Ch. 55 | New Beginning 13: The Other Side

The door slammed behind her hard enough to shake the frame.

For several seconds, nobody moved. We just stood there, staring at each other in stunned silence.

“What the fuck just happened?” I asked, dumbfounded, struggling to make sense of what just happened.

The security-room door was still hanging slightly ajar. Considering how hard Alysa had slammed it, I wouldn't have been surprised if she'd actually broken the damn thing. Through the narrow gap, I could see part of the room beyond it. And oh boy, it was a fucking mess, empty food containers were stacked across one side of the desk. Chip bags and clothes covered half the floor, and several pizza boxes had been shoved beneath a chair. The enormous wall display that I assumed was supposed to show the building's security feeds was instead occupied by some brightly colored game.

Maya slowly sank down until she was sitting against the wall.

I looked from her to the door again. “Umh, is this normal?”

“Sad as I am to admit it…” Maya rested the back of her head against the wall and closed her eyes. “Yes.”

A muffled voice came from inside the room.

“Maya!”

Maya's entire face tightened, and she opened her eyes again.

“What?” she asked, turning her head toward the direction of the voice.

“Bring me lunch later.”

Maya just stared at the door blankly.

“I want mushroom pizza, I won’t eat anything else. Ooh, and don’t forget that pink sauce that I like.” A muffled voice added soon after

Maya slowly leaned her head back against the wall again.

She looked so comically done with her life that I could have laughed if it weren’t kind of sad.

“You're supposed to be watching the security feeds,” Maya called through the door.

There was a pause.

“Relax, it’s going to be fine.”

“No, it’s not! Alysa, we are supposed to be watching them for a reason, if anything gets stolen…”

“If somebody steals something, I'll just get it back.” Alysa interrupts her. “Later, when I’m done with my game, no harm, no foul, am I right ?“ She adds soon after.

“I bet you don't even know what we're guarding.” Maya shoots back.

“I already said it's fine!” Alysa shouts louder.

Maya's eyes closed again.

“Alysa, liste–“

“Buzz off. You're making me lose, and if I lose because of you bozos, believe me, there is going to be hell to pay.” She shouted it through the door like Maya was nothing more than an annoying fly buzzing about near her ear.

For a few seconds, an awkward silence settled over the room.

Maya stayed where she was for several more seconds before dragging in a deep breath. “I don't know how much longer I can keep doing this.”

Something in her voice made Marcus's expression soften immediately, he crouched beside her and put a hand on her shoulder. “Hey. Don't go there.”

Maya gave him a tired look. “Marcus… “

“I mean it.” He lowered his voice. “You're not going to have to deal with this forever.”

Narun glanced toward the security-room door with a serious look on his face, and Marcus followed his gaze briefly before continuing.

“We were going to wait until Uden came back before telling you.”

Maya frowned. “Telling me what?”

Marcus exchanged a look with Narun, which was enough to catch my attention. Narun was the one who finally answered.

“We've been talking. About Alysa.”

Maya straightened slightly at that. From behind the closed door came another faint burst of game audio, followed by Alysa screeching loud enough that it made my ears hurt, making the silence that followed all the more intense.

Marcus sat down beside her. “We're done.”

Maya stared at him, but Marcus didn't give her much time to respond.

“When the captain comes back, we're going to her together. We’ll give her an ultimatum– Either Alysa goes, or we do, there is no other way this gets resolved without the entire squad quitting on the spot.”

For the first time since I'd met her, Maya seemed genuinely speechless.

“You're serious?”

“Completely,” Marcus replies with a look that means business.

Narun folded his arms. “I've only been here a few months, and I've already had enough. She doesn't train with us. She barely handles her own duties—fuck, half the time Maya has to do them for her. And whenever she actually does bother joining us, she fucks things up so badly we'd all wish she’d rather stayed away.”

Marcus snorted. “Half? More like all the time.”

Narun nods. “No point in keeping her around when all she does is drag down the rest of the squad”

Maya looks around between them.

“You had already planned all of it ?” She asked, her eyes widening slightly.

Marcus nods. “Didn’t have much of a choice, any more of this and we’ll all be dead sooner than later“

Her gaze moved toward Oba.

He was still sitting where he'd been throughout almost the entire disaster, elbows resting on his knees.

“You’re in on this too?”

Oba shrugged. “I said I'd at least hear them out.”

“Huh. Never took you for a rebel.” Maya looked genuinely surprised.

Marcus coughed into his fist. “We already talked about this.”

Oba gave no response beyond a small nod as he went back to staring into the distance.

Marcus gave him a hard look. “Listen, man, you don’t have to be thrilled about this. Just don’t leave us hanging when the moment comes.”

Oba murmurs something that sounded like an agreement and proceeded to fiddle with his knife again.

Maya rolled her eyes. “Put a sock in it. No more arguing, alright? We’ve got a guest here.” She gestured in my direction.

"Don’t mind me, I’m fine," I reply nonchalantly.

Marcus shoots me a look. “What about you, new girl? Like it or not, you are part of Ninth now.“

Narun hums in agreement as Marcus keeps looking me straight in the eyes. “You in?“

I shrugged, but before I could answer, Maya cut in.

“Hey, leave the new girl alone. It’s not fair to drag her into this when she barely knows any of us yet.”

“Alright, alright.” Marcus raised his hands in surrender. “All I’m saying is, now that she’s part of the Ninth, she’s gonna have to pick a side sooner or later.”

Maya let out a long sigh. “Can we leave it here for now? You guys are starting to give me a migraine.”

Marcus's expression softened. “Sure, let's can it. I'm honestly kind of surprised you aren't shutting this whole thing down.”

Maya averted her gaze. “I'm tired, Marcus. My head hurts, and I'm really not in the mood to play white knight for Alysa right now.”

Marcus kept talking, but somewhere along the way I stopped paying quite as much attention to what he was actually saying.

Narun agreed with him. Oba hadn't committed completely, but he hadn't exactly objected either. Even Maya, who seemed to spend half her life cleaning up after Alysa, looked like she had finally run out of energy to defend her. Listening to them, it was hard not to think they had a point. Hells, I had known Alysa for less than a minute and she'd already threatened me, shoved Maya around, insulted everyone in reach, and tried to have me thrown out because she didn't like my face or something.

Maybe she really was every bit as awful as they said.

Still... something about how quickly everyone had ended up on the same side was starting to bother me.

I'd seen that happen before.

Not here. This whole workplace drama was obviously different, but I knew what it was like when a group singled one person out as the problem. Even if that person genuinely was the problem, once the target was on their back, it became almost impossible to shake it off. Every mistake became proof that everyone had been right about them from the start, while anything that didn't fit the narrative was conveniently ignored. Once enough people agreed on who the problem was, questioning it became its own kind of risk, and everyone else learned pretty quickly to laugh along, nod, or at the very least stay out of the way.

For years, I'd been the person on the other end of that stick. The comparison wasn't fair, and I knew it. Alysa wasn't some helpless little girl tormented by a gang of bullies. She made liberal use of the fact that she had outranked everyone in the room, and I myself saw Maya take the brunt of her shit with my own eyes.

However, it’s also important to consider that I was only here for an hour or two and may not be privy to all the intricacies of the inner workings of the squad.

I didn't know what had happened between them before today. I didn't know Uden, and I definitely didn't know why Alysa was still vice captain if she was really as disastrous as everyone claimed. For all I knew, there were parts of this mess nobody had bothered mentioning because they were inconvenient, or simply didn’t fit the story everyone had already settled on.

As things stood now, what Marcus has said was completely right. And yet, there was something about this whole thing that irked me the wrong way. Maybe that’s what years of bullying does to one, make you instantly take the side of the “victim”, even if they technically deserve what they are getting.

Marcus’s pulled me out of my train of thought. “What about you?”

I blinked. “What about me?”

“You're part of ninth now too, so you get a say in how squad gets run.” He leaned back slightly. “You with us?”

Narun glanced my way. Maya raised her head slightly.

“I…”

That was all I had to do. Say yes, go along with everyone else, and avoid putting myself at odds with the first people who had actually welcomed me into their group. After everything that had happened at the Academy, the thought of finally belonging somewhere was more tempting than I wanted to admit, and Alysa certainly hadn't given me much reason to stick my neck out for her.

And yet, no matter how much easier it would've been, I couldn't make myself say yes.

As far as I was aware, everything they were saying about Alysa was true. Hell, judging by the way she'd acted since walking into the room, she seemed determined to prove them right. But even then, I couldn't bring myself to go along with it. Not when I'd known Alysa for barely a few minutes.

I'd spent most of my life being the person everyone else turned against. I wasn't about to join the other side, just because for once I wasn’t the one being trampled on.