Suddenly, the lights turned on. Victor slowly opened his eyes, squinting, blinded and irritated by the sudden glare. His vision remained blurred for a few seconds as the boy rubbed his right eye with his hand, feeling something sharp and hard inside it. The movement was very clumsy and slow, so much so that he accidentally hit his eye and cheekbone, continuing to rub in a clockwise motion with four fingers as gently as possible, until, only a few moments later, he felt his eye free itself from that thing which he now felt in his hand.
Pulling it away from his sight, he noticed it. A bit of eye gunk, slightly wrapped in pale yellow mucus that dampened the phalanges of his middle and index fingers.
"Mh..."
He wiped his hand on his shirt. Then he straightened up, remaining seated on the bed. He had no blankets on him, and it was already a miracle that he was wearing anything at all. Just a military green shirt and a pair of gray underwear. He remained seated on the bed, sliding his hips slightly backward, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his slightly spread thighs. He stared at the far end of the room, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the light.
He also waited for that strange bitter aftertaste in his mouth to disappear, probably caused by last night's dinner.
"And thank God the Bolognese cutlet was supposed to be one of the best..." he muttered, smacking his lips in an attempt to get rid of that awful rancid taste of ham and cheese.
Afterward, he shifted toward the edge of the bed and placed his feet on the floor. The floor was warm and slightly sticky, and the sensation of hairs and dust beneath the soles of his feet made everything even more disgusting.
Victor sighed. He turned his gaze toward the alarm clock to check the time.
It was only six in the morning, June 24th, 2054.
"Fortieth day of imprisonment..." Victor said with a hoarse voice, letting out a short "mh" to imitate a dry laugh, referring to the fact that forty days had passed since Lieutenant Abner informed them that returning home was impossible.
Victor remained there for a few more minutes staring at the clock, absentmindedly counting the passing seconds.
Suddenly, however, he was interrupted by three knocks on his door, producing a loud metallic noise that made the boy jolt in surprise.
"Shit..."
"Hackett, it's Oltmann."
The man sounded like he had been awake for several hours. He showed no sign of fatigue. His lively and decisive voice, in contrast with Victor's half-dead state, instantly irritated him.
"Yeah, what do you want?" Victor replied in a nervous tone, his voice still hoarse despite raising it. This caused him to cough in an attempt to clear his throat while searching around for water, rummaging through the nightstand, the desk, drawers, and duffel bags.
"We're grumpy this morning, huh?" Hansen replied meanwhile, adding a bit of irony, imagining and understanding the exhaustion of the morning and the forced awakening caused by the automatic lights in the rooms. "We've been called to the main hall. Abner wants us there in half an hour. Move your ass, kid!" he added jokingly.
"Give me time to figure out who I am and I'll be there," Victor replied.
"What an exaggeration!" Hansen answered.
"You think?" Victor said, finding a half-empty bottle of water in one of his bags. It was warm and crumpled, its plastic sticky and covered in dust and lint.
"Disgusting..." Victor muttered, drinking anyway due to his thirst, though still dissatisfied with the temperature, which made it taste like a bland, tasteless broth.
"When you become a father and take care of a newborn, you'll get used to it," Hansen replied with a chuckle.
"I still have to learn how to take care of myself," Victor answered while changing his clothes with fresh ones taken from his bag.
"Come on," Hansen said, continuing their playful exchange. "I've seen worse cases. You're improvable."
"That's good then," Victor replied at last, opening the door with some effort due to his lingering exhaustion. On his first attempt he pushed it, but it didn't open, stopping instantly.
"What the hell?"
"What are you doing?" Hansen said, this time seriously. "You have to pull, not push."
"Oh, right!"
Victor stopped pushing the door, which only creaked, and pulled it toward himself. However, it still didn't open, producing a loud thud as it was held by a rusty chain near the handle.
"The latch... God, what's wrong with you this morning?" Hansen asked, baffled by his friend's behavior.
"I've been sleeping like shit for days," Victor replied, finally opening the door after clumsily and frantically removing the lock and unhooking the chain from the knob, letting it hang against the wall.
"I felt like shit yesterday too. I'm never eating cutlets again."
Hansen silently looked at the boy from head to toe with a puzzled expression, noticing a strong smell of sweat coming from Victor's shirt, which was slightly stained white under the armpits.
"Did you wash yourself?" he asked.
"I took a shower yesterday," Victor replied.
He received only a horrified look from the man, who stepped a few centimeters away from him.
"And you want to show up like that in front of the lieutenant?"
"What am I supposed to do?" Victor said. "It's too late for a shower now. Besides, I think the lieutenant has more important things to worry about than my smell."
"Lieutenant Gordon Abner is our commanding officer," Hansen said very seriously, raising his voice as if scolding him. "We must respect him in every way, including our hygiene."
Victor remained silent, simply shrugging and widening his eyes as if to say, what am I supposed to do?
"Well, it's too late for a shower... but don't you have some spray? Some kind of deodorant?"
"Yeah... I do," Victor said, reopening the door to his room in the same slow, clumsy manner as before, clearly annoyed by the situation. He slammed the door in Hansen's face, almost as if sending an unspoken message telling him to go to hell.
The man ignored the message, though his irritated expression suggested otherwise. He let out a deep sigh to relieve some stress.
"So this is what I have to look forward to when she grows up..." the man muttered to himself, referring to his daughter.
"We're doing great..." he added sarcastically, placing his hands on his hips and casually walking sideways along the boy's door before turning and leaning his back against the wall. He sighed and stared blankly at the ceiling and the opposite side of the corridor, putting his hands in his pockets and resting his left foot against the lower part of the wall. He remained there, whistling briefly while waiting for Victor to hurry up, occasionally greeting acquaintances passing through the sparsely populated corridor.
Victor came out of the room many minutes later, at least twenty. His movements were much less clumsy than before, and he appeared more composed and orderly. His clothes were the same, though he had added an orange jacket to cover the stains under his shirt, which he could only properly remove by doing laundry—but since it was already 6:24, it was too late to go to the laundromat.
"Not great, but it's an improvement," Hansen said, looking at Victor somewhat skeptically.
"Whatever," Victor replied with a small sigh as he began walking down the corridor with the man.
"Is something wrong?" Hansen asked. "You don't usually act like this."
"What do you want me to say, Hansen?" Victor replied nervously. "This wasn't the trip I expected. And now we're stuck on Earth with no way to go back home. So yeah, something's wrong. Pretty much everything."
Hansen remained silent. His intense gaze drifted into the distance, his narrowed eyes and quick glances around the corridor suggesting that he was carefully choosing his words, understanding the difficult moment the boy was going through.
He stayed silent for a few seconds.
"And what do you think I should say, kid?"
Victor briefly looked at the man before turning his gaze forward again.
"I have a daughter I raised on my own. She has no one up there. I still don't trust the agency I left her with, because they don't know my daughter and her needs the way I do. And meanwhile, I'm stuck here. You're stuck here. All of us are stuck here. We're all pissed off, but venting our frustration or turning against each other won't change anything. Life goes on, even after tragedies."