He couldn't sleep.

'GhhAkg- !'

Elgan shouted while jumping out of the bed, his body shaking, a bad dream. Another bad dream.

Elgan's hands swiped his sweat-drenched forehead, a waterfall spilling down his eyelids making the sheets disgustingly wet.

It was something strange... despite the fact that the air conditioning had been working non-stop making the air inside the room freezing cold, the teen had been bathing in his own sweat for hours now. Swimming like a greasy pig in his own steam. A shame. His much-needed rest had transitioned to become an endless series of intermittent fifteen-minute naps sandwiched between short sessions of existential dread.

Eventually, his breathing relaxed and his heartbeat calmed down.

Elgan's brain had decided to rebel against him and there he was. Unable to close his eye for some reason. Who knew what the cause could be... Hunger, maybe excitement, or perhaps sleep overdose, if that even existed...

| GrGRgrrr |

Though hunger seemed a bit likelier.

His stomach grumbled, asking for food like a desperate hyena, too scared to pick a fight with him, but too hungry to ignore his essential needs.

"I should have paid a visit to the Cantine before it closed..."

He said in a tired tone, his complaining muffled by the soft yet asphyxiating embrace of the pillow.

The almost constant grumbling of his stomach was real, but his self-empathy was too. He understood perfectly he would have had a cardiac arrest if to be faced with another world-changing revelation, he needed time to make up his mind about what was going on.

"I wonder what that academy thing will be about."

Faced with the bleak possibility of being unable to shut-eye for the rest of the night, Elgan decided to think for a good while.

What people would he find?

What would he learn?

Elgan didn't have those exact answers, but he could begin to draw a raw idea of what it could be. For starters, after a long dialog with the bed, he had come to the conclusion that this was no normal military academy. The single-room apartments, the Wrist-Bands, the hotel-like design. It didn't make sense to build something that extravagant to accommodate anyone able enough to sell himself to the military, the answer to that question was mentioned by the sociopath Official Armstrong himself.

'Just like me and few others you'll encounter.'

If he was correct, it would seem Fragmented were a scarce resource... A precious one at that.

Elgan turned to face upwards, his newfound insomnia cautiously accommodating inside his mind. He would have liked to be able to say he was looking at the 'pristine white ceiling', but the absolute darkness produced by the lack of windows and lights made the fact that he could discern the shape of his hands a true miracle of mother nature.

'Maybe I have night vision...'

Bored out of his wits, the youth adopted various advanced yoga postures in an attempt to find sleep. A fruitless attempt. After a few minutes, his gaze fell right above the nightstand, his hand trailing behind in the search of something to distract himself with.

| Shake Shake |

Giving a good rough agitation to the clearly delicate device, Elgan managed the difficult task of ruining the Holo-Watch's sleep in a very compassionate attempt for the two of them to suffer together.

The interface summoned before him, his iris shining in blinding white.

"Ugh. Too bright."

Elgan turned the menu wheel around looking for the configuration window, his eye slowly burning.

'There you are.'

He tapped the icon, and a whole new world of useless settings opened before him.

Configuration:

|Alarms|

Currently, no alarms are enabled. [Create Alarms]

|Language|

Change Languages.

English: ◼

Spanish: ◻

Japanese: ◻

|Sound|

Alarms: ◼◼◻◻◻◻

Tapping: ◻◻◻◻◻◻

Notifications: ◼◼◼◻◻◻

Switching on/off: ◻◻◻◻◻◻

|Battery|

Intelligent Brightness: ◻

Survival Mode: ◻

'Where is it...'

Elgan's gaze quickly climbed to the bottom of the list activating the Intelligent Brightness setting as fast as possible.

'Much better.'

The light automatically dimmed down just enough for him to gaze comfortably. He closed the tab swiping away, his slowly returning vision darting to the hour and date.

4hs 21mins 32secs - 23/July/2643

'Hmm. It's still too early.'

Woke too early to start the day, and too late to go eat. What a heart-breaking situation to find yourself in...

Rolling to the side, Elgan continued scrolling the rather short list of Configurations. Although extremely untrustworthy of whoever had decided to give him this thing, Elgan had literally nothing better to do but try closing his eyes, which he didn't feel like doing for real.

Climbing up the rather short list of options like a starving monkey looking for bananas he ascended towards the alarm editor, a thin mental connection wired in his mind.

...

'Crap.'

Up until this very moment Elgan had really not bothered to think about it, but not having any alarm to rely on during his first day at this place wasn't exactly the best of his ideas.

He thought perhaps someone would bother to knock on the door to wake him up in the morning. One thing was having slightly better quarters than average, another one was having a personal maiden come to give you a good morning kiss. Thankfully he realized in time that said idea didn't have any reliable base to speak off, his plan wasn't dumb because there wasn't a plan, he had simply been irresponsible.

Like it often happened, his brain had uncaringly plugged into the equation the wrong suppositions.

Pressing the only button on sight, he created three alarms, each at a helpful hour.

|Alarms|

|Name|:Wake Up |Hour|:6:30 |Repeat|:◼

|Name|:Academy |Hour|:7:15 |Repeat|:◼

|Name|:Lightn'ts |Hour|:21:15 |Repeat|:◼

[Create Alarm] [Delete Alarm]

| Yawn |

'That should do.'

He thought, his hand already moving to close away the tab. A sudden wave of heavenly sleepiness washed over him, his eye closing under the sweet lullaby of silence.

| Ding! |

The sudden sound made him flinch, for a second he thought it was just his imagination. Only after gazing at a small notification hanging in the air did he realize what was going on.

Notifications [1]:

Your User has been created successfully. The features Profile and Messenger have been successfully unlocked and are ready to use.

'Hmm. Guess I should go watch what that's all of that about.'

Not that he felt curious or anything, he just wanted to be sure nothing wrong appeared in his profile. Reversing the movement of his swiping hand, the interface popped back up, his fingers selected the profile.

Profile:

Name: Elgan Klein Gender: Male Pool: Fragmented

Rank: NAT Branch: None

Reputation: 0

Balance: 1000␥

It wasn't that interesting for real.

...

'Another deception... Seems my expectations rose far too much after all the User Processing bullshit.'

Offering him the information he already knew about, his Name and Gender were no big surprises. The only eye-catching variable out of the first line was the Pool, which confirmed the fact that he was indeed inside the group known as Fragmented.

What did that imply? The Holo-Watch couldn't bother saying.

Next were his Rank and Branch both of whose meaning he couldn't come to understand. The complete lack of descriptions together with the programmer's obsession with meaningless acronyms made it very difficult for him to guess his way out of ignorance.

Finally, Reputation and Balance were definitely the two most interesting ones of the pack.

Elgan felt interested both in the reason why a Reputation Score should exist in this military base, aside from its possible use as a Credit System there was really nothing much else to it. From his humble point of view, Reputation itself represented something very abstract, difficult to both measure and operate with...

'Whatever.'

His Balance on the other hand had been the only pleasant surprise he had since he woke up. You know, it was not every day that one woke up with one thousand dollars, or whatever those units indicated.

Though he didn't know exactly how inflated said currency was in relation to the old dollar...

'Free money is free money.'

...

Except he knew it wasn't.

Sold your soul.

Well, yes... More or less.

As Elgan had said earlier, people didn't give things for free. The Coalition, if they had found a reason to give him money, that meant he had given them something in return. Of course, he was the product of this exchange, and whatever his performance was from now on would make him a good or a bad investment.

Without bothering to take a look at the other unlocked app, Elgan swiped to the side, turning off the Holo-Watch and throwing it uncaringly towards the Nightstand. His eye threatened to close up soon... Closing.

Closed.

...

| Beep Beep Beep Beep |

Proud to do its job despite the rough working conditions and large sessions of unpaid work, the Holo-Thing did its job as expected, beeping as loud as he possibly could and waking up the soundly sleeping Elgan.

| Beep Beep Beep Beep |

Though getting him out of his bed was an entirely different matter...

|Beep Beep Beep Beep|

Still, he persevered through tough and thin, the poor stupid circuit had no idea what waited for him. Hell broke loose.

|Beep Be-|

"Shuftt Upf!"

Elgan shouted, his lungs squeezing all air inside them in a rage attack. Thankfully for his neighbors, he had the delicacy to bite the pillow while doing so, preventing him from becoming a public enemy. The eye bag painted over his pale face noticeable as he directed his gaze towards the Holo-Wristband, now displaying the image of a shaking alarm clock.

It was not a mystery that those two extra hours of sleep hadn't done any miracles.

|Beep Beep Bee-|

Elgan rolled sideways falling from the small-sized bed in the process, the cold floor meeting his face, his working hand reaching for the uncanny device, shaking it as hard as he possibly could so it would shut up.

'Despicable.'

The original strategy would have been to roll his way back to the soft warm mattress still waiting for him. He would then try to sleep for another half an hour, hopefully waking up with enough time to speed-run to class.

Sadly, the lights had already been turned on and the occasional sound of footsteps on the outside was starting to make his crippling anxiety kick in.

'Let's get ready...'

Dragging himself across the floor, Elgan entered the bathroom ready to take a good old cold shower.

Locked the bathroom door, got naked, and fired the tap. A rain of fresh water washed the dried sweat off his face. Though the anxiousness he felt didn't leave. Although he would have liked to think he had plenty of time ahead of him, Elgan knew it wasn't the case. Getting ready, finding his way out of the apartment complex, grabbing something to eat, getting to the training hall on time and maybe also exploring a little bit his surroundings with the aid of the Map. He had things to do. A lot.

Exhaling cold thick mist produced by the shower, Elgan readied himself in less than a dozen minutes. Finding a new change of clothes inside the bedroom's wardrobe he readied himself. His hand is about to turn the doorknob...

'I should probably bring that...'

Going back to his room, he searched the floor, finding the plastic wristband hiding in one corner of the room. Hesitant to let the piece of clearly perverse technology touch his fair skin, he placed it inside his pocket.

"Good to go."

Pushing with his smaller, deformed right arm Elgan opened his room's door. The light transitioned to a red color. Tapping his pocket, Elgan invoked the menu which impressively enough managed to manifest through the thick tissue of his trouser. A wide map appeared before his eye, the icon leading to his long-awaited food set on the horizon.

Elgan's journey across the maze began.