Sargent Payton had us go on the same run as the day before. The goal is to keep up with her the whole time. I ran after her bike as if my life depended on it. It still hurt when we reached the stopping point. I could see just a little better, but still sat on the floor. Sargent Payton didn't let us rest as long as the day before. We were told to run back just ten minutes after stopping. Just like yesterday, Sargent Payton headed down first, then the rest of us followed her. When we got back to the starting point, Sargent Payton is standing there waiting for us.
"You're two minutes late," she addressed us as we got back into formation. We formed sloppy lines and were exhausted. "Drop and give me twenty push-ups," she commanded. A chorus of groans rose from us. It took a moment before someone moved. It is a person in the back who all but fell to their knees before getting into a push-up form. We followed their example. I have never done a push-up in my life. I can barely do one. However, Sargent said we wouldn't leave until we finished them. So I, and many others, were there for a while before we finished. I looked over at Mathew next to me. He is having just as rough a time with the push up as I am. It had surprised me when he did them earlier.
"I thought you were like me," I muttered when he looked at me.
"What do you mean?" Mathew gasped before clenching his jaw to do another push up.
"I thought you weren't athletic, like me," I answered, turning my head back. It's hard to talk and do push ups.
"Now, boys, do we need to separate you?" Sargent Johnes asked right next to me. His voice caused me to lose the push-up and collapse. I looked up at him while laying on the floor.
"No sir," I answered. I got back into formation and continued the workout. When we got to 25 push ups, Sargent Payton told us to stop.
"Obstacle course time!" Sargent Payton cheered. Behind her is a monster course. It had everything you would see in a military movie and some. The wall that people were supposed to climb over is at least 11ft tall, and there are two of them. "Run this course in 20 minutes. I'll be sending two at a time. The slowest one will do 10 laps before dinner," Sargent Payton said.
"Form two lines!" Sargent Anders called out. I moved to do so. Mathew stood behind me in the right line. I didn't want to get in more trouble, so I didn't turn around.
"I don't wanna make you do 10 laps with me, bro," Mathew whispered into my ear. His chin rested just above my shoulder. I couldn't hold back a gulp or the way my cheeks burned. I gave a curt nod, thanking the Sargent that Mathew isn't facing me. In my run I came second.
"Sanders, that's 25 laps before dinner." Sargent Anders said at the end of the course. My head swung around to look at her. "10 laps for being late this morning, 10 for coming last, and the extra 5 for going overtime," she said smirk forming on her face.
"Yes, Sir," I said, then moved out of the way, and back into the line. We had to do the course five times before we got to break for lunch.
I spent the next three months like this. We trained, ate, learned about the laws involving the tower, trained more, and slept. After all the training, we didn't have enough energy to do anything else. Sargent Payton said that their training was going to be worse than hell, and she is right.
Mathew and I grew closer than the others because we were both weak. We both couldn't lift or run for long. That changed quickly as Sargent Payton would strap weights to our arms and legs. Trying to get through the exercises with them is the worse thing in the world. They held us back and if you got used to them, she would add more until you were carrying the equivalent of another person on your back. The training hit a head when she blindfolded us and left us in the woods. It disorientated us after being kidnapped after waking up to the five am alarm. We have to get untied and find our way out of the forest. Someone blindfolded us and left us in the woods, which initially seemed like a straightforward task. However, things took a turn when someone started shooting. She and the other trainers shot at us while saying, "You won't die from rubber bullets - for every bullet welt, you'll run a lap with twice the weight" with a smile. I got hit on my right leg and fell.
A hand appeared next to me. I looked up, expecting the trainers to be there to finish the job. Mathew, who ushered me to hurry. I grabbed his hand with a small thank you. "I would never leave you alone," Mathew said with a hand on my shoulder while looking into my eyes, "Especially not while in this war zone." We began running for our lives. In the end, we made it back to base before the end of the day. I ended up with 14 welts. Having to run only 14 laps after I got to eat something. Mathew got over 20 welts on him. Most of which appeared on his back.
I knew he got some of those from helping me, so I ended up running the same amount of laps with him. When we could breathe enough, we talked about our lives before the fall. He's been a student in a programming class for the last two years. The fall caused him to both take a break from the stressful schooling life and regret spending so much time not doing what he loved. Mathew is working on making his own PC, but between classes and work he got little time to look for the pieces he needed. He wanted to get a good job and make six figures. He wanted to buy his own house and go on vacations. I admitted it was a pleasant dream. He told me he grew up in a single mother-'s home. They lived in apartments, and she never had time to go to any of his school stuff. He complained he got bullied in school because he grew up poor compared to the other children. Assured him that there was still plenty that he could do. I mentioned his mom must have really loved him. Working two jobs to support myself. Couldn't imagine having a child to take care of. I told him how I have been living from paycheck to paycheck. He muttered a 'yeah, it's rough out there' before asking what I would do if I could do anything. After running through the trial, we would have enough money to do anything.
I smiled at him and talked about the dream I had as a child. That I wanted to go to culinary school. I told him that my grandma loved to bake and taught me before she passed. Made grand plans to make a cat bakery. I would put a Plexiglas between the food and the rest of the bakery. I would talk to the local shelters to get some cats to join me during the week. That people could adopt them if they wanted after having a meal with them. I would sometimes look up retail spaces for sale and dream about them being my bakery. I even told him I planned on naming it after my Grandma; 'Maria's Boundless Bakery'. Did everything I could to work in a bakery so that I could learn about the back end of it? Unfortunately, I never got the chance.
He laughed at me but said that he would help me by making a program so that people could order from their tables. So that the food would never come in contact with fur. I refrained from mentioning that the technology already exists, assuming that he wanted to be of help. We talked about starting the business together. Though both of us knew it was nothing but a fantasy. We couldn't even run 3 miles without almost throwing up. That people died more often than not in the tower also made it unrealistic. That conversation ended as quickly as it started. "Just two broke hoes," Mathew said with a soft huff from the lamps. There are only half of them left.
The week after that talk, I found out that his natural skill is called 'humming strength' It helps him and those around him grow stronger while he's humming. He admitted that at first, he is really embarrassed about the skill. He didn't want to hum all the time. After we talked, I convinced him he should try working on lung exercises so that he can hum for a long time if he needs to. His skill would come in handy in an emergency if he didn't want to use it regularly. He agreed and later we talked with the trainers, who began giving him a different workout. I didn't have to worry about not seeing him, as the rest of the training was the same. Though now he's having a hard time talking, having used his voice too much during the personal training. We all got an hour to practice our skills to strengthen them. The people who could control their skills were the ones that made it out of the towers.
During my personal training hour, Sargent Payton and I worked to figure out what my skill entailed exactly. At first, we tried to test if it would tell me it was a trap nearby. While I noticed the trap before I stepped on it. I have to get almost too close to it. She asked if I could tell poisonous vegetation apart. I tested that by being given a plate with different berries on it. With a medical officer nearby so that if it failed, I would get immediate help. I noticed, but only once I have already touched it. Being able to tell after I touched the poisonous things didn't help. I felt dejected by the results of the tests. That after all this time, I still couldn't control my skill.
"You did good, kid. Relax a little," Sargent Payton said, patting my back after the poison test.
"But my skill is barely any help," I whined back. My eyes burn. I will not be of any help in the tower, and would probably die in it. I'm only here because I have no other choices. It's this or dying in the gutter, and by the looks of it, I'm gonna die in the tower. I also have this hope that Mathew is right. That I would earn enough money to actually open that bakery.
She huffed and smiled a bit. "What Level is it?" she asked.
"What?" I questioned.
"What else? Your skill. What level is your skill at?" She asked, rolling her eyes at me a bit.
I opened my status screen "Level 2" and muttered while looking at it.
"You wanna know what level my skill became useful at?" She asked me. When I turned to look at her, she smiled. "My skill is called 'the Pather'. It lets me see the different paths I can take and which will end with death. At least it does now. When at level 2 I could hardly see a thing. Until level 10, when I found out that it would tell me if a path is safe." I watched her for a moment and felt a little better. It still hurt that my skill didn't give me an advantage on the tower. I thought that my chances of dying in the tower rose.
At first, there were no improvements to my skill. I couldn't figure out what makes my skill work. I'm falling behind the others in my skill level. Even Mathew's making significant progress. He leveled up to 4, and he started later than I did. Though I am glad that he is making progress in his skill, I still felt a sting of jealousy. I'm not sure what he was doing during the personal training time before he started working on his skill. The trainers made him humming during the laps or any group exercise. Sargent Payton sat me down with the other two trainers and asked me about how I used my skill in the past. When I told them of the door incident, they mentioned they might have figured out a plan and would implement it the next day. They had the offensive skilled people attack me during the skill hour. I got the plants to move around me to protect me. The trainers said that they were starting a new training method. For the hour of skill training, those attackers would come at me over and over. If they got through my plants, I would run laps until dinner. If they couldn't, they would run laps until dinner. That set the others off. They wouldn't stop coming after me.
After fighting them off for a while, Sargent Payton called them out to spar elsewhere until there is only one person fighting off against me. That one person is incredibly strong. His short, slicked back hair, to keep it clean and out of his face, gave a vibe of an old gangster that time traveled. His name's James and he has a slashing skill. James told me he was a chef when the fall happened and he's often in charge of the prep work.
Sargent Payton stood at the edge of the field watching us. James charged forward, his sword at the ready. I took a step back and felt the plants react. Vines shot out from the corners of the field. They warped around James's legs and arms, attempting to stop him. His skill allowed him to cut the plants as quickly as they could grow. The speed at which he sliced through the vines made them look as if they were nothing but the air. When he got close enough, he kneed me in the stomach. Then shoved me back. I gasped when my back hit the floor. Looking up at James, I saw that he's frowning face. I felt fear that he might be angry that I'm not strong enough to stop him. He backed away a bit, readying his sword.
'He's gonna kill me' I flinched. I moved my arms to block the blade from hitting me. My eyes clenched shut, waiting for the final blow.
"I knew I was right," Sargent Payton screeched. I opened my eyes, and the first thing I could see is Sargent Payton walking my way. Moving my arms so I could see. James dangled off the ground, his arms pulled up and away from his body. The vines warped around his legs, stopping him from moving any further.
"Now we just have to attack you until you can learn to control it." She said with a grin on her face. Sargent Payton made me stand up and try to coax the plants into letting James go. It took a while, but James even said that he felt the grip losing. James said nothing about if he was excited about being my sparing partner from now on. Sargent Payton'sthe one that excited about this. That gave me the impression that the start of my veritable hell was about to begin. As we got more comfortable with the training, they increased the hour of skill training to two hours, with obstacles thrown into it. We had to dodge, hide, attack, and defend ourselves from each other for two hours. The baffling part is it's working. It got us all to decide and fail in a safe environment.
In the next training session, James confessed that Sargent Payton told him he must go all out. That if he didn't, she would make him run the obstacle course until dinner. I forgave him, as I would have done anything to get out of that punishment as well. He didn't go after me like he wanted to kill me anymore, but that didn't mean that I won. I never won against James until I hit level 10 of my skill. We became even in our fight. After an hour, the trainers stopped us from sparing. I cheered, having kept James away during the spar. James is even panting at the other end of the field where he started.
As the last two weeks approached us, things got scary. We were in the woods for the last two weeks as our ultimate test. The test is free for all where there are no teams or friends. You could make alliances, but none of the trainers were gonna hold the group together. Everyone is open to attacks from others. The last one standing got the hidden food around there. Sargent Payton said that we were safe as there were no bears or other wild animals in the woods. That the food's in locked boxes, that the code to those boxes is 'potato', and that there is enough for all of us. 'Strange that she told us about the password to the lock boxes' The thought passed my mind before I discarded it. We all thought that there was nothing to be afraid of. The way to pass this test is to gain all the points that we could. I gained the points by taking other people's name tags or 'killing' them. By knocking out other participants and taking their name tags, I gained points which the trainers kept track of.. That every time we're killed, we lost those points. So we went into the woods ready to 'play' fight. We should have known nothing about this test is going to be easy. After the first hour in the woods, we found we were being hunted by our trainers as well. That the other group of ten are in the woods too and their trainers were hunting us too. There were traps that snagged people or shot them with fake bullets. Trainers sometimes used traps that would snag or shoot people with fake bullets, which were made of rubber, paint or smell. It only took until the next day when we had found nothing. Either the food or empty boxes, we realized what a nightmare we were in. It quickly devolved into chaos after that.
Mathew and I ran off together. I looked around for James but couldn't find him in the chaos. Fighting our way to a couple of boxes. We only found enough for each of us to have one meal each day. We ran into more people than we wanted and spent a lot of energy fighting them off or running away. By the end of the two weeks, the trainers telling people they were done. We could go back to the starting point. We had a day and a half before we entered the tower. When asked about the food, the trainers smiled and said, "Oh yeah, I guess we only placed them at certain hours of the day and removed them after an hour. Can't be leaving food in the woods unattended, am I right?" which caused my mouth to drop. I hadn't expected them to be shifting the food around while we were fighting to survive the test.
"There's a feast tonight so don't get your britches in a bunch," Sargent Payton said, smiling at us. "As soon as you get back to base," before running. The other trainers took off after her as well. Those of us that were angry at them for the woods chased after the trainers with a new life. The trainers laughed as we chased them down.
It's the last day before we entered the tower. I looked around the banquet hall. Everyone is smiling, laughing, and showing how much they have grown from the beginning. They placed together both groups for the feast, making it easier to talk to new people for a change. I watched them all talk and enjoy each other's company. I saw Mathew laughing and drinking as much as he could. The plastic cup in his hand giving away how drunk he's planning on getting. I snaked my way through the crowd to him. I asked Mathew to speak to him alone. Once we were I asked him if he had a group that he wanted to enter the tower with. "Dude, I thought we were going in together," he said with an awkward smile.
"You want to go with me?" I asked, feeling the heat from my chest rising. This is it. I'm gonna tell him how I feel.
"Well yeah? Why wouldn't I?" He said while leaning forward a bit. He placed his hand on my shoulder, bringing me into a hug.
"I love you," I blurted out, knowing that I had jumped the gun. I planned to wait and tell him I loved him after he agreed to benign in the same group as me. That I would only confess after we have survived the trials.
"Dude, what are you gay?" He laughed while patting me on the shoulder. I said nothing while staring at him. He noticed the look on my face. "Your not, right?" He asked while his face turned vicious. I couldn't breathe realizing what I have done. Things must have connected with him as he jerked his hand away like I'm contagious "What the hell? You're gay. Oh fuck, you like me, don't you? You little freak," He said, voice ranging.
"I- "
"WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU? GET AWAY FROM ME" He yelled, backing away back into the goodbye party. Not follow him, knowing that he would tell everyone there that I'm gay. I knew from other events that I would get hurt if I went there. My eyes burn as they blurred. My lungs tried to drag in as much air as they could. I didn't want to be here anymore. It took a moment before I could move. My first wobbly step back before turning and running back to the training ground. I curled up in the tunnel used for hiding. There that I cried myself to sleep.
When I woke up, there were green vines that covered the entrance to the tunnel I'm in. I shoved the plants away before crawling out into the day. It took a moment to realize that I'm 30 minutes late to the entrance of the tower. I took off running to get to where the boot camp was supposed to meet. I only barely remembered to stop by the dorm and grab my bag. After having to repack it as it dumped out and scattered around the room. After all that training, where the trainers dumped out our bags. It is easier to pack it back together without making too much of a mess. I still didn't know why we had that kind of training. I'm just lucky that I'm still dressed in the uniform navy blue shirt and stretchy pants that I supposed to be in. It's a little dirty from sleeping in the tunnel the night before, but it's going to have to work.
I made it to the tower door an hour after everyone was supposed to be there. I apologized to the trainers, and they gave me a sad smile and said I could go in with the next group if I wanted. She had heard about what had happened and that even though there would be groups from other countries, there still is a high chance I would run into Mathew. Shaking my head, and entered without another word. I couldn't afford to stay at boot camp for another four months. I had to go in today or I would die in a ditch here. The first steps into the tower and the world swirled around me, changing into a city.