The base barracks were somehow as sprawling as they were claustrophobic; corridors snaked around like capillaries with countless doors to bedrooms, kitchenettes and the occasional social space, all lit with the harsh unearthly flicker of fluorescent tubes. There was no natural light, but soon the daylight-simulating lighting would be on, from the currently-darkened bulbs peppering the otherwise plain ceiling. The walls were all a plain off-white, and the floor was patterned in various shades of blue and green. Perhaps it was meant to be calming. Really, all it did was underscore just how lost at sea Iris really was.

It was the morning, and Iris ran. She had to; it was something to do. She ran through the halls, circling around aimlessly for want of a better track. She missed her usual route: it was boring in its own way, sure, but it at least had a little more variety than this place. A bit stifling only having artificially-recycled air to breathe, and not even distant towers to orient yourself by.

Still, there was somewhere to run. That was something.

Iris ran until the exhaustion was just starting to hit, muscles just on the edge of burning, lungs well-worn but not panting. There was need to push it: when the day's this full of unknowns, you have to keep some spare energy in your back pocket.

It was about 15 minutes walk from where Iris ended her run back to her room. She took the walk briskly — not exactly like there's scenery to enjoy, after all — but still fairly leisurely, with a languid bounce in her step. She reentered her room just as the daylights started to come to life, pushing the door aside to see her suitcase resting upon the edge of the bed. It was a cramped space, with only a small desk and a narrow wardrobe along the longer edge of the room. The bed was a single, mattress just slightly too firm, with thin, plain sheets. A cork-board was above the desk, currently empty of anything, including pins. There was no toilet or shower; communal ones were at the end of the hall.

Iris sighed. It was all pretty utilitarian: definitely designed for soldiers rather than 18 year old girls. It was probably a good thing that her suitcase was so empty. That also made picking an outfit easier; without even really thinking about it, Iris grabbed a t-shirt, a pair of loose, thin jeans and a towel, and left her room. Time for a shower.

Of course, the showers here were just as bleak and functional as the rest of the barracks. Iris took one of the few cubicles and stripped her exercise clothes off rapidly, leaving them in a pile just outside the shower stall. There was no point in taking her time in a place like this. She showered quickly, doing her best to wash her hair without shampoo or conditioner — perhaps she could ask Harry where to get some — and dried herself just as fast. She put her clothes on for the day and checked herself in the mirror, running a hand through her still-moist, still-greasy hair.

Ugh. It'd have to do.

Once she got back to her room, Iris laid herself down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. She could text her dad, let him know she's okay, ask how he's doing. Apparently he was awake now. But honestly, what do you even say in this situation? Like:

hi dad
apparently i'm a soldier now?
kinda
its complicated 🤷🏻‍♀️
love you, get well soon ❤️
iris

Ridiculous; she deleted the draft. Maybe she'd work out what to say later.

It wasn't fair. There was this huge, sprawling barracks, maybe hundreds of rooms, but somehow she was all alone. And in the mean time, she had to contend with the fact that yesterday, she'd fucking eviscerated some giant monster, and what's more, she'd enjoyed it. She needed time, she needed space, to come to terms with what she'd been through, what she'd done. No, it was the opposite: she needed to be busy, to be surrounded by humans. People to remind her what she really is.

But nobody was there.

Well, there was Amanita. And a coffee machine in the kitchen down the hall, too. That'd definitely help: a strong cup of coffee and a new friend. Buoyed by the strength of her conclusion, Iris came to her feet and walked out of her room, to the kitchen.

The kitchen had the smell of new plastic and disinfectant. It was small, but functional, with room for two or three people so long as you weren't moving around too much. Maybe even more so than the kitchen at home, given how tidy it was. There was a fridge (small, probably only really useful for drinks), two hobs (only two, hot-plate style) and a handful of cupboards. In the corner of the room was a stack of military-looking food containers — not rations, but utilitarianly-labelled cupboard staples like beans, tomato and soup — reaching about a third of the way up the height of the wall. The counter carried both a kettle and a small machine that allegedly would deliver coffee.

The whole place was spotless, save for a few soup stains and noodle fragments near the kettle. The bin had a couple of discarded ramen packets in it, too. Amanita's room couldn't be that far away, then.

Iris found the cupboard with the mugs in it on her third try, the first two turning up plates and bowls and assorted shapes of pasta. She grabbed one at random — they all looked depressingly identical — and placed it in the coffee machine. She pressed a button on the panel: one she assumed had to be the coffee button.

The machine beeped angrily at her in reply. No coffee came out.

She sighed. Sure, the machine was significantly more complicated than any coffee machine she'd seen before in her life, but it couldn't be that hard to get a cup out of it, right? Iris tried another button, and another; the machine kept beeping at her, like it was singing a mocking tune at her in her uncaffeinated, vaguely emotional haze. Who designs a coffee machine that you can't use before properly waking up? That's the whole point, right?!

"It's not instant. You have to give it a pod."

Iris looked up. Standing at the door to the kitchen was Amanita, her black hair unkempt and wiry, still in her pyjamas. She entered the room, opened a cupboard, and grabbed two palm-sized and vaguely-spherical objects from it.

"Here," she said, opening a hatch on the top of the machine that Iris had failed to notice. She put one of the spheres inside it and closed it up. She turned to Iris. "What kind of coffee do you like?"

"Uh… like, normal?" Iris said. What, did this thing do cappuccinos, too? No wonder it was so complicated. Suddenly, Iris felt like a bit of a hick.

"Filter, then," Amanita replied. She pressed a sequence of buttons on the machine, and it started to whirr. Iris tried her best to commit the sequence to memory, but quickly found herself lost. It was a bit like trying to learn the lyrics to a song in French: little snippets of the process made sense, but she didn't have the context to put it all together.

The machine dispensed coffee almost immediately, the hot, rich aroma of coffee spilling out into the kitchen. Iris was impressed: the one at home didn't work anywhere near that fast. Maybe she could talk her dad into upgrading…

Or rather, replacing, she reminded herself. Along with the rest of their things. Ugh.

Iris smiled at Amanita as she took the cup. "Thanks! You'll have to explain it properly later, can't make head or tail of that thing."

Amanita nodded wordlessly, and set to making a cup of her own as Iris added the requisite milk and sugar to hers.

The coffee was perfect: just the right amount of bitterness and acidity, not too watery, not too strong. Iris was glad to get some caffeine in her, too, especially after yesterday's, uh… excitement. Things couldn't be that bad here, when the coffee's this good. Right?

She turned to Amanita. "You had breakfast?"

Amanita shook her head.

"How about I cook for both of us?" she suggested. After all, there was no sense in doubling the work. "You got any dietary stuff I should know about?"

Amanita shook her head. "I don't usually have breakfast," she said, quietly, as she sipped at her own cup of coffee. She apparently took it black.

Black coffee? That can't be good on an empty stomach. That settled it, Iris decided: they were definitely sharing breakfast today.

"Oh, it's no trouble!" she said, trying to rein in the worst extremes of her eagerness. "I'm used to cooking for two people." She smiled slyly, and drank more of her coffee. "Plus, I'm a pretty good cook. I promise, you won't regret it."

Amanita was quiet for a moment, clearly deep in thought about something or other. "Okay," she replied eventually. "How about… scrambled egg?"

Iris beamed at her new friend. "Oh, we're going to get on great."

The fridge was already well-stocked with eggs, milk and butter, though all synthetic: clearly the military budget only stretched so far. Iris raided the cupboards for the rest of her supplies, finding both a saucepan and a small but usable collection of seasonings. There was even a toaster and some bread, albeit both looking a little worse for wear. Awesome.

Iris set to work scrambling eggs while Amanita set up a table and two chairs, clearly scrounging them from some nearby room Iris had yet to see. She sat, reading, as Iris stirred, answering monosyllabically to almost everything Iris said to her. It was like talking to a girl-shaped wall: one that had been painted with one of those paints that absorbs all light so that nothing, no matter how bright, bounces off of it.

Iris didn't get it. Was there something she was doing wrong?

Undeterred, she served up two plates of scrambled egg on toast. Amanita took hers silently, cutting a piece of toast and egg and putting it into her mouth.

"Oh!"

Bit of a weird reaction.

"Ah," Iris asked, "is something wrong?"

Amanita shook her head vigorously in reply. "It's good! Better than mum makes. What did you put in it?"

Iris grinned. That was maybe the most syllables Amanita had said to her since they'd met. Nothing like the stomach as a way to the heart.

"Just salt, black pepper, a couple herbs," she answered. "Nothing fancy. You like it?"

Amanita nodded, though clearly she was too busy eating to say anything more. Iris smiled; she took the unspoken compliment gladly.

Once Iris and Amanita finished breakfast — which didn't take long — Iris took the plates and cutlery to the sink to wash them up. Amanita had some kind medicine to take, apparently, and she needed to get dressed too, so for now they went their separate ways. But it wasn't long after Iris finished doing the washing up that another person came into the kitchen, startling her for a second time.

Harry Searl smiled apologetically as he came into the kitchen. He was dressed in his usual uniform, though the top button on his shirt was undone.

"Morning," he said. "You weren't in your room, but Amanita said I'd find you here. I'm off duty for the morning, thought I'd check in."

"Oh, hey," Iris replied. It was good to see another person, though she wished people would stop sneaking up on her.

Harry strode over to the coffee machine. "You don't mind if I…?" he asked. Iris shook her head, and he started making himself a cup. He clearly knew his way around the machine as well. "Often a tea man, if I'm honest, but can't beat coffee for the mornings. You want one?"

Iris shook her head, gesturing to the dregs of her own coffee. The machine started to whirr.

"Can I ask you something?" she said.

"Sure. What is it?"

He bent down to grab the milk from the fridge.

"Why is the barracks so… empty? Just two people?"

"Ah, yes," he said, putting just the tiniest dash of milk into his drink. "Well, this is the barracks for the pilots. There's a separate one for us. And we've only got two pilots at the moment, just you and Sev— er, Amanita."

"Sev?" He'd said that before, hadn't he? Was it some kind of nickname?

"Oh, er, Seventeen," he explained. "Candidate Seventeen. You're Candidate Forty Four, and she's Seventeen."

Iris frowned. "You've had forty four candidates and only two pilots?" That was a hell of a ratio.

Harry gave another of his apologetic looks. "Yes, Doctor Klein can be a bit… er, she expects a lot, I suppose you could say." He sipped at his coffee. "And, well, technically you're our third pilot, only Thirty's been on secondment somewhere for several months. Eventually we'll ramp up production and then we'll probably end up revisiting a lot of the rejected candidates. At least, that was the plan."

Iris nodded, though honestly, she had just gained far more questions than answers. Why had she been picked, then, if the requirements were so strict? What was so special about her? Was it genetic, psychological, or what?

She didn't ask Harry any of that. He probably wouldn't know, and if he did, he might not be allowed to tell her. Instead, she asked:

"What's Doctor Klein like?"

He practically choked on his coffee. "Blimey, that's a big one! What do you want to know?"

Iris shrugged. "I don't know. I just don't really know what to make of her, yet. We've only really met a handful of times and it was just… weird, you know?"

"Doctor Klein…" he said, ruminating. "Well, she's driven, that's for sure. All work and very little play." He paused. "Look, I don't want to speak ill of her, but… be careful around her, okay? Sometimes I worry that…"

"Worry what?" Iris asked.

He rubbed his forehead. "Well, I just think she might care a bit too much about the science and not enough about the people. I think she's very intelligent, and there's a lot to admire about her, but I wouldn't want to see you get hurt, that's all."

Well, that was kind of ominous.

"Listen," he said. "Let's forget about that for now. I heard you're into exercise; want me to show you where the gym is?"

Iris beamed. Now he was speaking her language. "Sounds good to me."

The "gym" was not all it was cracked up to be.

Harry had taken Iris through the corridors towards the centre of the barracks, where the lifts were. On the way, they'd picked up Amanita — she didn't seem particularly excited by the prospect of a gym, but apparently she was bored enough to check it out anyway — and together, they entered an unassuming door just off the central corridor.

The lights flickered into action as they entered, simulated day gradually dawning in an enclosed room deep underground. The room was small and sparse, with two treadmills and a single set of weights, one table tennis set and no attached showers or changing rooms. The floor was the same material as outside, albeit unpatterned, and the walls where the same colour. There was a television on one wall, but otherwise the place was as undecorated and spartan as everywhere else.

"Well, er," Harry said, a little awkwardly. "Here we are, I suppose."

He sounded faintly embarrassed in the same way that Iris was faintly underwhelmed. She wasn't entirely sure what she'd been expecting, but it had been more than… this.

Amanita was less diplomatic about it.

"Is this it?" she asked. Her voice was practically the same as it always was, soft and flat, but Iris could tell she was deeply unimpressed.

"Sorry," Harry said. He looked thoughtful for a moment, running his hand along the bars of one of the treadmills. "Tell you what, I'll talk to the Colonel about getting you passes for the officers' gym. A place like this is hardly going to encourage anyone to exercise, I'd think."

Perhaps Iris shouldn't have been surprised to learn the upper ranks got better facilities. Amanita, for her part, just shrugged.

He smiled, a little weakly. "The officers' gym is great," he continued. "Weights, bikes, squash courts, the lot."

Iris' ears perked up. "Squash courts?" she asked. She'd always wanted to learn: it looked so cool on TV.

Harry's smile broke into a grin. "Oh, yes," he said. "Badminton and basketball, too. But squash is where I shine. Came second in the Junior Officers' League last year. Fancy a match some time?"

Oh! "Um, I don't really know how to play," Iris said, "but if you could teach me the basics, maybe? I've mostly done tennis and football."

"Mm," he agreed. "No room for a football pitch down here, unfortunately. Some of the lads tried to get one, but there's no room in the budget for carving out a room that big just for fun." He shrugged. "Still, we can get the matches on the telly, and occasionally someone does a jumpers-for-goalposts on the tarmac up top." His expression turned a little conspiratorial. "If we think we can get away with it."

Iris giggled. For the first time since she'd arrived at the base, she felt herself relax. This is what she'd been needing: a bit of normality, a bit of humanity from these weird military types. And yeah, a friendly game of squash or football sounded like a lot of fun, but honestly any kind of fun would be great. She was a teenage girl, for God's sake; fun was what she was meant to be doing!

"Football's the one with the offside rule, right?"

Iris shot Amanita a quizzical look. She hadn't expected this quiet, bookish girl to know anything about sport. Perhaps she'd misjudged her.

"…I saw it in a film once," she explained.

Well, that made more sense.

"Yeah, it is," Iris replied. "Well… rugby's got an offside thing too, but it's different. You ever play?" It couldn't hurt to ask.

Amanita shook her head. "Table tennis, a bit," she said. "That's all."

Iris smiled. Now she had an in.

"Fancy a game?"

Amanita, it turned out, was better at table tennis than she let on. They'd been playing for only about ten minutes and already Iris was three points behind. Harry had left them to it, claiming he had somewhere to be, though Iris found his excuse a bit thin. More likely, she reckoned, he just didn't want to be a third wheel.

Iris stared at the ball, following it as it danced across the table: pukka-pukka, pukka-pukka, pukka-pukka, always lingering that little bit longer on Amanita's side. Iris' reactions were faster, but less accurate, and more than once she'd managed to slip and knock the ball off course entirely. It was exhilarating. She'd not had proper competition on any sport since her dad had moved out to the suburbs. Maybe suburban girls were less sporty, or maybe it was just that she'd never really gotten on well enough with one to be properly friends. But Amanita was not a normal suburban girl.

Slap! Amanita let loose another firm whack, sending the ball rattling as it bounced on the floor. Another point down.

The feeling of being outmatched was indescribable. It was different than the sparring match: there, she was failing because she was inept, but this was in her element. She wasn't losing because she was bad. She was losing because she wasn't great. You need something like that, something to work yourself up to.

At least, Iris did.

"That's eight to four," Amanita told her. "Your serve."

Iris picked up the ball from the floor with her right hand, transferring it to her left to serve. She opened with a gentle shot to the left corner, letting the pace of the rally gradually build up: pukka, pukka… pukka-pukka, pukka-pukka… Then, in a rapid burst, she feinted left before hitting right, watching as the ball bounced off the table — yes! — and past Amanita, landing on the floor. Nice!

"You're not going easier on me, are you?" Iris asked, not entirely seriously. Of course, Amanita didn't seem like the type, but it didn't hurt to check.

"Eight to five," Amanita said. "No, I'm not going easy." She stretched her shoulders a little before picking up the ball once more.

"Okay, cool," Iris said. "Just so we're on the same page." She grinned.

The next rally started gently, with Amanita sending a shot towards the centre of Iris' side of the table that she returned leisurely. They built up steam gradually, the rhythm of the rally sounding a bit like a train gradually increasing in speed as it leaves a station, flowing back and forth, pumping, pushing, moving…

They got faster still, faster than they'd been going before. It was like they'd both decided to really go for it now. Limiters off, pulling out all stops. Let's see what you're made of.

Iris sent off another shot, bouncing it just inside the far line; Amanita made to return it, but only glanced it, sending it skittering off to the side. Iris smiled. Eight-six: maybe she could still pull this back.

Amanita retrieved the ball and got ready to serve once more.

"This is fun," Iris told her. "We should make this a regular thing."

Amanita nodded slightly. "Okay." She threw her left hand up, letting the ball arc in front of her, and made to bat it.

But she missed.

"Aah, fuck!"

Amanita fell to her knees, grasping her left arm. The ball bounced away uselessly; Iris paid it no attention. She dashed around the table to her friend's side.

"Are you okay? What's happened?"

Amanita put a brave face on it. "It's nothing. Just a spasm."

Iris looked at Amanita, at how she was holding her arm, clutching it tightly at exactly the place she'd lost it yesterday. She was clinging on like her life depended on it. Could it really be just a spasm?

"Come on," Iris said. "Let's go find the infirmary."

Next time:

Candidate Thirty returns! While Amanita's out of action, Iris is paired with the bad-tempered senior pilot Willow Reynolds! But can they get over their initial friction well enough to work together as a team?

Find out in the next exciting episode. Episode 4: Arborescent!