Cognizance

Chapter 9: Calm Before The Storm

We can hear Instructor Johnson blaring out role call as Luke and I rush through the parting doors of the elevator, our foreheads damped with sweat.

"-And it looks like we have late privates on our hands," she unenthusiastically says, looking at my weary brother as I settle in between Kenzie and Marcus. "That's great."

"Good job, Conran," Kenzie quietly teases, nudging me as Instructor Johnson continues down the list of names.

"Yeah, what took you so long?" Marcus whispers curiously. My lungs are struggling to recover from the sprint through the corridor downstairs as I make an effort to slow my breathing.

"Well, some of us can't make it here in fifteen minutes," I grin between deep breaths.

Throughout this week, I have become pretty good friends with Kenzie and Marcus: hanging out with them, sticking around, getting to know each other.

I learned that Kenzie is an amazingly great chess player, which surprised me. Her mind is like a super computer: calculating things quickly and predicting her opponent's each and every move. I like to tease her about the fact that a bad, scary, unsympathetic girl like her likes playing chess of all things but as much as I taunt her, she still basks in the enjoyment of constantly reminding me that chess improves problem solving skills and memory, which is important when it comes to field work. But like everything else, it's all just another secret that our little group of friends keep safe behind locked doors.

Not only does Kenzie have secret hobbies, but so does Marcus. A couple days ago, a private left his chronocuff lying around and it somehow ended up in Marcus' hands. Kenzie and I caught him tapping furiously onto the tiny glass screen, though we could tell that he was trying to be discrete. The two of us silently stood watch and observed as Marcus gently placed the cuff in its previous location and walked away, trying to be sly. When the owner of the chronocuff came back to claim his watch, he placed it on his wrist and quickly jolted as a loud children's theme song blared from the screen.

The room soon became a mess of laughter as the teasing began: people pointing fingers at a person who denied that he watched Little Timmy's Choo-Choo Adventures. And all Marcus did was walk up to us with a grin on his face as Kenzie gave him a nonchalant high-five.

"What did you do now, nerd," she asked, looking at the commotion of snickering people.

"I broke past the the chrono's encryptions and programmed it to give a feed of kid's shows whenever the sensor senses that it's being held or worn," he replied, real satisfied and a bit smug. "And messed up all of the guy's schedules and times and alerts and- oh, and I think I erased his SD card so all his memory is gone too, and I-"

"What did he ever do to you?" I laughed, giving him a questioned look.

"Well, Pete over there made this rumor saying that I tried to make out with Jenna Thompson in a tree and that she pushed me off because I don't know how to do it right," he exasperatedly said, slouching as he held his arm out and motioned toward Pete. "And the only thing he uses to justify this is the scar on my leg."

"But it's okay Marcus, we all know which half of the rumor is true," Kenzie reassuringly said, patting Marcus' shoulder as she lowered her voice. "Definitely not the part where Jenna yelled at you from the tree because she figured out that she was your side babe."

"Hey!" He exclaimed as he shoved a laughing Kenzie.

"Don't worry, everyone can see that your first love will always be a computer, followed by your love of hacking into classified data bases and junk," she snickered as Marcus stood there with a frown on his face. "Nerd."