THE EPOCH CHRONICLES | ✔

nineteen | two

AMELIA DIDN'T know which was worse.

Sitting and waiting for the day of the launch, or it actually happening. Her anticipation to get it over with intensified with each passing hour - And there aren't many of those left, either, and, as Tina had so tactfully implied, the window of 'opportunity', so to speak, was closing.

"I'm not asking for much," Tina had pulled her aside more than twelve hours before as they had exited the building filled with the very machines that would transport them to a new life, "but I really think you should strike while the iron is hot - when else are you gonna get the opportunity?"

It had taken Amelia a moment to realize what she was talking about, and another moment for it to sink in that Tina's priorities were completely wacked. Then she'd realized she felt absolutely no surprise; merely acceptance that Tina's first thoughts would always rest on others' love lives.

So that was why she was standing in the doorway of the clinic, awkward as an awkward thing with her stomach in knots and her eyes on the cabinets in front of her. In her head, Amelia rehearsed her excuse as to why she was hanging around the clinic at nine PM at night, like one of the many hobos that lined the backdoors of the bars and pubs that thrived with activity each night in Grayling, begging for a shot as if some whisky would drown away their woes.

She shook the image out of her head, not wanting to get nostalgic in the last leg of the mission. Amelia had dealt surprisingly well with homesickness compared to the other Learners (though the marines seemed too hardened to feel anything), maybe because she didn't miss her home city as a whole - Amelia just missed some of the people.

Daryl. Professor Tatumm, whom she would never be able to thank for setting the whole thing up for her. Some old high school and university buddies. Searching for more excuses as to not step into the Clinic and not meet Dr Royson, Amelia let herself wonder whether or not she'd ever see some of those people again.

"Amelia?" A tender voice startled her from her reverie, so random it took a moment to realize who was speaking in the gloom, with the florescent lights off and merely a small lamp on the Clinic's front desk lighting the whole cubicle; she didn't feel the tension dissipate once she realized Zoey herself was speaking.

"What are you doing here?" The doctor stepped closer into the light, still wearing her white coat and her dark hair in a messy bun that spoke of her exhaustion, though her eyes seemed bright, even in the darkness. "Do you need something?"

"Uh ..." All of Amelia's excuses scattered right then and there, her tongue growing as dry as Lake Michigan. Great move, brainiac. "Sleeping pills," she blurted out, internally cringing. "I can't sleep."

Zoey gave her a perplexed look (something along the lines of I-don't-believe-you-but-okay) before heading over to the cabinet, unlocking it with a key from her coat pocket. "I get it. Tomorrow's the big day, huh?"

Amelia trailed after her, trying to relax - though it seemed impossible in the other woman's company. She could almost hear Tina in the back of her mind: 'Guess who's falling in L-O-V-E ...'

Oh yeah. That was an annoying little voice.

"Yeah. I mean, we've been training for it for the past - what, three months? - but it still feels unreal. But at the same time, I just wanna get it over with, y'know what I mean?"