I crouched in the thick tall grass, like a predator hunting its prey. I had the entire field mapped out in my head. Marcos was at my 2 o'clock, Ferguson at my 8 and Johnson at my 6. I knew none of them could see me through the thick tall grass and I chuckled silently at the thought of jumping out and yelling surprise.

"Come on Iris, the exercise is over, you can come out now. We surrender." It was Ferguson's voice. She was my roommate and my closest friend but at the current moment I could tell she was just done with my shit. I was by far the best stealth soldier the unit had and sometimes I would give in to my devious nature and tease the others during exercises.

I sighed and shuffled silently to my near right, the weak spot they'd left in formation. I wasn't about to give away my best scouting spot for exercises, not today anyway. Once I was far enough from my previous post, I stood up with my arms up in a "I surrender" fashion.

"Okay, okay, I'm right here. You left a weak flank by the way." I teased as their heads snapped to my now standing form, Marcos and Johnson had already thrown in the towel and removed their helmets, Ferguson had hers unclipped and ready to slide off as well.

"Yeah. yeah. we can discuss weak spots after chow!" Johnson patted his stomach as he scowled at me. "Your little game has made us late! Hopefully there's still something good!" He added as we met in the corner of our little formation that was headed by Marcos, since he was closest to the chow hall.

We shoveled down what we could scrounge up what was left of the chow hall selection, not that it was anything to drool over when it was the best selection but hey, we were fed. It was one of those things we gave up after being signed away into the military, we were lucky that the food out here was hot at all.

I looked out the window of the dining hall as we ate. We had been in this forest of a ghost town for a few months now. We didn't really know where we were, we had been flown out in the middle of the night and not told where and all we knew about us being here was that shit was about to hit the fan in this area and we were to defend our post at all costs. We spent our days training and waiting honestly. But hey, I couldn't really complain, I came from a long line of soldiers so I had been taught most of my skills as soon as I could walk. My parents had raised me on a military base and I attended the Military Academy as soon as I was old enough. Everything about me physically helped me excel at my career in the military too, I had ashy blonde hair that almost matched the tan of the uniform perfectly, I had thick thighs from years of weight training, perfectly suited to carry someone had that become a necessity. I was thin but toned, able to fit into small spaces for long periods of time if need be. I even had corrective eye surgery when I was younger to make my vision better than 20/20, a common practice of soldiers these days. My back was dusted with scars from training to handle any kind of torture.

"Iris?" Ferguson called, "you good girl?" She waved her hand in front of my face and pulled me out of my thoughts.

"Yeah, what's up Fergs?" I asked.

"It's time to go back to the dorms." She said, "it's almost curfew." She added nervously, only a select few soldiers were allowed out past curfew to patrol. And Ferguson was one to ALWAYS follow rules. We disposed of our food trays and headed back to the makeshift dorms that had been converted from some old building that had begun to deteriorate long before this was a base for us. We followed our normal routine before bed, get out of uniform just to slip into our PT uniforms, it was much like training where we didn't have any clothes of our own outside of uniforms, there was to be nothing to make us stand out or somehow become a target. We washed our faces and brushed our teeth and hair. Then we settled into our prospective beds. After training all day, it didn't take much for me to fall asleep as soon as my muscles relaxed into the rickety bed.

"Warning, warning, this is not a drill. Base has been infiltrated." The sirens blared overhead. Ferguson and I grabbed our weapons and jumped into action. We had trained for this, we were to head to the underground barracks while front lines took over defense. I didn't feel the panic seemingly oozing off every other moving body rushing through the barracks. I led the way and Ferguson followed suit, we left our building to get to the underground. We had never been allowed out of the dorms this late into the night since we'd been here, an eerie light was cast on all the buildings by the moon. As we were within eyesight of the bunker, I looked back to see Ferguson on the ground, shoving a figure shrouded in black off of her with her legs. She was unsuccessful and I knew I'd have to intervene. She was bleeding from her achilles, what were these people fighting with? Before I could second guess myself, my instincts took over, forcing my body into action.

My leg came into contact with the enemy, shoving them off of Ferguson. "Run!" I commanded Ferguson as she clammered to her feet. Thankfully someone grabbed her arm to steady her and get her into the underground. I, on the other hand, was not so lucky, I felt a hard blunt object bash into my skull and then I was enveloped in darkness.

I squinted my eyes, panic flooded my brain. Where was I? How long had I been out? I tried to lift my hand to feel the wet spot on my head and noticed my wrists were secured together with some sort of cloth. I blinked hard a few times, I was not used to blurry vision, I was in a dark, damp, concrete room. Well, a cell rather. I had been captured when I had sprung forward to help Ferguson. Somewhere I knew in my head it was better me than her, she still had her family and she would probably break under what sort of pressure they were planning on inflicting on me. I pushed away any panic I had been feeling, this was what I was bred for, to survive this.