2120 - Noise and nerves - Another Ossan - The sound of the sea - Deployment - Four propellers - Snake eyes - Fight or flight - Call and response - Alphabet soup - Candy - A new friend.

Mom, they're sending me to Ossa tomorrow, Eoran Toriet's letter began. He sat hunched over a low table that spread long to either side of him, left hand compiling his thoughts in a flurry of slapdash penmanship scrawled onto the sloppy and warped pages of a notebook that had seen much better days. Just beyond him lingered an empty aluminum tray, each partition picked clean save a pair of seed-laden, wheat-based rectangles. For convenience sake, most people called them crackers, but all soldiers knew the truth behind that delusive designation: they were reformed sawdust masquerading as food.

The chow hall long ago descended into auditory chaos. Two companies of freshly-trained recruits from opposite ends of the country were assembled and allowed to mingle therein. Soldiers stripped to their shirts hooted loudly amongst one another; tables were slapped in jovial recollection of hardships they’d faced at home, furtive glances belying any stoicism these young men boasted of the yet-to-be hardships they would face in the field. Bodies were up and down, around and about, a constant fluctuation of ungoverned curiosity.

Eoran, however, kept close to the mates he’d acquired in basic. Despite their brief camaraderie, he knew this large gathering was due to be chopped up and shipped out. It was pointless to get to know anyone he may never see again—perhaps this was a passive way of divesting himself of unnecessary emotional baggage. Besides, he clearly had more important things to do.

Too bad some in his class had different opinions on that latter point.

"Eo—hey, Eo! How do you say 'FUCK YOU' again?" The loudest private in his squad shouted loud enough to fill the hall, even though he was sitting right in front of the occupied boy.

"Aatoya—"

"AATOYA," the rambunctious soldier repeated, shoving his friend next to him with a large fist. "How do you say 'FUCK YOU MOTHERFUCKIN’ FUCK'?"

"Uh—what? What about 'fuck you' isn't good enough? It's concise, gets the point across..." Eoran looked up from his letter to the bright blue eyes of the blond boy perched expectantly in his queries. Eo was a complete contrast; dark hair, dark eyes, demure in the face of such self-possessed bombast, furrowed brow conveying a small measure of irritation.

"I wanna get poetic with it. Remember when Instructor Carle said you people are all about the poetry of shit? I gotta to show off my eloquence, really blow 'em away. Look, if you won't tell me, I'll just go ask that Ossan guy from the other camp."

Eoran’s eyes lit up instantly, apparently not as committed to his correspondence as his studious façade portrayed. He glanced aside, surreptitiously searching the sea of faces draped in blue-light fluorescents. “There’s another Ossan?!”

The private’s thumb gestured behind him and Eoran tilted his head to the side.

“I don’t see him—which one?”

“Black hair,” the white boy turned, “There, right there—see? Three rows down, back to us, to the left.”

“Oh.” With a grin, Eoran shut his notebook and stood. “I’m going to go say hey.”

He was only a handful steps in before a loud sergeant entered the room and announced, with an open throat shout, that chow time was over. The Toriet boy’s sigh fell on deaf ears, soon devoured by a horde of boys rushing to claim their beds.

Reveille woke everyone early the following day.

Camp Holltin was built on the south eastern side of Amstead’s landmass. Situated near the ocean, it drew a salt-touched breeze from the nearby water, especially in the hours marking the beginnings of a new day. The sun had yet to peek over the squat buildings lining the camp’s far side, but it lingered just above the horizon. Streaks of red clouds emanated from a center unseen, a neon-rimmed burst of lines broke the lavender tranquility of morning’s first breaths with their grasping fire fingers. Just below, row upon row of colorless barracks stood in an order that would never be disrupted—not unless peace somehow came between Amstead and Ossa’s quarrelling, which seemed increasingly unlikely given the repetitious marching of every passing day. Again, the shuffling of boots on gravel clashed with the meditative hum of the crashing sea.

With his haversack slung over his shoulder and still partially asleep, the Toriet boy fell in line within his company. Their CO wove through the collective lines of the group and picked them apart, directing each soldier to go one of two ways, either:

Left, where a convoy of trucks were idling. Or…

Right, where a hulking turboprop waited at the head of a paved runway.

Like a zipper ripped open, Eoran’s squad split apart. He moved towards the plane, watching with a rousing fascination how the flight crew scurried around the structure, scale reduced to the size of ants turned frenzied. Their black shadows were brisk, quickly fussing and passing around the machine in preparatory ballet, choreographed motions beholden to the wisps of pull-tags demanding removal before each departure. Four propellers lazily spun in the morning air before committing to their spinning in earnest. Now there was no calming rush of the sea—only the sound of antiquated engineering proved too reliable to decommission.

When Eoran stepped into the belly of the idle beast, he felt the hum of its engines in his spine. The plane’s interior was dark—no windows save for the one in the center of the exit, situated like it was built to be bailed from. The cabin was long and sparse, inner joists bare, industrial and bereft the luxury of bubbly fabrics seen in civilian transport. Seats were more like benches: long and littered with straps. The young private fit himself into the first space he saw, clutched his pack to his chest, and glanced aside. The soldier at his writing elbow had hair the color of autumn, like foliage burnt by the will of a quickly changing season. He turned his chin to check the other side, quickly absorbed in the sea of similarly young faces filtering in from the daylight. Eoran's eyes were always full of night, wide in the darkness of their confinement as they shifted over details blurred by constant motion.

When the next group began to file in, PFC Toriet's query from the night prior was the first man aboard.

He was tall with a head-down-low posture echoing more a predator's desire to remain hidden than the habit of a shy thing, more measured than callow. Eoran's squadmate had been right, to some degree: the boy in question was mixed. His features were brackish between duelling landscapes, cheekbones high as Ossa's jagged terrain, nose sharper and more pronounced like the boys surrounding them, eyes wider than typical but shaped enough like a foreigner's that their color didn't matter when lines were drawn, gaze like gunmetal and ashes rather than the more familiar onyx and deep mahogany that Ossa took great pride in.

The darker the hollow, the deeper the well, the Toriet patriarch had proudly proclaimed of his sons time and time again.

The deeper the well, the harder to get rid of the snakes, Eoran's mother had always added, constantly patrolling the outlands of her husband's old blood philosophy to make sure her children knew sense and not just principle.

That unnerving boy and his lightning bottle energy paused when he breached the fuselage, just long enough to skim across each face,

long enough to pause on Eoran,

brief enough to keep from lingering.

The stranger passed brisk through the gangway and went straight to the back of the plane, hand carding through his black hair to rub at his freshly sheared undercut. As far as he could get from those already seated, the pale-eyed boy and his mongoose cast, glowering gaze ever averted, took a seat with his back to the sturdy wall of the hold, pack between his feet, counting out energy bars like the holy currency of the food-insecure.

Idle reverie broken by the sudden reminder escaping him, Eoran leaned forward on his pack, smooshing it atop his thighs. His gaze was always guided by his curiosity’s whim, and his curiosity only had eyes for the soldier that just passed him by. For an extended moment, he studied that boy from afar, watched the shadow-draped shape of him work through his calorie counting arithmetic. He was on the edge of his seat when a specter of perception gave his impatience pause. What was that—hostility? A sense of innate antipathy? That boy’s scowl clearly worked wonders in building walls. A zone of exclusion afforded him a wide berth in a space that was rapidly becoming cramped.

Watching, waiting, Eoran was scopaesthesia made real. He willed himself to be caught, wearing a smile to be found in a profusion of apathy.

That feral thing knew what it was to be watched.

Much the opposite of a domesticated creature’s impulse to seek the source of their peripheral dysphoria, the boy in question fell completely still. Slowly, carefully, like even now he was in danger of being trenchant caught, he stowed the bars in his bag. Folded in twain, he idly cast his grey eyes askance and upward, caught his captor by the throat with his noose stare, straight line mouth a piano-wire snare before the trapping pit.

He was two reflections of fight-or-flight in a foxhole. His eyes narrowed, just barely, twitch like a question mark.

Eoran’s sense of adventure double-crossed a pang of anxiety that rang through his guts like a scolding from his mother, another ignored lesson on how he shouldn’t be so open to courting all signs of blatant danger. He motioned to the boy with his hand, a fluid language of his own making compiled in a series of gestures. Index finger to his chest identified the subject of the sentence; turning it upon the stranger posited his request: Can I sit with you?

The raffish boy's deadfall expression didn't falter, stock still position unmoving despite the chaos of boarding surrounding him.

"Hey," a larger PFC intoned, friendly as he broke the mudblood's predator-prey standoff with the Ossan boy across the plane. Rubbing at his close cropped auburn hair, the soldier attempted to sit. "I'm Bergen—Cole B—"

The larger recruit's descent was halted by that lone delinquent's hand planted on his back, shoving him off to the next row across.

"No." His decree was absolute. "Seat's taken." He still held Eoran's querying stare,

eyes wide and dark,

so wide in the dark,

when he spoke, loud enough to be heard across the din. The standoffish soldier crossed his arms over his chest as he sat back, sullen and unamused. He looked up sharply at the redhead sent stumbling over apologies as he found himself a seat a couple rows away, ears red and cheeks flushed in rejection.

The boyish hope illuminating Eo’s expression grew into a victor’s satisfaction in seeing the question answered and his invitation extended. The young private stood and moved through the settling crowd, stepping past the shunned white boy with no acknowledgement of his personal victory whatsoever.

“Hey,” he said to the mixed stranger, sitting close enough to be heard without having to yell. He fashioned himself into a more jovial reflection of the other boy, wedging his bag between the bench and the dust-blown floor. “I’m Eoran. Thanks for letting me sit with you.”

"Okay," the loner replied, a short drawl through something of a mumble like the word was sticky. His smirk was tucked into his cheek where no one could see, head pressed back into the fuselage. He spoke at a volume that drew people closer but he wasn't conscious of this behavior—instead, he canted his head to listlessly examine his companion from his tall angle, inadvertent superiority scrawled all over his pretty face.

His antagonistic demeanor seemed all too willing to withhold his name, to torch this offer of friendship and leave it gawking at a seat left empty by a ghost, but something seemed to hold that juvenile delinquent fast.

"I'mma ask you something."

It was a statement of intent, not a request for permission.

That gregarious boy tilted his head, inquisitive stare augmenting his already receptive disposition. If the other boy was telling, then, just like that, the young PFC considered himself told.

And yet—there it was again. A feeling that put him on the edge of his seat. Eoran warned himself that this was the type of conversation had on the eve of a stabbing, his et tus nameless, his curiosity slain. Like witnessing the timeslown, unstoppable moments before his own death, Eo couldn’t look away. He couldn’t stop himself from quirking his brow just so,

ready and

waiting and

wanting—even in his red-flag captivation.

“Okay,” he replied, easy.

The flight risk next to Eoran crossed his legs loosely, heel bouncing on the aluminum floor.

"If you had the chance, in this exact moment, to go back to the life you were living before—your friends, your family, the things and people you love—would you take it?" Feral thing incapable of amicable eye contact kept his straightaway looks to himself, observing the other PFC in sidelong, obtuse degrees and skewed glimpses. He seemed nervous, undecided, ready to spring but suddenly snared. "Whatever you get out of the army, money, job stuff, you get it. Would you dip right now?"