NO NOTES AT BEGINNING
Gwen Shade looked out at the tarmac, watching as a fighter jet descended from the gray abyss that hung above the base. She tugged at the hem of the oversized black T-shirt she wore, studying the black truck. It had appeared over 20 minutes ago, rolling up next to a hangar, and had yet to move. Stranger yet, no driver had exited the vehicle. The soldiers she could see eyed the truck cautiously, but made no move to approach it. She didn't see anything off about the truck. It was big and foreboding, a perfect truck to be paired with agents of clandestine affairs.
She supposed that was what made it stick out to her in the first place. Since arriving on the base nearly two weeks ago, it appeared only caring and friendly soldiers were stationed here. She had yet to meet anyone who wasn't sympathetic to her predicament, nor anyone who criticized or judged her for any reason. Other than Carlson, who she discovered wasn't normally stationed here in the first place, and who had ventured to stay back in California, the only one who'd been anywhere near unkind was the doctor who checked over her injuries and dressed her wounds in fresh bandages every other day or so, and he was merely grumpy. It made her wonder why a truck like that would be here.
It wasn't the first strange vehicle she'd spied either. Twice on her way to or from the medical center, she'd spotted strange cars. One had been a blue semi with red flame decals. Now that had been a sight to see. If it had been a normal semi it wouldn't have stood out so much, but she couldn't imagine the military giving such a flashy paint job. The other had been an ice cream truck. There was no rational explanation for it. No story made any sense and dismissed its presence. It was just too strange.
So, Gwen studied the black truck. It didn't stand out like the others, but the longer she watched, the stranger it seemed. After another ten minutes she heard footsteps in the hall outside her room. She didn't bother turning from the window though, seeing as it could have been just another soldier passing through. She knew it wasn't at the same time. They never walked this hallway unless it was to stop at the room they'd placed her in.
Sure enough, a knock signaled the visit of another soldier.
The door opened and she turned to see a brown haired man in the doorway. He smiled at her, not unlike other soldiers had. She managed to smile back weakly.
"'Afternoon, Ms. Shade. I was hoping you wouldn't mind talking with someone for a few minutes," he said.
"Whatever," she sighed in return, facing him and hobbling over.
"All this getting to you?" he asked.
"No. It's thee boredom. Don't you have anything to do on this base? Books? Video games? Anything?"
The man chuckled at her. "We do, but I'm afraid we aren't permitted to provide anything but the essentials due to risk of security breach."
They turned a corner and headed down the main hallway, passing many soldiers on their way. "At my age video games are an essential. If I don't see an X-box controller or Wii remote soon I'm going to die from high quality graphic and virtually simulated gore deprivation," she huffed. He chuckled once more at her expense before they turned into a new hallway headed to a different branch of the compound.
"I don't know about video games, but we might be able to requisition a book or two. Any preferences?"
"Do you mean genre or series or..."she trailed off.
"Book, author, series, genre, whatever. We might even be able to get some comic books if you're into that," he explained.
"Comic books? What are you going to do, raid a sci-fi convention?" she joked.
"Well, we've got ourselves quite the mix of people here. I'm sure one of them has a stash. Names Will, by the way, since you don't seem keen on asking," he introduced himself.
Gwen had the grace to looked embarrassed. "Sorry, I didn't-er, I wasn't trying to be rude, I just-"
"Don't worry about it," Will laughed, "I'm sure you were just enjoying a decent conversation after being cooped up on this base for two weeks."
"It's really been two weeks already?"
"Yup, and I'm afraid it doesn't appear you'll be leaving anytime soon."
Any joy the conversation had brought was suddenly buried under the darker emotions the statement brought with it. The government was no closer to finding her parents, or perhaps they just had no intentions of releasing her at all. She had seen something she wasn't supposed to, and they were just pulling every last piece of information out of her that they could before she was silenced. It wouldn't be surprising, if all those movies were true, but she had really hoped the government wasn't as black and white as people speculated.
"You alright?" Will asked, effectively claiming her attention.
"I'm good, though my legs acting up a little," she lied, looking at the approaching doors of the medical center.
"I'm sure R-um, Doctor Chet would be happy to take a look at that for you."
"Great." Gwen looked at her hands, twiddling her thumbs while Will continued to push her through the medical facility. He stopped once they reached a room in the far back, near a pair of doors she would have thought led to an ambulance bay if it hadn't been a military base. Military bases might have ambulances too, she mused silently. A man stepped out of the room, wearing green-blue scrubs and holding a tablet, though not of any make or model she was familiar with.
"Major Lennox," the man greeted.
"You never said you were a major," Gwen pointed out. The 'major' merely smiled at her humorously.
"You never asked," he replied, walking away. She frowned at this realization, having liked the mans friendly demeanor, but discovering he was a major made her wonder why he had taken her to the medical center. She was just a civilian after all, no one special.