34 2780-Space City Iron Lake 044165 -Switch (2/2)

An apartment duplex seemed, a little too claustrophobic, for a man that was being chased. Even if the area were large enough, there would be too many angles in which to be cornered., it wouldn't be large enough, So Zatland wouldn't choose that. The mall was the same, even though it had a lot of people, the place was pretty confided.

Zion wondered, why hadn't Zatland tried to contact him so far, Maybe he somehow couldn't do it? Maybe their assessment was separated or something else more complicated?

Was his assessment finding Zatland or doing something else? Did he and Zatland have the same mission? Were they playing against each other or working together? Or had he failed the test even before they even started?

He kept wondering if maybe Zatland was already heading for the crystal lake building by now. Maybe he was just wasting time and should just turn around and run straight all the way to the lake base camp. That feeling of being left behind almost ate through his stomach. Did he fuck up? When he went inside that insurance place? Or when he exited it?

Well, no one was telling him about anything yet, So he didn't know if his recruitment had been denied already. He decided, he would follow the clues as far as he could possibly, before finding Zatland. Zatland would hold the answer to his problem if he could find him in time.

Soon they both would have to start heading back to crystal lake base nonetheless if they were late the first day of recruitment, their dignity would be torn asunder before the entire space sector.

Only the military would publicize their humiliations. Being late was a nonnegotiable offense here, and people would often get hazed to death as a punishment for non-compliancy.

Hazing was a great way to reinforce rules, even those who didn't experience the pain would never want to experience it. It's kinda like a police shooting, every time it happened you would begin to wonder if you would be the next victim of it. It made it a lot harder to commit crimes.

If he failed this test, he'd still have a little chance to begin his training, but if he were to be late to the crystal lake appointment, they would kick him out of the military for a year.

He set a timer; there were one hour and twelves minutes, he could use that to find Zatland on the base. They both were running right out of time. And the crystal base camp was a one hour sprint from here. They had 2 hours to get to the base, and Zion could only use one hour and 12 minutes of them at most if he hoped to get to the training: and that was while sprinting the whole way.

Was this a test? Had he failed it? Was Zatland going ahead of him? Unfortunately, Zion could not find all the footage of the events that had taken place while Zatland was running. He hadn't seen the footage of Issac shooting at Zatland between the folds of civilians.

If he first saw that, he would have more reason to find Zatland sooner. He would at least believed his friend was in real danger, or still taking the test; both would have reassured him that what he was doing was the right thing and that he was not just stupidly messing up again.

...

A few miles away from Zion, Isaac watched them both through the lens of his phone. He saw Zion following closer on the trail, and Zatland still trying to steal a phone. He decided to do something about it; He decided to switch targets.