Derrek opened his eyes to find a trumpet pointed at his face and Jeffrey behind it, in the middle of taking a deep breath.
“Don’t you dare,” he said before Jeffrey could finish his breath.
Noticing he was awake, he let out his breath with a loud, exaggerated groan. He lowered his trumpet and gave Derrek a chance to wake up. He turned on the lamp and thought his drunken slumber had made him miss his alarm, but one look at his phone told him that Jeffrey had beaten him to the punch, since the time showed 5:20 a.m.
“What happened to six sharp?” a groggy Derrek asked as he rubbed his eyes.
“Gotta keep you on your toes, element of surprise and whatnot.”
Derrek got up from the bed, his head throbbing in pain. He had a rough time getting his footing, and his stomach burned. He tried to speak, but his mouth suddenly filled with saliva, and he ran for the bathroom. The sounds he made as he violently vomited into the toilet were enough to make Jeffrey shudder, reminding him of his high school days as a self-described alpha party animal.
While Derrek was expelling his bile, Jeffrey took a look around and saw the empty bottle on the dresser, confirming his suspicions. He went to the minifridge for a water bottle and put in two antacid tablets he had in his pocket, shaking the bottle to help them dissolve.
Derrek came out a couple of minutes later, as white as a ghost, eyes puffy and red, completely exhausted. He slumped back onto the bed, covering his face with his hands. Even the low light from the lamp was enough to make his eyes burn.
Jeffrey held out the water toward him and said, “Drink. You’ll feel better.”
Derrek accepted and began to drink, meaning to take only a few sips. However, he was extremely thirsty and quickly chugged the entire bottle. When he finally stopped for air, he put the cap back on and tossed it to the trash basket beside the dresser, missing by almost three feet. Jeffrey didn’t laugh, even though he thought it was very funny, since he knew the pain he was going through. He walked over and put the bottle in the basket for him.
“Did you have a fun night?”
“Yeah, had some saur … something. Some kind of beef or something, I don’t know. Had some whiskey too, but they let me leave with the bottle. I think I was on the roof too. And I think there was a piano involved, but my head’s killing me.”
“Then don’t worry about it. Just take it easy. Take yourself a quick shower and put on some fresh clothes. I’ll be in the dining hall. Be there by six.”
“Sure,” Derrek said as Jeffrey started to leave. Before he got to the door, however, he asked, “How’d you get in? Did you seriously break another lock?”
“Didn’t have to. The door was open,” Jeffrey said, prompting Derrek to look at the wide-open door. In his drunken haze, he had forgotten to close it.
He nodded slowly, seeing that it was his fault, and let Jeffrey leave without another word. He took a few minutes to just sit before he went to shower. He spent a solid ten minutes just standing under the water until eventually the antacids kicked in and he finally had some relief from his nausea. By the time he got dry and dressed, he had only five minutes to be in the dining hall, so he put on his shoes and a pair of sunglasses he had in his duffle bag and left the room.
Jeffrey was sitting in the same spot he was in the morning before, the only one in the room save for the cook staff. There were two coffee cups and two plates of food on the table; he had gotten breakfast for Derrek, who took his seat.
On his plate were two scones topped with ham and poached eggs drizzled with a yellow sauce with a side of bacon. The smell made his mouth water and his stomach rumble.
“Eggs Benedict. Eat up,” Jeffrey said as Derrek did just that. The plate in front of him was already empty, but the leftover sauce made it obvious he’d had the same. The plate was clear before either of them knew it, and they both felt satisfied.
“That was delicious,” Derrek said as he began to sip his coffee.
“Hells yeah,” Jeffrey said as he stacked their plates and placed them on the side of the table. “Some Wall Street bene-dick made it as a hangover cure about a hundred and forty years back, and I’ll be damned if he didn’t nail it on the head.”
Derrek tried to laugh, but it made his head throb, so he did his best not to.
The rest of the day went similarly to the one before; the two ate another plate each, sharing stories and jokes over their eggs. Eventually, they loaded up and went to the track, Derrek having a rough time but feeling much better thanks to his breakfast. He even managed to stay on his feet when they finished their workout. The weapons training went well; he was hitting the target consistently at four and five times out of every ten shots, even getting six once, and was getting better with his knife-throwing extracurricular.
He wasted the same couple of hours on that game show, the name of which he finally caught: Kuchenparty, which he took to mean, “Cake Party.”
Dinner was similar to the one before, but he was joined by Jeffrey, to whom he recommended the sauerbraten with risotto, while he had a delicious dish of spaghetti squash and sausage. The entertainment was a standup comedian who left everyone in stitches despite a fifteen-minute tangent about horses, or perhaps because of it. After their meal, they stuck around for a few drinks, Jeffrey ordering a full six-pack of Brewskis and Derrek getting a large mug full of a sweet ale, which he had refilled twice. People filed out after 8:30, and they did the same, turning in to their respective rooms.
That was how the next few days went as they continued Derrek’s training. His dreams took a more mundane turn, most being the same level of nonsense to be expected from a dream, with a staggering amount of chickens speaking English, but in reverse. He got better every day, finishing his workout faster each day. He was even able to keep pace with Jeffrey on the first mile and a half on the fourth day.
On Friday, the fifth day of training, Derrek earned his certification, hitting eight out of ten on his exam. As a graduation gift, Jeffrey gave him his sidearm and his pack of knives. He said it was legal to open carry the knives there, but Derrek took that with a grain of salt. That night, they decided to embrace their manliness, ordering twenty-four-ounce steaks and a bottle of whiskey, valiantly consuming the slabs of meat before them, immediately regretting their decision and continuing anyway. Jeffrey did his best to maintain his composure, but he utterly failed and looked like a full tick—too engorged to move.
Derrek claimed victory that night, stomaching his entire steak and his fair share of the bottle of Steel Barrel he insisted they drink with hardly a sweat. He was feeling the pain, but still riding high from getting his certification, he played it cool for the entire dinner. When he got back to his room, it was another story; he completely collapsed and writhed in the agony that came from eating a pound and a half of steak along with half a bottle of whiskey. He was visibly bloated and unable to make many vocalizations beyond pained grunts and groans.
He eventually fell asleep watching Kuchenparty, which was either running a marathon or on a constant loop, but he was certain he hadn’t seen any repeats. He had no dreams and slept like a hibernating bear, snoring like one as well.
Every aspect of the Schadenfreude had surprised him, but the biggest surprise so far was waking up without Jeffrey standing over him. He was groggy from the night before and was confused for a solid five minutes before he remembered his training was finished. Since Derrek had passed his certification, there was no reason to drag him out of bed.
However, he had grown accustomed to the early morning workout and decided to meet Jeffrey at the same spot they always met and joined him for their usual breakfast.
The next two days were a challenge for Derrek. Orientation didn’t start until Monday morning, and very few of the activities provided by the hotel appealed to him. There was a chess tournament, but very few people signed up, a total of twelve, including Derrek, all of whom he mopped the floor with. The prize was a prepaid debit card, roughly forty US dollars, which Derrek used to buy a cool hat online to be delivered back home.
Little else happened that weekend. He went out with Jeffrey to a bar on Saturday night, but that was the only time he left the hotel grounds. He was nearly dragged into a fight after someone poked fun at the reflectivity of Jeffrey’s head, which Derrek did his best to mediate, buying a drink for everyone to cool everything off. It didn’t calm the perpetrator, but it did make it clear to him that the patrons of the bar were now on Derrek’s side, prompting him to take his drink to go.
Monday had rolled around, and Derrek was up bright and early for his morning routine. He got back to the hotel before nine, not only giving him enough time to freshen up before orientation at ten but also setting a new record. It was a special class; since he was the only one who arrived without their open-carry qualification, he was the only one who missed the initial orientation.
It was taking place in the hotel conference room. Derrek entered to find a large ovaloid table in the same white-marble-with-gold-trim style with which the rest of the hotel was adorned. At the head of the table were two people, a man and a woman, along with assorted presentation materials, including several piles of papers, a laptop, and a laser pointer. The woman had black hair tied back in a bun and glasses and a red blouse, while the man had short, matted brown hair and appeared to be wearing pajamas.
“Ah, you’re here,” the woman said, shuffling through some papers. “Derrek Snowe, right?”
“Yes, ma’am. That’s me.”
“It says here you had Major Reynolds as your weapons instructor. I can imagine that was a challenge.”
Derrek was confused. “What makes you say that?”
The man spoke up with an English accent. “Because he has a habit of pushing too hard. Let me guess: he had you run a mile at the crack of dawn?”
“Ten, actually. And a lot of sit-ups, push-ups, and jumping jacks.”
Both of them stared at Derrek in disbelief. He didn’t have the form of someone who, in the past week, had run a cumulative seventy miles, but they saw no reason for him to lie.
“Right,” the woman said, “I suppose introductions are in order—”
The man interrupted, “Wait, are we really just going to scroll past that?”
“Yes, we are.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
“What the hell? I’ve got questions!”
“And I’ve got a schedule to keep. Ask him on your own time.”
The man grumbled with minimal coherency. The only word that could be made out by the listeners was ‘breakfast.’
The woman coughed to regain Derrek’s attention. “Anyway, my name is Dr. Rebecca Shepherd, and this is my,”—she paused as the man yawned loudly, still trying to continue his grumbling—“my associate, Professor Lewis Philman.”
“My friends call me Syler,” Philman interjected, reaching out to shake Derrek’s hand. “It’s my middle name.”
Derrek shook his hand and said. “I don’t believe that one bit.”
Shepherd smirked at Philman, looking at him with eyes that said, ‘Ha-ha, he called you on your nonsense.’
“Ha-ha, he called you on your nonsense.” she droned, pointing and laughing at him.
“Shut up!” Philman said. “It says so on my birth certificate!”
“You know perfectly well that I know that’s bullshit.”
“Oh yeah? Prove it!”
Shepherd didn’t break eye contact with him as she reached under her chair and pulled out a briefcase, which she dramatically placed on the table. She opened it and produced a single piece of paper, which she slid in Derrek’s direction.
“Do me a favor and read that out loud, will you?” she asked, still maintaining eye contact with an increasingly nervous-looking Philman.
Picking it up, he saw it was an official document and did as she asked.
“Lewis Shelby Philman.”
“OK, that’s enough of that,” Philman said as he snatched his birth certificate out of Derrek’s hands, throwing his compatriots into a fit of laughter. He tried to tuck it into his waistband before realizing how bad of an idea that was. Then he placed it on the table, guarding it with his life.
After her laughter subsided, Shepherd coughed loudly to reestablish the professional air. She opened the laptop and tapped away at the keys. Across from them, at the foot of the table, a narrow rectangular slot opened in the ceiling. From the slot, a screen slowly unfurled, and from behind the “professionals,” another slot opened. From that slot, a projection began, shining on the screen with an image clearer than anything Derrek had ever seen.
The screen showed the beginning of a slideshow, which read, in Comic Sans, “Frostbyte for Goobers: Environmental Scanning and You!”
“There we are,” Shepherd said, eyes fixated on the laptop screen. “Let’s get started, shall we?”
Philman groaned and said, “God, you’re pretentious.”
“Says the man with the fake middle name,” she said, looking up at him from her screen for a brief moment before gluing her eyes back in place.
Philman grunted and reverted to another bout of grumbling, albeit much quieter than his previous one. All the while, Derrek stood uncomfortably just inside the doorframe, debating whether he should sit.
Philman took notice of his internal struggle and ceased his grumbling fit to say, “Please, take a seat. This’ll be a little while.”
“Thank you,” Derrek said as he sat in the middle seat on Shepherd’s side. Philman slid him a folder that was akin to a dictionary, absolutely brimming with forms, documents, and a clipboard, for some reason. Taking a look at several random pages, it seemed to be full of several hundred waivers.
“We’re going to need those signed and initialed by tomorrow morning, just so you’re aware,” Shepherd said, glaring coldly at her colleague. “And I would recommend that you actually read them; it’s important to know what rights you’re signing away, Philman.”
“Oh, get over it already! If I didn’t blindly sign that contract, I wouldn’t be here now, would I?”
“Exactly my point.”
Derrek could feel the tension between these two and thought that changing the subject might help them not kill each other.
“‘Frostbyte for Goobers’—I had to make one of these for the policy they put in about the flu last year,” he said with a jovial tone. “Although my boss did put his name on it and passed it off as his, but that’s work, right?”
The two looked at him with blank faces, neither of them sure what to say, but it was clear that they had forgotten they were in the middle of an angry staring contest. Eventually, Shepherd cracked a smile, and Philman let out a short laugh.
“You’ve got that right,” Philman said, “At the university I used to teach for, my department head would always put his name on the reports I wrote! Ended up being what got the bastard fired. Well, that and how creepy he was to the coeds.”
“Every time my team’s research gets published, they put our names in fine print at the bottom,” Shepherd said with an exasperated tone that didn’t fit her smile. “But first page? Center print? In bold? The damn pencil-pushing bigwig bureaucrat who green-lit our budget.”
The three had a hearty laugh, which Shepherd cut short so they could get to work.
“We should be further ahead. You’re supposed to be in the field tomorrow.”
“Right. Sorry, ma’am,” Derrek said.
“Don’t apologize,” Philman said. “I needed a good laugh.”
“He has a point,” Shepherd said, half-glaring and half-looking at Philman, “but I will ask that distractions are kept to a minimum. Feel free to ask questions, though.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She looked at him for a moment before fixing her gaze on a sheet of paper with Derrek’s full name printed on top. She wrote down, “Oddly formal,” matching the header perfectly, leaving him amazed at her handwriting. She looked up and tapped a key, changing the slide.
“Let’s start with the purpose of this operation. As I’m sure you’re aware, our main reason for being here is to lay the groundwork for Frostbyte’s one hundred twenty-seventh wildlife sanctuary, our first one in Germany. But our secondary objective is to add the DNA of the flora and fauna to our ever-expanding database of genetic code. William Shale and many of our scientifically inclined professionals, myself included, believe this may reveal the key to lengthening the human lifespan, possibly indefinitely.
“Over the course of the past two decades, we have already mapped approximately thirty-eight percent of the global genome, mostly due to our highly efficient equipment,” she said as she changed the slide to a picture of a large rectangular machine and let Philman take over.
“The genetic screening and recording machine, or as I like to call it, the GENRAM,” he said, prompting Shepherd to roll her eyes, “the way this bad boy works is you put either a little critter or a small sample, like a leaf or a patch of hair, in that there slot.”
Suddenly a red dot appeared at what Derrek took to be the side of the machine, centered on a small square-shaped slot, about a foot wide. Philman was now holding a laser pointer, and it was clear that Shepherd was not happy about it.
“The machine then works its magic, performing deep scans and effectively obtaining around ninety-nine percent of the genetic code of whatever was slapped in. Whatever was put in then comes out the other side, completely unharmed. Don’t know how it works personally, but that’s not in my job description.”
The red dot moved from the screen to the center of Shepherd’s forehead, unbeknownst to her, as she was focused on her notes. She turned to the next slide which was a large chunk of text with the header, “Dress Code and Safety Regulations.”
“Obviously, opened-toed shoes are not allowed,” she began, “along with shorts, graphic T-shirts, and extravagant jewelry—although we do allow wedding bands—and no primary use of the color red-orange.”
Derrek raised his hand for a question, which Philman acknowledged with a nod, still pointing the laser at Shepherd’s forehead.
“Why is that particular color banned?”
Shepherd looked up from her notes, catching the laser in her eye. She fought the urge to scream while Philman fought the urge to laugh, but she got over it before him, giving her the time she needed to snatch the laser pointer from his hand. She put it in her briefcase, which she promptly locked. She then gave Philman a murderous glance before facing Derrek to answer his question.
“Frostbyte just doesn’t want to get confused with our competitor, Spitfire. I think their CEO and Shale have been fighting since the company’s inception.”
Derrek had never heard about this feud, but he figured if it were important, Shale would have told him, so he brushed it off. However, he would be sure to ask about it when he got home.
“That makes sense. Sorry for the interruption,” Derrek said as Shepherd nodded, appreciating the apology. She quickly went back to her notes to underline, “Oddly formal.”
“Anyway,” Shepherd continued, “you will be provided with a uniform. It’s very thin, durable, and breathable, so feel free to wear whatever you want underneath. Just don’t dress for winter. If you have long hair, you have to tie it back, and we work with a lot of powerful magnets and moving parts, so piercings must be removed before going out in the field.
“Unless it’s an absolute emergency, your sidearm is to be holstered with the safety on and the chamber empty. Normally, the biggest threat we face on these missions in terms of wildlife are bears, but seeing as they were hunted to extinction here in 1835, the boars are a bigger worry. And the snakes. There are snakes. Venomous snakes. However, there is also the possibility of a more … human threat.
“In the past, there have been eco-terrorist groups, crazed civilians with conspiracy theories, militias who didn’t get the memo, and one time, a confused old man passing by who thought we stole the refrigerator in his front yard.”
“Although,” Philman interrupted, “there haven’t been any major militias in Germany since the 1940s, they’re not at war, and nowadays most of their population is reasonably mentally sound. Not to mention, we’ve got ample supplies of the antivenom for both the European adder and the asp, the dangerous snakes Becky mentioned, so I bet you’ll be fine.”
Shepherd glared at him, then shook it off, apparently letting it slide. “That’s pretty much it as far as regulations go. There are several smaller ordinances, but they mainly line up with standard Frostbyte practices. Last week was almost entirely set up, so all the machines are in place and calibrated. You’ll get the tutorial when you’re out there.”
“So,” Derrek began, confused at the brevity, “is that all?”
Philman began to speak, but Shepherd seemed to kick him under the table and said, “Yes but also no. While I’m sure you’re familiar with said ordinances, we do legally have to go over them.” She glared at Philman; Derrek got the impression she thought he was going to try to get out of it.
The next forty-five minutes reminded Derrek of his eighteenth birthday, the day he was officially hired full-time at Frostbyte. They went over appropriate banter, sexual harassment, rules against horseplay, and their very hard stance on forming unions: in favor of them but adamant that terms be negotiated with union heads and corporate. He got the feeling it would have taken substantially less time were Shepherd and Philman not constantly at each other’s throats.
When all was said and done, Derrek shook both of their hands and went back to his room with his folder full of waivers. As soon as he was out of the room, he heard yelling from inside and was impressed that they were able to not kill each other for so long. He thought about trying to break it up but decided that they could handle it. They were adults, after all.
It was only eleven, but he got the feeling the rest of his day was going to be dedicated to those waivers. Each and every one of them detailed different ways he could get injured, maimed, crippled, killed, and in one case liquefied, and he had to read and sign well over a hundred of them. He surmised that at a rate of one every five minutes, he could spend every hour of daylight he had that day just signing them.
He got comfortable on the bed and used the clipboard as a backer. He thought about turning on Kuchenparty, just for some background noise, but he was certain it would eat up all of his time before he even realized it, so he decided to just hunker down and get it done.
He had hoped the time would pass the way it had with the rest of the hotel, but it did not. He felt like he was back on the flight, wanting to sleep but unable to, the only difference being he had to actively keep himself awake. He agonized for hours, reading in great detail every way he could potentially be killed on this innocuous excursion, taking note of every stipulation, condition, and exception, making sure he wasn’t signing away his life rights.
He finally signed the last one well around eight, which he couldn’t tell until he opened his blinds to a pitch-black landscape. He had skipped lunch, so he made up for it with a big dinner—a massive plate of linguine Alfredo with the juiciest grilled chicken Derrek ever had. The cheese was rich but not overpowering, and the perfect consistency. He tried to think of a word to describe it and ended up with “carbolicious.”
He was bloated and devoid of regret, but he still managed to lug himself back to his room. The thought that it was nearly a week since the first time since he first went to sleep in that lavish bed with a belly full of luxury food ran through his head, but he was too tired to think more on it. He changed into his pajamas and slipped off to sleep as soon as he closed his eyes.