I'm a terrible person. We know. I think I lost motivation because I saw no one was reading, but I've come the conclusion that, with or without reads or feedback, I write for me, so, those that do read FLOSS, thank you, I love you, message me sometime! :) I hope you all like Chapter 9.
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Chapter 9: Time and Truth
"Super soldiers? We're super soldiers? Like the Captain himself?" Jarvis asked through a mouth full of food.
"Basically. I'm sure you've already noticed the differences before and after the...injections," I said slowly. "You're stronger, faster, smarter. Your reflexes are better, and your wounds heal extremely fast. There could be more things that I haven't observed yet."
"That's so cool! I mean, not the whole life-changing part, but at least there are perks, right?" Jarvis responded.
Stephanie spoke up. "That's true. I was pretty uncoordinated even after joining the Navy. Now I'm able to fire a gun with, essentially, no chance of missing my target," she said while biting into a slice of toast. "And I knew a lot about computers before the shots, but now? I don't think smarter begins to describe it."
Victorian nodded his head and sipped orange juice from a glass, all the while offering me bits of fruit from his bowl. "So then melee combat is affected as well, Love? You said we have better reflexes and that we're stronger."
"Yes," I said with a mouthful of apple slices. "That doesn't mean you can beat me now, though."
Everyone at the round table except Aaron chuckled.
Victorian nodded and sipped again. "Oh, I know. I couldn't beat her before," he mumbled to the table. "She clobbered my arse...constantly."
"Clobbered my arse?" Jarvis asked.
"We fought all the time. He lost all the time," I added quickly.
Jarvis smiled and continued eating his chicken. "Figures," he said, and he gave a playful punch to Aaron's shoulder. "Aaron beat him up pretty bad when we got here. I told you not to be dramatic, dude." Jarvis was staring at Victorian, now. "Throwing doors open is not discreet; even I know that. Next time, you may not be so lucky and come across a human. Especially ones that you know."
"One." Aaron cut in.
Victorian scowled and cursed and I felt a chuckle breeze past my lips.
"So, Lieutenant Blake, I wanted to talk to you about some things that I found along the way here."
My gaze went to Stephanie, who was now already standing at the mouth of the kitchen, gesturing for me to get up and follow her. I slid my chair out and rose from the table.
"You three play nice, now." This was mostly directed at Aaron, who still didn't seem to like Victorian very much.
At all, really.
I heard both, "Will do, Lieutenant. No worries," and "Got it, Mademoiselle," at the same time. I waited for a yes from Aaron, but all I received was a simple grunt. A small glance from the corner of his eye told me all he wanted to say, though.
We'll talk later.
I turned and followed Stephanie out to the foyer and up the steps. "So what is it that I needed to see?" I asked.
"Tons," she replied as she opened the door of her suite and ushered me in hurriedly. She moved to the side of her bed, where I saw a multitude of black laptop cases along with cords wrapped around each other along the floor. I followed the length of the cords to a desk, nearly completely covered with more computers and wires. "My observations, data collection...Victorian told me you're really good with computers and I wanted to see for myself..." she trailed off.
I glanced at her and shrugged. "Can we do the important things first?"
"Right. Yes, we can. Definitely." This woman had to have at the most five years on me, yet her actions and words were almost childlike. It was an unpleasant realization.
"What is this?" I asked as she laid a laptop down in front of me with line graphs covering the screen. "Statistics for...?"
"Numbers of the "zombies" when they would attack. When all of this started, it was sporadic." She said, all the while pointing to the bottom left of the graph.
"Three, maybe four at a time," she continued. "Now we're talking maybe forty or fifty of them appearing and causing damage at once."
I nodded as I watched her hand move upward to the right of the graph. I was still staring at the screen when she spoke again.
"Usually after an attack, unless it was just eerily calm where we were, I'd enter what I had gathered from it. How many there were, what they looked like, even abilities or observable characteristics and tendencies."
"Right. And? Had something changed?"
"It's not entirely set in stone but..." she hesitated and moved the graph window towards the bottom of the screen, revealing her spreadsheet of observations. "Look."
My eyes scanned the cells of the page, reading quick notes from Stephanie's point-of-view.
Scattered.
Unintelligent.
Low strength.
As I got toward the more recent data entries, discomfort began edging its way into my gut.
Increased speed.
Battle formations implied.
Increase of deadly intent.
"They're getting...better?" I whispered to myself.
"Yeah," Stephanie responded."They are. Somehow, Lieutenant, and I honestly have no idea what that somehow is, but I do know that wherever they're coming from..."
"It's being done deliberately. Yeah, I got it." I answered while getting up. As I walked toward her suite door, I paused when I didn't hear her footfalls behind me. "Is there something else you-?"
The end of the sentence fell off as she stared at me and purposefully turned her head toward a laptop on her bed.
"I thought you were going to show your skills," she said in a taunting tone.
I laughed and walked over to her bed and pulled the laptop toward me. I opened up a command window and my fingers began clicking all sorts of codes into the computer. When I finished, I simply hit the "enter" key and stood up.
"I'm done," I said.
Stephanie dropped onto the bed beside the laptop. "That's all? What did you do? Nothing has changed."
"I'm not as good as Victorian made me out to be," I said while shrugging. "Sorry."
As I left the room and closed the door, a distinct pinging sound from behind the door made me pause.
"Wait! Dammit!" I heard Stephanie mumble. After about five minutes of furious clicks and clacks from her side of the door, it flew open and I stared bemusedly at Stephanie. "You're better than he said. Much better."
"So are you." We both walked to the stairs and descended quickly.
"Yeah, thank God, or you would've crashed my computer," she said with a playful glare.
I shrugged. "You say 'crashed,' I say 'broken now and fixed later'."
She gave a laugh and we turned the corner into the kitchen.
I raised an eyebrow as I watched Victorian slam Jarvis' arm down on the table triumphantly.
"Hah! Is that all you've got within you? Your arm carries the strength of a grasshopper!" Victorian yelled.
"What?!" Jarvis' eyes flashed and he glared at Victorian. "A grasshopper?"
"Oh, forgive me, that's an insult to all grasshoppers."
When I saw Jarvis about to leap out of his chair, I interrupted.
"Victorian, stop being a bother," I started. "Arm-wrestling is just his way of making others upset." I finished, looking at Jarvis. "He did it back in the Corps too."
"Ah, Love, came to ruin all of my fun, have you?"
"And at a good time, I see...where's Aaron?" I asked, staring at his now unoccupied seat.
Victorian rose from his seat and leaned towards my ear. "The angry one left up to his suite about ten minutes ago, Love. Don't know why. I can't imagine him going upstairs for anyone." A smirk sat on his face after the teasing whisper.
"Stop it." I said as I flicked his nose in annoyance.
"Well, it's about 2 o'clock in the afternoon now, Love. A lot can happen."
I had forgotten just how irritating my best friend could be. He knew that I was the type that sidestepped conversations like those. The ones that talked about inner thoughts. Or feelings.
I definitely attempted to skirt around those.
"And where is this mystical clock that tells you exact times, Oh-Great-English-One?" I asked teasingly. "How do you know what time it is?"
He pointed behind me, and I saw Jarvis and Stephanie messing with what looked like a clock.
"Seriously? Does that even work?" I said while Victorian shrugged. "The batteries in that thing have probably been dead for months. Years, even."
"Surely. I don't think the sun has burnt out, though, Love."
"It's solar powered?"
"Pretty cool, right? I was being nosy and found this baby in that cupboard over there." Jarvis waved the clock in the air.
"In the cupboard? How is it on, then?"
Everyone shrugged their shoulders but Jarvis wasn't going to let me dim his excitement.
"Now that we have the time and all, I say we look around, you know, explore a little."
A minute grin twisted my mouth as I realized just how alike Jarvis and Aaron were. Both were easygoing-sometimes too easygoing, I thought as I remembered how Aaron looked after fighting the Slicer earlier in the week—and they were both kiddish, which was obvious from the way acted with one other. They cared, though. Even I could see that. They placed another's well-being before their own, as I had pointed out to Victorian not too long ago.
"Why not?" Victorian yelled as he slapped a hand on my shoulder. "Right, Lieutenant?"
"We're going to tour the motel," Stephanie answered, seeing my questioning look as my attention was brought back to the three in the kitchen. "We just agreed."
Why did everyone want to tour, and look around, and see things? Why couldn't everyone just sit and remain immobile? You would think that finding a nice place to rest in an apocalyptic setting would cause reservations in people and their decisions. Maybe they would want to stay in the nice place that they had found.
Nope.
I had somehow ended up with the three people on the planet—four, as I thought of Aaron—that believed you always had to be doing something, and it did not necessarily mean a productive something.
"So why don't you run along, Love? Go tell van Shackle what our plans are? Maybe tell him something else?" Victorian was in my ear again, with his right arm slung over my shoulder. He walked me to the edge of the kitchen and out into the hallway. I opened my mouth to tell him off, but I quickly snapped it closed as Victorian gave me a look.
A look that said, "I don't care if you can kill me with your bare hands, you're going to listen to me first."
"Listen to me, Scarlett. I know you're not the best chit at dealing with feelings and all that, but what I do know is that I've seen you smile and chuckle more in the past twenty-four hours than I have in all my time with you back in the Corps. You may not want to believe it, but it's because of that fellow upstairs," he said while nodding to the stairs from the hallway.
He raised a hand as I began to protest and pushed forward. "I know that you're not going to say it aloud, but I'll tell you this to ease your nerves: let's say he doesn't actually love you. Yet. Let's say he's beginning to. I'm not telling you to marry the bloke, Love. All I'm saying is that, right now, he loves—cares enough for the both of you, and any of us can see the way he acts around you; as if he is a child who can't have a cookie. You should give him a chance; a sliver of hope. Something."
My eyes were wide as I listened to Victorian monologue.
"I've seen you so blunt and wax-like, Love. You've never let just anything bother you. I've also seen you alone. Always. I'm tired of that," he said quietly. He moved his arm from around my shoulder and lifted my chin up. "I'm also tired of the bloke silently glaring at me because he believes I'm trying to steal you away from him and make you Queen Elizabeth." He finished cheekily.
We both laughed and he turned me in the direction of the stairs. "See? That right there. That laugh and that smile? They're a few of the easiest that I've ever seen appear on your face, Scarlett." He pecked the back of my head quickly and pushed me forward softly. I turned back around to speak, but his voice cut me off again. "You don't have to love him now, but don't be cold and act as if you feel nothing, Lieutenant. He'll continue believing it's me, and, as much as I enjoy bothering the lad, I don't want to have to hurt your beloved." He finished with a satisfied smirk and walked toward the kitchen.
"I don't believe that I'm good enough for him, Alexander. You know that."
My use of his first name had him turning around and glaring at me. "Well, frankly, no one else believes that, and, most importantly, he doesn't. So go on," he pointed behind me. "Try to talk to the bloke, and do try not to make too much noise, will you? Those of us non-smitten folks don't take too kindly to squeaking bed frames."
The sentimental mood between us had been vaporized and Victorian dashed back into the kitchen with a smile and a wink to avoid capture.
I shook my head, wondering how someone like him became my best friend, and I put my body on a path toward Aaron's suite.
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So was that good? I hope so. -.- As you can see, Victorian is a love doctor, Haha. I hope someone doesn't kill him. O.o I'm joking. I'm too attached to kill off my babies. ↖(^▽^)↗
Comment and tell your friends. KEEP FLOSSING, DEARIES! ♥♥
Love,
Swaggerwithwords :)