Taking Sides

Chapter 1: Research Station

-Chapter 1: Research station-

Thankfully the next day or two went mostly without incident, save for a few more tremors. Luckily, people wised up enough to tie things down, and the injury rate decreased drastically after the second day. I got fed up with my toothbrush being tossed around the interior of my cupboard and ended up taping it down after every time I used it…

However, today would be slightly more interesting, as my team was on standby duty, and had to stay in the provided bunk at the main administrative building. The bunk was right next to the office that handled any operations, which made it easy for us to retrieve our orders in the event of an activation.

Hence, I tossed some snacks, along with my various chargers and my DS into my bag, then made my way to the bunk, with my two other teammates and the sergeant that was my team commander.

Along the way, we had to stop over at the store room to check the detectors for serviceability, before going straight into the air conditioned comfort of the standby bunk, more than happy to escape the muggy heat that was the typical weather on this island…

As we set our things down, the room shook a little as a mild tremor struck. However, by then, most of us were more or less used to all the shaking, and just carried on…

The standby bunk was a small, cramped room, with one double bed, one single bed, and a last one that was simply two mattresses stacked on top of each other. In front of the double bed, there was a long and narrow table, with a cheap wooden top and metal legs. On it was a television, a DVD player, and a playstation 3, whose controllers were in rather bad shape, but they were still usable, thankfully. The first thing we did, of course, was to set up both the PS 3 and the DVD player, while sorting the huge pile of discs to sort the games from the movies, as well as to decide on what to play and watch later on.

Of course, a tremor then came along and undid what we had done, making the two neat piles of discs collapse into a heap, and as if intending to add insult to injury, the discs also became jumbled up by the shaking. Meanwhile, I had to jump forward and hold onto the flat screen TV, fearing that it may fall over, much to the amusement of the rest.

However, we eventually settled in nicely and began to watch a random movie, having given up on trying to get the faulty controllers to cooperate. At random times, tremors big and small alike would hit, and we would be jiggled around a little, while my phone ended up on the floor. Annoyed, I put the entire extension cord, along with the multitude of chargers and phones that were connected to it onto the floor, and warned the others not to step on them.

Eventually, we got bored, and watching the movie degenerated into all four of us sitting around and using our phones. A glance at the platoon whatsapp group told me that a bunch of researchers had arrived from both the army and NUS, and had set up shop ‘on the top floor of our companys building, in one of the dry yards, among all our half dry underwear’, as aptly put by Victor, one of my platoon mates.

I replied with ‘your face is an underwear’ as part of one of our various running jokes, before ending up lying on the bed, falling asleep.

...Then, the alarm went off.

We had been activated, and considering the current circumstances, it was difficult to tell whether it was a drill or the real thing.

Either way, I tossed the thought aside, while I reached over and grabbed the storeroom keys, while the sergeant along with another team member, Rohinesh bolted out the door, on their way to the operations room to get our orders. I ran with our other team member, Yi Qiang to the store rooms. I was responsible for loading up the detectors, while he was in charge of the decontaminants. We ran into the adjacent stores, and hastily unlocked the doors, not bothering to talk. There was simply no time. If this was the real thing, we had to be out the camp gates within minutes.