"OKAY, TELL me this, then, Lale — how much is the Mona Lisa worth?"

Lale grunted as Bradley's blow knocked the punching bag against his shoulder, before he rearranged his footing, bracing himself for another particularly powerful punch.

"I'll tell you," Bradley continued. Beyond the red punching bag, which smelled uncomfortably so of sweat and blood, he could hear the former airman shuffling his feet. "A hundred million dollars."

Lale relaxed against the bag as he heard Bradley take a gulp of water, using his brief moment of respite to roll his neck and try to rid his body of the aches that echoed up and down his spine. Training had grown more vigorous since Robert and his son had made an appearance — like they had something further to prove.

"Your point?" He questioned, stilling the punching bag's sways and reaching for a towel, which Bradley handed to him. Lale wiped his face clear of sweat, muffling the former airman's words slightly.

"My point is that we're just gonna leave it here? All the artifacts? Things that could make us filthy rich?

"For what — some swamp? And dinosaurs? And mosquitoes?" He could practically hear the shudder in his friend's voice as he smiled into the towel, before he tossed it back onto the rack. "Oh dank; imagine how many mosquitoes there'll be!"

"I think it's a little too late to worry your royal butt about mosquitoes, Bradley." Lale took a sip of his lukewarm bottled water, before taking his place in front of the punching bag. He clenched his fists experimentally as Bradley anchored his shoulder against the bag.

"I'm just sayin', Lale, you're a marine! You're used to that sort of —" he gasped against Lale's punch, which satisfied the darker haired of the two.

"You talk too much, Brad."

"I know. Maybe a little warning next time?" Bradley positioned himself behind the punching bag once again. "You're used to that gritty stuff, I mean. But me, I'm a pilot. I'm used to sky and freedom and sunlight, not bitey insects."

Lale slammed his fist into the red material again, the pain and shock that traveled up his arm feeling good. "Gotta get used to it, then."

He sympathized with Bradley, he really did — but Lale had already recognized that mosquitoes would not be their biggest problem. And one misstep could lead to death. And his friend had to realize that too.

But, with Bradley, no one really knew. His lean and scraggly figure packed a stronger mentality than most reckoned he had, something Lale had realized after hearing about the airman's own brush with death — a crash on the Gulf of Mexico had forced him to resort to measures not even Bradley himself would talk about. Among drug cartels and a world even more wrecked than America itself, Lale doubted he could be able to imagine what all the pilot had had to do to get back home. That escapade, Lale had summed up, had earned him a spot alongside the fellow ERAA members. And he had hung on by the skin of his teeth each and every time.

"Easy for you to say," Lale heard Bradley mutter, before he threw another punch.

━━━━

After physical training was lunch, which would be followed by Technical Adverse Avoidance Training, or TAAT. Three months had been long enough to learn the armed forces' time table off by heart.

Almost too long.

Only fifteen more days, Lale reassured himself, though his heart dropped slightly even with the lower number. Fifteen more days of tension and training and polishing of skills — then more tension and more training and the re-polishing of skills. That was all the marines and company did. They would be the brawn of the First Wave, a title that made Lale grow increasingly bored with his tedious lifestyle.

"The usual?" The tinny speaker burbled as he stood in front of the lunch line.

"The usual." Which consisted of, like most other days, low-fat yoghurt, chicken on a roll, and crispy potatoes on the side. Not an ideal meal to some, but for Lale, it was equivalent to divine manna. With the extensive training, he quickly added a green apple. He couldn't stand the red ones, but could never remember the name of the ones he liked.

Like most things, the food came from outside the facility, yet anyone could taste the difference of extensive sterilization — no meat prototypes or cloned poultry were allowed either, which was fine by him. They tasted too fake, anyway.

The mechanics were complicated to Lale, but within a minute, the food had trundled down a chute that led up into the ceiling, where the above buildings were, and where they presumably prepared the food. He took a hold of the metal tray, taking a moment to wrench it off of its magnets, before scanning the lunch tables for any sight of the more favorable marines.

It was surprising, really; such a large facility had separated and distanced the Learners and Armed forces, of which there were only about thirty. He had never truly taken the time to count, but what he could count (on one hand, no less) was the amount of people he considered his friends. More acquaintances than anything else, really.

"Lale!" Lale blinked at the sound of his name — Bradley gestured to a table occupied by three scholars, judging by their bulk-less forms. Plus the one guy had glasses on. (Don't judge a book by its cover, and all that stuff; the point was, Lale didn't care. There were empty seats.)

"Nice save," Lale slid into the seat across from his friend, and the three others automatically shifted upwards. Instinctively, he quickly scanned their counterparts before turning to his food. Two women, one guy. Definitely scholars.

"Naturally," Bradley grinned his smooth, pretty-boy grin. It was strange how quickly things changed, Lale thought once again. Four months ago, he'd had no prospects for his future besides from serving alongside Fereldson, maybe busting a few border-smugglers and taking down cartels, but nothing out of the ordinary. People like Bradley, in the life of four months before, were to be avoided. Pretty boys carried baggage.

But that was before ERAA. Before Fereldson backed out. And before Lale felt desperately out of place.

"I wonder where the Quillans are," Lale murmured as he took a gulp of his water, which had only grown warmer. It bothered him, even before Robert had reappeared, how he and anyone (everyone, really) involved in PAST as its guinea pigs had no control; the feeling had only grown more profound, and Lale was certain that he wasn't alone in the sense of insecurity. The grip of his control over his own life was slipping.

Lale should've been used to it. But the feeling always stunned him anew.

"I saw them checking the tech," the nerdy guy piped up, confirming Lale's sneaking suspicion that they were being scrutinized by the Learners. He guessed it was one of their principles; they needed to notice things in order to capture, record, and experiment on them, or whatever the scholars did on strange and potentially bitey creatures.

Creatures much more dangerous than mosquitoes.

"Great," the lighter-skinned of the two girls rolled her eyes, aggressively stabbing her fork into her salad. "As if we need more adaptations to the technology. More things to learn, more cogs to screw on —"

"Hey, the mechanisms are a lot more sophisticated than cogs," the black nerdy guy defended. Bradley and Lale shared a look. Of course Learners would fight over this stuff.

"Guys, calm down," the other girl, evidently the peacekeeper, patted the air in a placating way. "Whatever they're going to do to the models, it'll obviously help us. I mean, life and death scenario, y'know?"

If only she knew. Lale reckoned time travel would be the least of their problems, the way the marines were training. With guns. Electrically charged ones, which weren't the same, Lale had been disappointed to discover the first time they'd practiced handling them. They were lighter and warmer to touch than the automatic rifles they were styled after. And they didn't have the same pleasing effect once they were fired — no fatalities.

But that was just his battle-toned mind thinking.

"Anyway, Tina, you and I won't even be handling the mechanics," she emphasized on the word, which seemed to appease the other guy, "so let's leave the engineering to the engineers. Simple as that."

Lale allowed a small smile to cross his face, just as she met his eyes. Her own were dark and pulsing in the florescent light. She didn't look good under it, he realized. She looked more like a chick who was used to sun, and looked good in its light. They were also shone with humor and ill-suffering: "These nerds, eh?" It seemed like she was saying.

"I'm Amelia." She reached over the table to shake his hand, bumping the nerd's elbow out of the way in the process. Amelia's palm was warm and dry, unlike his own, which had been gripping his dingy plastic spoon tightly.

"And these two over here are Tina and Luca."

"Lale," Lale replied on automatic. He let go of her hand, feeling slightly awkward. His earlier impression of them had been wrong, he conceded. Not just nerds and techs about to pounce on him to dissect his liver or whatever.

Just people.

Bradley's mouth was too full for him to respond, so he waved behind Luca's back. Lale rolled his eyes inwardly. At least his friend couldn't charm any girls with his face looking like a hamster's — a relief, for his own sake and Amelia's. (Though she seemed way too smart to fall for the ex-airman's attempts at something called 'charm'. Or, at least, he hoped so.)

A more comfortable silence followed as they all ate, though Luca was still shooting Tina exasperated looks. Lale nearly chuckled, stifling his amusement deep down and looking at his yoghurt to hide his smile.

Soon after, the glass lit up with a soft blue — the sign to move on to the next period. They all stood, and the Learners flashed both Lale and Bradley curious looks, as if machine guns would magically manifest next to them.

"It was nice meeting you two," Amelia flashed Lale a smile that he noted in his peripheral view; he didn't turn to it, feeling awkward uncertainty once again stir in his chest.

"And you," he echoed, but his ears pricked up another sound underneath the chatter of the other, one that immediately rose another emotion in his chest, silencing his worries about what Bradley would do to embarrass himself in front of two women, and whether or not he should've returned Amelia's smile.

Wariness and confusion — emotions he had been feeling a lot more in the past few months than he would've liked — beat down on him at the same steady beat as the helicopter Lale could hear landing on the ground above.

"Well. That can't be good."

━━━━

even more people joining the fun couldn't possibly mean anything of the good sort — but what does this mean for Lale and Amelia?