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A ragged cry ripped through the room, startling Jack from the safety of sleep. He blinked a couple of times, trying to make sense of where he was before moving. The dim lighting of the barracks provided just enough detail for him to recognize his room. The sound came again, a low growl that echoed through the stuffy space. Rolling to the side, Jack thumped his feet onto the floor and stumbled toward the other side of the room.
Six months ago, when Jack had first joined the Soldier Enhancement Program, there had been six men in the room. Now, there were only two. SEP had no room for weakness; it had winnowed the candidates down to a handful. Jack didn’t know if his former roommates had died or failed out of the program. He’d stopped asking what happened to them when the second didn’t return from his weekly injections. Jack tried not to think about what that meant; it was the only way to keep moving forward.
“Get the fuck away from me.” A voice growled from the semi-darkness. Jack’s remaining roommate twisted beneath his thin blanket, swatting at the empty air above him.
Sweat stood on Reyes’s brow, running down his cheeks to soak the pillow and sheet beneath him. He’d dragged his shirt off at some point during the night, presumably to cool himself down, but it hadn’t worked. Jack sighed. Reyes had taken his fourth dose of SEP serum today, so the reaction wasn’t totally unexpected. The medication affected everyone differently, and each batch seemed to come with new side effects.
“It’s just a nightmare,” Jack yawned, trying to shake the last remnant of sleep away so that he could focus. “Wake up.”
Brown eyes flashed open without recognition as Reyes clutched Jack’s shirt. “Did you see the bees? Aggressive little bastards got me a dozen times.”
As if to accentuate the words, Reyes scrubbed at his right shoulder. Jack noted the hives forming around the injection site. That probably wasn’t a good sign. He brushed a hand over Reyes’s forehead and felt the flush of fever before his fingers connected with the skin. It would dissipate by morning, or it would rise higher and kill him overnight. Jack wasn’t a doctor; he had no idea which it would be. Hell, the scientists that passed for medics in SEP probably didn’t know either.
A bottle of half empty water sat beside the bed on the floor. Jack unscrewed the lid and held it to Reyes’s lips. Most of the liquid splashed down the side, but the man swallowed some of it.
“Are you allergic,” Jack asked, lowering himself to the floor and resting his shoulders against the cold metal frame of the bed. He would undergo another injection tomorrow, his third, and he needed whatever sleep he could get. Jack rested his head against the edge of the mattress and closed his eyes.
“Allergic to what?” Reyes asked after a moment. His voice didn’t sound quite as confused as it had, and his frantic swatting had stopped. “What are you talking about?”
Snorting under his breath, Jack opened his eyes and frowned at the man. “The bees.”
“Have you been drinking?” Reyes pushed onto one elbow and stared down at Jack, a single eyebrow raised in surprise. Shaking his head, the man glanced around the room with a groan. “Why is it so fucking hot in here? Did you turn the heat up again, farm boy?”
“The bees probably did it,” Jack deadpanned, pushing back to his feet. He didn’t bother explaining. Reyes wouldn’t remember any of this in the morning, anyway.