Free The Scarlet Dagger (The Red Sector Chronicles, #1) by Krystle Jones

groaned, loud and obnoxious, and Aden smiled.
     
    “ Even if I wasn’t a vampire, I would’ve heard that,” he said. Though anxiety still radiated off of him, his shoulders slacked with resignation and I knew I had won.
     
    He sighed. “Come on. Let’s get you some real food. But then I’m taking you back to your cell.”
     
    I forced myself to smile, feeling slightly pleased with my performance.
     
    “ Whatever you say, Captain.”
     
    ***
     
    The base was tiered, like an inverted pyramid, and larger than I had originally thought. Upon our agreement, Aden had spun in the opposite direction, turned a corner, and began ascending a stairwell I hadn’t noticed. A sign detailing the best evacuation routes for each level was tacked next to the door, and I paused, trying to memorize it. I always had a decent memory, nearly photographic.
     
    The lowest (and smallest) level held the prison block; the next, the medical laboratories; the third was the hospital wing I first awoke in; the fourth housed the training academy level, and judging from the graph, it was massive. The fifth and final level held no labels.
     
    “ What’s on the top floor?” I asked, my voice reverberating around the cement stairwell.
     
    Aden paused on the stairs, eyes sparkling with mischief. “If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”
     
    Too late. You’ve sort of already done that. I shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “Just curious.”
     
    He rolled up his sleeve – I noticed the bandage on his hand was gone, revealing a thin strip of shiny new skin where the Scarlet Dagger had cut him – and checked his watch. “It’s nearly noon. Come. I only have about a half hour window to eat before the cell block shifts switch out.”
     
    He started back up the stairs, and this time I followed.
     
    At about the fourth landing, we stepped through a door that read 4: Training Academy . I could feel Aden’s precaution ease up as he decided I wasn’t going to bolt for it, and I took the opportunity to pepper our conversation with questions about the facility, trying to collect as much information as I could. Each answer of his was vague, as I could have probably figured it out for myself by simply observing my surroundings.
     
    “ The academy level serves as the training grounds for our soldiers,” he explained. “But we also house a lot of civilians who help run the base, like nursing staff, electricians… those sorts of jobs.”
     
    Black tiled floors shone beneath me as I followed Aden into a sparsely populated corridor. Every person, I noticed, wore the same black uniform as Aden, only the girls wore black skirts and tall boots instead of pants. Some of the uniforms were red; others white. I did notice that the white uniforms all had a red cross on their right jacket shoulder. All of the military personnel wore at least one gold, silver, or bronze chevron on their right sleeves.
     
    “ What’s up with the different colored uniforms?” I asked.
     
    “ Black,” Aden said, pulling at his own sleeve, “is for the soldiers. Our medical staff wears white, while our technical staff wears red. Color coding is mostly to help the new recruits quickly distinguish a person’s rank and position. And if you’ll notice –” he pointed to an older man talking to a teenage girl, both wearing white – “the medical staff all wear crosses on their sleeves, with the certified doctors bearing a caduceus.”
     
    I remembered reading something about the caduceus – the winged staff of the god Hermes – back in my freshman literature class. It had been a symbol for healing and medicine for many years, and was later adopted by the U.S. Army to represent their medical corps.
     
    “ And the chevrons?” I asked.
     
    “ They go by rank and years of experience. Obviously, the more chevrons you have, the higher your rank, with bronze marking you as a newbie. If you make it through your first year, you advance to silver, and then it’s a