Restless Earth

Chapter 3: Xavier

Man was she ever ungrateful.

The girl had caught my eye when I'd walked in to the training centre, short, blond with a tomato red face from yelling at another trainee. I liked her then and there.

Unfortunately, she was stubborn and prickly as a hedgehog when it came to making friends.
Luckily for me, she didn't brush of my attempts at making acquaintances with a punch in the face, just constant verbal rejections. Oh well, she'll come round to my considerable charm eventually.

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A couple weeks passed.

We where now nearing the end of our training. The only step left was to elect two commanders from the group.
We didn't know it yet, but one of us was to succeed and the other was to die, all to find a cure that was most likely a myth.

The girl's name was Rose, I learnt, and she still hadn't softened towards me. It sucked at first, but I quickly grew to dislike her and her short temper almost as much as she seemed to dislike me.

The bell for class one rung, shaking me out of my thoughts.
I elbowed my way past other eager cadets, to drop of my dish and leftovers before heading to class.

I stepped into the meds hall, first as usual.

Luckily, Rose was only in one of my classes, despite there only being sixty students in total. Twenty two would be allowed on the mission.

I wound my way around the chairs to my regular seat, right under the nose of our teacher. I was trying, some would say too hard, to excell.

Meds passed in a blur and even though I took copious notes, I'm positive most of it passed through my head. So much for paying attention.

After meds was survival tactics and then weaponry. And then finally, the blessed relief of lunch, two hours without teachers droning on about this or that.

We'd learn better with experience, not theory.

I can't wait to get outside. Never been, neither has anyone but the few who returned from military expeditions but the longing for outside, for fresh air and real trees and open sky was in my bones.
Sadly, I wouldn't be able experience it well. The Military stuck it's expeditions in space suits as if the surface of the Earth was some foreign planet and perhaps, after a hundred years in hiding underground, it was.