Creatures of God

A Fellow Space Marine

Hello everyone, thank you so much for joining the ride! I hope you are enjoying it!

This section is dedicated to _HannahArlene_, who is one of the nicest and best people I have met on Wattpad.  

"Elliot, wake up."

The sleepy young man flinched with partial wakefulness and wondered why he was hearing this voice right now; familiar to him, soft and gentle, a female's voice. Of course, he recognized it. It belonged to Mimi, his childhood friend. Memories of the two growing up together began flooding back -- playing hide-and-seek, eating twirls and twizzle pasta, learning about the stars...

"Elliot, what are you doing here?"

Here? Elliot thought. Where am I?

He found himself off in a faraway field, gazing upon Mimi, who was wearing a full-length white dress as she strode through waist-high grass and grain. A cool breeze blew, and the girl gently moved between rustling stems and leaves. She stopped and reached for a blue flower, hidden amongst the yellow thicket. She twirled the tiny blossom and placed it to her face.

Elliot smiled.

Somehow he was closer to Mimi now. Visually, he followed the petals of the flower she held over to her face -- burnished brown eyes, sun-kissed skin and dark, wavy hair that flowed wistfully about her happy face. The girl appeared clean and innocent, like a teen at her thirteenth birthday party; an angel singing in a children's choir; the first maid at her sister's wedding...

Wait, am I dreaming?

"Elliot, you're drooling, ya nom-nerd! Wake up! What are you doing here?"

Everything was coming back now. He remembered. He had fallen asleep at the control desk in the pathology lab.

"Ahhhh!"

Elliot startled himself awake. He sat up and was shocked to find Mimi there, standing in front of him, with a quizzical look on her face. Instead of down, her straight hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail, and instead of being dressed in all-white, she wore her usual tan and black camouflage as an officer of the Human Protection Unit.

"Is that how you greet a fellow space marine?" Mimi asked, smiling. She referred to the times growing up when the two friends pretended to be starship troopers, chasing each other around, laughing and screaming until breathless.

As it was currently, Elliot was the only one hyperventilating. He couldn't tell what was happening or what he was doing. The last thing he remembered, he was supposed to have been watching over...

Elliot gasped.

"For shermin's sake, what's wrong with you?" Mimi asked.

Elliot whirled around, looking through the observation glass and into the adjacent room. There, he saw an empty exam table with a warming blanket strewn halfway off. The boy stranger from Earth's past was nowhere to be seen.

"Fuck!" Elliot cursed.

"What? What's the matter?" Mimi asked. Her eyes narrowed as she studied her childhood friend. He was wearing a wrinkled white coverall, and his hair was misshapen from his awkward sleep. His eyes were tired and large in size. He blinked a couple of times and stared at an empty space in the other room.

Mimi followed his eyes to the vacant metal table. "Don't tell me you're sleeping in the lab now, are you?"

Elliot was too disoriented to understand. "What?"