Chapter 94

94 Tour in the Underground

“Just a report,” she responded. Her voice was soft, and her tone was very low as well. It was hard to tell if she was tired or bored, but I figured it might have been the latter considering she was a soldier of some sorts.

I could listen to it all day.

“Alright, we’ll review it in my office. But for now, show them our underground base,” he said.

I looked outside, seeing the mellow trees. Clearly doesn’t look underground, unless there’s another building inside of it. But it doesn’t look like it’s big enough to have another building inside of it either.

“Underground, sir?” I asked, but Vance laughed as he responded to me.

“You’ll see soon enough,” he said as he winked at me, and then he turned to Sergeant Yvonne who was just staring at Malachi. “Follow me,” she said, as she walked back the other way.

As we did, we found ourselves heading to an elevator at the end of the hall. We walked in, and the smell of it was quite interesting. It smelled like pink lemonade or something of the sort, which wasn’t bad at all because I really love that smell, especially mixed with some cologne or something like that.

Don’t call me weird. Don’t you dare call me weird. I have every right to like it because it smells so good. And I’m sure it does smell good, because the scent just lingers in my nose for hours afterwards. In fact, the cologne makes it better so don’t say otherwise.

Sergeant Yvonne punched a button on the elevator and we started to descend the elevator shaft which had a strange metallic sound to it that just echoed in the empty hallway. But once we were about halfway down, the elevator stopped and a man came out of a side room.

.....

He seemed like a student. He had a blue utility belt, which is usually yellow. But the place looked almost identical to our YMPA hall, with stairs leading to different sections, and the bathroom to the side, and the cafeteria right by the bathroom, and the door to recess also at the same place.

Students galore moved through the halls, talking amongst themselves and eating their lunch or something like that, and we all took a step back as we watched them walk by in complete awe.

Three girls that walked by looked at Malachi, and he shot one of those ‘chad’ looks at them. I sighed, because he looked just like an imbecile when he did that. But they just kept walking as if they didn’t see him at all.

“You tried,” Greg said, patting him on the back but he didn’t respond. Then he continued to talk as if nothing had happened, saying, “Let’s go in there.”

He was pointing to the cafeteria, so we headed over there. Inside there were about fifty tables and chairs, all made from wood and iron with metal legs. There was no lunch being served, but the cafeteria was full to its highest.

“Yeah this basically the first floor of the new FMA school,” she said. “Quite similar to yours I’m sure.”

Tisiah nodded, but she didn’t respond otherwise. But then she took us to a room that had three different desks set up with three different computers. “This is where we work,” she said, pointing to all three computers.

The desks were made from metal and wood, and there were pictures of the earth and a satellite that looked like it was floating around. “We track people on missions here,” she said, pointing to the pictures of earth and the satellite.

I wondered who else was working here other than her because there were three other people working here too, but they were sitting on their computers and reading some weird code or something, but they didn’t even look up at us at all.

Sergeant Yvonne walked past us, and then she went to a different room and opened it up to reveal a room full of computers.

My mistake I guess.

“Yeah, this is just another room full of computers for the same thing,” she said, pointing to the three other computers that were in a room that was about ten times bigger than ours.

The computer room looked like it was made from marble, and it was filled with dozens of different types of computers. Desktops, laptops, netbooks, all kinds of them were sitting here and there in different rows. The entire thing looked like a computer graveyard with old computers that had been left behind just sitting there in the tables.

“Alright, let me lead you to our classes,” she said, with an exasperated sigh as she turned back to us. She led us out of the computer room and into the hallway where she started to talk again, saying, “We have a variety of classes, and I mean variety, starting from general science classes that are taught by teachers who are no older than twenty-five years of age.” She paused for a moment.

“Why are you guys teaching science?” I asked.

She chuckled, “In case you didn’t know, we are sort of the inventors. Therefore we teach science.”

“Ah,” Tisiah nodded as if she had just remembered something that she had been meaning to say but had forgotten for a moment.

“And as for our military class,” she said as she took us back into another room that seemed quite far way. Malachi sputtered, “You have a military class?”

“Well I guess yeah,” she said. But then she continued to talk as if he wasn’t even there, saying, “We’re more like soldiers than soldiers themselves.”

“Well what could be more soldier than soldier?” Greg asked. She chuckled, “You’d be surprised.”

She then walked up the stairs as if she was in charge of us. The whole time she talked to us but not really, which was kind of strange. There were halls with about ten doors leading to different classes like biology or chemistry or some other stuff that I can’t remember.

“These are our class, and the doors inside of those lead to other ones,” Yvonne explained.

I looked over them all and I noticed that some of them were marked with a green light and others had a red light. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well,” she said with a smirk, as if she thought this would be funny, but I don’t see the humor in this at all. “It’s actually meant for our teachers to see which ones are full of students and which ones aren’t.”

“Interesting,” I muttered as I walked into a classroom that had about thirty desks and chairs set up in a circle.

And I thought it was nice, until I noticed that there was a huge boulder that had a bunch of markings on it. Made the room feel off all of a sudden.

I looked at Sergeant Yvonne who seemed like she wanted to say something but then stopped herself from it as she said instead, “These are all empty desks.”

“Okay...and,” Nikki said, but then she trailed off, not knowing what to say.

But then Greg said something completely random, saying, “I want to get an A.”

“You’re not actually gonna be in these classes you know,” she said, pointing to Greg’s head. Then she sighed, as if she was going to say something else but stopped herself once again. “Yeah, so this is a new FMA base so...yeah.”

She suddenly left us and moved downstairs towards another door. Then we walked up to the desks and sat down on them, but none of them were even close to being comfortable.

“Is this how sitting on one of these chairs feels?” Malachi muttered with his hands on his knees as he stared at his feet. He looked like a kid sitting at the principal’s office, but I wasn’t going to tell him that because he would be so mad.

But it would be funny though.

“Okay, so how about we meet some new people,” September said, as if this was a good idea at all.

“But why are you smiling?” I asked her as she took a seat on one of the desks, and then she looked over to me. “Well, it’s new people.”

I’m an introvert, that is my worst nightmare. “Uh, how about not,” I suggested, but September laughed and waved it away.

“Nah,” she said with a laugh as she looked up at the clock hanging on the wall which said five after nine. 9:05 for the people who are confused.

Preview:

After being shown our temporary rooms, we slept until the next day. My eyes fluttered as I began to wake up, noticing my body was completely empty as if someone had removed all of my limbs except for one hand that was wrapped around my pillow. I sighed and then I opened my eyes.

And there was Malachi staring back at me with those big puppy eyes of his. Fear struck inside my heart as I shrieked, “Oh!” and then I leapt out of bed with a thud.

But it wasn’t loud enough for Malachi to hear it because he still didn’t seem to notice me yet. He sat up and looked around the room with his hands on his chest and he said something in a sleepy voice that sounded like “mmm.”

After some time, I shouted, “Over here!”

He turned to my direction and yawned, as if he was too tired to even look at me or anything. But he turned to me and I noticed his eyes were bloodshot and his hair was sticking straight up like he was using a brush or something. “Hey, uh just to let you know, Captain Vance wants us.”