Three Strikes [✓]

Blackout

Chapter Forty-One: Blackout

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Tyler Island, Spring Sea.
September 20th, 2019.
0400hrs.

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The morning air was crisp and cold, made only worse by the rainfall that had started earlier in the morning. It only added to the dreary and tense atmosphere that set Avril on edge, and she shivered as she tugged at the camouflage coat of her uniform. Normally she would have tied it around her waist, but the temperatures were starting to get lower and it was bad enough on her as it was. The rain had only let up slightly, going between a downpour and some light drizzling. Right now it fell steadily over the island, pattering against the concrete and hitting the beige, winter cap Avril had put on.

Every step that she took was agony, the pain that she'd grown accustomed to becoming much more severe with the changing weather. First the cold made it ache constantly as far down as to her knee, sometimes just past the joint, but the rainy weather made her entire leg hurt and every step sent a jolt in both directions. All the way down her leg and all the way up, which made it harder to walk on. It had only been a few days since the sudden change in the weather and shift in the temperature, but it was already starting to screw her over. Her work flow had slowed the day before because of it, and what movement her injury had allowed before was more limited now.

Avril had pushed through it and refused to complain, but the sergeant she worked under forced her to go to the doctor to get something for it. And of course the doctor didn't believe that she was averaging a six or seven on the pain scale when they asked. And that was on good days. They gave her some pathetic, low-dose over the counter shit and sent her on her way. The medicine that actually worked was reserved for soldiers with gaping holes in their bodies or missing limbs. Apparently, if you weren't keeled over and bleeding out, you weren't actually suffering. Seeing as how her body was in one piece and her leg was — unfortunately for her — still attached to it, Avril decided to just suck it up and take what she could get.

This morning in particular had been difficult for her, for some reason. She'd worked a bit later the night before, hoping they might get word on how the operation at Farbanti had gone. They'd gotten a nice view of the first of the Erusean satellites going down before the clouds started to move in, and not long after their base commander claimed they were shutting off personal communication on the base. That had been what really threw Avril off, wondering what had happened for them to just cut everyone off.

As far as she knew, typically the only time that happened was when things had gone to hell and someone had died. The higher-ups never wanted to risk word breaking out and causing a panic for folks back home, so to make sure family would be notified in a delicate way they shut everything down for the rest of the soldiers. However, they hadn't seen any major, direct combat with Erusea on Tyler Island for some time. So there was no reason to shut them off, as far as Avril knew. But who could say for sure, ever since an increase in Erusean activity on the opposite end of the island. Maybe something really had happened.

Regardless, Avril had been uneasy when she'd gone to bed and she woke up feeling more exhausted then she had before. It took her about fifteen minutes before she was able to force herself out of bed, taking a while to steady herself enough to stand. Every muscle and bone ached in protest, and her stomach felt like it was in knots. Aside from that and the fact that the base was dead quiet, everything felt...mostly normal. So she just went about her morning routine with a little added effort. Nothing really clicked in her mind until some airman she worked with came by, telling her the base commander wanted her to go to the HQ for some briefing type thing or something.