Night of the Alphas

Chapter 31

When I woke up the next morning, all of my sickness was gone. The nausea, the pain, the migraines, everything. I wasn't even running a temperature. It was almost as if I had never been sick at all. Sure, my mind was a bit cloudy, but other than that, I felt amazing.

"You feel perfectly fine?" Summer asked, confused.

I nodded. "Yeah."

"That's great!" Alex grinned from ear to ear.

"It's suspicious," Abel corrected. "You could hardly get up and walk yesterday. And now you feel... Amazing?"

"Yep."

"Hmm," Was the only thing he said on that subject. I could tell the gears were still turning in his head, but he didn't say anything else.

After that short conversation, we went on with our normal schedule. I felt strangely excited to train that day, and I did everything with a bit more enthusiasm. My friends seemed a bit confused at my sudden burst of energy, but they were happy that I was at least up and moving.

Once that entire ordeal was over, life went on as usual. My sickness never returned, and everything was... Pretty normal, I guess. Well, as normal as it could be in the AFM army. The days turned into weeks, and the weeks into months. Despite our best efforts, we hadn't been able to climb up the ranks at all. I didn't get it. We'd been well behaved, we did our best at learning the forms and fighting methods, and we regularly sucked up to the higher-ranking soldiers. It drove us absolutely insane.

As the months went by, my mind started getting foggier, day by day. It slowly became harder to retain memories. The colder the weather became, the more I felt like I was drifting away from any life I had before coming to AFM. Strangely enough, though, it didn't bug me. It felt as normal and natural as dreaming in my sleep. Everything and everyone I knew just slowly became nothing more than a dream. A peaceful, forgettable dream. Even the photographs I used to look at so longingly started to mean no more to me than the snowflakes that blew into our room at night.

Summer ripped a strand of duct tape off the roll and tried to tape a piece of cardboard over our window. Unfortunately, a strong gust of wind blew through at that moment, and it knocked her and her cardboard back. "Damn it! Abel, come help me with this before we freeze to death!"

"I'm a bit busy," He responded. "Jay, put the coat on."

"Um, how 'bout I don't." Jay folded his arms defiantly.

"Right now."

"No thanks."

"Here, I'll help you out." Alex got up and headed towards the window, which was causing cold air to spill into our room. The two of them struggled against the wind, which was unnaturally strong. Finally, they were able to cover up the window.

"Is that any better?" Summer asked, rubbing her hands together.

"A b-bit." Zaria's teeth chattered as she wrapped a blanket around herself. She glanced at me, her eyes looking like they were about to freeze over. "Zane?"

"It's better," I said dryly. "I wish we had some heat, though."

"There!" Abel shouted triumphantly. "Now keep that dang coat on."

"It's too big." Jay flopped his oversized sleeves around. "I don't like it."

"Well, you're gonna have to deal with it. That's mine." Abel sat next to Zaria and grabbed some of her blanket.