Page 31 of Oblivion

Dante

“Lote, have you seen my phone?”

I glanced up from the photocopier to see Jenny rifling through the ops desk, shoving paper this way and that. He’d managed to keep it in his possession the entire time we were in Vegas, but three days later, he’d gone and lost it at work. Go figure.

“No. Where’d you last have it?”

“If I could remember that, I wouldn’t be looking for it, would I?”

Letting out a snort, I turned and leaned my ass against the copier to watch him sweat.

“It happens so often none of us give a shit anymore. You’re like the boy who cried wolf.”

“Fuck you. Mei’s gonna kill me if I’ve lost another one.”

I chuckled. Mei was the cutest, sweetest little woman you’d ever meet, but put one step out of line and she wouldn’t hesitate to make you feel like a kid in trouble. In those moments, she was positively scary as fuck.

“Call me while she’s chewing you out. I want to listen,” I said through my laughter.

“She’s like a fucking demonic Hello Kitty,” he muttered, now digging through the drawer for the third time. “Just as well you live alone now, I’ll be calling if I need a place to stay.”

“Door’s always open, brother.”

“Maybe I left it in the break room,” he grumbled and strode from the room, colliding with Forrest coming in.

After a short scuffle between them, Forrest straightened his shirt and entered with a grim expression.

“Court Martial verdict’s out. Ward’s been found guilty on only one of the five charges.”

“The fuck!” I exclaimed, spine snapping up-right. “Which one? And how did he get off the others?”

“Desecration of a corpse, but only because of the video evidence. There’s no talking yourself out of that.”

“And the punishment?”

Forrest’s face darkened further. “The jury took into consideration the weeks he’d been detained before the trial started, so ended up handing a measly two months in military prison.”

My heart dropped. “The fuck! What a fucking joke!”

I’d expected demotion, or best case scenario, dishonorably discharged. But nothing more than a slap on the wrist and a few hard weeks in lockup? Ward had just single-handedly made a mockery of our justice system.

“When did this happen?”

“This morning,” Forrest stated gruffly.

“How are we supposed to trust him on deployment? I mean seriously? There’s no reliability with a ticking time bomb like him. What happens when he does it again? Christ almighty!”

Forrest scrubbed a hand down his face and itched his short beard. “Fuck, I know, Lote. I ain’t happy about it either. And the guys won’t be when they find out. I say we push to get him relocated. Especially after we testified against him.”

The printer behind me quietened and spat out the last of the document I was waiting on. I tapped the papers into formation, venting a small fraction of my frustration while Forrest watched on.

“Is that your re-enlistment paperwork?”

My gut clenched and a bitter taste formed in my mouth. “Yeah, brother.”

“It’s a no-brainer, right? You’ve still got heaps of missions left in you before you bang out.”

I kept silent for a moment, taking a second to find the words that would slice away a part of who I was. Re-enlistingshouldhave been a no-brainer. But after the shit that went down with Ward, and the weight of the ghosts I carried from past deployments, truthfully, I didn’t fucking know.

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