The Mantis Effect

Chapter One

The sweat on my palms was starting to soften the stack of fifteen pages I had clutched in my hands. I stared down at the test and asked myself one last time, for the last time.

'What the hell are you doing, Mei?'

This exam was the most important test I will have ever taken in my life. Every-one before now was a building block to this moment and I felt as though the weight of my overthinking was going to crumble it all.

'Hand it in. Just hand it in and be done with it.'

I didn't realize how hard I had slammed the test on the table before I felt everyone's eyes on me. I was even more scattered now. In my head, I had two options. I could either vomit on my test and render it void to the military, fly down the hall, and take the environmental engineering test like my parents wanted or straighten up, ignore how tight my collar seemed to be getting, and walk out of here allowing others to believe that I totally had it in the bag when in fact I myself did not believe I had it in the bag.

I straitened up and saluted my Captain. He nods at me and for a millisecond I see the slightest crook in his mouth. The tiniest beginning of a smile of approval. He had always been hardest on me in class. I didn't know it was because I was the smallest, the least coordinated, or the most unlikely to have made it this far but he was the definition of relentless.

I had come to believe that when the others ran 10 miles and he made me run 11 he was really trying to run me out of the program. Or when I was sequestered to complete a partnered project alone he was trying to weaken my resolve. But in this moment- in that ounce of a smile I realized he was pushing me to be my best with or without the support of others.

"It has been a privilege, private," he said in his stony voice.

I addressed him as Sir and struggled not to tremble as I left the classroom. Once I made it outside it was everything I could do to keep from teetering over like a game of Jenga.

Other prospect soldiers like me who had just taken the test stood outside their classrooms too. Each of us tried to stand as tall as we could but our nerves could be found in the single drop of sweat that rolled under each of our jaws and into our uniform collars. We all wanted it so badly, to be the next generation accepted into the Elite class. Some of us might make it but most of us won't.

A boy with thick dark hair across from where I stood clicked the heels of his boots together, shattering the silence.

"Knock it off Rodriguez," another soldier warned.

The boy referred to as Rodriguez smiled at him in a mischievous kind of way as though he wasn't taking the uppity soldier seriously. He was a handsome boy with a sharp jaw that might have made boy-crazy girls weak in the knees but my knees were already weak from the exam.

Rodriguez looked over at me and with the same smile he had paid the other soldier he now offered to me. My face grew hot and surely looked a baffled mess trying to collect myself out of my nerves. He laughed quietly at the silly girl he had so easily flustered and it only embarrassed me more.

A single bell sounded over the intercom above. It signified the end of the exam. Those who had not finished would not be considered for the Elite program, those who had would be and out of them only a select few would probably make it. I was determined to be an Elite. It's all I'd wanted since I had joined the ranks.

The Elite class of Olympians and Vectors were the highest regarded in the military factions. They were the pace makers of this war and the bar setters for those of us on the front lines of it. They made a difference.