Over the past few months, Miles has noticed one unpleasant thing about himself: he has begun to have serious problems with sleep. At first it was fleeting, and he chalked it up to stress and a regime that gone crazy, because, really, how can he sleep when the damned Na’vi and plans to eliminate them are constantly spinning in his head. However, over time it only got worse, significantly affecting his daily well-being, causing him to blush painfully in front of the management from incessant yawns into the back of his hand covering his mouth.

And then, a couple of weeks ago he stopped falling asleep completely.

To make matters worse, sometimes he would begin to feel dizzy and weak when he couldn’t sleep all night for several weeks. However, he never told a word to anyone from fear of being considered too weak and unreliable, because how could he manage a task that demanded a constant state of alert and active thinking if he couldn’t even survive one night without sleep? Although his team was not aware of it yet, his performance started to decline, which he would explain it by being overworked.

He did not visit the hospital wing of the base out of pure principle, although he was well aware that there was no weakness in seeking medical help, Miles simply could not bring himself to do it, and therefore stubbornly continued to fight his own body with everything possible methods. Exorbitant physical activity was used on the basis that “to fall asleep, you need to be tired,” huge amounts of coffee and even weak alcohol, but the effect was zero.

However, even when he finally decided to see a doctor, they didn't tell him anything concrete. They merely confirmed Miles's suspicions that it was insomnia due to stress and suggested he start taking sleeping pills. He immediately dismissed the idea — God forbid something would go wrong and the medication would fail him. It was better to try to overcome this unpleasant condition himself. It couldn't last forever, after all. Sooner or later, his body would collapse from exhaustion anyway — the main thing was to make sure it wouldn’t happen during a battle.

For these reasons, Miles stopped taking direct part in missions, remaining in his office and issuing commands remotely. His behavior surprised the soldiers, who were accustomed to his eagerness to be in the forefront, but quite quickly they got used to the innovations and did not ask unnecessary questions, like the management as well, for which he was immensely grateful to them.

The work of the entire department had stalled, which was noticed not only by the commanders of the base, but also by his superiors. The constant irritability and excessive anger began to affect the quality of work and, most importantly, the attitude towards Miles from the management. However, even when several complaints have been received from the upper levels, he did not change anything in his life and did not even try to solve the problem, just tried to hide it.

Or, more precisely, their attitude would have changed if the quality of his work as head of RDA security had actually suffered seriously — but this did not happen for one simple reason. Any mistakes and inaccuracies that he inadvertently made in the documentation first passed through the hands of his immediate deputy and closest confidant, Sergeant Paz Socorro, who, as it turned out, was able to cover his back not only in the heat of battles with the Na'vi, but also with paperwork.