Zatland Zuallen

,Where was Zion? Even though Zion usually seemed incapable, he was surprisingly smart and resourceful. Zatland was wondering if Zion had noticed yet that something had gone wrong. Was Zion trying to find him now, was he anywhere close by?

As Zion's childhood friend Zatland understood his friend very well, Zion may have broken protocol at the first sign of trouble, but that was only because zatland was running at the front, and because they were close he was worried. It was a lot easier for Zatland, who wasn't worried about someone he knew personally dying, to keep his calm and follow protocol, but Zion most definitely understood the protocol for searching and finding and should be on their trail very soon.

Maybe it was time he should be leaving behind some marking, maybe on the walls of some of the buildings he was passing by. If Zatland were Isaac at this point, he would be camping out somewhere in which he could keep watch over himself, that would mean, he would remain stationary. He wouldn't come out to destroy every bit of evidence that Zatland left behind, even if he could do that, that would be too much effort, to follow Zatland especially if he wanted to keep track of him. Zatland could leave a marking behind and sprint to a spot over a thousand meters in either direction before Isaac could even erase part of one. If Isaac were to do that, he would never catch up to Zatland, even if you gave him a century to do so.

Tagging.

Everybody thought that it was only something gang leaders or Skaters would do, but the military used the same concepts to relay information and reinforce teams, and other things like missiles. If you spray paint a special kinda of ink onto a flat wall, a missile could track it from more than a thousand miles away from the launch site.

Unfortunately for Zatland, he didn't have the necessary art supply to initiate on such an endeavor. Furthermore, Zatland and Zion didn't have an assigned system of symbolizations that they could use to communicate.

Zatland collided with a woman that wore bright red lipstick, her bag crashed to the ground, and he helped her pick it up. He now had a small red lipstick container; it was for the best if he used it sparingly.

If he was looking for a symbol that Zion would recognize. What better than the symbols that they came up with for their homemade videogame. King Agro.

The first symbol was a skull-shaped wine bottle that was cracked and spilling its content, the content was blood, and it fell like it was being blown by the wind. This was the most epic of depictions a child could make; but now seemed kinda lame because of the years, now that they were older going over it. They had invested hours to create symbols for a video game only the two of them ever played, how embarrassingly geeky that was.

Zatland began tagging random walls with a rough outline of the picture. It was noticeable but not very noticeable. If you didn't recognize the symbol, you could walk right by it, without noticing it.

But if you did recognize it, it would stand out. It would make you think...what is this doing here?

He wondered what Issac would do about it.

...

One, two, three options were possible for him: the market place, the mall, or an apartment duplex.

An apartment duplex seemed, a little too claustrophobic, for a man that was being chased. Even if the area were large enough, there would be too many angles in which to be cornered., it wouldn't be large enough, So Zatland wouldn't choose that. The mall was the same, even though it had a lot of people, the place was pretty confided.

Zion wondered, why hadn't Zatland tried to contact him so far, Maybe he somehow couldn't do it? Maybe their assessment was separated or something else more complicated?

Was his assessment finding Zatland or doing something else? Did he and Zatland have the same mission? Were they playing against each other or working together? Or had he failed the test even before they even started?

He kept wondering if maybe Zatland was already heading for the crystal lake building by now. Maybe he was just wasting time and should just turn around and run straight all the way to the lake base camp. That feeling of being left behind almost ate through his stomach. Did he f.u.c.k up? When he went inside that insurance place? Or when he exited it?

Well, no one was telling him about anything yet, So he didn't know if his recruitment had been denied already. He decided, he would follow the clues as far as he could possibly, before finding Zatland. Zatland would hold the answer to his problem if he could find him in time.

Soon they both would have to start heading back to crystal lake base nonetheless if they were late the first day of recruitment, their dignity would be torn asunder before the entire space sector.

Only the military would publicize their humiliations. Being late was a nonnegotiable offense here, and people would often get hazed to death as a punishment for non-compliancy.

Hazing was a great way to reinforce rules, even those who didn't experience the pain would never want to experience it. It's kinda like a police shooting, every time it happened you would begin to wonder if you would be the next victim of it. It made it a lot harder to commit crimes.

If he failed this test, he'd still have a little chance to begin his training, but if he were to be late to the crystal lake appointment, they would kick him out of the military for a year.

He set a timer; there were one hour and twelves minutes, he could use that to find Zatland on the base. They both were running right out of time. And the crystal base camp was a one hour sprint from here. They had 2 hours to get to the base, and Zion could only use one hour and 12 minutes of them at most if he hoped to get to the training: and that was while sprinting the whole way.

Was this a test? Had he failed it? Was Zatland going ahead of him? Unfortunately, Zion could not find all the footage of the events that had taken place while Zatland was running. He hadn't seen the footage of Issac shooting at Zatland between the folds of civilians.

If he first saw that, he would have more reason to find Zatland sooner. He would at least believed his friend was in real danger, or still taking the test; both would have reassured him that what he was doing was the right thing and that he was not just stupidly messing up again.

...

A few miles away from Zion, Isaac watched them both through the lens of his phone. He saw Zion following closer on the trail, and Zatland still trying to steal a phone. He decided to do something about it; He decided to switch targets.