In the Wrong Space and Time

XIII

Media: Have a nice little drawing of Mr. William Coleman and Dr. Reyna Blackwood. Though they're side characters, they still deserve their own art.

On to chapter thirteen!

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F. M. PRIMERO'S SHARP HAZEL eyes dart around the room, and he narrows them almost imperceptibly.

"Some people are watching us," he says in an undertone. "Now laugh like I told you the world's greatest inside joke."

"What - why?" Percival asks, befuddled.

"To avoid suspicion, of course," F. M. Primero continues in that same low register.

"Oh, what the hell," Tyra shrugs, and proceeds to let out the loudest peal of laughter I have ever heard a person make.

Taking that as our cue, Percival and I guffaw and snort in a well-put-on display of mirth, while F. M. Primero makes a great show of leaning back smugly in his chair, smirking.

Now, everybody in the canteen is looking at us, but at least we have managed to quell any rising suspicion regarding our secret plans.

"What's the joke?" Some loudmouthed busybody a few tables away asks.

"Inside joke, you wouldn't get it even if you tried!" Percival responds, waggling his eyebrows maddeningly. I lean in and pretend to whisper something into his ear, and he laughs all the harder.

At last, everyone turns back to their food, and finally, no more attention is on us.

"Great work, everyone. I never knew that you all were such proficient actors!" F. M. Primero smiles and whispers.

"You know what?" Tyra asks. "That was the only time I've laughed these few days, and believe me, I am in dire need of laughter. We deserve a break from the war, and what better time to relax than lunch hour? Or, you know, lunch-half-an-hour-left."

I nod in agreement. "Let's just do something fun and silly, just to take our minds off of things for a while. What do you think?"

As the words leave my mouth, I find myself instantly surprised. The old me never would have said something like this. Is this a bad change, or is this a good one?

I brush the thought away as Percival and F. M. Primero agree enthusiastically.

"Oh, would you look at that, we've gotten our favourite nerd to loosen up," Percival forgets his earlier animosity with me entirely in his triumph at finally seeing a new side to me.

"Okay, fun conversation topic coming right up," Tyra takes command of the situation again. "Funniest thing to have ever happened in your career, go!"

A long-buried memory makes its way to the surface of Percival's mind, evident in the way that his normally serious blue eyes light up before he starts to speak.

"It was my first time on the battlefield as a newly-recruited medic," Percival begins, grinning. "I had received my first shipment of wounded soldiers. My team and I had to tend to each and every one of them, and some patients had gore spilling out of their every orifice. At least, we knew how to treat them. But there was this one man, who had no visible injuries or trauma except for a single long gash on his arm. It appeared to have been a bullet graze, but it wasn't even deep - he couldn't have had lost enough blood to go unconscious. And yet, there he was in such a deep state of unconsciousness that we thought he was comatose."

"I think I know where this is going," F. M. Primero remembers that particular situation too, pressing his lips together firmly and shaking his head in mock seriousness.