by Stacey Mac
Today I should feel a little tougher than I did the day before.
I’m not getting stronger. Instead, I seem to be decaying from the inside out. What little stores of fat I’ve managed to hold onto the past year have been depleted. So it surprises me that I don’t seem to be projecting my general, reliable disillusionment.
We start off normally, and I warm-up my body with Vincent, who always seems to be ready no matter what abuse his body absorbed the day before.
“What is with you?” He asks at one point. I’d been gazing off in another direction, paying no attention to anything in particular.
“What?” I snap, defensively. “Nothing.”
“You seem...cheery.”
“Cheery?”
“Yes,” Vincent says. “Did you get dismissed from gym again, like last time?”
“No.”
“Well, you’ve been all doom and gloom these days, what with having to spend all your time with that asshole over there,” he points in the direction of the Resolutes, and I smack his arm, hard. “Which can’t be much fun, seen as you hate him. So why are you staring at him like that?”
“I’m not staring at anyone, Vince.”
“Yeah, you are. What did he do this time?”
“Shut up!” I say, smacking him again. “You’re going to get us in trouble, touch your toes or something.”
He snickers, and leans forward to stretch.
We are called to receive our instruction from Flint, and then we separate to our mats.
The day drags, and it consists mostly of scenarios with multiple attackers, so naturally, I end up being separated from Vincent and grouped with a brutish frontline boy named Gavin, and a slender girl named Willow. Willow is non-threatening to look at, and had I not watched her bite and scratch her way through combat training in the past, I might believe it. When it is her turn to fight off Gavin and I – the attackers – she literally licks her lips at me.
Then it is my turn to be backed into a corner by these two animals, and I do what I always have, I close off from their approach, making my movements smaller, my limbs flimsier, and prepare for the onslaught.
I concede twice within five minutes, but I will have to continue until Flint calls for us to switch again.
Willow and Gavin back off, Gavin looking bored, and Willow looking superior, and I get up from the ground for what feels like the millionth time. I bring my arms up to a protective stance. My turn is almost over. Flint will call it any second. Surely it has been long enough, he will call it soon... Why isn’t he calling it?
Thunk.
The palm that crashes into the side of my head blurs my vision for a moment. I didn’t even see Gavin raise his hand.
Focus, focus.
I sense, rather than see her. Willow raises her fist to my left, and I strike before she does, but the punch I land on her chin isn’t hard enough, and she responds too quickly. Her leg swings out and catches my ankles. I go sprawling face first. Gavin is on me in the next moment. Sitting on my back, he hefts my head off the ground by my chin and places the other hand on my forehead.
He gives my head a small, controlled twist – simulating the breaking of my neck. “You’re dead,” he says cheerily, then releases me.
My head falls to the soft mat again, and I consider staying here, or at least buying some time. I used to do this as a child. I’d lie face-down on my mattress and pretend it wasn’t morning, let the minutes eat themselves up so that I could make the day shorter.
I sigh, standing again, brushing myself off.
“Initiate…”
All three of us turn simultaneously, automatically standing at attention.
Dean stands there, and it is me he speaks to next. “You,” he says. “Here, now.”
The others relax, and so do I as I walk quickly to him. My hair is slick with sweat and I know my face must be red with exertion. For some reason this bothers me.
“What are you doing?” Dean hisses to me when I am close enough. The other initiates won’t hear him. “You can do better than that.”
He sounds angry. Actually he sounds furious, though I couldn’t guess why.
“Your barely awake,” he presses. “I’ve shown you this – hammer fist to something vital – remember?”
“Yeah,” I say warily, “but…”
“But, nothing. You’re being pummelled.”
I put my hands on my hips and exhale heavily. “I’m fine,” I say. “My turn is almost over anyway.”
“Your turn won’t be over ’til you win a round,” he says, “I’m going to stand right here ’til you wake up and start defending yourself. I don’t care about your morals. I don’t care if you don’t like it. Ruin ’em, or they ruin you. Got it?”
He glares at me, and I glare right back.
There he is again; trainer-Dean. Archenemy Dean.
“You fight ’til I tell you to stop,” he says again. “Go on, now.”
I give him one last incredulous look, and then turn on my heel angrily. I’m muddled. I can’t consolidate this Dean with the one I spoke with last night. What the fuck is his problem?
As Willow and Gavin begin their advance on me again, looking thoroughly fed up, I try to forget the guy watching me. I give my arms a shake, and hold them up.
Willow lunges first, this time from my right, and I block her fist before it finds my face.
Whoosh.
I realise too late that Willow’s attack is a diversion, and Gavin’s fist is buried into my torso, just underneath my rib cage.
The air is forced from my lungs, and I curl into myself and go to the floor, clutching my chest.
I gasp and stutter, but manage to force the words past my lips. “I...I concede.”
I can’t continue. I can hardly breathe.
“Keep going,” I hear Dean call. “Get up.”
And I find him from my place on the floor. Dean is pacing back and forth, watching me.
I can’t speak again, so I shake my head at him instead.
“It ain’t an option,” he says coldly. “They are the enemy. They won’t stop hurting you because you ask ’em to. Keep fighting or you die. Get up on your feet.”
I pant. Fury is seeping into my bloodstream, finding pathways to my extremities, my fingertips. I can feel its pulse in my ears. I set my jaw obstinately. “No. I said I was done.”
I feel Willow and Gavin’s stunned silence. I doubt they have ever seen someone refuse a trainer directly.
“Get up on your feet.” he says, louder this time.
I see the resolve in his expression, and I know that he will not yield. I can’t disobey him in the Arena. He is the superior, I am the initiate. He has me backed into a corner and he knows it. My legs shake as I stand, but not from fatigue this time. It is the anger that poisons me, makes me hate him, hate Gavin, hate Willow, hate me.
I want someone else to bleed instead of me. I want to show someone, anyone, that I am not weak, and that I will not let this pressure shape me, change me. I want to kill someone.
Instead of waiting for their advance, this time a lurch myself towards them. I take down Willow first. My fist collides with her ear and she falls, taken by surprise. I turn in time to see Gavin reaching for my torso, and he crashes into me, through me, taking me to the ground. I roll beneath him and we struggle for an instant as he tries to stop my escape, but my wrists are slim and they slide easily from his grasp, and I knee him in the groin.
Gavin rolls off me and onto the mat, clutching himself and groaning loudly. I bend to him, and he tries to aim a swing at my head, but I catch his fist, and throw my own at his throat.
He coughs and splutters painfully as my hand comes away from his wind pipe. “I...give,” he whispers huskily.
I stand quickly and turn towards Willow, but she has crawled off the mat, and now sits with her knees up, clutching the side of her head, glaring at me.
My chest heaves with each breath I take; they hiss noisily past my lips. My fingernails
bite into the palms of my hands, and as my heart rate slows I calm down enough to loosen each finger, one by one.
The fury, red and hot, gradually leaves my body and in its place I feel emptiness; self-reproach; the corner of my mind that my father’s voice lives in, telling me that a coward doesn’t have a mind of their own. They are easily influenced, moulded by another person’s evil.
“Well done,” Dean’s voice says, but I refuse to turn and look at him.
Instead, I hear Flint’s voice, calling for all initiates to convene, and I walk off the mat and away from him, away from Willow’s bleeding ear, away from Gavin’s wheezing. Just...away.
*
“Did I hear correctly?” says Delilah. She slides into the spot beside Adriel, rather closely to Adriel in fact... “Did Tessa, the meek little grazer, beat the holy shit out of her opponents today?”
I throw my bread roll at her. “There. Would a meek little grazer do that?”
She throws it back at me, batting her extra-long eyelashes. “Yes, grazer’s are all about food distribution.”
I roll my eyes.
“Actually, I saw some of that fight. You were really good, Tessa.” Vincent chimes in.
“Thanks, Vince, except that if you had of been watching the whole time, you would have also seen the first fifty rounds, all of which I lost.”
He shrugs. “Who cares, I owe Willow one for biting me last year. I still have scars on my leg.”
“Whatever happened to sparring?” I ask of no one in particular. “Remember when we were taught to practice control? Now we all but kill each other. Doesn’t it seem a bit...irresponsible of them?”
Vincent, Mia and Delilah smirk at each other knowingly, but Adriel gives me a dumbfounded expression. “Well, we are being trained for war. Where’s the fun in hitting air?”
I grimace at my stew, but I don’t miss Vincent shaking his head at Adriel, as if to say, ‘yeah, we don’t understand her either.’
“I think it’s stupid, hurting each other,” Tilly says suddenly. I’d all but forgotten she was here, but here she is beside me, holding her head up with one hand, eating rice with the other, looking half asleep. “We’re supposed to be on the same side, right?”
I smile at her. “Right.”
“Don’t you be starting, squirt,” Adriel says, poking her in the side. “How’re you going to fight someone in real combat if you don’t practice a few times first?” He drawls.
Tilly scowls. “The same way I’ll shoot someone in a real fight, doesn’t mean I’ve got to shoot my friends first.”
That shuts Adriel up.
I tousle my little friend’s hair, and she gives me a sweet smile.
*
I seriously consider mutiny.
I can remember exactly where the hole in the fence is that Dean made. Has it been found and patched up yet? How far will I make it before someone realises I’m missing?
What will they do to me when they find me?
The answer to the latter is obvious: they’ll shoot me. But tonight, even this seems preferable, because the thought of going to that room and looking at Dean’s smug face makes me sick.
Of course, I really have myself to blame and no one else. Hadn’t my father spelt it out for me, time and time again? With the end of the free-world came the beginning of the divisions: groups of scared, lost, helpless survivors who banded together for protection, and established sectors. With the sectors, came the return of order. But to maintain order, there must be leaders, and leaders are all the same: they dominate, spread fear, manipulate. Leaders prey on the weak-minded, bend them to do their bidding.
How easy it was for Dean to manipulate me into that fight. How skilfully he baited me. How weak-minded I must be.
I drag my weak mind, my exhausted body to the gym. Every step that takes me closer feels like a punishment in itself. I won’t speak to him, won’t give him the satisfaction of knowing that on some level, I did trust him. I won’t let him see that I thought he might be different, that I had begun to forgive him.
I can’t let him know how it hurts to be wrong.
Your fault, a whisper says. You knew better.
“Hey, you’re late,” he says when I arrive. He is repositioning the punching bags again. His jacket is on the floor, though the stagnant air is freezing. He sweats, the beads of moisture rolling down his biceps and into the sleeves of his shirt. He has been here for some time already.
Does he ever stop?
I put my hands in my jacket pockets and wait. I promised not to speak to him unless it was absolutely necessary. No more questions, no more ‘getting to know you’ games. I’m done.
When I don’t respond, he stops what he is doing and turns, spying me standing by the door. His eyes narrow at my expression, and I see his jaw twitch. “You look mad,” he says conversationally.
And I say nothing.
He rolls his eyes and bends to collect a towel that lies on the floor, wiping his hands on it. “Do you want to talk about it?”
I force my stiff legs to walk forwards. “No.”
“I didn’t think so,” he smirks, that stupid drawling voice echoing against the walls. “Let’s get started, then.”
He steps up to one of the punching bags and pushes it further along the rafter.
I stand readily in front of it, and turn to Dean expectantly.
“Straight palms,” he instructs calmly. “Do a set of fifty, and then we’ll go to the mat.”
I nod stiffly, and then begin to remove my jacket. I undo the zip and slide it from my shoulders, throwing it a few feet away. The black, uniform singlet I wear underneath is better for striking.
I look up, and see Dean look away, but not quick enough to hide that he was watching me.
I start the set. Holding my hands close to my chest, I bring them out one after the other, flicking my wrists at the last moment so that the heel of my palm hits the bag. A straight palm is the first strike we learnt as minors, nine years ago.
I strike again and again, my hands beating out a steady rhythm against the bag: pum-pum, pum-pum, pum-pum...
“Loosen your wrists, but keep tension through your arms and upper body.” Dean says suddenly. He comes behind me, and holds my shoulders between his hands.
My eyes narrow as his fingers curl over my arms, and my chin drops to my chest.
My first instinct is to shake him off, but I resist.
I stare at the bag resolutely, and strike again, and again. My hands sting as they come on and off the unyielding fabric, but it satisfies the tumultuous nature of my thoughts, so I keep pounding harder, faster.
“You were good today,” Dean says at some point.
I keep working.
“You can win...when you feel like trying. You should do yourself a favour and try more often.”
At this, I stop. My hands are shaking, and despite my oath, my mouth is far too big and opinionated to listen to him say ‘I told you so’ one more time.
I’m out of breath, and loose strands of hair are stuck to my cheeks. I look at the bag rather than him as I speak. “You got what you wanted. Why would I do it again?”
He raises his eyebrows. His arms are already crossed over his chest. “Please. You ain’t telling me you won that fight for my benefit.”
“No,” I say, louder than I mean to. “I did it for mine, like a kid does when they throw a tantrum. Where did it get me, exactly?”
“It made you see what it’s like out there, where there ain’t no mats, no friends to protect you, and no submitting.” He comes to stand an inch from my face, his eyes burning, and I recoil.
“Do you understand that you will be out in the real world soon? That you’ll be a soldier outside of your safe little boundary lines? What do you think your enemy will do to you when they find you? Do you think they’ll let you go if you surrender? You fight, or you die. Those are your options, there is no alternative. So tell me now if you’re the suicidal type, and I’ll stop wasting my time on you.�
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I take a step back, because his breath on my face is reminding me of Trey’s, and his tone is reminding me of Snare’s, and because he has no idea what type I am. “What do you want from me?”
“I want you to start defending yourself.” he snaps back. His expression has become something else, almost...pleading, worried.
“Why do you care what I do, and what I don’t?” I ask, genuinely wanting to know exactly why he is so very interested in my success as a soldier. “You don’t like me.”
“I think it is for me to decide...” he says carefully, “who I like.”
“And this is what you do to the people you like? Push them? Manipulate them?”
He shakes his head and makes a noise of frustration, turning away. “You ain’t got a clue what you’re talking about.” He walks to the benches, and bends to pick up a water bottle. “Take a break,” he says without looking at me.
For a while I just stand there – a knee-jerk reaction to do the opposite of what he wants me to do. After a few seconds of me watching him sip water, he raises his eyebrows, and I relent. I choose to sit on the balance beam, rather than join him. It’s childish, maybe. Whatever.
We sit tensely, quietly.
After a few minutes, I stand and shake out my tired body. Dean stands as well, and he walks to the mat that is set up in the middle of the gym’s floor.
“Let’s go.” His voice is terse.
I follow him to the mat and wait.
“Straight palms are only effective if you hit the chest – to push someone away from you, or the head – to break a nose, or an eye socket. You have to wait for their hands to come away from their face, either because they bring them down voluntarily, or because you force them to, by striking their lower body, for example.”
“Wait for an opportunity to strike, or create an opportunity. Don’t hesitate, got it?”
I sigh, but nod.
“Go on, then.” He brings his hands to a protective stance, covering his face.
We circle one another slowly, and I try to concentrate, I really do. But after a few minutes of nothing...
“Tessa. Wake. Up!”
I scowl. I take a step forward and kick the side of his leg, but the contact I make is so feeble that he grabs my foot and throws it away, frustrated.
