Chapter 6 #4
“I’d still think you’d be bigger by now.” He lifted his chin to put me further below his gaze. The fact that I was standing and he was sitting, and I was barely level with his eyes was embarrassing without needing the added gesture though. “What’s your name?”
“Vann Callan.” I answered more confidently this time. I’d get used to saying it eventually. “And you?”
“What unit did you transfer from?” He ignored my question completely and continued his inquisition.
“I just told you. I’m from Protectorate 005.” I shook my head, at a loss for what he was looking for.
He eyed me suspiciously, and a bead of sweat formed on my brow.
“Right, but what unit were you in last year? I don’t care where you were born. I’m trying to figure out who your superior was, because you don’t look familiar.”
“You mean my mentor? Breaker Delacorte is my mentor, but I just got here, so I haven’t been assigned to anyone else.” That bead ran down my cheek and pooled on my jawline.
“Breaker, huh?” His brow twitched. It probably wouldn’t be a stretch to assume they knew each other. “I’m going to ask this again, very slowly. Who was your Unit Captain last year?”
I scrunched my nose, completely at a loss as to why he was so confused by this, then I returned the condescending tone by speaking even more slowly. “This. Is. My. First. Day. I wasn’t in any unit last year.”
“You’re trying to tell me you’re a new recruit?
Why the fuck are you in my room then.” It was more of a growl than a question.
He stood from his bunk, and now I really felt small beneath his towering height.
His easy six-foot-four dwarfed my five and a half feet with startling contrast. Saturn’s gravity didn’t inhibit vertical growth, I gathered.
I knew for sure that all men weren’t over six feet tall, but all of the men I was running into seemed to be.
“The new recruit bunks are in the basement. Did you take a wrong turn?”
“I wouldn’t have been able to open the door if I had.
The room opens with a chip, if you didn’t know.
” I showed him my palm and tapped the center for emphasis.
I couldn’t say if I was antagonizing him or attempting to diffuse whatever was happening here with logic and reason, but he was having none of either.
He took one step towards me, and I stepped back, stumbling when the backs of my knees hit my bed.
Definitely shouldn’t be antagonizing him.
“M-maybe they ran out of bunks in the basement. There’s a draft right now.
” The words shook from my lips, and I didn’t know how I’d come to feel like I was doing something wrong, when I’d literally used an internal microchip that would only allow me to go to the correct place.
I was so paranoid about being found out, I was questioning even the simplest and most un-mess-up-able parts of this day.
Yet the way he stared at me had me buckling under his scrutiny.
“No. That’s not why.” He moved swiftly, stepping in close and grabbing my chin in a rough grip. He glared into my eyes like he was searching for an answer somewhere in the rods and cones of my retinas, while my brain was still catching up to everything that was happening.
I shoved him back—or rather I shoved him, and I fell back—needing distance between us, terrified he might feel through the illusion.
There was no reason he needed to be physically touching me.
That was entirely too intimate for a man I just met.
But especially for one who would be my roommate and was supposed to think I was also a man.
His gaze narrowed, then he scowled, turned on his heel, grabbed a shirt from his bunk, and headed out the door as he was pulling it over his head.
I blinked several times in confusion, sitting in stunned silence as the sound of the door whirring shut filled the room.
I exhaled very, very slowly.
I had no idea what I did wrong or why he was so offended, but whatever. Men were so moody sometimes.
I shrugged, grateful for this opportunity to unpack in solitude, not interested in making his problems my problems right now. I started putting away my things, organizing my belongings, and stashing anything that needed to be hidden, versus the things that could be safely visible in my lockbox.
The only thing I truly had that could be seen as feminine or identity revealing was my Sanitary Evac Unit.
Though, to be fair, it was pretty unlikely a guy would even know what it was.
No matter how much the breeding empire claimed to value vaginas, the male half of the population was impressively ignorant to how they worked.
There was no other explanation as to why, after an infinite amount of time, humans still hadn’t developed a half way decent period product beyond the small, egg-shape chamber that absorbed and emptied itself based on the flexing of my pelvic muscles.
It was all fun and games until you learned the bathroom wasn’t the only time a woman flexes her pelvic muscles. But I digress.
Conversely, my medical training had exhaustively covered male specific issues, so I felt fairly well versed in anything I might need to know in that regard.
There were definitely going to be some idiosyncrasies of male existence that I wasn’t aware of, and I still hadn’t come up with a great solution for peeing standing up, but I theoretically wouldn’t be required to do that in front of an audience.
I’d observed plenty of guys in my day to day life, and they wouldn’t be that hard to mimic.
I mean, men were technically just people, right?
They had thoughts and feelings just like I did.
Probably.
It was more important that I nail the military specific knowledge though.
All I really knew about military expectations were the things Vann had shared with me when he was forced to train, but beyond that, I was a bit out of the loop if I encountered any “everyone knows this” nuance.
Fortunately, it was unlikely that anyone would suspect a woman would want to be in a position like this, so there was no reason I’d be under particularly heavy scrutiny.
If nothing else, I could probably write off my quirks and faux pas as a cultural thing, being an ignorant medic from a somewhat newly acquired Protectorate.
It was normal that new Mictlan citizens wouldn’t know all of the customs of born and raised Mictlanians.
I still stumbled over expectations for my real gender, so it wouldn’t be difficult to feign ignorance of this one. I’d make it work.
I finished unpacking, then crawled into bed and curled up in coarse bed sheets and a thin blanket. I was way too tired and had way too much on my plate to let an unexpected roommate derail my plan. I’d worry about what to do about him in the morning.