Chapter 6 #3
I nodded, deciding to be a touch more forthright than he was.
“I was planning to be a doctor before I got drafted.” It probably wasn’t the time to mention that a majority of my curriculum had been tailored toward Obstetrics and Gynecology, but I had plenty of training in trauma and field situations, too.
“Huh. That’s useful.” He glanced up as if he was storing that little tidbit in his mental database.
“We have a few basic first aid classes here to make sure we aren’t completely worthless when we get injured, but for the most part, if you can’t get your Shinka home, they don’t want you to come back.
” He stretched his arms to the ceiling before he glanced at me again.
His gaze descended from my head to my toes, and he offered a half smile that didn’t remotely reflect in those eyes I kept staring at.
“I mean, the good news is that Shinkas are great equalizers. Even small, frail people stand a chance out there in one of them.”
He laughed while I pursed my lips. The way he delivered insults in such an upbeat and easy going way was disarming to the point it was hard to be mad about it.
Admittedly, that fact was something I was banking on when it came to combat, but it didn’t make me feel overly confident in my disguise if I was already being pegged as small and frail.
Though it likely wouldn’t take long for anyone to come to that conclusion if I got the wrong opponent in one-on-one sparring.
I kept up with Vann well enough, but even I knew that at times he was going easy on me to make me feel better.
Something I never faulted him for, having thought I’d never actually get to use those skills.
I could only hope the things he did teach me would aid me now.
Breaker pressed a hand onto a glowing panel, and the door to the dorms slid open.
“Oh right, so, for your protection, only authorized personnel are allowed into the dorms, the classrooms, the gym, and just about anywhere else, really. The chip they implanted in your palm at orientation will give you access to any facilities that Mictlan deems necessary. Same goes for your dorm room. Only you and your roommate will be able to open the door.”
“Roommate?” I said aloud, catching myself before I sounded too surprised or worried. “I had my own room at Medella.”
Breaker looked over his shoulder and shrugged.
“Nothing will ever be your own here.” So cryptic.
This was the most bizarre and depressing tour I’d ever taken, and I’d been to old war museums. “I mean, sharing is caring or whatever.” That smile fully reached his eyes, and dammit it was disarming.
His demeanor gave me constant whiplash. Breaker’s face could transition between a puppy dog and a lion with the drop of a pin, and I wanted to say I liked him, but I had no clue if I was simply being taken in by his good looks and his charisma, or if he was genuinely a good guy.
My mentor’s wild mood swings was hardly the most pressing issue right now though.
Not when I was going to be sharing a dorm room.
I oddly hadn’t anticipated that. I just assumed all schools gave their students the dignity of their own room and living space.
It was a good thing I’d thought to bring masculine underoos, but this was going to suck whenever I got my period.
My Sanitary Evac Unit was great and all for purging, so long as I didn’t sleep too long on a particularly heavy night, but the timing of my cycle never worked out predictably enough to feel confident.
If I was lucky, maybe my body would pick now to give me one of those occasional six month breaks.
My hormones hadn’t been enough to get me out of breeding expectations, but fortunately I’d only been subjected to a single injection before the mini-apocalypse, so I should still be fairly consistently inconsistent.
Maybe the stray chin hairs and irregular ovulating would finally be good for something.
I doubted it, but a girl could dream.
I held in my existential dread as I followed Breaker down the hall. He led me up the stairs until we were on the top floor.
“So you’re in…” He scrolled through the hologram projected on the back of his hand from his CHRONO.
“Fifth wing, fourth floor, room twenty-nine. That’s a good number.
You’re right above me and Seba.” He spoke more to himself than to me.
“We can probably even yell out the window to each other if the power ever goes down.”
“Are… power outages a problem here?” I’d never heard of such a thing in any of the colonies.
We had back-up generators for our back-up back-up generators, considering a single hour without the ecosystem regulator would suffocate the entire population of the Protectorate.
We were well prepared for hull breeches, but we were extremely well prepared for power needs.
It was concerning if they were this lax about safety protocols. Maybe I should be asking what the procedure is in the event of a damaged dome.
“Nope. Shouldn’t be.” Something about Breaker’s expression had me on edge.
“Great, so go that way. Put your hand on the panel, and your signature should already be registered. If you need anything, just holler out the window, and I’ll maybe hear you.
” He started to walk away, then he stopped himself, raising a finger as if to say ‘one more thing.’ “Wait, one second, let me see your CHRONO.” He grabbed my right wrist without waiting for me to comply, opened my contact app, then he pressed his own finger prints into my address book.
“There, you can also call me. Works better with the sound proofing and all.”
“Thanks, I guess.”
“Any time.” With a hard pat on the back that nearly knocked me over, Breaker took off, and I was at last alone to get my bearings.
At least for the next ten seconds before I met my roommate. I hoped whoever I got stuck with wasn’t a total slob. Preferably also not someone overly observant or nosy. It would be best if they were another scared, unwillingly draftee who didn’t care to get to know me at all.
I sighed as I placed my open palm on the panel for room 5/4-29.
The door slid open, and I hauled my duffle into the small rectangular space.
It was a simple place with a single bathroom near the entrance, then deeper in the chamber, down a narrow hallway, the room opened up and there were two beds spaced about six feet apart.
At the foot of each bed was a closet filled with uniforms, surely sized to the specifications we listed, and at the head was a storage chest for personal clothing and items. Very efficient space management, I had to say.
Our dorms at Medella were much more comfortable.
The bed by the window appeared to be free, while the bed closest to the door was occupied by a man who was sitting against the wall, shirtless in grey sweats with every single one of his defined abdominal muscles on display.
He had unnaturally vibrant burgundy hair, and a black undercut that only intensified the color.
The two tone style was pushed out of his face, braced by a large pair of headphones topped with dragon horns that hooked straight up towards the ceiling.
His red eyes were streaked with orange and rimmed with gold, like flickering flames that practically glowed against his sepia skin.
The three stud piercings on his right eyebrow, the stud in his nose, and the bar and four rings on each ear were definitely not to regulation.
“You’re staring,” he said, and I jumped. He closed his eyes briefly as he removed his headphones. Without the band, his hair fell haphazardly over his forehead in an attractive mess. That wasn’t regulation either.
“S-sorry.” Well that was an awkward way to start our friendship.
The heat in my cheeks had me immediately averting my gaze and continuing to my bed.
I felt less exposed with my back between his face and mine.
The last thing I needed was to visibly blush in front of every good looking guy in Astaroth.
This was not the time to suddenly acknowledge that I was capable of finding men attractive.
They weren’t, and I was not.
“Never met a Saturn-born before or what?” His voice was dry and mildly annoyed.
“I haven’t.” I shook my head. That explained the red glow to his eyes.
Though the exact coloring for each birthplace wasn’t completely predictable, and each child’s DNA reacted differently to the radiation levels and atmospheric signatures of varying planets and ecosystems, so there could be a number of different manifestations of Saturn-born, just as Zircon had a thousand shades of gray or white.
“I’m from Protectorate 005. We’re pretty boring over there. ”
I turned to face him again, only to meet a gaze that seemed to be appraising my every inch. The iciness of that glare contradicted the warmth of its coloring, and it was making my skin crawl. My heart picked up a few beats, paranoid I’d already given myself away somehow.
“Yeah you are.” He rolled his fiery eyes. “Boring and weak by the looks of it. I’ve seen mice bigger than you.”
I swallowed, already feeling like the fraud I was, but I forced myself to respond.
“We’re medics, not fighters.” I justified my quaint physique in a way that mildly killed me inside.
I never wanted to feel less than anyone, but I couldn’t really argue with the damn anatomy poster talking down to me.
No matter how much time I spent between my training dummy and the sparring gym, I was never going to look like a built killing machine like a real soldier did.
I gathered that relying on giant robots for battle hadn’t changed the physical requirements of our soldiers when they were out of their combat machines, and it showed.