My Only Familiar Is Me[A Late-Blooming Evolution Story]

The mess hall was filled with a low, steady hum. Nearly a hundred people were happily digging into my cooking, and I had to admit, the sight warmed my cold accountant’s heart a little. For the first time in my life, I finally understood my mother. I used to wonder about her habit: after making dinner, she would not sit down at the table. She would simply settle across from me and watch with a quiet, contented smile as I devoured her cooking. Now I found myself standing by the serving station with my arms crossed, doing exactly the same thing as I watched my platoon demolish their meals. Maybe it was time to give them another piece of news.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I need your attention for a minute.” I spoke in an even, deep voice that easily carried over the noise of the room.

The reaction was immediate. Nearly a hundred teenagers stopped gossiping, clattering their metal spoons against their trays, and talking among themselves, then froze and stared at me.

“As most of you already know, I leave the base every day on official Corps business. Every single day.”

A palpable wave of pure envy swept through the mess hall. And it was understandable. Many of these boys and girls had spent years seeing nothing but the dreary perimeter of this camp, except when they went through the Portal, where they risked their lives every second. Even so, I saw no outright malice or murderous resentment toward the ridiculously lucky newcomer. They understood the reality of the situation well enough. Standing in front of them was a grown, fully trained officer with a combat decoration, someone who simply had far more opportunities than an ordinary conscript ever would.

“I leave the perimeter to work, not to have fun,” I continued firmly, keeping everyone’s attention on me. “From eleven in the morning until five in the afternoon, I bust my ass working for the Ministry. But I have a little free time on the way back. So if any of you need to buy something in town, just let me know.”

My announcement blew apart the stuffy silence of the mess hall like a grenade. The younger teenagers erupted into a deafening roar of excitement, while the older ones immediately started arguing over their shopping lists. The noise rose all the way to the ceiling. Dillon could probably hear it from his office, even in his sleep.

“QUIET!” My roar cracked through the chaos like thunder, instantly shutting the whole platoon up. “Before you start wasting your time and mine, I’m laying down three ironclad rules for deliveries. Rule number one: don’t even think about asking me to buy something that’s strictly prohibited under Corps regulations. No alcohol, no weed, no shady contraband. If I catch any smartass trying it, I’ll personally give him a disciplinary lesson he won’t forget, and whatever’s left of his brain will be shaken loose on the morning parade ground for good.”

No one dared argue. Not a sound came from the room, and a couple of the usual instigators behind the late-night drinking sessions visibly paled.

“Rule number two: your entire order has to fit comfortably into one standard medium-sized duffel bag. I didn’t sign up to be your personal chauffeur, and I’m not renting a cargo van just to haul somebody a stereo system, a plasma TV, or a refrigerator.”

No one dared challenge that rule either, although disappointed sighs rolled through the ranks.

“And the third, most important rule: don’t come to me personally with questions or shopping lists. I physically don’t have time to listen to every fighter’s wish list. Give all your written requests and cash to my personal adjutant, Private Drake. That’s the only way I’m taking them.”

Dozens of boys immediately turned their heads in unison and stared at Ted. The girls from the neighboring wing still had no idea who this hotshot was, but they caught on fast enough. Their sharp eyes immediately began sizing the kid up.

Under the crossfire of hundreds of eyes, the teenager instantly turned bright red and broke into a sweat from the sheer force of the attention. But Ted wouldn’t have been Ted if he let an opportunity like this pass without pulling a stunt and cementing his new status.

“I’m Theodore Drake!” The kid jumped onto the polished dining table and screamed at the top of his lungs until his voice went hoarse. “I’m the official adjutant to my big brother, Tom! From now on, you bring all your questions to me!”

“Get off the table, Private Drake, before I deduct the cost of the damaged furniture from your pay.” I gave the little show-off a look that could freeze water. Ted immediately deflated and carefully hopped back onto the floor. “Everyone else, finish breakfast on the double, then fall out for morning drills!”

The steady clatter of spoons against plates resumed with triple the force. The mess hall filled with the roar of conversation again, but this time everyone was speaking much more quietly, sneaking glances at me. The more enterprising soldiers had already started drifting toward Ted, putting their orders together on the fly and holding out crumpled dollar bills. Instead of opening a notebook and making a clear, organized spreadsheet, Ted simply waved them off and announced that he’d “just remember everything.” Yeah. As a former accountant, I could already see the disaster waiting to happen in his books and the inevitable cash-flow mess that would follow. But after thinking it over, I decided it wasn’t my problem. Ted would benefit from taking a few painful lumps from his fellow soldiers and learning to respect an audit.

“And where do you two think you’re going?” I caught McCoy and Storm by the shoulders as they tried to disappear into the crowd.

“Sorry, sir...” McCoy shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other, keeping his eyes down. “You handled breakfast yourself today, so we thought... well, we forgot we were on duty.”

“Yes, I took over the morning cooking duties. But now the gravy train’s over, and your regular shift starts. Get to work according to regulations. Start with that sink.”

I pointed deeper into the kitchen. Beside the stainless-steel worktable stood a monumental mountain of enormous pots, baking sheets, and cast-iron skillets. The guys’ jaws practically hit the floor when they saw it. Their usual workload on kitchen duty was nowhere near this bad. But when a cyber-chef starts calculating an individualized macro-balanced portion for every single fighter... well, let’s just say I somehow managed to dirty every piece of cookware we had in storage. And they still had an entire platoon’s worth of plates and spoons to wash. Needless to say, the boys were in for some serious manual labor today.

And I still had one more important thing to take care of before the official training session began.

“Ted.” I caught him right outside the residential block, grabbed him firmly by the elbow, and pulled him into the deep shadow between the buildings. “Care to explain what the hell you were just telling everyone at the serving station? Since when am I your actual older brother, an active CIA agent, and, on top of that, the personal head chef at the White House?”

“But I was... Tom, I was telling the truth!” He put on the most innocent, angelic face he could manage, his eyes going wide. “After we survived boot camp together, and then went through hell side by side in the Portal, you really are like a big brother to me now! You’re the closest person I’ve got on this damn base.”

“Nice save, you little punk.” I narrowed my eyes and gave the young manipulator an accountant’s once-over. “Fine, we’ve settled the family connection. But what about the CIA? I was an ordinary accountant my whole life before I joined the Corps.”

“That’s exactly what I tell everyone!” Ted said with a completely straight face. “You’re an accountant. Just a special accountant from the Central Intelligence Agency.”

“What the hell?” For a second, I was genuinely thrown by the twisted logic of a teenager.

“Tom, you went into town yesterday, and you have no idea how many questions you left behind in the barracks,” he rushed to explain, waving his hands animatedly. “The guys immediately ran to the checkpoint, pulled up the duty computer, and dug out your personnel file. They started reading, and under previous occupation it says: Accountant. That’s it. No company name, no work history, just a blank line. After you took down six oversized punks by yourself last night, the guys thought it was completely insane that you’d spent your whole life sitting quietly in an office with a calculator, shuffling papers. They all turned to me because I’m your adjutant. They were like, ‘Spill it, Drake. Who’s your boss really?’ So... I blurted out the first thing that came to mind. I told them you handled some kind of special accounting for the CIA. Come on, you’ve gotta admit, it worked great! Your reputation across the platoons shot through the roof. Even the Count is scared to death of you now!”

“And your own importance shot through the roof right along with it.” I gave my self-appointed assistant a heavy, reproachful look. “Fine, the CIA really does have specialized auditors, so at least your story has some loose connection to reality. But why did you start telling people I grill steaks for the president? That one doesn’t even pass the smell test, Ted.”

“Well... that’s your fault. Your divine cooking got me carried away!” He looked away sheepishly and scratched the back of his head. “Okay, I admit it. I might’ve gone a little too far, huh?”

“That’s putting it mildly.” I folded my arms across my chest, towering over him like a wall. “Bottom line, Drake, knock it off with the cheap bullshit once and for all. Spreading crap like that doesn’t just put me at risk of an internal security investigation. It also makes you look like a complete idiot in front of the guys.”

“Me? An idiot? I’m only trying to help you, so...” His grandiose teenage speech died in his throat under my hard stare. Ted swallowed and wilted. “Okay, I’m sorry, Tom. I get it. I’ll stop running my mouth.”

That settled it. I headed straight for the barracks and changed into loose athletic pants and a lightweight gray T-shirt.

[Special Command: Conduct a perfect, maximally efficient physical training session for the male personnel of the P-SWAT base, taking into account the current condition of their muscle fibers.]

I dropped into hyperfocus instantly. The platoon had just taken in a massive dose of quality calories and protein, and all that building material needed to be put to work immediately, accelerating fat loss and muscle hypertrophy. I ran them through the obstacle course like a machine, precisely calibrating the sets and rest intervals for each fighter with the accuracy of a Swiss watch.

A sudden snap of awareness yanked me out of hyperfocus at exactly 10:30 a.m. Oh, hell. Bad timing. My internal clock was sounding the alarm: in exactly thirty minutes, I had to be standing at attention at Colonel Leon’s military base. I had already pissed off the intelligence officer plenty by flatly refusing to become a full-time operative for his agency. Showing up late on my very first day and giving Leon another reason to be pissed off would have been tactical stupidity of the highest order.

I shot the guys a quick glance. The entire platoon was sprawled across the parade ground, breathing hard and ragged from total exhaustion. I turned and hurried into the barracks to take a cold shower and change clothes. Under the icy stream, I quickly analyzed the reason for my scheduling failure. The training session had run significantly longer than I had calculated. The reason was obvious: thanks to the balanced breakfast I had given them that morning, the teenagers had far more stamina and usable energy for physical exertion. They simply took much longer to run out of gas.

But there was a systemic weakness hidden inside that advantage. Over time, their physical performance would improve even further, and I would end up pushing them until noon. With a schedule like that, I would never make it anywhere on time. Betty might overlook my lateness in accounting as long as I could still produce a flawless weekly balance in a couple of hours, but in other combat departments, punctuality was a matter of survival.

This time, I decided not to show off and put on the Corps’ standard utility field uniform without insignia. There was no point strutting around in a dress uniform with a Bronze Star in front of Colonel Stewart. That old fox had seen enough hot zones to fill a trophy case. If he wanted to, he could probably wear a decorated uniform with so much gold braid that I would get dizzy just looking at it. What I needed here was strict professionalism, not pomp.

As I swung onto my Buell Hammerhead, I noticed an empty parking spot nearby. Dillon’s massive SUV was gone. Apparently, the commander had sobered up and slipped off the base in a hurry sometime during the workday. It was damn lucky I had thought to take an entire stack of forms from him yesterday. Otherwise, I would have been stuck at the checkpoint arguing with the guards right now.

The military intelligence base was a little over a hundred miles away as the crow flies, and I had only twenty-five minutes left. Traffic on the highway out of town was already starting to build at this hour. It was time to use my trump card.

[Special Command: Reach the destination in the shortest possible time using the full available potential of the engine while avoiding critical damage to the motorcycle’s components.]

The last thing my brain registered in real time was the thin needle of the Buell’s electronic speedometer shooting instantly past the three-hundred-mile-per-hour mark. Then the entire world around me disappeared. All of it. The landscape smeared into one continuous gray blur.

This had never happened before. In this hyperfocus state at extreme speed, I could not make out even individual sections of road or the silhouettes of nearby cars. All I could do was surrender completely to my subconscious reflexes and trust that, somehow, I was weaving between civilian bumpers and taking tight interchanges at that insane speed.

Hyperfocus spat me back out without warning, accompanied by the deafening, shrieking sound of hard braking. The rear wheel fishtailed, thick bluish smoke poured from the burning tire, and the bike’s overheated engine blasted me with a wave of choking heat. The motorcycle came to a stop in front of a solid concrete wall. But when I glanced at the clock, I saw the result I wanted. The display read 10:59. I had made it to the destination exactly one minute before my official duty under Colonel Stewart began.