Free The Cupel Recruits by Susan Willshire

uncomfortable eating of the day before. Without a look or any coy smile, Juliet handed Gabriel an orange juice. A drop of condensation fell from the carton onto the table. Though nothing like her, the mere action somehow reminded Gabriel of Gretchen and he wondered how she was doing. ‘She must be worried sick that I’m missing’, he thought to himself. He hoped she would keep the wedding plans going so they could get married on schedule. He hated the thought of pushing it back because of this, whatever this was exactly. ‘So you steal a bus full primarily of scientists, plus a few random folks who were mixed in’ he thought. His first thought was that it must be a weapons project. Why else all the cloak and dagger? He’d never worked on a weapons project in his life, and he absolutely refused to start now. ‘The first sign that we’re being used for a harmful purpose, I am NOT participating,’ he promised himself. Gabriel would sit in his room alone for the next four weeks before doing anything that might do harm.
    David Running Wolf sat alone eating breakfast of eggs, bacon and bagel at the adjacent table and was thinking the same thing. An MIT graduate, he’d turned down many lucrative jobs in bioweapons design to continue working on genetic mapping and testing. His work allowed pregnant mothers to be aware of markers for certain illnesses and conditions early enough to take preventive action, like beginning vitamin therapies or medication to ensure a healthy child.
    The man Mr. Aquila had seen in the hallway earlier appeared at the door to the cafeteria accompanied by another, taller man that had the look of a soldier. Stone spoke, since they had seen him bringing in trays of food and were no doubt more comfortable with him.
    “It’s time for class, everyone,” he said and started to clear the tables. The recruits cleared their tables quickly and began clearing the room and heading down the hallway to the training room. The last to exit, Juliet, dropped her tray. Wood rushed to help her pick it up.
    “Are you shaky at all?” he asked, still on the watch for medical side effects of the day before.
    “No, just a damn klutz,” Juliet responded. She left the room and jogged a bit to catch up with the tail end of her class. Wood watched her go.
    “She’s not even a Circle One yet, my friend, as in off limits,” Stone said to Wood. Wood’s voice responded about a half octave above his normal decibel,
    “I know.” When Stone and Wood entered the training room, all recruits were already sitting and Saraceni stood at the front of the room. Saraceni addressed them as they entered.
    “Gentlemen, thank you for your assistance. Team, I’d like to introduce you to two men who will be assisting us throughout your training experience, Wood and Stone.”
    “Who’s who?” Juliet asked Saraceni, glancing back at the two men. ‘The one is clearly the brawn of the outfit, but why the muscle? Do they think we’re going to make a run for it?’ she thought to herself.
    “On the left is Wood and on the right is Stone,” Saraceni answered.
    Juliet summed the two up to herself. ‘So, the slightly shorter one is Wood . He seems smart and alert. The other one is harder to read, but they’re clearly friends as well as coworkers,’ she thought.
    “Now that the introductions have been made,” Saraceni slightly raised his voice to regain the attention to the front of the room, “we will commence our lesson for today. We have a lot of material to move through in the next few weeks, so I will be moving at a quick pace, summarizing some pretty large areas of study and have a specific order of approach. This may not fit with your questions. I’ll make every effort to answer them, but we will have occasions where we have to parking lot them to revisit later or where we just have to move on. I’m saying this to acknowledge that there is a much deeper layer to this subject matter and you will likely want to learn it at