Incipience

Chapter 5

"I was going to say that I'm surprised to see you here after what happened last night, but then I remembered how stubborn you are."

I give Chloé an absentminded smile, "what can I say? It's in my blood."

"So what happened after I got knocked out? All I remember is getting hit and the next thing I knew, I woke up in the infirmary. I guess you faired better than I did since you weren't stuck in one of those cots all night too." Chloé gives me a playful nudge, "so what'd you do to the soldier? Did you defend my honor and kick their ass or did they lose interest after the real fighter was knocked out?"

This time, the smile I give her is genuine. "Yeah, something like that."

She rolls her eyes at me, "Which are you saying yes to? I gave you two options."

Before I get a chance to answer, Rombag enters the room and barks for us to get in line. Chloé immediately stops talking and falls in line. I bite back a sigh of relief. This is probably going to be the only time I'll ever say this, but I'm glad to see Rombag.

"I hope you all enjoyed your evening off yesterday because today will not be as laid-back! You will be grouped based on your overall ranks and..."

It doesn't take long for my attention to wander to last night's events. I don't know what's more unbelievable: that I took down one of Rombag's soldiers while injured or the fact that the wrist that was shattered less than twelve hours ago is healed as if nothing ever happened.

Rombag took me straight to Xiomoazi's lab for an examination right after I passed out. Apparently, my vitals were giving off abnormal readings during my fight, so they turned me over to our residential geneticist. Xiomoazi was able to make sense out of the data she retrieved from my monitoring bracelet while I was knocked out. As soon as I got injured, there was this huge surge of adrenaline and some unidentified chemical circulating through my system that allowed me to push through the pain and take out the soldier. Xiomoazi had me stay in her lab overnight and was running tests on my blood all night to see what's actually going on.

Between my immunity to the sleeping agent they tried on me when I first was taken aboard, my miraculous ability to heal, and newfound Krav Maga skills, I'm dying to know exactly what the hell is going on with me. Xiomoazi said she should have some answers for me by tonight, so all I have to do is make it through today to figure out what's really happening. 

In the meantime, Rombag gave me direct orders not to tell anyone about what's going on, not that I was eager to do so. I have no clue whether or not the fighting thing is a fluke—or a byproduct of having binge-watched all of the Marvel movies many a time—and the healing honestly freaks me out. Sure, it'd be nice to cue Chloé in on what's happening, but I have fewer answers than I do questions, so I see no point in telling her anything at this point.

"...understood, cadets?!"

"Understood!"

Suddenly, everyone starts shuffling about. I blink in confusion. What do we understand? I turn to Chloé for an explanation and get a laugh in response.

"You definitely hit your head if you couldn't even pay attention for that long." She chuckles and gives my forehead a light poke. "You might want to go get that checked out."

I playfully punch her in the arm, "I did, actually, so show me some slack. What'd Rombag say? What are we doing?"

"Double click the button on the side of your bracelet to pull up your team. We're getting placed in groups on a weekly—or in some special cases daily—basis depending on how we do on our activities and overall rank, so we all no longer have identical schedules. The teams in order of skill level are Alpha, Beta, Mu, Psi, and Omega."