Suspicions

A trio of young people in their twenties accompanied an apparently middle-aged woman who had some rather peculiar characteristics. Her arms, which were visible to everyone, were not human arms but insects, were greenish in color and looked very much like the limbs of a cricket. Her throat wasn't completely human either, it had a dark green hue with some thorns in the trachea region.

This quartet walked through the torchlit corridors and during the walk, the deformed woman, Gloria, tried to bring up the subject anyway. She asked about life, how they met and other details. The one who answered most of the time was Ace, the six-foot-tall young man with shaved hair. Before he was very quiet, but after registration he talked a lot.

Their goal was the cafeteria, they got there around 10 pm. As a refectory of a large school, it was well equipped and even though it had some shortcomings due to the war, it was well taken care of due to several clearly visible renovations. They sat at a square table big enough for 20 people, the three young men sat next to each other, with Ace in the middle, while Gloria sat on the other side, facing them.

The food was very simple, just some vegetables. The four sat down and began to eat. However, Ace's face gave away his thoughts, even in the past weeks when meat was rare, there was still a little in every meal. To make matters worse, vegetables were not as 'beautiful' and 'flamboyant' as they were on market shelves before the war. Gloria noticed Ace's expression change and said:

"I know, I know, but it can't be helped. We no longer have the fertilizers and other products to grow food as we used to, so they are ugly anyway. As for meat, you should know, since you've spent a few weeks living alone, it's not easy to get meat from undeveloped animals and it's not all evolved animals that we can eat, so we only use it for special moments." She spoke naturally to the trio, they listened to the beginning calmly, but when they heard the last few sentences, they didn't get their surprise. Ace was the first to speak:

"Do you eat mutants?!" He widened his eyes and placed his hands on the table, his astonishment showing in every cell of his body. Gloria was startled by his reaction.

"Like this? Didn't you eat?" The middle-aged woman replied with another question and Ruby replied:

"Of course not! What if we turn deformed too?" Even Ruby, who always controlled her emotions, was quite shocked by this revelation. When she noticed the state of the three young people in front of her, Gloria explained:

"Yeah…did you guys never try to eat? Well, it's not important, since this all started, some have always eaten meat from what you call mutants. Of course, we found that there are some we can't eat and some we can. Overall, there's not much difference in flavor, at least for me, but there are people who prefer mutant meat to regular meat." She wasted no time, even as she spoke, her mouth had vegetables and vegetables being crushed, her voice was no longer the best due to her mutation and adding food, she got even worse to understand. But the trio, even though they didn't understand word for word, understood the general meaning.

"But isn't there the possibility of becoming a mutant too? And what effects do meats that we cannot eat have?" Lucas asked.

"Until now, no one has ever become deformed after eating mutant meat, when we eat mutant meat in the best cases of complications, we only have nausea, vomiting and headache, in the worst we can end up dying of intoxication. But this is very rare now, all the meat we eat here has already been tested, so nothing happens. Haha." She spoke with the same animation as always, Ruby already had some suspicions about this behavior, but did not pay attention due to the large flow of information they received.

But now there was no mistaking that something was off, even Ace looked suspiciously at Gloria. Lucas noticed the change in expression of his companions and secretly grabbed one of the knives from the table and brought it under the table. He made a cut on his left hand, from which purple blood came out, but soon the wound closed.

Without anyone noticing, he manipulated the blood and formed a sentence, it had few words, but its content was very important. Then he moved the blood between the table and the legs of his left mates, his target being Ruby.

The beautiful girl at the table with her black hair felt a nudge on her left thigh, she was startled at first, but soon controlled her fright as she looked at the source of amazement, then calmly returned her gaze to Gloria as if nothing had happened. The deformed woman didn't notice this action as she was looking at Ace and explaining about the meats they could and could not eat.

Ace, even a little suspicious, didn't show it, because soon after he threw the subject in the back of his mind. After clearing up a few more questions, the four went back to eating, but Lucas didn't stop thinking about what was going on.

'Since I got here, I haven't seen anyone angry, sad or anxious. The world is crazy and even though it's been more than a month, it's no reason for everyone here to accept these changes as if they were nothing. She talked about death on the exploration team of course, about the dangers involved and such, also on the way to the cafeteria everyone I saw is happy, or at least not upset or something. Maybe I'm thinking too much, but it doesn't hurt to be careful.'

Quickly everyone finished eating, so the trio of young people were taken to their new rooms. The bedroom was very simple, just a few single beds with a simple wooden frame, clearly handcrafted. The room wasn't big, but it fit eight beds perfectly with a small closet for the people next door.

After seeing their barracks, they returned to the car and took their clothes along with other belongings and brought them to the barracks. Fortunately, their dorm only had them as tenants, giving them privacy to talk freely. Lucas started the conversation when everyone settled into their respective beds. He explained his suspicions and waited for the cousins' reaction.

Ace said:

"Oh, you're thinking too much. They should just be happy that everything is under control. You don't have to worry about anything, haven't you seen how everything is organized? They have a department for everything." He didn't find anything worrying and turned to sleep.

Lucas looked at Ruby and waited for her response. She said:

"We just arrived and we only saw less than 10 people, even though I was surprised too, maybe it's just in our minds. Let's go to sleep, tomorrow there's training, I'm worried about it and anxious, I never participated in it. Things are going very fast, I suggest sleeping soon, the world has changed a lot." Ruby also turned to sleep.

Lucas, hearing this, wasn't surprised, as he knew it might just be his mind, so he lay down to sleep too.