November 19th, 2024:

The wall didn’t budge when she crashed into it. Walls never did. Without a word of explanation her mother had grabbed her roughly by the left upper arm and had shoved her out of the room. She grimaced when she rubbed her sore arm; that was definitely going to leave a bruise.
It was all her own fault. Despite her father telling her not to, she had snuck out of the base with a couple of the other Rooks. On a dare, to see if they would get away with it. Just a couple of teens being rebellious.
She looked over her shoulder, back into the room and saw her father sitting on the end of the bed, his elbows resting on his thighs, his face buried in his hands. He could easily have been crying, but she knew it was something different. She had no idea what it was.
For as long as she could remember her father had suffered from tremendous headaches. She had them about it, but she had never gotten a straight answer from either of them. Like it was some big secret she wasn’t supposed to know.
Still, it had never been her intention to have them worry about her. She could hold her own perfectly well. It had nothing to do with her and everything to do with what was on topside. It was the only world she had ever known, even if she had been born in the old world.
Her mother stood looking at her from under her eyebrows, an accusing look of ‘see what you have done’ on her face. She had one hand on the side of the door, the other rested on her hip.
“I’m so sorry, mom,” she mumbled, feeling like a chastised four-year-old instead of the fifteen-year-old she was supposed to be.
Her mother snorted with contempt, shook her head one last time and closed the door. Tears welled in the corners of her eyes and she tried to swallow the lump that had formed at the back of her throat.
“Someone’s in trouble,” someone said in a singsong voice a few feet behind her. “What did you do now, sis?”
Laughter could clearly be heard in her voice. She whirled around and saw her sister lean casually against the wall, her arms folded across her chest.
“We snuck out,” she said in a low voice, jumping with a start when a beastly howl carried through the door of her parents’ quarters into the tunnels of the underground base.
Her heart pounded savagely and her head began to ache. The howl had come from her father. Why had he howled like an animal shot? What was her mother doing to him?
Her sister raised an eyebrow: “And so it begins.”
“Begins?” She echoed.
“Nothing.”
“If you know something, just tell me now!” She ordered.
Her sister looked at her: “Don’t you order me, snot-nose,” she warned before she turned on her heels and stalked away.
She glanced at the closed door one last time and started down the tunnel.
“What’s done is done,” she muttered to herself. “Can’t go back in time and undo it.”
She sighed in defeat. It was just one of those days where everyone seemed to be against her. Her sister, half-sister technically, was not someone to mess around with. But who in her family actually was?
They were all high up in military ranks, only her sister and her were at the start of a long and glorious military career. That was if they lived long enough to have one. She had thought of declining a life in the military, but with her background, there was no other choice.

Destiny was calling her name. The call grew stronger and stronger with each passing day until it could no longer be ignored, no longer denied. It echoed through the tunnels of the base. It beckoned her on the battlefield.
Her name...?
Wilder Storm Devlin. The daughter of General Sarah ‘Ghost’ Connor and Major General Tyler ‘the Devil’ Devlin. And with parents like hers, she was expected no less than to follow in their footsteps.

Chapter Index - Warriors Of Time - A Chosen Fate

Chapter 1: Writ In Blood, Signed With Steel