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It was a restless night. An hour spend tossing and turning in bed, a pool of sweat too hot to prove comfortable. Rob tossed off the oily blankets and slid clumsily out of bed, his eyes straining in the blackened stillness. The room before him lurched forward, leaving Rob sprawled on the musty carpet. Staying low to the ground, he groped his way to the door and escaped into the damp and cold of a late summer night.
Rob realized he was ill-prepared for the climate when he fell face-forward onto the cement floor of the open corridor. The chill entering Rob's body via his grizzly cheek was enough to subdue the fever that kept him awake. A throaty groan escaped into the night as Rob pushed himself to standing, leaning against the wall as he quietly shut his door. Rob did not find himself locked out, but the idea of returning to his bed instilled more fear than the most bloody battle, and he had seen his share of bloody battles.
The longer Rob stayed outside, the colder his dogtags became, attaching themselves to the middle of his chest, and set him to shivering. With the stability of a rabid dog, Rob stalked down the corridor, throwing open a random door and stumbling in.
No lights were on in the bedroom; the carpet was not as musty as the one in Rob's room; the sleeping inhabitant stayed asleep despite the moonlight pouring through the open door. The smell of a strong-but-clearly feminine perfume streamed from the dresser beside the bed farthest away from the door. Finding strength in his shaky knees, Rob crawled his way to the dresser. He haltingly picked up the perfume, recognizing the smell but not being able to place it. Beside the bottle, glinting in the moonlight, was a set of dogtags in the style of those Rob himself wore. In the sparse light, he searched for a name, anything that gave a clue to the identity of the figure in the bed Rob had yet to inspect.
Squinting eyes and probing fingers gave Rob his answer. "Lorien Bankcroft?" he asked, dropping the tags and rising to his feet. Rob loomed over the bed, casting a shadow over the sleeping woman, who he had never seen outside a mech. His eyes ran up and down the still figure, the man coming out from behind the soldier. Rob's first instinct was to reach out for her, his haze clouding the judgment he otherwise would have had. Despite his mental lacking, Rob recognized the sound of a plasma gun charging up as the body of Lorien Bankcroft swiveled, pushing the mouth of the gun into Rob's Adam's apple.
"Have you been drinking, Lieutenant?"
Government funding had come to an all-time low, forcing the fighters, the regiments, to house themselves not in fortresses or civilian houses but run-down mansions and motels, keeping their armor in the back, watched by the weaker people, the inept ones, the people who could not and would not steal these pieces of equipment that cost more than a house and the people inside.
After getting caught in Lorien's room, Rob had been placed on shift duty, locked in simple collars and wrist wraps, all that keeps his mind from activating these large metal suits and leaving the
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