Subordinance

Chapter Twenty Two

Chapter Twenty Two

We've hit a bump in the road as far as my friendship with Rho goes. Not hostile, not forced, just a differing in ideas that makes it that much harder to talk together. Don't get me wrong; having her at the hospital makes work much more enjoyable, but the previous bond we'd had has seemingly frozen over, setting us back as familiar acquaintances.

It's a lonely feeling.

I didn't notice it before, but the cavity in my chest has caved, yawning into a pit of ache that swallows up the light in my life and permeates the rest with shadow and ash. At night it opens, the memories of things gone past awakening inside the pit, stirring with my worries into a seething mass of tension.

Losing someone doesn't necessarily mean they have to die; it can be as simple as them taking a step back, and yet, it is just as noticeable.

The past week and a half has been quite monotonous, days lazily rolling by as if there's nothing better for them to do. As I sit here, filing medical records of the Regiment on the screen network, thousands upon thousands of Subordinates are fighting and dying and living. In the border Districts and beyond, they work in unison as a complex piece of machinery, a weapon of mass devastation to be wielded against the Enemy. Each and every Subordinate strategizing or working in food distribution or fighting hand-to-hand is playing a role, infinitesimally small but wholly essential in order for the machine to work.

Maybe that's why I was reassigned to the hospital.

Because they know I was made to Scout but placed me here instead. So I don't do what I was created to do. They've made of me a misplaced part in an entirely alien machine. A wrong fit, a wrong placement, wrong in every meaning of the word possible, and yet here I sit.

Ding. File accepted. Drop. Add another.

I sigh and keep on working, dragging the electronic files around and editing the medical information. The swivel chair is hard and squeaky, the atmosphere cold and sterile. The lobby, like always, is void of life, visitors having no reason to come to a nearly completely vacant hospital. A plate of ration mash sits on the reception desk, having separated and gotten cold a while ago. I didn't really feel like eating anyways.

As I finish updating the medical records, I swivel around once to stretch my legs and rest my eyes. The notification on my screen says that I've got another hour and a half before the shift change, so I start the next pile of paperwork—scanning in all of the blood test printouts and adding them to the medical records.

A thought occurs to me as I'm sliding the papers into the scanner—what if this is it? What if I'm never reassigned to another Regiment, stuck filing medical sheets and testing tubes of blood for the rest of my time? A misfit in the wrong Regiment until I'm dismissed? I know it would have to be extreme, but I was sent here as punishment for being kidnapped, wasn't I?

Never being able to Scout again.

Run free again.

Be me again.

The hope I have held onto is that I'll be allowed to go back to Kappa and life will go on as it should; that I'll be allowed to Scout again. In my head, memories replay of the Quadrant Officer and I flying across wastelands and climbing buildings and zip-lining over craters the size of the hospital, loving every moment of it.

I feel heat start to color my cheeks at the thought of the Quadrant Officer. I remember so clearly his green eyes flashing with excitement, or frosted over with reserve, or glittering with amusement at something that'd happened. Rare emeralds at times when he would look at me and I'd get this funny feeling in my chest that confused me more than I knew what to do with. Even now, the scarlet flares in my cheeks and a bizarre mood swing leaves me almost giddy.