By: Nathaniel Okolo

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Approximately 12,000 miles away from camp Ajian, General Promes sat morose at his desk, slouched over in his too comfortable leather chair, he thought to himself, that this must be the most unproductive period in his entire life.

He lifted his eyes from the computer screen on his desk, and did a quick survey of his office, the four walled rectangular area from which he was supposedly to oversee this operation.

Decorated as spartanly as possible, the only odd thing out of this setting was the picture of a dark haired, brown eyed, mouth open in laughter gorgeous woman of whom he never felt to wonder his luck at having for a wife, next to her picture was that of a solemn looking young man, arm raised towards his head in a salute, dressed in full military combat gear.

This particular picture General Promes looked at with undisguised sadness, his son whom would never come home again.

Not one to linger on emotional matters, he swiftly turned his mind to his immediate environment,

The office which he currently occupied, was the largest in the army base which was located miles away from the camp.

This base, although hastily set up, was nonetheless impressive, with barbed wired fences, 24 hour guard patrols, sniffer dogs, security cameras, he often wondered who needed the guarding, the army base which contained as much men as one might need to invade a small nation, or the camp whose only security was an electrified fence.

How the hell did I get stuck with this job, he thought to himself, “you know exactly how” replied a voice in his head, because you are the best at what you do, containing situations.

After his last mission, admittedly, he had been looking for something a bit less hectic, but this was just ridiculous, the only excitement they’d had was a bird getting electrocuted by the fence surrounding the camp.

If this continued, he was surely going to die of boredom.

As if in reply to his unuttered prayers, the computer screen blinked twice, he snapped from his reverie, and promptly stared up at his computer screen, he just hoped it was not the usual false alarm of a squirrel or bird triggering the heat detectors.

Looking closer at the screen, he could not believe his eyes, right in front of him, the screen was showing six heat signatures that were definitely too big to be squirrels, and they were moving, outside the camp!

A thousand questions flooded his mind, who or what were they? How had they gotten out?

He tapped a few keys on his keyboard, which ordered the heat detector to perform a closer analysis of the heat signature.

The results were promptly displayed, and when Promes eyes saw it, his heart nearly stopped, he could not believe his eyes, and how was this possible, how had they gotten out?

2

He sits in his dorm room, in front of his plastic desk/ table thingy, the plastic chair is starting to make his butt uncomfortable, spread out in front of him is a book he has been trying laboriously to read, it is a book that talks about mind-sets, how to have the right ones, and kick wrong ones to the curb.

The thing about reading books on mind-set is this, you almost always start to think, not necessarily about mind-sets, and in his case, he is not thinking about mind-set, he is thinking about his childhood.

If this were a Nigerian film, if there was still a Nigeria, there would be a white light, or bright light, or some light, and then we would watch his memories with him.

The scene before him is one of rainfall, sheets of raindrops, splashing on cemented floors, with children frolicking in this glorious downpour in their underwear, only they don’t call it underwear, they call it pant, but pronounce it as pa-int.

This is why he hates reading books on mind-set, or thinking on mind-set, or thinking on deep things at all, they always make him homesick, of the times when all their mothers would gather to gossip about the women from the other compounds, of course you could never tell them to their face they were gossiping, well you could, but then, well, no dinner plus a myriad of slaps awaited you once you were home, so they all settled on calling the activities engaged in by their mothers ‘discussion’

The slide show of memories is abruptly cut shut, by a wack along the backside of his head, quit daydreaming Adniel, we have an inspection to get ready for

Adniel, what sort of a weird name was what he thought, what had possessed his mother into giving him such a name, well now that he thought of it, his father had been giver.

Why did he have to think of his father, he had to stop doing that?

With a grimace he pushed himself up, plastering a grin on his face, he turned to face his room mate, who was standing ready to deliver another wack to the head, just in case the first on had not had the desired effect, he secretly hoped the first one had not had the desired effect.

Don’t you so much as think about it Nestor, said Adniel, as if reading his mind.

Well I can wish, can’t I, replied Nestor, with a slightly malevolent look on his roguishly handsome face.

Standing at six foot one, Nestor used to think he was tall, until his very first night at the patrolik recruitment camp, when he first got to the room, assigned to him and he saw a giant standing arms akimbo, looking confused.

He had thought the giant was one of the camp’s supervisors, so he had hurriedly gotten into a saluting posture, not until the giant opened his mouth, and in a voice that sounded too pleasant to belong to a giant, said, hi I’m Adniel, I’m your room mate

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3

Standing at six foot six, Adniel was by far the tallest recruit at the camp, with jet black hair cut short, and deep-set grey eyes that seemed capable of looking into your soul, he was indeed a perfect specimen of the human species.

Hence the top brass in charge at the Icardia Security Corps (popularly called patrolik by citizens of Icardia), had been all too eager to get him enrolled in the Corps.

Standing beside him, Nestor often felt like a too short younger brother, although they looked nothing like brothers, with Nestor having bright blond hair, and dark green eyes.

This of course only accentuated Nestor’s handsomeness, and he took full advantage of this, especially with the opposite sex.

This was another contrasting difference between the two roommates of room 978 of the ISC Recruitment camp, where Adniel was soft spoken, Nestor was loud, and where the former had a deep brooding look almost all the time, the latter was almost always animated, joking, and pulling pranks.

Nevertheless, they had developed a close friendship that most brothers would envy, in fact, it was not out of place to say, that both of them would give their lives for the other.

What they had thought was going to be a routine inspection, turned out to be duty posting.

The commander of this Corp unit, an achingly beautiful woman name Melrose, stood in front of them, holding a digital tablet, from which briefly looked up to scrutinize the anxious faces looking up at her as she stood on a slightly raised platform.

They were too young in her opinion, having barely just completed the standard battery of training required, they were yet to be placed in a real life crisis situation, which would have been the crowning of their induction into the Icardia Security Corps, but orders where orders, and she was nothing if not obedient.

She scanned through the faces before her, searching for a particular face, when she saw him, she blushed slightly, but quickly recovered, chiding herself for letting her feelings get the better of her.

It was a shame though, just when she was finally getting to know and like him, Adniel would now be shipped off to some remote out camp to try and subdue a rising rebellion, that was just too bad, she rather liked him, he was a great kisser, and she had been hoping to find out how good he would be in bed, but that was apparently not going to happen now.

In a way she ought to be grateful, relationships between commanders and trainees were frowned upon, though not expressly forbidden.

She proceeded to read out the postings, at the end of reading out the entire list, Adniel it appeared had been posted to an out camp were only yesterday there had been a break outs, apparently, two locals six unidentifieds had managed to get beyond the perimeter fencing of their camps, and were now wandering around the forest outside.

He would be part of a squad being sent there to investigate the puzzling occurrence of how those such a large group had managed to get out without getting roasted to death.

And what were they now doing now they were outside the camp.

But the more important question was, had they made contact with the Elders of Nod?