Three Strikes [✓]

Flawed Strategy

Chapter Two: Flawed Strategy

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Fort Grays Island, East of Usea.
May 25th, 2019.
1100hrs.

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Although Fort Grays Island wasn't completely cut off from the rest of civilization and they were fairly lenient on the soldiers stationed there, it was still a military base and as such — especially since the war had started — it regulated calls and monitored any emails sent. Because she'd been so busy recently, what with Knocker refusing to allow days off anymore and dragging them into the air for training so they'd stay sharp, Naomi wasn't able to check anything on the computer or even look at her phone.

After what felt like ages, a Saturday came and Knocker had agreed to let everyone have the weekend off, taking into consideration that HQ had been close to finishing their plans for the next mission. So Naomi went back to her quarters to take a break from the ever growing aggressiveness in the games the others had been playing all day. She would have stayed outside and continued playing, but she had hurt her knee when she and Brownie were participating in the second game of football that Boggard and Faun had started that morning and decided to give it a rest and check some emails.

Once she got inside, she shut the door behind her and hobbled over to the bunkbed across the room. The sun was shining brightly outside and the blinds that usually covered the window was wide open, so there wasn't any reason for her to turn on the light. Opening the one of the drawers to the desk opposite the bed, she pulled out a thin laptop case and set it on the desk. There was a pocket in the case, so she opened it up and pulled out her smartphone and its charger. Plugging it in, she waited patiently for it to charge up.

When it finally charged enough to be used, the screen told her that she had several missed calls and unanswered text messages. She scrolled through them, marking the text messages as 'read' and then going through the voicemails from the numbers she had in her contacts. Most of the calls were from her parents and brother and sister, all of them going back to when the war started, the day she had put away her phone and not bothered looking at it again. Naomi felt guilt wash over her as she realized that she hadn't really thought about how her family would be reacting to the start of the war and her being stationed at a base meant to keep peace on the continent.

First, she went to her contacts and tried her parent's home phone. Her mom was probably still at work, since it was around five or six in the morning in Osea, and her father rarely looked at his phone anymore. He was an early riser, usually up at four in the morning, sometimes earlier. She blamed it on him being in the military for so long and having no choice but to get up early.

It continued to trill in her ear as it called the house phone and she waited and waited. Eventually, it went to voicemail and a recording of her father's voice came on. "You have reached the Foulke residence. We are currently unavailable, but leave a message and we'll consider returning your call as soon as we can." Be- Naomi pressed the 'end call' button before it started recording.

Alright, so she'd try her dad's phone, figuring that he either started sleeping in or he was out on a walk or something like that. Her parents did own two highly active dogs that needed multiple walks every day. The trilling sound returned and went on for a little while, but finally she got an answer and it didn't go to voicemail like it had done before. "Dad?" she asked cautiously when nobody said anything.

"Naomi! It's about time you called!" her father suddenly shouted into her ear. She winced and moved the phone away from her ear a centimeter or so. "Your mom's been nagging me to find a way to get ahold of your superiors and find out if you're dead or something like that. She's been driving everyone up the damn wall!"