Anarchy | Book Two, The Genesis Series

Three

The bronze walls of Dylo's room had been swallowed whole by the glistening sunlight seeping in through the windows. Completely immersed in the predawn, dazzling rays of angelic heaven, a full head of gleaming, ruffled blond locks rose from a comfy pillow.

The aching weight of consciousness seizing his body as if it were a prisoner of war, a lethargic groan evicted itself from his throat. He wiped the crust clogging his eyes, blinking a bit to make sure he got the last of it out. He peeled his comforter off of himself; his feet felt numb to the touch as they struck the glossy, black floor.

His heel accidentally pinned down one of the legs of his pajama pants, very nearly causing him to trip himself. He huffed, pursing his lips and clenching his jaw. He always hated when that happened in the morning.

The freckled blond threw his head back in annoyance, his golden locks following suit as his cobalt eyes fell onto the clock hanging over his black desk.

It was ten o'clock. He was late for the team's daily morning training session. Again.

Dylo thought that it was painfully ironic that no matter how fast he got, he always seemed to be a second or two behind the real world. Always too late to make a difference. Sometimes, he truly wondered whether he actually had super speed or not.

More importantly, though, Director Callan would surely have his head for missing yet another mandatory practice that week. Whatever monologue or lecture the man would force him to suffer through was guaranteed to be a drag, especially due to the fact that the blond wasn't very keen on seeing him at the moment.

The director himself wasn't the reason for that, though. He wasn't at fault. No, it was the sequence of events that had transpired throughout the past few weeks that had put the blond in such a sour, downcast mood.

Not one of the elected squad captains had selected him for any of the past five missions. Five.

The first couple of instances, it hadn't bugged him at all; for he understood that not every task would call for his specific power set. Specific types of missions such as containment or defense missions weren't really a speedster's cup of tea.

But things like reconnaissance, extraction, and evacuation were his bread and butter, and he still hadn't been selected for any of them. Not a single one.

He kept telling himself that they were just trying to give some of the newbies a good dose of battlefield experience, but he'd be lying to himself if he said that some of the exclusion hadn't felt deliberate.

To help himself pass the time and not go crazy from the lack of excitement, he'd routinely zip down to the training grounds and get in a few hundred laps on the running track. Honing his abilities was his way of making himself feel like he was making some sort of progress.

Personally, he felt pretty satisfied with his current speed record.

A sharp contrast to when he'd first obtained his abilities, he could now jog at Mach One with minimal effort, and attain velocities in slight excess of Mach Three when he really got into stride.

There was a downside, though. His stamina was extremely limited. Since utilizing his power required his muscles to exert extreme amounts of energy in very short intervals of time, he ended up succumbing to the effects of fatigue far quicker than the average person.

Expanding his minuscule stamina threshold was one of his top priorities, though. The only remedy he had for this drawback at the moment were his power pellets. A standard caffeine pill dialed up to eleven, the sweet, brown, chalky pellets temporarily stimulated his nervous system, decelerated his metabolism, and eliminated the excessive buildup of fatigue chemicals in his muscles.