Selected of Illèa-A Selection Fanfiction

12

Lucas POV

"Officer Leger, plan in action. Get your soldiers armed and leave as soon as possible. You know the plan, and make sure your soldiers understand it. If this mission goes wrong, they will kill Julie," I hear my father telling our close family friend, the commanding officer right as we get back from breakfast. My plan is so precarious, there are a thousand ways it could go wrong. All of them end in the same way. Julie dead. I breath deeply.

My mom comes over to me. "Honey, I know this has been hard for you, but you need to continue with the selection. The girls are getting angry because they haven't seen you in ten days. They worry about you," she tells in her motherly voice. I hate her motherly voice because it's impossible to refuse. "Your sister misses you too," she added on. I nod, because I know it's true.

Satisfied, my mom leaves the room, but not before tugging her ear at my dad. I know they do it, not sure what they do it for, but they do it all of the time. My dad smiles, something I haven't done for a long time.

Remembering what my mom said, I go to my sister's room. In there I find three of the selected. Emily, Grace and Aubrey. I'm not going to lie, but I've neglected them a lot during their whole stay. Rachel looks up from their conversation. "Hey, what's up?" she asks as I lean in her doorframe. "Just saying hi to my little sis," I reply, with the obvious answer. "Chill," she says as she goes back to the conversation. Then, being the awkward person I am, I stay in her doorframe. "Is there something you want?" she inquires, noticing I haven't left. "Well, uh, I was wondering if you lovely ladies wanted to get creamed in a cooking competition," I answer, making it up on the spot. They all eagerly agree, including Rachel. "Sorry, Rach, but you'll have to judge," I tell her as she jumps to her feet with the other girls. "Oh," is all she says, clearly disappointed she won't be cooking.

We head to the kitchens, they selected clearly pleased that they are invited to do this. The cooks give us half the kitchen, the part they aren't using, for our use. It's more than enough space. Rachel will be watching us cook, so she isn't bored. I ask her to find three random ingredients we have to use. We can use other ingredients, but those are required. She chose strawberries, oats and mangos.

"You have 45 minutes starting...now!" Rachel voice rang through the kitchens. Wasting no time, I take a banana and smash it in a bowl. I take one and half cups of oats and mix it in with the banana and a one-fourth cup of honey. I add a pinch of salt, a teaspoon of vanilla and a teaspoon of cinnamon. I mix well and begin to form in the muffin pans by putting a spoonful into each of the cups and pushing it to the sides to create a bowl. I chill it for a couple of minutes as I cut the strawberries and mangos, using the juice to create a syrup. I then put it in the oven to bake. During that time, I scour the kitchens for vanilla ice cream, in which I find over on the other side of the kitchen. I take it back with me, just in time to take my oat cups out of the oven. I scoop the ice cream into the hot oat cups, drizzle the mango strawberry syrup on the ice cream and place the cut fruit on it. I finish my ice cream, oat cups just as the timer beeps.

Emily has created a parfait with some honey yogurt, homemade granola (which has the oats) and the fruit. It looks really good, especially the granola. Aubrey made a smoothie with the fruit, ice, agave (kind of like honey) and milk. She had oat cookies with cinnamon on the side. It's probably the most healthy item as Grace made frozen yogurt. She used vanilla yogurt, mangos, and strawberries. She then created an oat honey crumble to top it with. The frozen yogurt didn't have enough time to freeze, so she used liquid nitrogen in a pump to freeze it, and it worked.

I could tell Rachel was having a hard time deciding after she devoured our treats. So she wouldn't be biased, she didn't know who made what, but at the end, she gave me the grand prize of acknowledgement for my amazing dish. I have to admit, I was pretty proud, but then again, I've made this dish so often with yogurt and other fruits, it was a bit unfair.

I walked the girls to their rooms together before walking to my own room with Rachel. We're pretty close siblings, I'm proud to say. So, us hanging out was nothing new. "So, Rachel, how's Officer Webb?" I inquire. "Well, he went on the mission, for Julie," she says, worry overcoming her face. "Sorry, Rachel. I didn't know he would be going," I apologize sincerely. "It's fine. He's a soldier," she wipes a tear away after her reply, obviously not fine with it. She hurries to her room with silent tears of worry slowly drifting down her face. I feel entirely guilty.

As I go into my office I see a note on my desk from mom.

Lucas, if you won't eat dinner with us again, you won't get dinner. I love you, Mom

I decide to come to dinner, because I like eating. I guess I'll have to brave out the selected. Which is fair as I haven't been to the dining room for dinner in, well, ten days. Ever since Julie got kidnapped.

Just then a guard, Officer Webb, bursts in my office. I quickly get to my feet, bracing for the news. "Sir, we got her," he tells me and starts leading towards where Julie is. We break into a run and find ourselves out the back entrance by the military trucks.

Officer Mark Leger, son of commanding Officer Aspen Leger and who I happen to know is dating Blair, was carrying a frail figure with long chestnut hair I've come to love. But then my attention directed to her cut and bruised skin. I gasped in horror and took her in my arms and started to gently carry her to the hospital wing. She is obviously malnutritioned and is a lot thinner than when I last saw her, and that's saying something as she has always been very thin. Her eyes are closed and she seems asleep, but with every step she winces. I get to the hospital wing where the doctor takes her. He pulls the curtains around her and ushers me out. For the first time in 10 days, I let out the breath I didn't know I'd been holding.