Rift

Chapter 28: Gaze

I sat down, waiting for him to reveal why he wanted to speak with me. The first feature of his that caught my attention was a black eye patch that covered his right eye, with a slightly visible scar that extended from beneath it and down to his cheekbone. Even though I couldn't be certain of it because he was sitting, he didn't look to be too tall, but he more than made up for it with his width, which was not due to fat but to muscles, for the most part. He wore a long sleeve shirt that covered most of his arms, but I noticed that some of his fingers were scarred as well when he clasped his hands in front of him; these ones were smaller than the one that made him lose an eye, and even though they were more closed than that one, they didn't look to be older.

"Jeff said that you were in no conditions to come here. As always, he likes to exaggerate; you look pretty fine to me. Your name, boy?" He asked with a straight face after a couple of seconds.

Good manners would require one to introduce oneself before asking for someone else's name, but I didn't want to shake the waters for something as trivial as that. "Christopher Moore. May I know who I have the pleasure of talking to?" I asked, stretching out my hand towards him and trying to be a little convivial in an attempt to soften the mood.

"There's no need for you to know my name. Everyone refers to me as sergeant, and from now on I expect you to do so too." By his stiff words and his facial mimic, which didn't budge at all at my approach, I could roughly gain insight on his intentions and on the way this place was conducted.

The army, uh? Even they couldn't do much against the greatest threats humanity had ever seen, but they persist with their old ways anyway. Well, it's not like I expected everyone to just give up on fighting back and resign to live as mice, running around and trying to avoid the foreign creatures. Was this really any more promising, though?

Without waiting for a reply, he kept talking while I pondered the matter. "I've heard that you fight pretty well. It looks like you have a nice knife there, but it doesn't matter, we can provide you with something more effective. I knew a lot of civilians who owned guns and liked to spout nonsense about the training regimes, saying that with firearms everyone is equal and that anyone can press a trigger and defend themselves without being trained. Those fools surely learned the lesson the hard way by now, while the few that came this far know that reality is not like that, and you know it better than most, if my left eye serves me right."

He surely likes to blather, but now I get why I'm here.

"Better than the slackers downstairs, that's for sure" he said while standing up. "That's why I want you to join some group in their expeditions, after a brief training, of course" he added before stretching his hand towards me, waiting for me to shake it.

After months of travel, we finally reach this place thinking that it can be our new home, and he has the audacity of asking me to join a dispatch to leave after just a few hours? "I refuse."

"It looks like I misjudged you" he said as he disappointedly withdrew his hand. Obviously, he wasn't satisfied with my blank reply, as was evident by his irritated look. "We are not a charity or a hotel, where everyone is free to come and get fed and sleep under our roof while refusing to do anything in return. If you came here thinking that, you can go back where you came from."

"Sorry, that came out wrong. I'm just tired from the journey here; I didn't plan to take advantage of your kindness, but I hoped there would be something else that I could do here, instead of departing right away." Like hell I misspoke. I'll just make another try with a more amicable approach, not that I think that the likes of him are going to change their minds just like that.

"Too bad, we don't have the luxury of choosing our dream job here. In our situation, it's more efficient if everyone does what they do best. If you are still not convinced, don't make me waste any more time, accept or leave. Oh, now that I think about it, I failed to mention that should you refuse, your friends would follow you."