Day Two
Holly showed up before my alarm again, pulling me from sleep with an abrupt knock on the door.
“I’m up,” I grumbled.
“Rise and shine!” She came bursting into the room.
Today she was wearing all black, some sort of tactical gear adorned with straps and pockets, but all flush and form-fitting otherwise. Her golden hair and deep blue eyes stood out from the dark outfit. I started getting up in an attempt to appear productive before she caught me staring.
“Brought you a present,” she said with a smile that stood stark to the dreary little room.
She held out a bundle of clothes, a similar ensemble to what she was wearing, complete with a new pair of boots.
“They aren’t special made or anything, so you’ll have to be careful with them,” she stated as she handed me the boots. “But today we won’t be doing anything too physical, so this should all be ok.”
I quickly dressed while Holly pretended not to watch. Once changed, I stretched and moved about, surprised at how much flexibility the tight-fitting clothes had. We headed down to the mess hall for a breakfast almost identical to the one the day before. The only difference was Aaron was manning the front desk, so Derek joined us, and Michael was nowhere to be seen.
Again I out-ate everyone, including Derek. He seemed most impressed by my appetite.
“This morning we’re going to do some very light combat and weapons training,” James announced after breakfast. “You’ll work with Derek and Holly on some fundamentals for hand to hand combat and then light weapons training. If this morning goes well, we might get to something more tactical this afternoon.”
“Sounds good to me!”
“After all, despite your obvious physical gifts, it was pretty clear you don’t know how to fight,” James said with a wry smile.
“Hey! I won!” But I laughed anyway.
“There’s a lot more to fighting than simply winning a single bout, or getting lucky,” he said, putting a heavy hand on my shoulder as he moved passed.
He was right, of course. I knew next to nothing about fighting. Not to say I hadn’t fought my share of battles, but they’d all occurred in my head while staring blankly at a blackboard in class.
With a plan for the day’s activities in place, Holly, Derek, and I headed downstairs. This was the first time I had seen Derek anywhere other than behind the front desk. The service elevator that had easily fit five of us yesterday felt cramped today with his hulking figure. In the enclosed space he was even more intimidating like he had jumped from the pages of a comic book. As if the artist were told to draw their interpretation of the most imposing human they could. Then told to exaggerate that even more. He was wearing the same black outfit as Holly and me, which only went to further accentuate his figure—just a massive being of flesh and muscle dressed in combat gear.
The elevator safely reached the bottom (not that I was worried…) and they led me to an area just beyond the mats they used for sparring. Located here were a dozen different punching bags, speed bags, and other training tools. I recognized a few of the wooden statues from a movie I’d seen, IP Man.
“Here.” Holly tossed me some sparring gloves.
“Do we really need these?” I asked as I put them on. Weren’t our bodies supposed to be tougher?
“It’s not to protect your hands; it’s to protect the equipment,” she replied.
“Come over here,” Derek’s deep voice called to me.
He was standing beside one of the punching bags. It looked to be a sturdy thing, standing out of the ground. The ceiling was far too high to hang it from a chain.
“I heard you gave Logan quite the thrashing. Let’s see you throw a punch,” he said.
I squared up with the padded bag and tried to envision what a good punch should look like. Use your body, generate power with the legs, twist the hips, transfer to the shoulders and extend through the arm into the fist… I had no idea what I was doing. I punched the bag as well as I could. The padding was much more forgiving than I thought a bag would be, but its yield ran out abruptly. The shock echoed back through my body.
“Hmm, not terrible, but we have some work to do,” Derek observed.
“What is that thing made out of?” I asked, shaking my hand.
“It’s padding on a concrete pillar,” Holly stated.
“Oh.”
I took a half-step back. This way my fist would hit the bag at the end of its travel, not before. But it didn’t matter anyway, Derek repositioned me and walked me through everything. My stance, how to transfer power, how to move every part of my body. We spent the next ten minutes with just footwork. He didn’t even let me involve my hips until he was satisfied I had a solid base down first and could move quickly and smoothly.
After more practice he let me rotate my upper body, and then I finally received permission to extend my arm, but only after he fixed how my arm, elbow, and fist were positioned. Then came another twenty minutes of putting it all together and doing it over and over.
“Good! Looks like you’ve got that down. Time to learn how to jab,” Derek stated.
And that’s how my morning went—one style of strike after another. The first one took almost an hour to get down well enough for Derek to be satisfied. Holly stuck around and offered some assistance, but mostly she watched or worked on her own techniques with some of the other equipment. Thankfully, I got better with each new maneuver, needing less time and reps to learn each subsequent blow.
One important thing became quickly apparent: much like how my mind could now remember better than before, so could my body. The muscle memory wasn’t as instinctive, but after practicing dozens of times I could reliably and accurately follow along with what he wanted. Combine this instinctive muscle memory with amazing stamina and an expert teacher, suddenly learning techniques and fighting skills that should have taken months of constant practice instead took a single morning.
“Just because you can throw a punch, kick, jab, or elbow doesn’t mean you know how to fight.” Derek’s advice kept me grounded.
“It takes years of constant training, and more importantly, application in stressful circumstances to truly employ everything you have learned. Using the right strike, right take-down, or correct technique in any given situation is much more difficult than simply memorizing how to perform them. But you are doing well.”
I smiled at that.
Logan arrived downstairs with James, carrying bags from the nearby deli for all of us. I ate a club sandwich in silence while Derek reported to James about our progress.
“The kid learns quickly. He obviously has the physical gifts, but it’s his mental game I’m most impressed with. Almost never makes the same mistake twice.”
I tried not to eavesdrop too much, but with improved hearing and no other conversations that was a hard task. They talked a bit more about what we had gone over and where we were. I felt pleased with my progress.
Tom would be proud. I was doing almost exactly what he had hoped. Well, except for the whole “starting a revolution” thing. I had no doubt we could effect change on the world, but it remained to be seen if it was the type Tom had envisioned.
“Ready for weapons training?” Logan said, cutting through my reverie.
“Yeah!” I replied quickly as we all stood up. I was eager for more.
“Come back to me when you’re ready for more real combat,” Derek lightly mocked.
I glanced between the two of them, slightly confused.
“Don’t mind him,” Holly reassured me as we started walking away.
“He just prefers a more… intimate type of combat,” Logan responded.
Holly and Logan retrieved some duffel bags from one of the rooms in the wall of underground cavern, and then we all headed back toward the far wall, opposite the elevator. Here there was a tunnel that stretched into the darkness. Tracks on the ground led off into the darkness. James found a heavy-duty switch on the ground that had wiring following the tracks. He flicked it and lights came on, illuminating targets farther down the tunnel.
“These are the tunnels I told you about, they connected the underground bunkers,” Holly supplied as way of explanation. “They were blocked off with debris sometime after the Cold War. It looked intentional, but we cleared away the rubble up to five-hundred meters.”
Is that how far the furthest target was? They were lit up at different intervals, but it was hard to judge distance in the darkness. They looked like the silhouettes the police used, but their reflections suggested a metal construct, not paper.
Before I was allowed to even touch a weapon, they went over some basics. The rules seemed obvious: don’t point at anything you didn’t intend to kill, don’t put a finger on the trigger until you are ready to fire, always treat a weapon as if it’s loaded, clear your weapons before and after using… the rules went on and on. And yet, when they first handed me a pistol, I almost swung it around when Holly addressed me. I barely caught myself, but she raised her eyebrows regardless. Busted. I made a point to keep my hand facing toward the tunnel and the gun pointed down from there on out.
Once the rules were established, I thought we would get into the shooting, but no. Much like fighting, there were a hundred things to learn first. They showed me how to disassemble the pistol and reassemble it. Then they made me do it ten times over. Logan showed off a little, demonstrating how he could do it twice as fast with his eyes closed and all the pieces randomly laid out in front of him.
“Not the most useful talent,” Derek muttered.
Apparently he had decided watching us was more entertaining than training alone.
But I was impressed. His fingers were a blur even to my eyes. I didn’t mind this training. It was cathartic, in a way. Like playing with adult Legos. Not quite mindless, but certainly not physically demanding like walking through all the various forms of movements required in different strikes.
Once they were satisfied I knew how the weapon worked, they finally let me point it at a target (the chamber still empty, of course). Just like the training that morning, there were another dozen steps before actually shooting. How to stand, how to position my feet, hips, chest, shoulders, arms, and hands. How to breathe. Even how to pull the trigger.
Finally it was time to shoot, but first they had special hearing protection. They were sleek in-ear devices, not like the bulky mufflers I’d seen before. They also didn’t seem to impede hearing at low volume.
“Just because our ears would likely heal doesn’t mean there’s any reason to damage them in the first place,” Holly explained as she helped me put them on. “Ready?”
I nodded and she walked me forward and helped me get into position.
The closest target was only five meters away, about the same length as the living room I shared with Tom. This particular target wasn’t as affected by the disembodiment effect of the darkness as the other targets. The farther ones appeared as glowing wraiths floating in the night, but the light from behind us helped with the closer ones. I could see it clearly with both eyes; it was about the size of an average man. But once I lined my eyes up with the iron sights on the top of the pistol, it seemed to shrink.
I mentally followed through the checklist, starting at my feet and working up through my body. Once content I was in a satisfactory position I concentrated on breathing. In and out, in and out, slowly. I let my finger close in on the trigger, trying my best to pull smoothly.
BANG!
A blast of light appeared at the end of the barrel. The weapon recoiled from the flame, pressing hard into my hand, a casing ejected from the open slide disappearing into the darkness, and I swear I could see metal charging away from the explosion. A split second later a metallic pang reported through the empty space.
“Not bad,” James commented.
There was a new hole just to the left of the chest area.
“Again.” He nodded forward.
I went through my mental checklist again.
BANG!
This shot was down and to the right. Odd, I didn’t feel like anything was different.
“You flinched,” Logan stated.
“Did I?”
“Yeah, but no worries. Happens all the time,” Holly reassured.
“You pulled down as you were pulling the trigger to compensate for the kick of the gun,” Logan explained.
“Watch me.” He stepped up with his own gun in hand, and fired a shot down range, dead center.
“Now here’s what happens if you flinch.” He fired again.
This time, observing him, it was obvious what he was doing. His body tensed up just before the shot, his contracting muscles pulling the gun downward as it went off.
“Shooting is like using any tool. The difference is your mind knows it is inherently dangerous, even pointed elsewhere. It is loud and violent. Your body wants to react to that. It’s almost the opposite of what you learned this morning. Here you must fight your instincts. Fight your muscles, but do so mentally.” He tapped his temple. “You cannot tense up, you cannot let your body defeat your mind. Shooting is almost entirely the mental overcoming the physical. Anyone is physically capable of pointing a gun and pulling the trigger. The gun is the same in my hand or yours, but my bullet will always go where I want it. Will yours?” he asked as he stepped back.
No pressure.
I fired the rest of the rounds in the magazine. They made a circle around his centered shot.
“Not too bad for a beginner. In all reality, you are much better than a beginner. The virus will accelerate learning any new skill that requires physical ability, but unfortunately that’s not good enough for what we do,” James said matter-of-factly. “I’m not trying to discourage you; we’ll continue to work on this, but just know that the objective is perfection. If you enter a room following a flashbang, there will be people shooting at you, and you may have to hit a target that is using a human shield. There is no such thing as close enough,” he finished.
James nodded and Holly walked out to the target. She stopped in front of it.
“I’m not shooting at that,” I protested.
“And I would never ask you too. At this point she’s far more valuable to us than you are,” James stated.
Logan stepped up but turned around facing us, gun holstered.
“Go!”
As the sound of the word began emanating from James, Logan moved. Pushing with one foot he pirouetted in place, smoothly drawing with his other hand. Both hands came together, leveling the pistol as he finished his spin. Three shots fired so quickly they sounded as one, the three separate bounces of brass doing more to distinguish them.
Three new holes had appeared on the target. Two barely discernable from each other between Holly’s arm and body, a separation of maybe an inch. The third was just a hairsbreadth from her cheek, in the target’s head.
“Damn.” I didn’t know what else to say.
Holly walked back with a wink. Logan holstered the pistol with a cocky grin.
“We won’t be having you do anything like that,” James said, “but that is how good we expect you to become if you want to be a part of this team.” He leveled his gaze at me. “Keep up the good work.”
“As you can see, we have a lot of work to do!” Logan said.
And so we got to work. I spent the entire afternoon shooting rounds down range. We started with the closest targets, and didn’t move on until Logan was satisfied that I could keep a grouping under a handbreadth. Not spectacular, but good enough for day one. Then we moved onto sub-machine guns and rifles. These were much more fun. Logan explained they were used more for spraying bullets down range and suppression. Accuracy was important, but not everything. Though, eventually I should be able to perform the same regardless of the weapon. He said they rarely had the opportunity to use anything larger than a handgun because of the covert nature of their operations.
Finally Holly pulled out a bolt-action sniper rifle.
“Logan may be king of close range, but when you need to do more than shake someone’s hand, really reach out to them, I’m the queen,” she declared.
Logan rolled his eyes.
“This is a SAKO T-R-G forty-two chambered with a 3-3-8 Lapua Magnum cartridge,” she spoke almost reverently, her touch more of a caress along the body of the rifle.
I almost felt a pang of jealousy watching her.
“It has a reinforced barrel chamber for hotter rounds. We use tungsten ammunition. It will penetrate body armor at over five-hundred meters and is capable of taking down single hard targets.”
I nodded along as if I understood a single thing she was saying.
“She means a vehicle or someone like you and me,” Logan whispered at me side-long.
She slid the magazine carefully into the rifle and laid down on the ground before sliding the bolt gently forward. Her every movement deliberate. She lay there, perfectly still, breathing slowly. In the silence I could concentrate and hear her heartbeat. I counted silently—it seemed like her heartrate had slowed to only twenty beats per minute. Her breathing stopped altogether. The rifle went off with a boom just a moment later. Her whole body rocked with the shock, and a flame shot forward in the darkness halfway to the closest target. After a moment, she fired again.
“Here.” Logan handed me a spotting scope.
It was focused for the five-hundred meter target. I could only see one hole placed dead center on the target’s head.
“Come here.” Holly waved me forward.
I laid down next to her, attempting to copy the position she had been in. Still, she didn’t even let me touch the rifle until she had adjusted my every limb.
“Better,” she said. “Now, this isn’t a game of showmanship like what Logan does.”
I heard him scoff behind us.
“Think of this rifle as your lover. You have to be gentle with her, caress her, respect her, and she will perform for you. Logan wouldn’t know anything about that.”
I tried to ignore their back and forth and concentrate on the gun.
“Here, hold her like this.” Holly positioned the rifle in my arms and readjusted me some more.
“Slow your breathing, your heartrate, hold the target in your eye and your mind,” she explained. “Then, when you feel everything is aligned, hold your breath and fire between heartbeats.”
I attempted to do everything she asked. Unfortunately, laying so close to Holly, I could feel the warmth of her breath, smell her in the air. My heartrate refused to slow down. Still, I fired downrange with her shots as a target. In my defense, I did hit the silhouette, but my shot was about eight inches below hers and way off center.
“Try again,” she breathed.
My next shot was better, but only by half.
“It’s ok, once more.” She lightly touched my arm.
My heartrate practically doubled at her touch. I missed altogether.
“Performance issues?” Logan asked from behind us.
I set the rifle down and stood up.
“Don’t worry about it,” Logan said with a laugh. “Holly’s the only one even allowed to touch that thing.” He waved at the rifle. “The ammo is too expensive to waste too much practicing, and she’s the best.”
I sighed. This afternoon hadn’t gone as well as the morning had. All of this was much less instinctive than learning how to manipulate my own body and muscles. I felt more exhausted from firing weapons with them all afternoon than I had from physically moving all morning.
“You ready for some more real training?” Derek had appeared again.
He sure could move quietly for how large he was.
“Yeah.” I was ready for something different.
“Last thing for the day,” Holly said with a smile. “You’re doing great.”
I smiled in return at her encouragement.
“You guys have fun. I’ll just stay here and clean up after us,” Logan declared.
“Don’t mind him—he’d much rather play with his little boom-sticks than learn real combat,” Derek said.
“I’m still hurt!” Logan retorted with a gesture at his ribs.
“Excuses!” Derek shot back.
Logan got to work picking up all the guns and ammo and packing them back into the duffle bags.
“I’ll join you two in a minute.” Holly bent to help Logan.
“She just doesn’t trust him with her rifle,” Derek whispered to me as we walked away.
I chuckled at that.
We walked back towards the training mats. When we got there, I saw another duffle bag placed on them. Out in front was a small display blades, including two wooden ones. Based on how the rest of the day had gone, I figured I would get to know those two best.
“Logan can keep his fancy tricks, but give me a good blade in an enclosed space every time,” Derek declared. “A bullet isn’t a guarantee, especially when facing people like us.” He nodded conspiratorially.
“I bet you could close the distance between that first target and Logan before he finished his spin,” Derek contemplated. “I’d take you with a knife over him with his pistol any day of the week.”
I wasn’t ready to personally take that bet.
“But you can shoot, right?” I asked. James said it was integral we all be on the same level.
“Sure. If I have to,” he replied. “But I can’t use those little guys. I have a special-made MP5 with a bigger trigger guard. Big hands.” He waved them with a grin. “It’s also easier for me to conceal a larger weapon.”
I could see that.
“Regardless, guns jam, bullets miss critical organs or targets altogether, are sometimes even stopped, and most importantly, people like us or anyone hopped up on drugs or adrenaline can fight through a ton of damage. That’s where these come in.” He gestured toward the display. “They are extensions of your body and therefore as reliable as you are.”
“Still standing around, boys?” Holly sauntered up.
“Some people only care about action, never the why behind it,” Derek said with a sigh.
“Actions equal results,” Holly said as she retrieved one of the blades.
She began spinning it around her hand and through her fingers. It became a blur, reflecting the light at odd angles as it spun.
Derek shook his head, but we began anyway. Once again, it was all about the basics: how to hold a blade, how to move, and how to utilize it best in a fight. However, unlike previous training, we spent almost as much time going over how to fight against someone with a knife when I was empty handed—how to disarm somebody, avoid letting them close space, and most importantly how to avoid the pointy end.
The most important lesson I learned was that if they had a knife and I didn’t, I either had to win immediately or change the dynamic of the fight. Which could mean getting a weapon myself, disarming them, or running to open space and awaiting backup.
We practiced with the weapon placed in various spots: between us, behind one of us, or two placed randomly on the mat. The object was to get a weapon while keeping the other person from retrieving one and place it at a vital point on them. It felt like playing an elaborate game of tag… except the consequences were potentially life and death. Still, a lot of fun, and far more enjoyable than the tediousness of learning how to shoot a gun.
I can’t say I was very good at fighting with a knife. I didn’t know any advanced maneuvers like Holly or Derek. They made knife-fighting look like magic; the knife was a very real illusion as it moved so quickly. But I did pretty well. I was stronger and could move more quickly than Holly, and I was far more agile than Derek. This all helped me avoid them when they had the knife or tap them where I wanted when I did.
“Honestly, most fights are over very quickly,” Derek stated at one point. “It’s nothing like you see in the movies. People don’t dance around for minutes at a time with fancy maneuvers and flourishes. One person loses, and then it’s over. The winner hopefully walks away with few injuries. So being fast and precise is far more important than showmanship.”
I took that as encouragement. I only had the basics, but I could do them very well. By the end I was winning almost every contest.
“Why don’t we change things up a bit?” Holly suggested with a mischievous smile.
“What did you have in mind?” I asked suspiciously.
“Well, you only fight when you have a great chance of winning or no other choice, so the odds are hardly ever fair…” She gave a nod to Derek, and they advanced on me together.
They each had one of the wooden practice blades. I had none. I backed up to the edge of the mat, watching them both apprehensively.
What had felt like a fun but competitive game had turned into something else entirely. Derek moved forward, graceful for his size, like a hulking dancer, his face unreadable. Holly moved far more lithely, like a tigress ready to pounce on her prey at any second. Her face was full of confidence—eyes hard, a tight smile with no humor.
I took a deep breath. I had one tool they didn’t know about. Time slowed around me. Their steps slowed as if they were moving through molasses. Their fluidity and grace in motion remained, but the intimidating speed with which they could utilize it was gone, at least to me. The shadows that had stretched behind them from the light began extending in front of them, portraying their every move.
Holly struck first, her shadow planting before leaping forward. I took a step back. Her assault followed my feint, attempting to press me back, turn me, and put Derek behind me. Even with a much faster reaction, stronger muscles, and seeing her movements in advanced, her onslaught was a blur of motions. The shadow of the blade itself barely kept ahead of its flowing arc. But her movement faltered, hesitated. Anticipation for Derek’s opening. Her eyes distracted by what he was doing behind me, her movement meant to exploit me for his strike. It was only a moment in time, a fraction of a second. But it was all I needed. I caught her hand wielding the blade with such deadly fluidity. I stepped halfway around her, and spun. It almost felt like a dance.
Derek had kept things simple, taken up position behind me, and went for a straight strike aided by a grappling arm. Only, suddenly I wasn’t there, but Holly was. His arm meant to take me from one side crashed through empty air, the wooden blade striking nothing. Until he collided with Holly’s back.
I stepped back and watched them both crash to the floor. For good measure I quickly retrieved one of the dull blades and tapped Derek on the back. I smiled smugly, but it dropped way as I watched them struggle to untangle themselves. Derek got up and brushed himself off. I reached out, and after a moment of hesitation, Holly took my hand. I pulled her to her feet rather exuberantly. She caught herself from crashing into me with a hand on my chest but quickly took a step back.
“Thought we had you there,” she said with a sigh.
I exhaled slowly. Good. Not hurt, not mad, just disappointed.
“Almost!” I smiled at her.
She tossed the wooden practice knife at me in response.
“I’m going to go shower. I’ll see you at dinner,” she said as she walked away.
“Come help me pick all this stuff up,” Derek said.
I walked over and helped him pack up the blades. We hadn’t even touched any of the real ones.
“When will I learn how to use these?” I asked as I sheathed a particularly wicked looking dagger.
“Not today,” he responded.
We worked in silence for a minute. The only sounds were the blades going snick into their homes. I helped him put the less dangerous bundles into another duffle bag. I wondered where they were coming from. Probably one of the many storerooms located along the outer wall.
“Just give her a minute to cool off,” Derek said as he picked them up.
“Hmm?” I glanced over at him. Had Holly actually been upset?
“Holly. She’s not… Well, none of us are used to losing. In fact, none of us would even be here if we had ever lost for real before. That goes for everything we do,” he explained.
“But this is just training!” I said somewhat exasperated. Wasn’t the whole point to make me better?
“Ever notice how everyone is so proud they can do one thing or another better than you? It’s because, to the rest of us at least, you literally showed up two days ago and have taken to things that took us years of practice. What you are doing? It isn’t natural, even for people like us.”
We began walking toward the elevator. He pressed the button to call it down. Holly had gone up alone.
“Wait here.”
He walked toward one of the doors and punched a code into a pad next to it. He disappeared inside but reappeared quickly sans duffle bag. We stood in relative silence, waiting for the elevator to return.
“You are what they envisioned when they created people like us,” Derek continued as we rode up the elevator.
“They?” I asked.
“The government, military strategists, scientists, and in your case I think even programmers,” he said with a smirk.
“B