When Zemin and Jagger returned to the group, everybody was doing stretches. Jagger gestured for Zemin to join them.
"In the 4th Exemplar Squad, we always start the day of work with exercise to send the blood running and butter our joints! When your spirit and Psionic will fail you, your body is the only thing that will separate you from death. So repeat after the others, Zemin."
"Yes, sir Jagger."
The stretches and the laps around the base that followed were just like in the academy. Jagger joined them in all exercises, staying steadily ahead on his long feet. Next was Danis, with Zemin close behind, and then Narcisa and Citri.
After the laps were basic exercises: squats, push-ups and pull-ups, and a gauntlet. Of course, using Psionics there was prohibited.
Like everybody else, Zemin deftly dodged swinging wooden blocks, ran on a narrow plank set two meters above the ground, and then hesitated for a moment. Others have already moved past that mark, but he didn't dare to jump until he saw a pile of hay below.
Zemin landed softly (softly enough) in it, then got out quickly and went to climb a wall, after which was the finish line.
The rest of the team was waiting for him there already.
"Slow like a baby," Danis sneered.
"Hey, he was only a few seconds slower than me, Danis!" Citri, who was the last, protested. "If Zemin ran this gauntlet every day like you, of course he'd be way ahead of you!"
Narcisa fixed her hair, packed in a tight black bun, and stared at a distance with an empty look on her face. That look gave Zemin such a pause that he barely paid attention to Danis and Citri.
The only people he saw looking like that were Soulless. People whose spirit was so broken that they stopped caring at all. About anything. Their bodies and minds kept serving the Holy Dominion, but their souls were already in the afterlife.
Zemin shook off the thought. Soulless couldn't use Psionics, and Narcisa didn't have an omega sign tattooed on her face.
"If you still have the strength to bicker, you have the strength for hand-to-hand spars!" Jagger declared. "There's finally an even amount of people now. Danis, Zemin—use violence to let go of any unpleasant feelings! Narcisa, Citri—just do your best. Especially you, Narcisa! Even medics can get attacked, and you need to learn to protect yourself without Psionics more than the others!"
Zemin won 6 spars out of 10, to Danis's frustration. Danis kept his negative feelings toward Zemin too close to his heart and far from his fists, to Jagger's quiet displeasure.
Then there was an hour set apart for lunchtime. The food at the base was much better than what Zemin ate at his academy. Of course, even there no one would leave the mess hall hungry, but at High Point Military Academy people had much less choice of what to eat. Usually it was meat with potatoes or chicken with rice or a similar thing.
The mess hall was a spacious space, with 10 tables for 10 squads—but only 5 of them were taken. Each table was marked with a number, and like before, Zemin brought his tray of food straight to the table number 4.
Others chatted idly over the food. Zemin listened with half an ear, but the spicy stew was so delicious, and the cake for dessert was so rare, that he heard only his own chewing.
When Zemin lifted his eyes from his empty plate, he saw Jagger grinning at him.
"Heh, you ate like you were plucked right out of a demons' labor camp."
"And he has hair like he had aged prematurely," Narcisa said, picking at her half-full plate. "Careful—if you waste food by throwing up, what will we feed the actual labor camp refugees with? Your bile?"
"Narcisa!" Citri wailed, waving her almost-eaten sweet bun. "Some of us are still eating! How can you talk about these things over lunch?"
The black-haired woman smirked and demonstratively put a piece of potato in her mouth. She chewed it slowly, swallowed, smirked and said,
"Easily. Unlike one guy I assisted with a surgery on once—demons had torn out his tongue."
Zemin curiously leaned forward. "How did that happen—the tongue? It couldn't have been in a fight, right, Miss Narcisa?"
"Ugh, I feel like an old matron when you call me 'Miss', Zemin," she grumbled. Before Zemin could protest that she didn't look old AT ALL, Narcisa continued, "No, the guy was a freed demon slave. The tongue was old news—the surgery was to just remove an appendix. It was way back then, while I was still only a student."
The lively conversation continued for some time even after everybody cleaned their plates. Narcisa turned out to be a well of fascinating and gruesome medical stories ("…he got WHAT stuck in his ass?!"), to which Citri always reacted loudly. Jagger was more reserved, and Danis barely spoke at all. Still, Zemin found himself smiling at the group.
He never had the time to relax and chat with others like that while he studied at the academy. There was too much he had to learn, and too little time.
After lunch, training continued. This time, everybody practiced their Psionics. Jagger gave pointers where he could. They weren't doing anything entirely new, just practicing the techniques they knew already. This was when the training mecha was used and abused again—it was the prime target for everybody's attacks.
This was vital for a Psionic-Soldier—practice helped to use the known tricks faster and easier until they became as natural as breathing.
For Zemin, there was just one problem with this all—a problem he couldn't avoid any more.