The following day, Jhonny woke up with a slightly stiff neck. He remembered his last few moments before getting knocked out and felt embarrassed about the thoughts he had.
Of course, he knew Henry wasn't a vampire. He had fought off the Tamarains in broad daylight.
Plus, his mother put loads of garlic in their food, and he was fine.
He felt stupid for thinking that way, but then he remembered getting knocked out. Again.
"Could they not do that anymore? What a bunch of savages!" He cried out.
From the other room, Henry heard his little outburst.
"You finally up, kiddo? About time! Food is ready; get your ass in here!" he hollered.
"I told you not to call me kiddo!" Jhonny said, leaving his room.
He sat at the small table in front of what Henry had called food. It looked like gray mush, like he had passed everything through a blender.
"You call this food?" he asked, eyeing Henry suspiciously.
"Eat it. It's hydrated military rations. Full of nutrients. Plus, the taste is not half bad," Henry lied.
He knew the taste was horrible.
After chewing only once, Jhonny almost threw up.
"How is this 'not bad' !? Are you trying to poison me!?" Jhonny screamed through two fits of coughing.
"Oh, come on now. Don't be a sissy!" Henry laughed.
"Eat it all up; you're going to need the energy. Your training starts today," he added before chowing down his own gray muck and grimacing.
After their disgusting breakfast, Henry brought Jhonny down to the basement again. This time, he would be there for the day, inside the VCP.
Jhonny had to be trained in different combat arts. Even if the kid was an excellent marksman, he still needed to learn a few things to stay alive on different kinds of missions.
His first training would be guerilla tactics, to have him learn to relocate after a shot. A good sniper never stays long after his first shot, lest he gets spotted.
Now, Jhonny would learn that the hard way, with Henry as his target.
Henry set the VCP to jungle terrain and explained how the training would go.
"Today, you will learn about tracking and guerilla tactics. You and I will both start at different spots in the jungle, and you need to find and kill me before I kill you. Can you do that?" Henry asked.
"Wait. Kill you? You, kill me?! That's not training; that is suicide!" the kid yelled out.
"Don't worry, Jhonny. This is a simulation. Have you never used virtual reality before?" Henry asked, a little baffled.
"No, I haven't," the kid answered.
"We don't have access to that technology on Earth anymore," he added.
"Oh... Then don't you worry. Your actual body won't move from this room. It will just be an avatar inside a simulated environment. The simulation will stop once one of us dies, but it will restart until I'm the one dead. Can you do that?" Henry asked the boy.
"Well, in that case, we won't be doing this all day," Jhonny said with a cocky smile.
"Haha! See you in there, kid!" Henry responded.
"I told y—" Jhonny started saying but never finished, Henry having pressed launch on the simulation.
Both man and boy then appeared in a lush jungle. They would go on all day, running one after another.
Jhonny got a big lesson in humility that day, as he failed to kill Henry even once. After a full day of virtual training, stopping only to eat meals, both boys went to sleep that night and fell like logs.
This training regime would continue for weeks until Henry received his next assignment. Commander Landon went to give the mission briefing in person.
He also wanted to check in on the boy's progress. He walked into the basement, and the two boys were still inside the VCP.
He could see through the screen a lush jungle scenery and a view of both participants trying to shoot at each other rather than running and getting behind cover.
He watched on for a few minutes, feeling a little satisfied with the quick progress the boy had made, but his time was precious, so he eventually interrupted their game of tag.
"Calvert! Boy! Get out of there. I have a mission for you!" the commander barked into the microphone, which was broadcasted into their heads.
In that split second, Henry took the message in; Jhonny pulled around the tree he was hiding behind and shot Henry in the face. Both were ejected from the virtual world instantly to a laughing commander.
"You little shit!" Henry exploded.
"You suckered me while I was receiving the transmission!" he growled.
"I got you fair and square. You just had to keep your mind in the game, old man!" Jhonny grinned.
The boy had gotten his cockiness as days went by, and he started acclimatizing to the regimen he was put through.
"Ahahaha! Boy! I like you!" Landon guffawed, slapping the kid on the back.
"That'll teach that prick some humility!" he added, still laughing his lungs out.
"This is on you too, Landon. You distracted me on purpose, didn't you?" Henry scowled.
"Come now, Henry. Even if I had, which I'm not saying I have, as an operative, you shouldn't get distracted at all. The kid got you. In war, you would have perished," the commander admonished Henry.
"Fine!" Henry grumbled.
"Let's hear what you have for me then," he continued.
"Before I tell you anything about the missions, let me give you some good news," Commander Landon said as he sat down.
"I have managed to pull some strings in high places that owed me favours and got the kid a fake identity and a certificate of birth printed.
"Luckily for him, Jhonathan is a common name, so he won't have to change that, but he now goes as Calvert. He is officially your cousin," Landon added, a little smirk on his face.
"I don't want to be his cousin!" both of them complained simultaneously.
They looked at each other with mocking faces and then laughed it off.