The Espadon platoon

No thought could come to her.

Her eyes stayed shut, but she did not mind.

She felt at peace, calmer than ever.

She did not even feel her arm nor leg: she did not care.

It seemed she could hear a repetitive "bippp, bippp" every second or so.

Yet, she did not try to process what this sound could mean.

She fell asleep again.

--

She was still half-awake a moment later.

Something came to disturb her sleep.

A feeling.

Was someone holding her hand?

"Wait... where am I?" The drugs were finally losing effects.

For a long time, her eyes had only seen darkness.

But now Eléonore woke up.

She opened her eyes.

Blinding light flashed.

As soon as it happened...

"Eléonore! You're awake!" Someone shouted.

Disoriented and still drugged, Eléonore slowly turned her head towards the voice. A familiar face appeared... long black hair... an oval face...

"Juliette"

Eléonore recovered again more of her consciousness.

Juliette asked: "Can you understand me? Nod if you can."

Eléonore nodded.

Juliette sighed in relief.

"Can you speak?" She asked next.

Eléonore racked her throat. It seemed as if she had momentarily forgotten how to speak. "How am I supposed to move my mouth again?". She made the first attempt. "Ah."

"Ah.."

"I can." She managed to say. Her throat hurt. Had she been intubated?

Juliette once more sighed in relief. It seemed as if she had kept to herself a lot of stress.

Yet, Juliette still appeared anxious to Eléonore: "She seems less worried, but why does she appear still so conflicted?"

Eléonore probed: "Juliette... what's going on? Where am ..."

As she asked the question, Eléonore remembered her last memory. She recalled how she and Marie had crash-landed on the grass. The impact had wounded both of them.

Immediately, a more urgent question came to her. "Wait, wait! Where's Marie?"

Juliette took a deep breath. She feared to answer that question, but she knew if it would come. She replied with the most neutral tone she was capable of: "Marie's life is not in danger, however... she's been in a coma since she was brought to this hospital. She lost a lot of blood, and she received a severe impact on her head. The doctors believe she'll wake up when her body heals."

The news shook Eléonore. She had never expected to live this kind of situation which she had only seen in movies, where one relative of the hero falls into a coma.

At first, she felt nothing, or it may be she was consciously ignoring the panic welling inside of her. She asked in the same neutral tone that Juliette had used: "How long has it been ?"

"2 days," Juliette said, "both of you were brought in by the army at the same time."

Eléonore took a moment to digest the information, a moment during which Juliette said nothing. Eléonore considered what two days meant. It didn't seem like a long time, but never had she been asleep for so long. Had she been drugged to recover faster? What about Marie? She failed to put away her worry for her grandmother.

"Do you think she'll be alright?" She asked.

"I'm sure of it. She's healing for sure. She's a fighter, just like you." Juliette replied with a most confident and soothing voice.

Eléonore was momentarily put at ease. However, what of the other people she had seen trapped in the vortex?

As if Juliette read her thoughts, she said: "Not everyone was trapped in the anomaly when it surfaced. For instance, my dad and I were reasonably far away to get away and call for help. Most of us are fine... but the gravity tornado still captured eight people other than Marie and you. One lucky one was only lightly wounded, two are moderately injured, and two are in a critical state. "

Eléonore silently counted. The numbers didn't add up. She asked: "What about the other three among the eight captured?"

Juliette shook her head. It was enough for Eléonore to figure out.

If the three were not listed among the lightly, moderately, or severely wounded, they were dead.

It was a tragedy and the first loss of life since the founding of the 5th force association. Would fate be kinder in the dark future ahead of them? Could she have saved everyone if she had been quicker to figure out how to use the 5th force to her advantage in time?

"I could have. Only me could have saved them- but how were the others saved?"

When she was trapped, Eléonore had not been under the impression that the anomaly would collapse anytime soon. If so, how were five people rescued?

"Juliette, what happened? How were we rescued?" Eléonore asked.

"It's better if they tell you directly. Wait a bit, maybe half an hour, I'll look for them. I think they'll be happy to see you're awake." Juliette smiled a little, thinking of Eléonore's saviors. She paced away from the hospital bed and quickly left the room.

Eléonore was left to her thoughts.

----

In an underground basement, below the hospital, laid different rooms filled with electronics, cameras, and high security. A fully armed soldier would guard every room and every corridor. Any intruder would not escape notice.

Presently, a civilian walked through the main hall leading to the training room. She proudly wore a badge on her chest showing off: "Civilian/Access to L1 authorized".

L1 referred to the first basement level of the heavily guarded underground facility. People said that there were more levels below, but Juliette had been kept in the dark. She had refused the invitation. Thus her access was limited.

She expected to find Altin, Julien, and Paul in the training gym, for they would usually be training their skills unless busy with an ongoing operation at this time of the afternoon.

She paused before the soldier guarding the entrance and its metal double doors.

"Apologies, Juliette, but I must ask to see your pass. It's the rules". The soldier asked.

It was all a joke to Juliette; she had visited Altin and his friends very often the last two days. Even though the guards worked in two shifts, they all knew her by now. Yet, she was still required to show the special pass supplied by the government. It seemed to her that the government wanted to do everything in its capacity to keep the existence of the "ability users" - as they were called - a secret, but was it all worth it? The secret was doomed to be out anyway.

According to her dad, since the anomalies became commonplace nationwide and worldwide, it was unlikely that nobody discovered the existence of the 5th force and the possibility to control it with adequate training.

Despite that, the government kept trying to find and retain the "ability users" for their military force in absolute secret. Was every country doing the same? Probably.

While these little thoughts passed through Juliette, she still managed to find her pass in her pocket. She showed it to the security.

"Thanks, Juliette. Go ahead." The guard stepped aside.

Juliette went in.

It was a large room that looked like a school gym to disregard all the military stuff stored and dusty there. Before it was reserved for the sole usage of the ability users, it was probably just one more of the old forgotten dusty warehouses of the military across the country hastily built during the Cold War. Today, or rather before this year, there had been no need for it.

Despite the decrepit and dusty boxes all around, the room was well-lit and spacious. It had an eight meters ceiling and plenty of space to run around. There was also all sort of workout machines, including her favorite military-grade treadmill. Being valued by the military had its peaks. However, it was full of downsides too.

Ability users were forbidden to communicate with the exterior by any means as long as they were within the facility for security reasons.

Juliette announced her arrival. "BOYS!" she shouted.

Four teenagers turned towards her... no... three. For a moment, Juliette had almost thought to see François. The four of them had been so close that she was not yet used to see Altin, Julien, and Paul without him. She felt pity for the three boys. François had been like a big brother to them, just like Eléonore was like her little sister. How would she react if she had lost Eléonore in this accident? She couldn't imagine it.

Despite the vastness of the room, there were only three teenagers. The government struggled severely to find ability users.

"She's awake." Juliette only needed to say this simple sentence to spring the boys into action.

She led the way out of the room and into the patient room where Eléonore was kept, upstairs in the not-too-secret hospital section of the compound.

---

A moment after...

Eléonore had quickly fallen once more asleep once Juliette had left her alone. It was only when the nurse came shortly after to check on her that she awoke once more. The nurse informed her that she suffered from a large cut on her thigh and a deep wound on her back.

Fortunately, both wounds were not too deep, and she would make a full recovery within a month. With some difficulty and time for her thigh to recover, she would even walk after a week. The nurse didn't talk much; as soon as she completed the checkup, she excused herself and left to check on other patients. "Marie and the others," Eléonore had assumed.

Eléonore was lost in thought.

Knock knock knock.

Suddenly, the door to her private hospital room opened, and Juliette came in, followed next by three young men. They spread out in the room.

Eléonore immediately recognized them. She started to say: "Gu…"

"Eléonore!" But Altin had beaten Eléonore at greeting them. Among the three boys, he was the closest to Eléonore due to having spent the longest time with her. "You're alright?" Altin asked, worry in his two large round eyes.

"I think so. The nurse told me I should make a full recovery." Eléonore replied.

Altin, Julien, and Paul smiled at the good news. "That's great," Altin said, "when we saw you falling from the sky, we feared the worst."

This puzzled Eléonore. Did she hear wrong? She asked: "You saw me?"

Altin replied: "Yes, we saw you falling just as we arrived to stop the anomaly."

Although Altin replied to her question, it seemed to Eléonore he was inviting just more questions. She felt even more confused than before. "Stopping the anomaly??"

Seeing question marks stacking up, Juliette stepped in. "Eléonore, a little before, do you remember that I told you the people who rescued the survivors would tell you directly how they did it? They're them: it's Julien, Paul, and Altin who came to your rescue, but especially Julien. He deserves most of the credit." Juliette stopped and nodded towards Julien.

Poor nerd was now in the spotlight. He now had to explain.

Julien took two steps forward to move from the back to the front; he was now standing in front of Eléonore.

"Well…" Julien was looking for the right words, "I just had the right idea at the right time and discovered an unusual application of the 5th force about a week ago. When we arrived, we discovered that the local power network was powering up the anomaly. So we asked the army to cut the power of the transmission network. Took some convincing to do." Julien pointed towards Altin.

Altin commented: "Everyone was clueless on how to stop it, even the engineers of the task force, but Julien was able to think outside of the box. He explained it to me, and I was then able to explain it to the officer in charge."

"Right," Julien resumed explaining in perfect sync after Altin finished commenting. The timing was very telling of how close the boys were. "After doing that, the anomaly stabilized significantly, and we were allowed to come closer."

Eléonore wondered: "Was it when I first started to take control of the surroundings?". The timing seemed to coincide.

Julien kept talking: "But it was too late to stop it altogether; it was already self-sustaining. Although anomalies usually cease to exist by themselves, they can take days. It would be too late to save anyone by then. So I channeled the energy of the anomaly into nothingness."

"Infrared light," Juliette interjected.

"Well, yeah. Infrared light. Invisible light of low power." Julien confirmed. "It takes a hell lot of time, but I discovered recently that I do, in fact, have the talent to apply the 5th force in a certain direction. It is to diffuse the energy powering it in the form of infrared light. It only lightly heats the surrounding environment, much like our body temperature. Thanks to this, I can "gently disperse" an anomaly given enough time. That's how we saved everyone: by extinguishing the anomaly slowly, slowly enough that everybody didn't fall straight out of the sky."

Julien stopped talking and looked for a sign of understanding in Eléonore's eyes.

None came.

Paul saw that. "Won't blame you if Julien speaks nonsense to you. I'm still trying to figure out how he nullifies the 5th force". Altin and Julien could not help shaking their head. Their bro-friend was not one for physics.

Eléonore, too, did not fully understand what Julien had said; however, she understood the gist of it: Julien's "power" was to disperse the 5th force. She asked: "Is it like diluting alcohol with water? Enough water, and you don't feel the alcohol anymore ?"

"Eléonore! How do you know about alcohol?!" Juliette exclaimed.

"I…" Eléonore realized her mistake. She was only 16. Definitively not of age yet. "Should I tell her?" She considered telling the truth behind the "food workshops" with Marie.

Thankfully, Altin came to the rescue: "Juliette, there's something else Eléonore needs to know. About the world and us." He gently tapped Juliette's shoulder, such she temporally forgot about the alcohol.

"Right," Juliette said, "We've been collaborating with the military since the experiment's accident. No way to hide any longer after what happened. Thanks to that, however, we've verified something big."

She paused for dramatic effect.

"The 5th force is coming into a world… and never leaves it. It only grows, never shrinks. We don't know how or where it comes from, but even when an anomaly disappears, it just disperses into the surrounding, like how polluted air slowly spread everywhere. Therefore, we predict that the 5th force will be everywhere in the future. And for the second thing… Altin?"

Altin looked at Julien and Paul, searching for approbation. He then took out a card from his pocket; it was his military pass. On it, "L1 & L2 access" was written in bold and clear red letters.

"After the death of François, Julien, Paul, and I decided to join a special unit of the government to help. Our team is very special: only ability users can join. So far, we're very, very few across the country. Our mission is to carry operations requiring sensing and controlling the 5th force. Mostly rescue operations."

At this moment, Eléonore found that Altin's cuteness and childlessness had disappeared. He stood straight and authoritative. He asked:

"Will you join the Espadon platoon?"