Chapter 7
I glanced over at my dorm mate, whose headphones were snug against his ears. His controlled, steady breathing and unbothered expression was that of perfect restfulness. Seba could sleep through a bomb, I swear.
I shook my head and got up as the pounding continued.
What kind of Neanderthal would pound on a metal door when there were literal ringers equipped on every room, I could only guess.
Actually, I didn’t need to guess. Saturn-born men were ridiculous.
I hit the open panel, and the metal slid away, leaving nothing to protect my face from the fist swinging for another knock. I dodged at the last second, then caught the wayward mitt of the red eyed soldier from the room upstairs.
“What is it, Elio?” I asked with a raised brow, while I subtly squeezed his fist in my palm just to show dominance. “I was trying to sleep.”
“I was too until a first year showed up in my dorm. What the fuck, Breaker?” He growled, the fury in his irises sparking like a flickering flame.
“I don’t assign the rooms. You know that.
” I rolled my eyes back at him. “What’s the problem?
The new 005 recruit is tiny and barely talks.
I doubt he takes up much space. I don’t see why you’re so mad.
” I added a shrug just to be extra dismissive.
That would definitely piss him off, but I was justified.
“The problem is I shouldn’t be bunking with a new recruit at all.
Why would they assign a literal draftee to share a room with me?
If they ran out of dorms, they should have moved up a promising second or third year and slotted this guy in the basement.
It makes no sense to shove a frail, untrained medic in my room.
They put you in with Seba, and I score better on every single discipline than you fucking do. ”
I opened my mouth, then paused. He did have a point, however mildly offensive it may be. Elio was second in all rankings—though his score being higher than mine was purely strategic and not about inadequacy on my part at all, for the record.
But the conundrum remained. Typically, first years were stuck in the basement dorms. All of the other draftees had been, actually.
These higher floors with windows and sunlight had to be earned by hardship and skill, and there was no one else who was promoted to this level that hadn’t survived at least a year or two at Astaroth first.
I must have remained dumbfounded for a few seconds too long, because Elio pounded his fist into the door frame to hurry along my response.
“So what’s the deal,” Elio demanded rather than asked, as he always did. The man didn’t know what a question even was. “You were on orientation duty, so I know you have some insight. You must have at least seen his transfer record if you’re his mentor.”
Still pausing, I contemplated how best to answer that question for my hotheaded friend, so that his response wouldn’t wake the entire dormitory.
I didn’t have a good explanation, and anything I’d determined from my brief interaction with Vann wasn’t going to clear up a decision like this from the top.
I could take a few guesses, but I didn’t actually know what the reasoning was.
“Maybe he scored really well on the entrance exam, and they wanted you to help foster his talent?” I suggested tentatively, speaking slowly so as not to trigger the bomb that was his temper.
“It’s a draft and all, so it’s possible they’re cherry picking some new recruits in hopes of advancing promising candidates to the front lines faster. ”
“What about that scrawny runt is promising, exactly?” He raised a brow, and I realized I needed to pivot with this explanation.
“Come on now, you know there’s more to being a pilot than your physical size.
Look at Seba.” I tipped my head back toward my sleeping roommate.
Lucky bastard was completely undisturbed.
“If Vann does have promise, who better to train a high-potential new recruit than the school’s ‘second’” I whispered the ‘second,’ “greatest warrior and pilot, Elio Marx.”
Elio scoffed, but he didn’t have a rebuttal. I think I was going in the right direction to diffuse him now.
“Great, so I’m a baby sitter now? Two fucking years working my ass off means I now get saddled with teaching children to throw a punch?”
I leaned against the wall and crossed my arms, though my grin was outwardly curt and teasing. “No good deed goes unpunished, you know.”
“Is that some stupid Earth-ism?” Elio knitted his brows.
And that made me laugh. My hair color and eye color typically gave me away, but not everyone was privy enough to make the connection that strawberry blond and hazel were Earth colors. Elio was though.
Being a Saturn native, he’d been constantly reminded of the quirks and after effects of being born in a planetary atmosphere, and he’d been surrounded by enough people from different walks of life to have seen it all.
There were many in the upper ranks who didn’t pick up on these subtleties with how much of Mictlan was station born these days.
Elio had guessed I was from Earth and Seba was from the now-abandoned Neptune base on our first meeting on the sparring mat.
The comedy being that Seba, himself, hadn’t even known he was from the Neptune base.
Like most of the former residents of that planet, he was taken in by a good, noble family before he was old enough to remember.
I remembered though.
But that’s not the point right now.
“Yes, it’s an Earth-ism. But I would appreciate if you kept it down about that.
” I waved a hand dismissively. The Territories had lost Earth a long time ago, and it was still a point of tension among some.
Not because immigration was frowned upon, but because the Axis Mundi were known to hide there, and Gehenna was doing a terrible job of stopping them.
“Regardless, I can’t help you. If you’re that upset about it, you’re going to have to take it up with Administration, but I imagine whether it’s this Vann kid or some other random, inferior recruit, your days of having your own room are over. ”
He groaned. “I should have known you’d be useless.”
Rude.
“Correct.” I nodded along anyway, because that was the response most guaranteed to annoy him.
Maybe I liked playing with fire more than I would ever admit.
“But before you lose your mind and burn down the recruitment office, I’d keep in mind that Protectorate 005 is a medic station.
With how often you get into fights, it’ll probably be useful to have access to someone with high level first aid training.
” His glare could have melted glass. “Just saying.” I added with a shrug.
“Now if you’re done huffing your bad breath into my room, I’d like to get some sleep before sparring practice tomorrow. ”
“Seriously?” Elio threw his head back in defeat, unusually distraught by the situation for someone I’d always considered pretty unshakable, but with no leg to stand on, he relented.
He turned on his heel, though not without adding another overly dramatic groan of displeasure, and he headed back to the stairs, leaving me with much coveted silence.
I tapped the door panel and the barrier slid shut, sending the whole room back into pitch black darkness. I inhaled through my nose, exhaled all of it through my mouth, then returned to my bed.
Though it wasn’t like I could go back to sleep now. My mind was buzzing with information I hadn’t taken the time to think about at all that now felt oddly important.
Why would a draftee be assigned to bunk with Elio? I might have to keep my eye on the new recruit more than my first impression had dictated.
I stared at the ceiling in irritation, while Seba snored softly in the bed beside mine, still cocooned in the quiet of his large over-ear headphones.
I glanced at his resting face, as his nose scrunched through some sort of dream, then softened as he conquered his inner demons.
He always looked so at peace when he slept.
I wondered what he was listening to in those headphones that could be enough to put anyone in this fucked up place at ease.
Maybe I needed to get myself a pair.