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Voice Energy

A month later, Till awakens from dreamful sleep by a tumultuous force rattling his tent.

He groans, sitting up and shaking the sand from his hair. There's a crick in his neck and itchy waves of goosebumps run up and down his body. He fights the chill as he brings life to a small candle beside him.

Though snow never falls, the desert has its own frost-bitten winters; no shortage of cold, frosty nights.

If one is unfortunate enough to be caught outside at night, two moons carving a twin path of destruction high overhead, they would have to endure raging sandstorms and stray aliens, each granule of sand like a shard of ice grating and sharp as they whip through miles of rolling dunes.

Taiga deemed this the best training in the universe. Till had no choice but to comply.

A month ago, Till's anger brought his mind to ruin and broke his mentality, and he asked for help from two random strangers. But one had saved his life, and the other had embraced his broken heart despite knowing nothing about him. They'd drowned their feelings in old, stolen rum for the rest of night. Taiga even suggested Till call him "Tai-ge" for the sake of getting closer.

The very next morning they started in on Till's training, all three of them nursing a hangover and enduring the scolding from Hyuna when they visited her in the infirmary. Luka couldn't keep his flappy mouth shut so she inevitably found out, leaving the three of them wincing from the pounding headaches.

Tai-ge began by handing Till a rather large knife and a smaller handgun, ordering him to spend an entire day carrying both around and to weigh them in his hands. He'd spent the better part of the next twenty-four hours getting sighs of sympathy from passersby, all too familiar with Taiga's training "tactics".

At the very least, Till came to realize he enjoys the feel of a knife in his palm better than a trigger at his fingertip.

The next step, according to his discovery, was an in depth introduction to the throwing lanes. Apparently knife throwing and, by extension, alien-killing had rules.

Tai-ge practically held his hand through every step of the process; all of Till's anxiety was effectively and effortlessly swept away by the tide of Taiga's calm and composed nature.

After getting familiar with knife-throwing alongside Tai-ge's teaching and enduring Luka's weapon training and endless, "Where the fuck were you aiming that time?"s, the three of them went on an FTX, or "Field Training Exercise". These FTXs lasted anywhere between three to seven days and the purpose of them was exactly as the name suggested— testing his training in the field. Real world, real enemies, real shooting.

Hyuna was healed from her wound entirely by the third week and was begging them desperately to quit making so much noise at the throwing lanes in the middle of the night.

"From now on, this is a no-fun zone. Piss off from the Org. if you wanna have a good time." She'd growled, a glint in her eye that sent shivers down Till's spine.

The trio effectively pissed off, hence the reason he and Tai-ge are out in the middle of the desert at the dead of winter.

This is only their second FTX since they'd begun his training but it is the first one without Luka. Tai-ge said his boy had some business to attend to elsewhere and said nothing more on the matter. Till decided it would be best not to push for answers lest it result in extra training.

"Wake up, kid." Taiga's voice is still raspy from the chilly night air.

"I'm up." Till responds, climbing out of his tent.

The sun is just barely below the horizon when Till looks around, the first chills of nightfall running along his skin. They'd retired just hours after midday as compensation for the ungodly hour they'd woken up at just to bike all the way out to their FTX spot.