Sophia returned to her new sleeping quarters with her container of childhood possessions to find her bag, still full, and a stack of four MRE field-ration packs by her bed. The top one was chicken fajita, which she considered the worst-tasting ration pack ever made.
She was too exhausted to check her bag for all the possessions—and there wasn’t anything of value in there. Instead, she placed her canteen beside the ration packs and pulled the small flashlight from her bag. She removed its batteries and exchanged them with the old ones in her cassette player. She drank half the canteen to rehydrate, put her earphones in her ears and lay down on the bed.
She hit play.
