daddy now. Use your power of authority to wrangle her in some."

"How do you suppose I do that?" I scoffed.

"What have you been taught to do if your young girl is being disobedient?"

"Punish her. But, sir?—"

"Then you punish her."

I rolled my eyes. "I can"t put her in a corner."

"Why not?"

I looked from him to Dorothy. She nodded. Did they expect me to treat Eleanor like a petulant child?

Cecil cleared his throat. "When this idea was brought to me last week, I had the same worries you have right now. When you are assigned your Young Ladies, the goal is for them to look at you as a parental-like figure, and to develop a bond with one another. A father-daughter type of relationship. But you didn"t have that opportunity with Eleanor. So, you"ll have to do a speed course through it."

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"It means, treat her like you"d treat the child you"d just been assigned. Give her love and affection when she"s good and punish her when she"s not. You"ve trained for what, eleven, twelve years now? How old are you, son?"

"I"m twenty."

"Yes, so your training is almost done anyway. You know exactly what to do with her. If you are stuck, bring out the manual. There"s no shame in double-checking."

"I think you underestimate Eleanor"s stubbornness."

"I think you overestimate how much I give a shit about what you think." Cecil walked around the desk. "My Young Lady, Myrtle, was quite similar to Eleanor. Sharp-tongued but good at what she did. She learned quickly that the Young Ladies who did well were treated better, given more CAFE bucks, more presents, more treats. But she struggled with listening. The moment those doors closed, and all the people who adored her couldn"t see her anymore, she became nasty, mean, and lazy."

"I remember Myrtle," Dorothy added.

"Yes. Myrtle was special. One time, I asked her to pick up after herself and she bit me."

"She bit you?"

He nodded. "She did. And I"ll never forget the look on her pretty little face when I scooped her up, lifted her skirt, and beat her ass until it was purple. Oh, how she howled and kicked and clawed at me, begging me to stop, but every time I did, she would just go right back to her awful behavior, so I"d do it again. Then finally, one day, she stopped."

Cecil went behind his desk again and rifled through his drawers. "She was still feisty, but now she was well-behaved. We had a wonderful relationship after that." He pulled out a small black book and flipped through the pages. "So believe me when I say I know exactly what you"re going through."

"What happened to her?" I asked. No one really knew what happened to the Young Ladies after they aged out. Retired Daddies were tasked with training the new DITs. But no one ever saw the Young Ladies again once they'd been impregnated. Cecil pulled out a slip of paper and handed it to me. It was a photo of a beautiful young woman, who looked vaguely familiar.

"She aged out, was taken to the doctors for seed implementation, and nine months later, she became Eleanor's biological mother."