Chapter 148. Better Breakfast

Official dinner time settled over the P-SWAT military base. I ignored that item on the schedule and skipped the mess hall. Strictly speaking, if you followed the regulations to the letter, communal meals were a mandatory part of the daily schedule, and skipping one without a valid reason or medical exemption was strictly forbidden. But given the state of discipline in this unit, command and the officers on duty could not have cared less that I was absent.

I had no need for the food they served. I had already loaded up on plenty of calories, and done so strategically, at the administrative center, where Corps personnel could get as much food as they wanted, whenever they wanted it. Besides, I had urgent official business to handle, and the last thing I needed was a bunch of unnecessary witnesses hanging around.

While the unsuspecting soldiers choked down some mediocre slop in the mess hall, I took a leisurely tour of the entire base with my smartphone in hand, methodically documenting everything. One photo after another was saved to the device, building an airtight body of evidence. Barracks blocks, where crates of contraband alcohol and packets of suspicious chemicals were plainly visible inside half-open personal lockers. The battered, rust-covered perimeter gates, a testament to the quartermaster section's total neglect.

My final stop was the commandant's office. I slipped inside without making a sound and snapped a picture of the senior lieutenant's bloated, drunken face. Dillon was completely passed out, his face buried in the desk beside an empty bottle of bourbon and an open browser window showing a finished online poker game. He was so deeply unconscious that he did not even notice the shift in the air when I entered.

With a complete package of photographic evidence in hand, I calmly returned to my barracks section, sat down on the hard bed, and opened the email client on my smartphone. I needed to write a report that would hit its target dead-on.

[Special Command: Draft a flawless, legally airtight report documenting Lieutenant Dillon's professional incompetence and inability to perform his military duties. Include a detailed justification for my own candidacy as acting commander of the base.]

The world around me instantly shrank to the size of the glowing screen. My fingers flew across the virtual keyboard at incredible speed, becoming little more than a blur as they assembled flawless bureaucratic prose.

Ten minutes later, a sharp click in my mind pulled me back to reality. The process was complete. The screen displayed a perfectly structured, devastating report with every photograph I had taken attached. The image files had already been automatically processed as well. The exposure had been precisely balanced, and the shadows lifted so that senior officials at the ministry would have no trouble seeing the bloodshot capillaries in Dillon's face and the system time displayed on his own work computer. I had not even noticed when my fingers had opened the built-in photo editor and made those adjustments while I was in hyperfocus, but the sheer automatic precision of it was damn satisfying. My brain was identifying and correcting weaknesses on the fly without missing a single microscopic detail.

I read through the finished document carefully, line by line, privately marveling at the heavy-handed yet devastating bureaucratic language my ability had produced and at how flawlessly it had laid out the facts of my own background. This was no longer just a routine report. The structure and wording could have gone straight into a military textbook as a model of official correspondence. With a perfectly clear conscience and cold calculation, I hit Send and forwarded the report straight to the ministry.

I knew perfectly well that, from the outside, what I had done looked outrageously bold. Trying to remove the sitting commander and openly positioning myself for his job on only my second day in the unit went far beyond ordinary military protocol. But objectively and pragmatically, I saw no reason to waste time sitting around and waiting for something to happen. I had documented the mess on my very first day. I had reported the situation to my immediate superior and gotten nothing but a hangover-fueled brush-off. I had followed every required procedure from beginning to end. And as for having the nerve to put my own name forward as his replacement... Let us be realistic. Who else was there? I was the only adult in the place with the right background, a combat decoration, and a senior officer's rank. It would hardly make sense to hand control of a strategic military facility to sixteen-year-old Ted.

Speaking of Ted.

"Did you take care of that assignment I gave you this morning?" I asked evenly the moment the top of his head appeared in the barracks doorway.

"Of course, Tom. You know me! You can count on me a hundred percent, no matter what! If you need anything at all in this dump, even something tiny, just say the word, got it? I'm officially your personal aide now, after all. Your right hand and your shield!" The moment he realized he had my attention, the teenager's usual verbal diarrhea kicked in, and he started talking a mile a minute, waving his hands all over the place.

"Right now, Aide, all I need is a sheet with the real names of everyone in the platoon." I cut off his torrent of words with a calm gesture.

"Oh, right. Yeah, here you go." He hurriedly reached into the pocket of his uniform pants and pulled out a badly crumpled sheet of paper folded into quarters. "By the way, Tom, where the hell were you during dinner? The cooks made some seriously awful crap tonight, but you weren't there for the head count."

"I was writing a report," I said truthfully, leaving out every detail that might turn into barracks gossip. "Now, if you'll excuse me, Ted, I need to go over these lists and get some work done in peace before lights-out."

"Oh, yeah, no problem. I totally get it. Big boss has all kinds of important government business to deal with." He nodded knowingly, wearing such a profound expression that he looked like he had just cracked every secret in the Pentagon single-handedly. "All right, then. I'll head to the game room and shoot terrorists on the computer until lights-out. Blow off some steam."

"Didn't you tell me a couple of hours ago there was a huge line of people waiting? The games have been booked since this morning."

"You think I'm gonna stand around in line with a bunch of rookies and beg somebody to let me play?" Ted snorted arrogantly and flashed a cocky grin. "There's always gonna be an open station for the new boss's personal aide. The guys will make room."

I watched Ted's back as he cheerfully headed toward the game room, not quite sure what to make of him. The kid was changing at an astonishing, almost unsettling pace. Back at the Corps training camp, he had spoken to me with obvious deference, shy and awkward, seeing me as nothing more than a seasoned adult who knew what he was doing. Now there was no trace of that distance left. He talked nonstop and acted around me as casually as if I were his older brother.

As I analyzed the change, I came up with three equally plausible explanations. Either the evolution had rejuvenated my cells and made me look considerably younger than my official age. Or that baptism by fire and the experience of surviving together in the chaos of another world had forged an invisible but powerful bond between us. Or Ted had simply grown up. Either way, his familiarity did not bother me much, unlike his openly insolent, condescending attitude toward the rest of the unit. The kid had adapted to the situation with remarkable speed and started throwing my authority around without the slightest hesitation. I would have shut down that little dictatorship in a heartbeat if not for one significant practical advantage: Ted had volunteered to act as my buffer and filter when dealing with the troops. He absorbed all the barracks gossip and complaints, saved me a ton of time, and regularly fed me valuable intelligence. Like the information I had just gotten.

I sat down on the creaking military cot and carefully smoothed out the crumpled sheet of paper. When I had handed it to Ted that morning, it had been perfectly neat. It was the official duty roster, originally drawn up by Corporal Lee. At my direction, Ted had conducted a proper internal investigation and written the platoon's real first and last names next to their ridiculous prison-style nicknames. Deciphering the teenager's crooked, sprawling handwriting was hardly a pleasure, but my accounting background had given me plenty of experience deciphering other people's chicken scratch, and I managed to organize the information.

Before the evening lights-out call, I lined everyone up in two rows on the concrete floor outside the barracks and personally called roll, methodically committing every face to memory. As I read through the list, I noticed another deeply disturbing pattern. The former barracks "elite" and the guys close to them in age had grandiose nicknames like Count, Gangster, and Black Dog. Everyone else, most of them intimidated teenagers, had been saddled with downright degrading, filthy names: Cockroach, Loser, and Cum.

That only reinforced my decision. This prison circus needed to be burned out with a red-hot iron. I honestly could not understand how, under that level of psychological pressure, none of the younger kids with superhuman abilities had snapped yet and incinerated the entire base, Dillon included, straight to hell.

"Privates McCoy and Storm, step forward." I stared directly at the men formerly known as Gandon and Snotbag. "You're assigned to kitchen duty tomorrow. I'm partially relieving you of your regular duties."

Absolute confusion settled over the platoon's faces. No one dared ask a question or say a word. In forty-eight hours, I had earned an unquestioned reputation as an iron-fisted and unpredictable leader. And now I was about to shatter their expectations for good.

"The food being served here is completely unacceptable," I announced loudly enough for my voice to carry. "So tomorrow, I'm taking over the entire kitchen operation. The two of you will be responsible only for keeping the serving area clean and washing the pots and dishes afterward. That's all. Lights out. Everybody get some sleep."

The soldiers watched me go with long, bewildered stares. In their primitive little hierarchy, the "big boss" was not supposed to lower himself to a stove and ladle. Well, they could puzzle over it. A real leader worked alongside his people instead of spending all day drowning himself in bourbon while pretending to get things done.

I opened my eyes at exactly two in the morning, feeling completely refreshed and full of energy. After the evolution, my body needed no more than three hours of deep sleep to fully recharge, which left me with an abundance of free time.

I slipped silently out of the barracks and followed the dark, moonlit path to the kitchen building. As a professional quartermaster, I had thoughtfully taken the set of keys from the duty officer the previous evening. Once inside the food storage room, I immediately took a quick inventory of the ingredients. Fortunately, the government did not skimp on provisions for the Corps' young soldiers. The refrigerators were packed with a wide variety of fresh meat, vegetables, and fruit. An excellent starting point for a cyber-chef.

[Special Command: Prepare balanced, delicious standard meals for the female section for three full meals. For each male soldier, select an individualized calorie and macronutrient package designed to accelerate muscle-fiber growth and recovery from micro-injuries.]

The world around me shrank to its familiar size again, and I slipped into hyperfocus. Somewhere at the very edge of my awareness, as though I were hearing them through a wall of water, I picked up the mechanical sounds: the steady thock of a knife against a cutting board, the hiss of hot oil on the grill, and the monotonous hum of a powerful industrial mixer churning through an enormous batch of protein shake. During the two morning training sessions, my analytical eye had already scanned the physique and muscle tone of every fighter in the platoon in detail. It was not a full medical examination, but my brain had enough processing power to perform what amounted to genuine biochemical miracles.

I came out of hyperfocus at exactly six in the morning, feeling a distinct, vibrating heat at the back of my skull. I had not expected the culinary magic to eat up four hours of real time, but the result had been worth every second. The entire job was flawless. The individualized meals were already lined up at the serving counter, arranged on metal trays, each one clearly labeled with the name of the soldier it belonged to.

Naturally, breakfast in the mess hall erupted into an uproar of pure excitement. Spoons clattered with twice their usual force.

"Holy crap! This is insanely good! The meat practically melts in your mouth!"

"Damn, Ted, spill it. Your big brother isn't just some CIA super-agent, is he? Is he actually a Michelin-starred chef too?"

"Pfft, aim higher, rookies!" Ted declared, lounging across the bench with an air of authority. "Before Tom joined the Corps, he didn't just work for the CIA. He personally cooked for heads of state at the White House."

"Hell, if this is how our president eats every day, I officially want to be president..."

Of course, there was some grumbling too, as expected. The women of the base had gathered around their own serving station and were quick to make their voices heard.

"Hey, what the hell?! Why does everybody else's tray look different, and why do the guys all have these special berry shakes? That's straight-up sexism! We want equal portions!"

"Shut up, idiot, and be grateful for what's on your plate." The older girl sitting beside her shut her friend down while eagerly devouring a bowl of juicy stew. "The last time I had food this divine was about three years ago at my parents' house for Thanksgiving. Eat while you can before they shut this whole thing down."

I stood in the shadow of the kitchen doorway, silently watching their excited reactions and feeling a pleasant warmth spread through me. My people had the fuel they needed. That feeling was going to come in handy today, because right after training, I was heading to work at Leon's agency.