Silent Knight

Chapter Five

Once the commotion had died down, General Duke threw each of us a thick stack of paper.

"Fill this out," he said. With my free hand, I grabbed the papers and began to sift through them. It was asking for information; name, age, next of kin, that kind of thing. I slowly slid the paper back into the middle of the table,

"Yeah, no."

Alexander looked up from filling his in and gave me another death glare. I smirked once again. I was glad I had the mask over my face so they couldn't see how humorous I found this situation. The General came over and took the papers away from the middle of the table while shaking his head. It fell silent in the room as everyone completed their papers. There was a lot of writing that needed to be done; military and their paperwork. I leaned back in my chair and sighed, wishing I had a drink. A few minutes later, Claire was done with her papers. She stood up and walked them over to The General.

"Now what?" she asked.

"Once everyone is finished, I'll give you the briefing and the tour," General Duke said. She nodded and went back to sit down. I yawned. The briefing and tour sounded very, very boring. I was also getting tired of waiting for everyone. I didn't like waiting. It was even worse to be waiting on these people. I began to watch the clock again, counting each second that passed. The only sound in the room was the ticking.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

When the last person was done, The General instructed us to follow him. Everyone around the table stood up and began to head to the door. I looked down at my handcuffs, faking a cough.

"Right," General Duke said as he came over to unlock them; however, he only began to fumble with the key.

"You're killing me," I said sarcastically, watching him struggle to unlock them. Finally, he got them to open. I rubbed the part of my wrist that they were around as I stood up, following everyone out of the room.

"We'll show you around the camp," The General said, now sounding like a cheery tour guide. "Where you'll be training, working and sleeping." He led us outside, where there was a vehicle waiting for us. It resembled one of the vehicles they have on movie sets, the kind used for showing people around. It had room for everyone on it, with three people in each row. Everyone in front of me piled on, with The General in the driver seat. By the time I made it to the vehicle, there was only one seat left in the back. Right beside Alexander. I chuckled as he folded his arms in front of him when I had no choice but to sit down beside him. Instead of looking at me, he turned his head to talk to Valliere.

"Bet you didn't expect today to go this way," she said to him. I felt him briefly looking back over at me. He shook his head, looking back.

"This is going to be a long few months," he said.

"Tell me about it," I mumbled under my breath, but loud enough for him to hear. The vehicle began to move, and The General started talking to us as we drove through the compound. It felt off-kilter, oddly like we were on a Disneyland tour.

"We train multiple divisions here at the base. Each of them sees a different side of combat." We drove past a group of soldiers who were jogging in sync to the shouts of a Captain. "Except me, you guys will have the highest rankings in this camp. This means if things go to shit and I can no longer lead, one of you will be taking control over all of the squads."

"And who will that be?" Claire asked from the row in front of me, straightening up in her seat. I rolled my eyes.

"That will be determined later. First, we need to see you all in combat." Besides Claire, Morathi looked nervous. I laughed to myself at the image of this guy in combat. He would be dead in seconds out in the field. "Each of you will have different roles to play to complete the missions we send you on. For example, Mr. Bello over here will be your eyes and ears. He's one of the best technological experts in the world," The General finally decided to mention. I nodded as he explained, so that's why he was here, technological expert was fancy talk for a hacker. I wondered if they had a hard time tracking him down as well.