Crash Landing

1: SATIRE SMILES

ONE: SATIRE SMILES

"Eat, drink and be merry (for tomorrow we die)."
 —Proverb

✦

        SAWYER WAS CONFUSED. At least he thought he was. In fact, he could either be so smart that his brain had already figured out what was happening or he was stupid enough to ditch on last minute team meetings. He assumed he belonged to the latter category.

        Sawyer looked on as he watched his team shuffle around, stuffing things into their book bags as they walked by. "I still don't get what we have to do," he complained, lying down on hammock situated between two doors in the hallway.

        "Shut up," Eli growled, stuffing a pair of headphones into his book bag. Eli always made snide comments like so, unless he was flirting with a girl. Sawyer had been friends with him ever since the four of them were grouped together for this mission almost a year ago. He would like to think he knew Eli pretty well.

        "You're an absolute idiot," Aaron said, soon thereafter. As Aaron walked by, he punched Sawyer in the shoulder. "I'm actually pretty sure that Char made the objective perfectly clear."

        "Yeah okay, so we just go up to them and go 'Oh hey there! Yeah, me and my buddies are just going to take you to our boss so she can extract your blood and put you through painful scientific experiments that'll eventually kill you! It'll be fun!"

        Eli rolled his eyes. "They aren't going to die. They're just- going to be experimented on."

        "You mean they are going to die. Char is ruthless. I don't know about you, but I don't want to have the death of four teenagers on my hand."

        "Not all of them are teenagers," Matthew piped up, who had been watching the affair silently. "The eldest one turned twenty half a year ago. We're just supposed to find them and bring them here."

        It was silent for a moment as Sawyer began to digest this. He never really listened when Char spoke, instead preferring to doodle on his jeans with a pen that he always had in his pocket.

        Sawyer: "So we just bring them here?"

        Eli: "Yeah."

        Sawyer: "Did Char even give us names?"

        Aaron: "Oh please. How many people with abilities like ours do you know?"

        Sawyer: "What about the people we have to watch out for, or whatever?"

        Eli: "So you do listen to Char."

        Aaron: "Watch out for them, stupid."

        "Fair point," Sawyer concludes. "And they're all in America?"

        Matthew: "Unless Char tells us otherwise, yeah."

        Sawyer huffed and got up, and winced when he heard his back crack. Miss a day of training once, and you begin to feel rusty, he presumes.

        "Char's stupid," he muttered with no relevance to the situation (It earned him an elbow in the ribs from Eli, though) before grabbing his book bag and beginning to pack himself.

✦

        There was a boy watching her. Falice Torrents knew this all too well. (Many boys were watching her, so she scolded her brain for letting this one matter).