As the years passed (2 of them to be precise) we became even closer as a unit, working better together, sharing more feelings, and doing our best to be better, if not to others, then to each other as we battled other squads for survival in the ever-present culling tests, always there was a heavy death toll, we worked together to make sure it was never on our side.

  The whole time we were doing this, the Agency was lacing our food with all sorts of chemicals, made to keep our bodies running at peak efficiency and keep our mutations working as intended. At some point they just stopped trying to hide it and straight up gave it to us as a creamy, cold purple beverage that they called B-207 (shit was delicious) however as a nasty side effect, it pushed us deeper into puberty than we were meant to be at ages 13-14.

  Case and point we began to experience strong yet unfamiliar feelings and sensations, leading to fighting, destructive bouts of depression, and general inefficiency.

  I remember the inexorable draw to my female bunkmates, not knowing exactly why I felt the need to be so close to them or why any physical contact with them felt like heaven, scared that I might hurt them or myself, I reported it on our bunk's computer, and was told to standby.

  It wasn't just us, because shortly after this began, the Agency organized a class about sex ed where they described in detail the feelings we were feeling and the ways we could alleviate the stress (complete with diagrams)

  I'm not going to sugarcoat this bit, because in my many attempts to recount this, I've always altered it some way.

  But today facts are facts.

  They encouraged us to get intimate with each other, as long as it didn't affect our classroom and battlefield performance. Preaching even, that intimacy may improve team synergy. They even went so far as to add that the mutations we'd undergone had sterilized us, making it safe for everyone.

  And so, with the assurance of the people in charge that it would fix things, we dived into it with the abandon of children in a candy store. The feeling of sex was so incredibly addicting, we didn't want to stop. There were no boundaries between genders or sexualities, it was pure stress relief and bonding, as horrid as it sounds.

  My first few intimate experiences were bouncing between Wolf, Love, Ripper, and Edge in a frenzy of hedonistic experimentation, rewarded and reciprocated by each individual, each trying to get their relief from the other.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  And really, this new coping mechanism did its job at the end of the day.

  Our team grew closer, a bit too close if I'm being honest. My therapist calls it a "Codependency" which, after looking up what that is, makes sense.

  We were more tight-knit than before, galvanized by our attachment to each other, and I swore to whatever powers there were, that if anything happened to anyone in my crew, I would burn this facility to ash.

  But that's how they liked us, compliant and deadly, with very few conflicts between us after the fact.

  Speaking of conflicts, disagreements within our unit were commanded by the higher-ups to be settled with physical (non-deadly) violence, the loser had to apologize, no matter how right they felt. This led to many a strength-based hierarchy amongst the JAB populace, and suddenly I'm reminded of that story about the captive wolves and the misconceptions about wolf behavior born from a hostile captivity environment.

  That was us.

  Mostways into the program, they stopped punishing infractions against protocol and staff with physical injury and started simply denying us rations for 3 days, we later learned that the reason for this was that the culling process they instituted at the beginning of the program had worked too well and our generation of JAB agents had whittled its way down from thousands into the low hundreds now.

  In the face of starvation caused by misbehavior, It was Green and I who had the bright idea to steal rations for my crew.

  As I got better and better at it, It was often expected by some members of my crew to receive an extra MRE as a romantic gesture from myself or another crew member.

  However, after a while of watching the other squads suffer, I also ended up stealing rations for other crews, as I was the only one at the time who knew about the security blind spot in the leftmost corner of the mess where they brought the food in from the outside, the others gave us things in return, books, spare supplies, ammo requisitions, stuff of that sort.

  This singular advantage didn't last long and eventually, food was being stolen en masse by other JABs who decided to spy on me while I made supply runs.

  It would be much later that I discovered the higher-ups meant us to steal when taken from, it was another sick test of our survival instinct.

  I hated this place.

  But we wouldn't be here much longer.