Chapter 140. Welcome to P-SWAT

There was only one guard at the checkpoint, sitting inside a gray concrete booth. He looked barely older than Ted, but he was wearing a faded field uniform, another glaring sign of this place’s harsh regulations. Apparently, the camouflage did not stop this “defender of the homeland” from being completely absorbed in a mobile game. He was so focused that the tip of his tongue was even sticking out, as if he had forgotten the rest of the world existed.

I had to rap sharply on the window with my knuckles. The kid jumped, nearly dropping his smartphone. At that moment, he looked remarkably like a teenage shoplifter caught stealing a bag of M&M’s.

“Hey! Who the hell are you?” he blurted, flustered, as he hurriedly shoved the phone into his pants pocket. “You can’t come in without special clearance. Restricted area.”

I did not like his reaction one bit. How could the guard at the gate have no idea that new personnel were arriving? This was a Corps base, not the New York Stock Exchange, where a thousand failed brokers got fired every day and another thousand were hired to replace them. At P-SWAT, new personnel arrived maybe a couple of people at a time each month, and they stayed for years. New arrivals in the middle of nowhere should have been the biggest event of the week. Either their internal notification system was completely dysfunctional, or this particular guard was seriously lacking in intelligence.

“We’ve arrived under orders from the Ministry to continue our service with P-SWAT,” I said in a clipped, bureaucratic tone. My years of office work had taught me that bureaucratic language was the fastest way to bring an incompetent employee to his senses.

I reached into my inner pocket for my smartphone to bring up our electronic documents. Ted, as usual, was more impulsive. He practically shoved his QR code against the glass right in front of the guard’s face.

“Oh, so you’re the new fish...” The guard gave a stupid little laugh. After looking Ted over, he sneered. “Try not to cry on your first day, rookie. There aren’t any mommies around here to wipe your tears.”

Ted nearly choked with outrage. His fists clenched instantly, and an angry hiss escaped his throat. “You’re the ones who’ll be crying!”

“Big talk, fish. We’ll see how much of that attitude you have left after a night sleeping by the latrine.”

I was the adult here. Time to put an end to this circus.

“What is this cheap prison slang?” I cut him off sharply, fixing him with a hard, unblinking stare. “Did they transfer you here from a correctional facility, Private?”

“Uh... no...” The smug grin vanished from his face. Red blotches spread across his cheeks. “That’s not what I meant...”

“Why are you stammering like that? If you’re wearing a United States military uniform, then answer according to regulations. State your name and rank!”

“Private Nelson, sir!” The kid instinctively snapped to attention and awkwardly raised his trembling hand in salute.

“Listen, Private Nelson. You’re going to put the smart-ass comments away, open the gate, and escort us to the quartermaster so we can get processed.”

“Yes, sir!” He stared at my dress uniform like a guilty teenager staring at his father’s belt. “I mean... I’m sorry, but no, sir! I can’t do that!”

“And what exactly is this supposedly insurmountable regulation that’s stopping you from carrying out a direct Ministry order?” I asked calmly, though a cold irritation was already simmering inside me. Occupational hazard. I cannot stand incompetence.

“Escorts and relatives of Awakened personnel are strictly prohibited from entering the facility. Even if they’re in uniform. You’ll have to wait beyond the line, sir.”

“Where exactly do you see an escort?” I calmly turned my smartphone toward him, displaying the Corps’ official letter. “I’m a recruit just like he is.”

I held my QR code against the external scanner. A beep sounded from the monitor inside the booth, bringing up my personnel file along with all my security clearances.

“Oh... Sorry, sir. My mistake, sir.” Nelson blinked stupidly, whatever remained of his arrogance evaporating as he frantically rushed to the gate controls.

I could only hope this specimen was a rare anomaly at this base rather than the norm. I genuinely despised people like him. They were complete nobodies, yet the moment they got the chance, they tried to make themselves feel important by throwing their weight around with anyone they perceived as weaker.

I turned toward Ted. He was staring at me with an indescribable mixture of wild admiration and awe. The last time I had seen a look like that was in third grade, when one of my classmates brought his older brother, a firefighter who had recently rescued someone from a burning building, to our class for a career presentation.

To be honest, even I was a little surprised by my own harshness and eloquence. In my previous life, whenever I encountered blatant rudeness from strangers, I would freeze up. My thoughts would get tangled, and the same stupid barrier would kick in: What if I respond too harshly, make an enemy, and get myself into trouble? Now everything was different. After my brain chemistry was modified, it was as if I had gained an impenetrable shield. I interacted with the world as though I were posting on an anonymous forum with absolute privacy protection. If I liked someone, I told them directly. If I did not, I kicked them to the curb without a second thought. My accelerated neocortical processing allowed me to organize my arguments into precise, devastating sentences in a fraction of a second, without descending into some childish emotional outburst. It was a wonderful feeling.

With a heavy, rusty groan, the massive gate finally began to slide open.

The poor condition of the facade and the lack of corrosion protection around the entrance were terrible signs for the people running this place. The base commander had already earned a big negative mark in my mental assessment for negligence, and I had not even met him yet.

Inspecting the base grounds only reinforced my initial skepticism. The facility was a stripped-down, bare-bones version of the training camp. There were no lecture halls, spacious libraries, or comfortable quarters for instructors. The only permanent structures were a dreary parade ground, a couple of warehouse hangars, and two long, two-story barracks, strictly divided into male and female sections. Minimalism bordering on poverty. I liked the base commander less and less. Even Selina, arrogant as she was, kept her facility in perfect condition.

Our sluggish escort led us to the two-story brick headquarters building and stopped in front of a massive oak door with a plaque reading “Base Commandant.” His short, hesitant knock went unanswered. We waited a minute. Then another. Then a third...

The absurdity of the situation left me genuinely stunned, but Private Nelson remained planted against the wall as if this kind of treatment were some officially sanctioned ritual. A distinct, rhythmic tapping came from behind the door, as though someone were frantically clicking a computer mouse. We were well into the fourth minute.

“How long exactly are we supposed to wait, Private?” I finally asked. My voice came out with the dry snap of a safety being released. “If the commandant is busy, contact his secretary. If his office is empty, call him on his cell. Standing around like this accomplishes absolutely nothing.”

“He’s in there, sir...” Nelson nervously glanced at his smartphone, shifting from foot to foot. “It’s just... we need to wait a little. He’s got some things to take care of.”

I silently logged the incident. I thoroughly disliked the way things were run here. Any professional assessment of an organization starts with the discipline of its senior management. If the person in charge is present but ignores visitors without an objective reason, such as an emergency conference call with the Pentagon, and there was certainly no sign of one behind that door, then the rot starts at the top.

By the eighth minute, I had mentally adjusted the balance sheet. The only positive indicator in this entire situation was that our official arrival time had already been recorded at the checkpoint. The schedule remained intact, and getting cleared by the commandant was nothing more than a bureaucratic formality.

It was not until the twelfth minute that a muffled, utterly exhausted voice finally came from behind the door. “Come in.”

“New recruits here for processing, sir,” Nelson rattled off, ushering us into the office before immediately retreating and pulling the door firmly shut behind him.

Apparently, the fact that the guard had abandoned the main gate for fifteen minutes without even waiting for his replacement did not bother anyone here. Not in the slightest. Complete anarchy.

A disheveled man in his thirties sat behind a wide desk buried under piles of paperwork. He looked like a heavy drinker. The right sleeve of his dress uniform had been neatly folded up and pinned at shoulder level. There was no arm beneath it. I immediately activated [Analysis] and scanned his profile. The results were grim. Every basic attribute was noticeably below the Corps average. His superpower was purely offensive, painfully straightforward, and utterly unremarkable by current standards.

If Selina and Leon were genuine alpha players in their respective departments, occupying leadership positions by virtue of their mental and operational superiority, this man appeared to have been put in charge solely as a form of social compensation for his disability.

The office air was thick with a suffocating mixture of stale cigarette smoke and cheap bourbon. My modified vision, capable of picking up microscopic details with ease, immediately locked onto the reflection of the monitor in the panoramic window behind the commandant. I barely managed to keep my face completely expressionless.

This genius of looking busy had not even bothered to open a spreadsheet for appearances. A blank search-engine page was sitting on the screen. Meanwhile, the neighboring browser tabs showed an online poker game in full swing. It became painfully obvious why we had been standing outside for twelve minutes. The man had simply been finishing his hand and did not want to lose his virtual chips. And the worst part was that this kind of behavior apparently counted as perfectly normal on this base.

In my personal assessment, this man, First Lieutenant Steve Dillon, immediately plummeted to the bottom. I understood perfectly well that he had lost his limb in a Portal, and there was probably a Purple Heart gleaming on his uniform, but a combat record was a poor excuse for administrative paralysis and such blatant disregard for his own personnel.

The specialized literature on surviving in closed military systems that I had studied before my assignment described this exact scenario with mathematical precision. The atmosphere within a unit depends directly on the commander’s personality. If he is active, conducts regular inspections, oversees logistics, and keeps his finger on the pulse of the organization, the base runs like a Swiss watch. If he locks himself away in his office, drowns himself in whiskey, and plays cards, welcome to classic military hell. Under those conditions, theft, hazing, and general disorder inevitably flourish in the barracks. Without firm direction from above, people with adolescent minds quickly regress to an animalistic level of behavior.

Still, I drew one important conclusion from this grim diagnosis: there was no point relying on the administrative chain of command. There would be no protection from above. I would have to deal with every crisis and internal conflict inside the perimeter on my own.

“Identify yourselves. Both of you,” Dillon muttered through clenched teeth. It was obvious that we were nothing more than an irritating interruption keeping him from getting back to his game.

“Cadet Theodore Drake! Reporting for duty with the assault unit!” Ted snapped to perfect attention beside me, practically threatening to punch a hole through the ceiling with the sheer force of his patriotic enthusiasm.

Steve looked at the teenager like an annoying insect and did not even bother acknowledging his greeting. The commandant’s heavy, glassy eyes slowly shifted toward me.

“Second Lieutenant Thomas Ross.”

“Hm. Another lieutenant... And a Bronze Star, too.” Dillon gave a crooked smile, and a distinct spark of dull, long-nursed envy flickered in the eyes of a veteran who had already been cast aside.

I looked at him with the same cold contempt. In addition to his disastrous professional qualifications, I had noticed another important detail: his rank. First Lieutenant. Just one step above my current position. And, apparently, that was the absolute ceiling of P-SWAT’s career ladder. If I planned to build a long-term career and expand my influence within the Corps, I needed to demonstrate exceptional performance in the departments as quickly as possible.

Dillon mechanically wished us “a successful tour of duty” and, with a brief gesture, sent us off under the supervision of the local corporal. I was already preparing myself for the worst, trying to imagine what kind of people awaited me in the barracks if even the commandant of this dump was mentally checked out.