Chapter 10: Evaluation Stage

It has been two days since I impulsively decided to join the Sundown Guild as a new Diver recruit. Both parts because my emotions clouded me at the moment, and greater parts because of the not-so-subtle suicidal thoughts that came from my only sanctuary being ransacked.

Obviously, outside of my own episode of rage and impulsiveness, my apartment complex floormates weren't as stupid as me and called the police as soon as they found their room searched through. Something, admittedly, I should have done as well, but oh well, someone else did it.

The police showed up about a quarter-hour after I made my decision with Darren and started asking each tenant questions about the situation.

Once they got along to knocking on my door, I broke out of my own turmoil and told them about the guy I knocked shoulders with when heading up to my floor.

They got interested more in me and started to try and get every bit of information they could about the guy, but in the end, they weren't able to get any good information from me since I, too, was only able to gleam a bit of information about him in that short confrontation, regrettably.

«The police are so useless in my area, do some cool satellite tracking shit or something. Instead, they arrested two of my floormates for having drugs in their ransacked room during the investigation. Really keeping the peace here, guys.»

Once they basically interrogated me about the situation, they asked me for a phone number in case they got any more information and wanted to ask more questions about the problem.

I gave them the phone number without any resistance.

Not because I think it will actually help them or anything – it's just that they were already noticeably annoyed at the situation and the yelling at them. I felt like they would beat the shit out of me legally if I did anything to get on their bad side.

Plus, I had nothing to hide anyway – I'm momma's good boy.

Anyway, getting past that whole fiasco, with my decision to do this entire Diver thing, Darren contacted me a few times asking for some identification or information to get me accepted into the DEP over the past day and a half.

That would have been fine and easy with emails.

Unfortunately, I found myself in a situation without an easily accessible laptop.

This made it a bit of a more involved activity for me, as first of all, I had to figure out how to get files on my phone to email to him, and second of all, and most importantly: ALL OF MY FILES WERE ON MY LAPTOP GOD DAMMIT!

«WHY! Why did you take my pride and joy! I can't find another boomer selling a laptop for $1 around here! This must be what it feels like for a parent to lose a kid...»

So, with a heavy heart, I compiled the list of things he needed and had to scramble to assemble the stuff required before the timeline was up.

Thankfully, most of the stuff needed was still on my person, like my phone or wallet. Unfortunately, I needed to search for a few things outside of those.

The worst one was proof of residence in the area. Ordinarily, this wouldn't be that bad. However, two things blocked my path when it came to this.

One: The landlord was swamped over the break-in situation and didn't really seem to be in the best of moods, making asking him to do more work uncomfortable. However, this wasn't the hard part since I was okay with this, and it wasn't the bad part I was concerned with.

Two: I technically don't own the room. My roommate did it on paper as the primary resident. I was somewhere in there, and this would still work as proof of residency – however, that isn't the difficult thing.

The real problem is that I couldn't get the form without the primary resident being present and giving his consent to distribute it. This meant that I had to contact Chris, my roommate and friend, which made the situation all the more stressful.

Why?

Because that meant I had to get Chris to come to the apartment.

Chris is the hardest person I know to make him do anything. It was a miracle that I got him to sign up for the apartment with me. Still, I haven't seen him for a whole month, and he never responds to phone calls and thinks it's cool to not respond to a text for less than 3 hours. This made getting him here seem like a logistical nightmare.

Thankfully or not – we just had an event happen, the break-in, that could grab his attention better than me just pitifully asking him to do something for me.

Even with the break-in as a topic of discussion with him, he still, for some reason, took fucking forever to come to the apartment, and I was able to get my proof of residence after a lot of nagging and persuading.

This is why I don't go out of my way to hang out with Chris or even talk to him anymore unless I need to; he is harder to contact than getting a girlfriend to decide on a place to eat.

With all that done and all my papers, I sent them to Darren. With his background as a Guild recruiter, he expedited the wait time for application review. Thus, he got it accepted in less than a day once he submitted it.

Otherwise, he explained it could take a week before my application even got a real person to look at it if I even got past the AI.

He set that two-day deadline to get accepted because today is one of the few days a month for DEP Entry screenings or DEP-EC.

Therefore, he wanted me to get into this day if possible to get the ball rolling as soon as possible. Otherwise, I would have to wait two weeks for the next one, which, considering my situation, would be tough for me, to say the least.

«Well, let's see how this goes for me, it shouldn't be too bad... Right?»

Darren explained to me that if I were to get the green light from DEP-EC, meaning I am fit to be a Diver or at least to attempt to be one, I would then be able to sign a contract with Sundown Guild, affording me the benefits from it, which did include a sign-on bonus I am very excited to see.

However, until I complete this part of the Diver Entry Program, I can only have wet dreams about that bonus money. Which brings me to this moment.

I am heading to the site in an Uber, which, thankfully, the Guild paid for, as this car drive to the DEP-EC was about 30 miles from my place, which would have cost me a good chunk of my saved money.

The Uber driver said it would be about a 40-minute drive there, so I just got comfortable and took a power nap on the way there.

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I closed the door to the mini-van, half-groggy from my nap on the way here.

"Thanks for the ride, I'll give you 5 stars."

The driver just nodded and thanked me before driving off to what I can only assume was his next customer.

Watching him drive off, I looked back at the building he dropped me off at. The place looked like a clinic from the outside, sporting a sign signaling that this place was indeed a DEP site; thankfully, I didn't fuck up getting here on time.

«Okay, me, usually you're a huge screw-up, but this is not the time. DO NOT SCREW UP, that's all I ask.»

As if getting ready for a sports game, I hyped myself up by jumping up and down and stretching my arms. Anything to calm my taunt mind.

«Alright, game time!»

I walked up to the entrance, pushed the door open, and did what I had expected. The holding area looked very similar to any other clinic building, with an open desk area to the right and the rest of the area populated by chairs.

I walked up to the desk and tried to sign in.

"Hi, is this where I sign in?"

The lady at the desk stopped typing and looked up at me with practiced excitement.

"Hello, yes, this is where you can sign in. Honey, why don't you just tell me your name and what you are here for and we can go from there, mkay?"

"Oh, uh yeah, my name is Max Verren, and I am here for the Diver Entry Program Evaluation."

Her smile turned even more palpable, and she responded excitedly.

"Oh! You're going to go try out to become a Diver, honey? How wonderful! Okay Max baby, I see your name right here, you are a bit early so I'll just have you take a seat in one of those there chairs, mmh. You'll just be waiting here for the rest of the group trying out today. I wish you luck, baby!"

I thanked her, walked to an open seat, and took it. No one else was here yet, and it looked like I was 20 minutes early to the set time, so with nothing else to do, I scrolled on social media on my phone – mainly looking up any news about Divers.

Bang

The front door opened with a loud bang, and the receptionist and I stared at who made such a racket.

I looked at the guy entering and immediately had a description of him: punk.

He entered the building with his back leaned against the door so he didn't have to take his hands or eyes off his screen. He wore an oversized hoodie that met his thighs and gym sweatpants on. When I looked at his face, I got a flashback to middle school, as the guy's face still had some baby fat in his cheeks with long hair going down to his chest.

He probably didn't even hear how loud he hit the door because he had headphones in both ears. His music was blasting so loudly that I could hear whispers from my seat about 10 feet from the entrance.

Without skipping a beat or looking up, he walked to the front desk, pulled one of his earbuds out, and addressed the lady.

"Appointment for the Diver evals, name's Rye."

The lady looked up at him without saying anything, with a disappointed face, probably because he had not looked away from his phone since he entered the building.

After 5 seconds of no reply, he finally looked up at her.

"Did ya hear me?"

The lady snapped back.

"Were you speaking to me, honey?"

She looked behind her and pointed at herself. Obviously, he was speaking to her since no one else was there, but I saw the point of asking.

"Yea. Here for the appointment, my name is Rye."

"Oh, momma, I couldn't tell because you were just looking down at your little phone, baby. Okay, Rye, sit down at the seating area while we wait for the others."

She said his name like she was spewing poison.

However, unfazed, Rye just put his earbuds in and walked over to a seat, looking back down at his phone.

Almost as soon as he sat down, the door was slammed open again.

However, this time, it wasn't just an ignorant teenager; it was a skinny guy with glasses who opened both doors, out of breath, like he had just run a marathon.

"Fuh, I'm 16 minutes early."

After stating that, he closed the doors behind him, muttered, 「Early is on time, and on time is late」 and started walking to the front desk.

The guy looked more like a librarian than a warrior and seemed one lost coffee away from crashing and burning.

He walked to the desk, dropped a file on her desk, and exclaimed:

"Hello, I am Elliot, and I am here for the DEP-EC two-thirty appointment; I have my files here if you need them. I hope to achieve my goals here today."

The front desk lady looked up at Elliot and started typing away.

"You can take those there files back; I ain't your doctor today. Okay, honey, take a seat. You are all set up. We only have one more person waiting for us."

"Yes, ma'am."

With that, he found a seat and just sat there, fidgeting with his files in hand, very obviously nervous.

Seeing him like that made me feel less worried for whatever reason.

After that, we got a few minutes of nothing happening. I just watched the TV show playing in the corner of the waiting room.

After about 10 minutes, a new person walked into the building.

She looked in her late 30s, a bit rough around the edges, with a beat-up jacket on and looking a bit worse for wear. She looked a bit apologetic.

"Sorry, everyone, I had to call off work, and I didn't have much time to change. Sorry for being late."

She wasn't late, so I don't know why she thought she was, but oh well. Not everyone can be helplessly unemployed like I am.

She walked up to the front desk and signed in, even dropping her ID on the floor for a second, leading her to bend over to pick it up. Her nervousness was apparent to all in the room.

«For how old she looks, she isn't doing all that bad. Wait, no, stop thinking like that, that's creepy, plus she looks like she could be someone's mom.»

After she signed in, the lady at the desk – instead of telling the new lady, Lana, to sit down – stood up and motioned to grab everyone's attention.

"Okay, everyone, please enter these doors, and someone will be there to take you back for your evaluation."

She pointed at the doors leading back into the office.

"Good luck with your Evaluations, babies."

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