Subjects

24- Basic Training

"Good morning, everybody. This is my third day here at The New Age Panther. The weather's great, they served eggs for breakfast and things are looking good for our crew here. Am I right, Seaman Recruit Roger?"

Roger takes a few seconds to part from his cup of coffee and look up at Ben's adopted camera, "is this thing even working?"

"Yes, of course it is!" Ben almost sounds offended. "I mean, I think it is. But my good camera is somewhere far far away so we'll have to make some sacrifices."

Roger sinks back to the dining hall table and hugs his comforting cup of liquid happiness. Why, oh why, did he let Ben drag him out of bed this early? Emily said they'd start working on the ship only at noon today.

"So how is the ship coming along?" Ben inquires.

"Great, actually," Roger says. "We almost finished putting everything back where it should be and I think we can get it to work in a couple of days."

"She should give you a promotion by now, with all the work you do," Ben says.

"Absolutely," you can see from Roger's grin that he doesn't mind it at all, on the contrary. Maybe Emily does most of the work but he is still having the best time he's had in a while.

"Well, I still have many things to film today, are you done with the coffee?" Ben can't see Roger's tormented expression behind the cup. He salutes at someone behind Roger's back. "Jeff!"

"At ease," Jeff sits on the edge of their table and high-fives Ben. "What are you up to?"

"You know, filming, the usual," Ben says. "So you'll take me down to the cargo halls, right?"

"This again? C'mon, Ben, you know I can't let you go in there. Plus, it's just a big room with lots of boxes, there's really nothing to see."

"Five minutes, please, I won't even film anything," Ben pleads.

"Sorry, man, I can't," Jeff takes something out of his keychain and slips it to Ben. "This is for the weather deck, you can go up tonight but not a peep as to how you got the key, got it?"

"Got it," Ben smiles like he just won the lottery and Roger can only think of the horrible sea sickness he's going to get if he goes up to the weather deck with Ben.

Meanwhile, at an abandoned space behind one of the containers on the main deck, Eva sits and thinks about how is it possible that she spends so much time thinking lately. She sure doesn't like it. Usually she has distractions, but what is usually anymore, really?

Eva sure could use a distraction right now. Is it too much to ask for a serie or a movie to watch? She'd even take a documentary at this point. Anything that will keep her from thinking about how bad things are.

She tries to keep acting normal but she has no clue what to do at this point. No one else seems to be having a hard. Emily and Roger are fixing the ship and Ben does... Whatever it is he's doing all day with that rusty old camera. Angie is just following them all around and it doesn't look like she minds this whole trip. It took Eva a full hour to loose the girl today, she gets better at navigating the ship and Eva still barely finds their room.

Is she the only one who feels so bad? It is just pointless, everything they do, what are they even doing? They have nothing, they are not safe anywhere, they can hardly even resist the influence. She had everything, how did she not see? She had her dad, her house, her friends! She didn't have to do anything, obey anyone, she was free!

She kicks one of the container and her foot hurts, so she kicks it again, harder. She wants to scream, to cry, jump off this deck and just swim away as far as she can. She holds the railing and leans until she feels like a single brush of the wind can tip the scale and throw her off into the endless blue.

The ship rocks slightly and Eva holds on tighter, her heart starts beating faster when she realizes how close she is to falling. She leans back, holding on even tighter. Even though she is safe now, she can't let go.

She cries.

The waves are so beautiful, the sun, the sky. All the different shades of blue. The endless world around her. She could probably make a decent painting of this view. She hasn't drawn in years but something in her knows that if she had a canvas and some colors she could pull it off.

"Eva?" took her a while, but Angie found her after all.

Eva wipes her face on her blue uniform sleeve and turns around, "hi, where have you been?"

Angie can tell that something's wrong, but she isn't sure how to help. She just wants Eva to feel better. "I was at the bridge today! Patch took me and Ben! You should come next time, it was so cool!"

As Eva looks at the little girl something changes in her. Life seem a little less dark then they were before. She looks away immediately when she realizes what is happening. The feeling is still there, but now it's not as strong. More like a light breeze rather than a hurricane of emotion trying to wipe away her feelings.

"It's time for lunch," Angie says.

"Let's go then," Eva takes Angie's hand. "Did you call Roger and Emily?"

You must know this feeling when everything you do is just... Empty. Don't you? When you want to say something but think that it's pointless, or when you look at the food in your plate and can only think of how exhausting it would be to force yourself to eat it. This is more or less how Eva feels right now.

She is looking at the one piece of spinach pie that she took just to justify sitting in the dinning hall but she has absolutely no intention of eating it.

"Are you okay, Eva?" Emily asks her quietly.

"I'm great," Eva hardly even tries to sound convincing, she doesn't even care.

"You haven't eaten a thing and I've never seen you this quiet," Emily leans forward to try and make this conversation a little more private but since they are sitting at opposite sides of the table it isn't working so well.

"Yes, Eva, what's wrong?" Ben joins in. "If you don't like the pie you can have some of my fries."

"I'm just not hungry," Eva pushes the plate aside.

"Well, you got to eat something," Ben says.

You got to eat something.

Eat something.

Eat.

Eva reaches for her plate again and takes a big bite out of the pie. When she realizes what she's done she jumps back, "what did you do to me?" She is horrified, Ben looks a bit confused as well, "what did you do??" she yells at him.

"I don't know, I-"

"You influenced me! How did you do it? Answer me!"

At this point Eva stood up and yelled at the top of her lungs. Some of the soldiers in the adjacent tables started becoming curious about the girl yelling at who seemed to be her friend.

"Calm down, Eva," Emily says. "Maybe it was just some weird thing that happened..."

"I felt it, Emily," Eva's voice raises with anger or more likely fear. "I know how it feels and Ben just... He just influenced me, exactly like Leo did to us."

"Try it again, Ben," Emily says. "Try it on me."

"Emily, eat something," Ben says to her. He is even more confused than Eva, if that's even possible.

"I didn't feel anything," Emily says.

Eva sits down again but she still keeps a safe distance from Ben.

"Eva, I don't know how this happened," Ben says, "but I promise, it wasn't on purpose. You know I'd never force you to do anything."

"I don't know," Eva says. "I don't know."