Chapter 2: Hallucinations

Was it all a dream? Could it have been the effects of Metallus exposure? It felt too real at the time. There was nothing there that would have made her think it was all hallucination - all but one thing - evidence.

Cerras Stratbein grabbed the bath towel resting on her head. She had been staring at nothing for quite sometime already inside her room, on her military-styled bed. She looked up, the dull whir of the ceiling fan and the sublte flicker of the flourescent light behind the rotating blades felt strangely hypnotic.

Nothing beats a hot shower after every mission, Cerras told herself. And there's nothing more honestly so in the world. She stood up walked back to the mirror hanging adjacent to her bunk. The mirror wasn't hers, but the last occupant of the room had left it there and as it made the room look slightly bigger, she had retained it. Now she had grown fixated to it, instinctively looking at herself everytime she passed by.

This time though it was somewhat different. She looked at herself - stared at herself - the first time she had done so in years. Her short roughly cut hair was still slightly wet from her bath, and droplets of water trickeled down her face. Her rich blue eyes reminded her too much of her father and her fair complexion that was the eye of all men in her platoon was more of an annoyance to her as it often gave her doublestandard treatment, in a good way - but in a good irritating way. Her wet green tanktop accented hair ligth coloured skin even further - and the scars from past excursions were made more evident.

Here, she said to herself, is Cerras Stratbein, team leader of the 16th division of Guardianus, heir to the Stratbein line, a household name now that the Reengineering wars had already ground to a halt and people were beginning to look for heroes. Her father, a general during the war, it seemed, fit in the vacancy of people to look up to - and she had been tasked with the undue responsibility of living out of the shadow that had been cast by her name.

Forcing the thought out of her mind, she lowered her sights, to her half exposed chest. Something was indeed different from before. Something that made her look into the mirror in the first place. She peered into the mirror, in disbelief. There was a dark spot in the middle of her chest. Did she ever have a mole there? No, it was probably dirt left from the last mission. She tried to flick it off but it wouldnt disappear. She looked at it again through the mirror. It seemed larger now. Cerras squinted. It was growing. Larger and larger. Her eyes became fixated to the dark hole in her chest that she tried to cover up, feeling something she had not experienced in a long time - embarassment. But at what? Her thoughts could only begin to ponder what was happening.

Her heart beat faster and faster.

Cerras fell to her knees and screamed.

Three loud knocks pulled her back to reality. She was standing in front of the mirror - and probably had been standing there for a very long time. There was no hole, no dirt, no mole.

Was it another one of those visions? Cerras breathed heavily. Either she was going mad or the world as she saw it was collapsing around her.

Three more knocks followed. "Lieutenant?" a muffled voice from behind the wooden door seeped in. "Who is it?" she replied with authoritative demeanor.

"It's me, Janice," the voice said. Cerras sat down on her bed and heaved a sigh. "Come on in."

Another girl in a loose white jumpsuit entered. Her long blonde hair appeared tied into a bun knot. Her face looked somewhat less intimidating than Cerras with slightly puffier cheeks and well rounded eyes that are always restive and gave off a calming aura.

"Was it just me or did I just heard a scream inside here? You look pale. Are you sure you're okay?" Janice inspected Cerras from head to toe. "You should know better than walking around all wet like that."

"I just had a minor slip up. Nothing big," Cerras replied. Clearing her throat, she was quick to change subject. "Is simulation practice over?"

Janice stretched out her arms. "Yeah," she said and then yawned. "Those new WA2's can be quite a handful on uneven terrain. I still prefer my good old 'troll'"

Trolls, Cerras still found the term amusing after having grown up around the military combat exoskeletons called War Armors, WA's in military terms or "Trolls" as its users would fondly call them as they looked like weird creatures with heads attached the main body and proportions akin to that of a troll.

Trolls were essentially the single greatest military contribution of the migrating Diaspora from the destroyed planet of Omicron from the end of the Megadeath Era - more than forty years ago. With the integration of Trolls in modern warfare, all previous technology were rendered obsolete - with the agility, response, durability surpassing all of the current weaponry of its time - Trolls managed to rearrange the balance of power in the world overnight.

Piloting such a weapon had been Cerras's ticket to fame. Effortlessly bagging the WA tournament trophy in her academy during her freshman year, she went on to stand undefeated in WA manipulation and had gone to fight successfuly multiple skirmishes on it during the closing years.

"The WA2's are still being tuned to mimic the old model's response behavior," Cerras said half-heartedly, her mind still swimming with what had happened earlier. It had not been hours after they went out on a mission and after a somewhat disastrous end to her last sortie, she now had the problem of hallucinations as well.

Janice walked towards the other end of the room and faced away from Cerras. "Listen," Janice said, her expression much more serious now, "about the mission earlier - "

So much for avoiding the topic, Cerras told herself. Janice probably wanted to hear her side of things apart from the debriefing statement she had managed to make up at the last minute.

"Lock the door," Cerras softly instructed. Janice nodded and covertly slid the lockbarrel into postion.

Somebody else had to know.