Chapter 13
I sat on my bed in what was once my small sanctuary, with my headphones on, staring at the ceiling, as the scream of black metal vibrated through my ear drums. I slowly dropped my gaze to the mouse in the bed beside me, who was balled up in his sheets with his face buried in a pillow, like he was trying to hide from something while he slept.
Fuck, this kid is hopeless.
It had been well over a week now, and I still didn’t understand what he was doing in my room.
I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that he was sharing my most advanced classes, while also being one of the most inept athletes I’d ever had the misfortune of training with.
It pissed me off that no one had given me a briefing to explain why the fuck this was my life.
I could have dismissed it as a coincidence if not for the fact that he was showing up everywhere in my day and not just in my room.
Not to mention that he got paired with Seba for Basics. Ninety-nine other possible squadrons, and he was in the top? I regularly saw Seba sparring with him, and I was starting to wonder if he’d somehow fooled him into thinking he was something special, too.
Not wanting to think about it, I shut off the music, then switched to my CHRONO and started looking through the latest news on the conflict.
Gehenna had been fairly quiet since the attack that broke the treaty.
I’d been on Demo duty on 008 when they attacked our media station, but I’d squashed their new Ghuls without much incident.
Their tech had potential, but their pilots were laughable.
The lack of obvious follow up or aggression was concerning, in my opinion.
Mictlan had been wise to immediately exercise the draft, but no one wanted to go on the full offensive yet.
Presumably, we were still in some sort of backroom politics phase.
Some speculation even questioned whether the attacks were truly Gehenna, or if it was a setup by Axis Mundi, trying to get the two most powerful nations to fight amongst each other and destroy themselves, so they could come in and reap the spoils.
I was undecided as to where I stood on that debate, but whatever the case, I was game to kill anyone who needed killing.
Though that might be an ambitious promise, considering I wasn’t sleeping at all lately, and I only had about four hours before I was supposed to get up and get ready for the day.
I should be resting, but the thought of spending yet another night in a recovery chamber or a storage unit instead of my own bed was starting to gnaw at my patience.
But what the fuck else was I supposed to do?
I couldn’t sleep with someone else in my space.
I’d tried every single night, and I gave up every single night.
Every instinct hardwired into my psyche refused to relax when locked in a room with another person, even when it was someone I did know, let alone when it was some mouse who had been positioned in my room for no explainable reason.
I certainly didn’t see any reason to trust him.
Maybe the sleep deprivation was making me paranoid, but if a draftee had somehow managed to situate himself in my room, then he must have either been someone’s son or there was more to the story.
He twitched in his bed then rolled to the side, facing away from me and scrunching even smaller.
To be honest, I wasn’t sure my body could fold that tightly into fetal position.
He was weirdly bendable. Maybe that was a small person thing.
I was pretty sure I was taller than him by the time I was fourteen.
My father may have been a piece of shit, but at least he gave me decent genes.
The rhythm of Vann’s breathing changed, and that only annoyed me more, as he sucked in a sudden huff, huff, snore.
My eyes burned with tiredness, and I debated just picking him up and dropping him in the cafeteria or something. Would that be so wrong? All I wanted was one single night of peace. I bet he weighed less than 150 pounds, so it wouldn’t be hard.
With a deep inhale, I watched him roll onto his back. His face twitched, fidgeting like there was a live animal in his blanket.
My irrational annoyance redirected my attention back to my CHRONO, where I forced myself to scroll aimlessly through something that was supposed to resemble entertainment and distraction. I swear I got dumber just swiping through these pointless videos. Nothing worked to ease tension anymore.
I’d settled on an old friend’s channel, which he’d simply called Lochlan’s Workshop.
The old man was the most brilliant mechanic I’d ever met, and the way he detailed different possible Shinka modifications for anyone on the broad Mictlan servers was borderline illegal.
Fortunately for his freedom, it wasn’t a very popular channel, with views in the low double digits, most of which were probably mine, and a majority of the others being Seba’s and Breaker’s, purely because I kept sending them the good ones.
He was thorough and clever, and I’d implemented more than a few of his parts and suggestions on Lamassu.
If I couldn’t sleep, at least I could be productive.
I was knee deep into module upgrades, when a sharp gasp filled the room, loud enough to penetrate my headphones.
Vann shot up suddenly, his eyes wide, his movements tight and frantic, and his gaze distant, like he was looking into the mouth of a monster that only he could see.
He placed a hand on his chest, then breathed in deeply, slowing his panic until he was relaxed again.
I paused a video about increasing propulsion force in the heel thrusters and removed my headphones, now even more irritated. The little white mouse of a man was distant and still coming down from shock.
“Nightmares?” I asked, though I wasn’t sure why I bothered. It wasn’t like I cared.
He startled at my voice, his whole body tensing in a dramatic jerk, before he turned to face me.
His colorless eyes and the sheen of his snow white hair reflected the soft blue hue of the unpainted metal in our dark room, taking on color where he had none.
The cast of greys only made him look even more like a goddamn corpse.
“I… yeah.” He admitted, as he rubbed his arms as if he was cold in our seventy-five degree room.
“I’ve been having them since Zircon got attacked.
” Vann bit his lip as soon as he’d finished saying the words.
It had been a long time since I’d heard someone refer to a Protectorate by its original name.
I suppose he was old enough that he would have known it as Zircon long before he knew it as 005.
But then, I also couldn’t say if he was referring to this recent event or the original attack on the station thirteen years ago.
“S-sorry, I mean Protectorate 005.” He cleared his throat.
Loyal as I was to Mictlan, that seemed more like an honest mistake than a rebellious declaration.
I might add that as a reason to distrust him—question whether he was Axis Mundi or a Gehenna spy who slipped up while in a tired, nightmare fueled daze—but as much as I wanted to tell myself there was something off about him, the reality was if either organization was employing someone this pathetic, they weren’t anything to worry about.
My general distrust of humanity had been getting the best of me lately, and I blamed that entirely on sleep deprivation.
I dismissed the absurd thought, then rolled my head back and resumed staring at the ceiling.
“Get used to them. You’re only going to have more the longer you’re here.” I moistened my lips with my tongue, fixating on the sensation as the studs of my venom piercing skated over my skin, then I inhaled slowly through my nose.
So many nightmares…
“I guess this is still a lot for me to adjust to.” He swallowed, staring at his twiddling thumbs. “Sorry if I woke you up. I wasn’t expecting you to be here.”
“It’s my fucking room. Where else would I be?” I snapped back. He was getting too comfortable, clearly.
“It’s been over a week, and you haven’t been here any of the other nights, so I assumed you had somewhere else you slept.
” Vann slowly walked himself through another breathing cycle, still calming himself down over a stupid little dream.
I gathered this wasn’t his first time waking up in the middle of the night.
“So do you have nightmares, too? Is that why you’re awake?
” His questions were like a javelin sloppily thrown into the edge of a target.
So close and yet on a whole nother planet at the same time.
“No.” I shut down the inquiry immediately. “I’m awake because I can’t sleep when someone invades my space.” I caught myself when I realized I’d started rubbing my wrist absently, and my brow furrowed.
I hadn’t been able to sleep in the same room with another human being since I was eleven, and I wasn’t going to start now. I couldn’t even if I wanted to. I’d already tried, and it was fucking impossible. But the last thing I was going to do was tell him all that.
Vann rubbed his eyes, clearly not planning to go back to sleep and leave me in peace. “So you just live in a nightmare while you’re awake.”
My lips fell open, completely taken aback, and I was quick to mask that surprise. What the fuck kind of emotional bull shit is that? “Don’t psychoanalyze me, Mishka.”
“I wasn’t aware there was anything in there to analyze.
” He rolled his eyes. Cheeky. This might have been even worse than hanging out with Breaker.
With another heavy breathing cycle, his hand still on his chest, he laid back down on his pillow.
“Is that why you’re so hostile towards me? Because I’m in your safe space?”