Empyrean

Chapter 5

Chapter 5-Serena

Zenith-Red Alexandros HQ Resting Area

Two hours after sundown, 25th of Diversa, Year 611

            It used to make me uncomfortable that the males and females sleep in the same room, but I guess I’ve gotten used to it. The only thing that separates us into different rooms is the year that we graduated. Since we are the newest and are still in training we sleep on the very deepest level. It is a hike every morning to meet Mentor on the roof so he can destroy me at S.R., but I don’t mind. I just feel like I am not getting any real training. I am always the first one finished and back to the resting area. Mentor says usually after the fifth time I have lost in a day to go back to the R.A. and ‘think about it’, whatever that means.

            After about an hour of me being alone lying on my bed looking at the ceiling, the Red Alexandros Neophytes start to flood in after their day of training, looking tired but satisfied. They all reek of sweat and a different smell that I am not familiar with. Soon they diverge, some going to the showers some directly to their beds, and some sitting at the tables in the center of the room. Jacob and Lucy are nearly the last ones to enter the room and are all but walking hand in hand, laughing like children at each other’s words. While I’ve been isolated their relationship has progressed significantly. Whether or not that pushes them both away from me, I can’t say, but it does make me feel like a third wheel.

            “What’s going on Serena?” Jacob offers as they sit on their beds on either side of me. At least they aren’t sleeping together yet. I am pretty sure that is my greatest purpose in their relationship, making sure they don’t get too close. “Serena?”

            “Oh yeah, nothing much. What did you guys do today?” I ask more towards Lucy. So she is the one that replies.

            “Well, it was physical conditioning again for the first half—”

            “I can tell!” I laugh but no one seems to think it’s funny so I stop. “Keep going.”

             “So, yeah, the first half was just more push-ups, running, jumping and martial arts. But the second half was where things got interesting.”

            She starts to lift up her shirt and before I can argue I realize there is no reason to. “Look-it!” In her hand is a small handgun. Where in and among her clothes she pulled it from is a mystery. But then I notice that everyone else is also either carrying or wearing a gun, all the same. We studied in school how to recognize and operate many types of weapons and I notice that this is the Relachment Dual-Type, RDT for short. The textbooks say that it is the safest gun that has ever been invented, and I believe them. But its functions scare the hell out of me. The first shot paralyzes the target completely; every voluntary muscle is immediately shut down on contact through a very specific series of electrical bursts. And the second landed shot, through the same method, kills.

            “Well? What do you think Serena?” Lucy says holding out her gun fishing for my approval.

            Eventually I guess Jacob gives up on waiting and pokes at the cloud that has been over our heads ever since we’ve been here. “Serena.”

            “Yeah?”

            “That wasn’t a question.” His blue-gray circles boring holes into my eyes. How anyone can look so straight and determined is beyond me. He wants something, something that he can’t have. Even though he is Lucy’s friend I know him well enough to know when he is about to say something that I won’t like.