Dawn Is Coming

Chapter 4

Grant

Same seats, different place. Safer situation, more tension, more suspense.

I've been staring at the floor ever since we finished transporting the cots into hospital rooms. The metal seat digs into my tense muscles, increasing the tension. I'm not sore; I rarely ever am. Unfortunately, though, I get anxious easily. Not a good quality for military personnel. Not that I had a choice whether to join or not, though. My adoptive parents decided to apply me for military training the moment the saw my build. I was always a big child. I reached an adult's average height at only 12, and I outgrew my parents when I was 13. I'll never forget how glad they were to get rid of me when I turned 16, how hard they were trying to prevent their mouths from breaking out into a smile. I moved into an abandoned building, at first unaware that it used to be a storage for infected Thrifts, but then I eventually found out from General Flynn. I didn't tell him I live there, of course. My ID records still show that my location of residency is adoptive parents' home. Akira is the only one who knows where I actually live. One day, she fell asleep on the MV on the way back to Ruinexus, and no matter how hard I tried to wake her up, she would just cough and stay asleep. I took her there, and she stayed asleep for hours. Poor girl.

Her body takes up two chairs beside me, her head resting on my left thigh. She had dozed off on the MV, so I carried her in here. I couldn't bear to wake her up. I fidget with her hair, trying to keep my hands busy as we wait, for which I receive a few criticizing looks from the other soldiers sitting in the waiting room.

Waiting. I hate waiting, especially when I have no idea what just happened and what I'm waiting for. I also hate the fact that we just got bombed by Neorexa and barely got our asses out of the battlefield alive. General Flynn is standing in the corner, talking in a deathly calm voice to someone through his earpiece. Sometimes, his calmness makes me doubt his humanity. He's only 45 years old, after all, and we just got bombed. Doctors scurry in and out of the room, pushing soldiers in various states of damage and undress along on the wheelie cots.

A loud cough coming from my lap startles me out of daze. Akira sits up, pressing a fist to her mouth as she tries to choke down her coughs. I can't blame her – they're awfully loud, echoing off the gloomy, white walls in the quiet room. I can see how hard she's trying to keep her eyes open, and she's not doing a very good job of it. She yawns, and then covers her mouth with the inside of her elbow this time when she breaks out into coughing once again. I rub her back softly, my hand spanning almost from one shoulder blade to the other. I can't tell if she's small or if I'm just massive. Her coughing dies down, and her eyes seem even more tired when she lowers her elbow.

I worry for her. Some days, I'm scared that she won't make it to the next. She does have a moderately safe position on the battlefield, but that's only in comparison to being on the actual ground. She still has to dodge a bullet every few moments. And even though I know she's completely capable of surviving, I can't help it. I worry for her.

"Follow me, please." A doctor approaches us, clad in a long, white lab coat and a surgeon's mask covering her face. I stand up to follow her, hearing Akira's quiet footsteps behind me. The doctor walks down a small, tight hallway, everything – the walls, the ceiling, the floor, the doors lining the walls – is white. It seems to press down on me. Although there are still a few centimetres between the top of my head and the ceiling, I bow my head, feeling a headache descending on me. The doctor opens a door in the middle of the hall with the number 6 on it, ushering me and Akira into the room. The doctor closes the door behind us, and I see Akira flinch, turning around to look at it with worry clouding her gold eyes. The room is small, with a cot in one corner and a machine beside it, wires coming out of its electrical ports and tipped with sharp needles. At the counter at the end of the room, another doctor wearing the same lab coat sits in a small office chair, typing something down on a sleek, small computer.