Zack, Attack and the Truth

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Grant sat on a bench in the central Quad after eating some sad looking cafeteria food, not even bothering to comprehend what it was he ate. Using his bandaged hand, he wiped away some newly forming tears as he took a deep breath and let out a long sigh. Grant checked the time, it was too early to visit his degree adviser to tell him the bad news, so it was back to the original plan of packing up. He got up from the bench quickly, too quickly and got light headed. He narrowly avoided running into another group of students as he made his way back to Crowder.

A headache was slowly forming as he climbed the stairs up to his floor not realizing that the mystery woman was at the base of the stairwell staring up at him. In the third floor hallway, Grant was greeted by a mile wide grin wearing a human suit, otherwise known as Grant's roommate, Zack. Zack tried to give Grant some witty " Nice to see you." jab, only to have Grant ignore him entirely and open the door to their room. His headache was pounding at this point as he grabbed his suitcase and began to fill it with his belongings. Zack entered the room seconds later asking, "When did you get your ear pierced?"

Zack was taken aback by the scene in front of him:

" What's going on?"

"Leaving…"

"When will you be back?"

" Never…"

"What about school?"

" Dropping out…"

" Why?"

"Can't pay…"

"How come?"

" Doesn't matter…"

" I'm losing my roommate, Explanation please."

As Grant was packing up, he detailed what happened, his grandfather passing, the confrontation with the Prick and the talk with his uncle. As he talked about his wrecked bike, Grant zipped up his roller suitcase with all of his dorm stuff inside. Grant grabbed his duffel bag and began to fill it with all of his clothes, Zack asked, " Wait, if your bike is wrecked, how did you get back?" Grant had to stop packing to rub his temples, He closed his eyes and spoke, " Don't know, walked, I guess?"

"What do you mean, you guess?"

" Can't remember…"

Grant stopped talking as his headache suddenly spiked and he let out a grunt and collapsed to his knees. Zack ran over to check on Grant as a melodious voice came from the doorway, " i can explain." The guys turn their heads towards the doorway. Leaning against the door-frame was the Woman in black that Grant had seen in the hallway after his shower. With tribal drums using Grant's skull for an amp, it was Zack that replied first, " And who are you Miss?" If the women's eyes could be seen, they would have shone that she was laser focused on Grant. " Who I am does not matter, what I can do, however, only Grant knows." Zack turned to Grant, who was struggling to get to his feet and confront the woman. Once back on his feet, he balled up his fist and yelled, " What can a mere military recruiter do…" Before Grant could even process what he was saying, a strong breeze blew through the room followed by a crash .

A cold wind invaded the whole room as Zack's eyes bugged out of his skull at the scene in front of him. A large hole was blown open in the outer wall of the room and the woman in black was holding Grant by the neck out over the street below. The smile never left the woman's face as she answered Grant's outburst, " Quite a bit actually…" Across the street, the Man in black was staring at the sidewalk through his fingers as he sighed, " we are here to recruit the man, not give him serious brain damage." The Woman stared down at her partner and mouthed, " I know what I'm doing." Her attention went back to Grant, who was convulsing in her grip and on the verge of passing out. " Normally we like to take our time with these things but our schedule got moved up, so we need an answer." Once Grant was completely unconscious, she brought him over to his bed, kicking off any obstacle in the way of laying him flat.

She slightly turned Grant's head and lightly touched the gold stud earring, which began to shine with a crystalline light, blinding Zack. Once the light faded, both the earring and the woman were gone. Zack immediately went up to Grant and checked his pulse, which thankfully was steady, which confused Zack. Since the hole in the wall was still very real, Grant should be injured but wasn't. Unknown to Zack was that the bandages on Grant's hand had become undone and the broken skin on his knuckles were healing at a visible rate. Inside Grant's unconscious mind, a memory as playing for Grant that felt so real and yet so surreal that it felt like a movie about him. It started off right where he did not want to recall, sobbing over the broken remains of his bike.