InvaSUn

14

Lieutenant Williams gestured to one of the soldiers we saw last night. "Give them their things."

The soldier nodded and pulled out 3 bins each full of our clothes and items. "Riley Davis." He shoved the bin with my name written across it in my arms. "Aiden Johnson." He did the same thing to Aiden and then he stopped at James. He observed the name on the box cautiously and blinked at James.

"Just give me the darn bin." James rolled his eyes and snatched it away from the soldier. I was curious now. Was James a hard name to pronounce? Or did James have a different name that we didn't know about?

I snagged the bin up to read what he said and James snatched it away. It was too late, I already confirmed it. "What are you doing?" He hissed at me.

"You have a different name." I gaped at him. "Wei Chenglei. That's cute!"

"You keep forgetting that I was born in Taiwan. And the name isn't cute. You don't even know what it means." He sighed and fumbled with the survival bag in his bin, he was checking to make sure everything was inside.

"Then teach me." I shrugged. This man was acting distant simply because I didn't know the meaning, maybe he'd act less like a jerk if I knew.

"What?" James stopped and observed me in confusion.

"Yeah! I wanna know what it means too!" Aiden tugged on James's arm. James nudged the both of us away and I could tell that he was irritated now.

"I'm not teaching you anything. Just Google it yourselves."

"I don't have my phone on me." I huffed.

"That's too bad." James teased. I was this close to lunging across the room and strangling this guy. He always made me so fed up with his attitude.

"Daddy! I think I've had another breakthrough—Oh!" A blonde woman barged into the tent and stopped when she saw the 3 of us. "You didn't tell me there were new guests!" She smiled at us.

"Tillie.." Lieutenant groaned and ran his hand down his face. "I told you not to barge in while I'm working. This isn't like our home when you could come to me."

"I know but I have to show you something! It's important! But let me introduce myself to these kind looking people." She reached for my hand and snatched it up in hers. "Hi! My name is Dr. Williams, but you can call me Tillie."

"Oh," I muttered suddenly. She definitely caught me off guard with her Peppy attitude. "You're a doctor?"

"She's a scientist." Lieutenant Williams corrected. "She specializes in biology but dabbles a bit in other fields like zoology and ethology as well."

"Oh!" I blinked in surprise. Tillie looked incredibly young but she was so intelligent. Maybe she graduated college early. "Well, my name is Riley, and this is Aiden. The big grump over there is James." I chuckled. James rolled his eyes at me in response before muttering something under his breath.

"Do you like animals?" She smiled at Aiden and he nodded excitedly. "How about I show you my baby Jaguar later?"

"A Jaguar?! That's so cool! I want to see it!" Aiden hopped up and down happily before looking at James and me. "Can I go with Doctor Williams?"

"Sure, whatever, I don't care." James shrugged nonchalantly. He wasn't even thinking straight about leaving Aiden with this woman we barely knew.

"Um, how about we wait?" I tapped Aiden's shoulder. "It's no offense to you Tillie, but we kinda don't know you well enough yet to leave him with you. We've been looking after him."