Zeke blinked at him. Was he lying just to boost his confidence? Regardless, the praise seeped into him, and a small smile found its way onto his lips.
“You guys! You made it!” said Meredith at breakfast the next morning. She beamed at Zeke, pushing food towards him. The bread she offered smelt fresh and buttery. He miserably spooned on a healthy amount of strawberry jam; the prospect of being sent out to the war zone in forty-eight hours made him feel sick to his stomach.
“We’ve still got to make it through today,” Frankie said.
Noah, sitting on Meredith’s right, allowed Wolf to sit on the bench next to him, his arm around his neck, causing Habib to glower at him. “So, are you ready for the test?” he asked, looking at Zeke.
“What?” he spat, dropping his bread.
Vitt burst out laughing. “He’s kidding. Shut up, you ass.”
“We’re just going to go over a few final things today. And we’ll finally go and collect your combat suits.” Noah fed Wolf the crust of his toast. “Until the last six months, we had always trained new recruits in them from the start, but we’ve been having… supply issues.”
“More importantly, we’re still going out tonight, right?” asked Savannah.
“Yes,” Vitt replied, glaring at Noah. He put his hands up in mock defeat.
Noah had posted the rest of the squad at the border, so it was just him who escorted Zeke and Frankie to the armoury. Up to this point, Zeke had avoided the armoury, which, located just to the left of the main gate, stored their suits, weapons, and other equipment in between assignments.
Although most of the buildings that made up the barracks were purpose-built—cheaply and efficiently—the armoury was one of the few exceptions. A small manor house in a previous life, thick ivy climbed half of the exterior wall, creeping all the way to the front entrance: a set of heavy wooden double doors, flanked by two guards. The guards greeted Noah warmly, scanned their chips, and sent them through.
The inside of the house was devoid of any remnants of the past. They walked through many empty corridors to reach a door that read ‘Stephen Benefici’.
“Hello?” Noah called as he opened the door. The smell of gunpowder and oil hit them. An older man with a thick grey beard and stern eyes sat at a workbench, fiddling with a deconstructed rifle. The man sighed.
“Sorry Stephen. These two start active duty tomorrow. They need the full gear I ordered.”
Stephen rose to his feet. “Let’s see what we’ve got then.”
“While I’m here, Spla— Sorry,CameronKing wanted me to chase up the request he put in for a new undersuit. His is starting to show less elasticity. Looking slightly stretched in places.”
Stephen grunted. “I sent him a message this morning saying it’s a no go. I just don’t have enough TPU at the minute. We’ve got a lot more new recruits that need them first.”
Zeke’s brain cycled to place the acronym. “Are those the 3D printed thermoplastic polyurethane undersuits?” Splat had described them to him the other day.
Noah nodded. “Each soldier is assigned a set.”
Stephen already had all of their measurements—every soldier was subjected to a weekly medical checkup—but double checked them anyway before disappearing into another part of the manor house. Noah left with him to collect his own gear from his locker upstairs and reappeared shortly, with Stephen dragging a wooden cart behind him. Besides suits, it contained two VisorX helmets—these at least they’d practised with many times before.
“We need to apply blocker and suit up within four minutes in case of emergency scenarios,” explained Noah. “I’ll run you through it, then the pair of you can have a go.”
Zeke saw Noah half-dressed in the changing room most days, but struggled not to avert his eyes as he effortlessly stepped out of his uniform, leaving it in a messy heap on the floor. He grabbed from the side a bottle of blocker: a notoriously unpleasant sticky gel, mostly translucent with a blue tinge, that soldiers covered themselves in before entering the field.
Noah sprayed the blocker all over his skin, detailing how much to use while he rubbed it into his muscular chest. In theory, applying blocker to every inch of your skin would minimise your smell and pheromones, making attracting types less likely.
Zeke watched Noah knead it into the firm muscles of his abdomen. What would the smooth skin feel like, if it were his fingers on Noah instead? As he studied Noah rubbing the blocker in deep circles, his heartbeat increased as blood rushed to a place it really shouldn’t be going. He resisted breathing a sigh of relief when Noah finally began pulling on his tightly fitting undersuit, the black fabric clinging to his frame.
Noah moved on to demonstrating how to position the knee and shoulder pads, followed by the chest piece, moving so quickly Zeke found it difficult to keep up, his brain still examining his deeply inappropriate reaction.
Noah pulled on a pair of dark boots and laced them up to cover a large portion of his thigh. Finally, he slipped on his own helmet: a shiny black headpiece with a clear visor, which would protect every inch of his face. He grinned at them and bowed when Frankie clapped. “Three minutes forty seconds,” he said, waving his wristband at them. “You need to be speedy, but make sure everything fits properly and is tight. The last thing you want is to give them any chinks in your armour to utilise.”Utilise—meaning eat your fucking flesh.
“Your turn!” said Noah, throwing him the bottle.
Opening it, the scent of eucalyptus awoke a forest of memories in him, washing over him like a drug. Earlier that year, he helped run trials on various batches of the substance in the lab. An image of Oliver squirting the stuff in Zeke’s hair to make Becca laugh caused a painful stab of nostalgia to erupt in him.
Frankie’s laugh brought him back to the present. She had started removing her clothes from where she was standing, but Zeke went to a corner of the room to strip to his underwear, and then applied the cold goo to his legs. A slight tingling sensation rippled across his skin, but the substance absorbed quickly. Which brand of blocker did the unmarked bottle contain? Some were far more effective than others in the blind trials assigned to his lab.
“Ninety seconds so far!” Noah shouted at them. Zeke pulled on his custom-made undersuit so quickly he sent his glasses flying across the room. Noah grabbed them before he could, putting them to one side. When he reached the chest piece, Noah had to come over and turn it around, as it was on backwards. Noah’s warning of thirty seconds remaining only made him panic further, and he fumbled with the shoulder pads, dropping them to the floor. Noah gave up on his countdown, picked up the equipment, and showed him how to put them on again.
