The Recruit

by Claudia Silva

  When she came back to her senses, she was in a big net. Perhaps she had activated another trap while under the sedative. She doubted the soldier could have trapped her in the few seconds she passed out. It was a big field, making her realize the soldiers must've arrived days before in order to set up so many traps.

  Turning around suspended in the net, she was about to break free when the soldier appeared below her, a smug grin on his face. Rebecca stopped what she was doing and waited to see what he would do.

  "There you are." The soldier was still pointing his tranquilizer rifle in her direction. For the first time she put a face to the voice. The soldier was a young man, about her age. His head was covered by a helmet and his squared face showed a tough, competent soldier behind his blue eyes. "The way the Major described you I thought it would be more of a hassle."

  Rebecca said nothing, she had stopped moving trying to decide what to do next. She had to get away. She couldn't stay there any longer. With her superhuman strength, she took the net with closed fists and tore it open. This time, her fall was graceful, landing on her feet right in front of the young man.

  “What in the world…?” He opened his mouth in surprise, lowering his gun after watching a woman tear the net's thick rope with ease. Rebecca did nothing more than push him back, but her new strength sent him flying a few feet away. Soon, she was on top of him, feeling him struggling to breathe as she pressed on his chest.

  Don't hurt him, she repeated in the back of her mind.

  The strong, trained soldier was probably wondering how a skinny woman like her was able to pin him down like she was doing. No matter how much he struggled, he couldn't get free.

  She didn't need to fight him for long. Taking his own tranquilizer rifle, Rebecca aimed it at his neck and took the shot before the soldier could protest. The sedative acted instantly, she remembered they had said it would last about twenty minutes. That was more time than she needed.

  Jumping at hearing the radio come to life, Rebecca found it in the soldier's waist and took it.

  Francis, can you read me, over? The soldier on the other end called.

  Rebecca juggled with the possibility of answering the call, but thought better of it. Shutting off the radio, she clicked it to her own waist. It was time to move. She searched the unconscious soldier for more tranquilizer darts, finding a few. The soldier also had a real gun with him, and a long knife. Rebecca took them and threw them away as far as she could. She didn't want them and she didn't want anyone shooting at her. In her search she had also found a couple of granola bars, she took them. From the soldier she also took his watch. Maybe when it was all over, she'd give it back. For now, she was glad to be able to read the time. 1:07 P.M. It would still be a long twenty-one hours.

  Standing up with the rifle over her shoulder, she got back on top of the trees. Her next destination, the first cabin.

  The ‘cabin’ wasn’t a cabin at all. It was more like a small tool shed that looked like it was falling apart. The wildlife had made it their home a while back and Rebecca wondered when the last time someone had open its door had been.

  After making sure she didn't spot any traps near it, she let go of the tree trunk she'd been holding onto. Landing on her feet, she walked closer to the standing building being careful with each step. Under her, the ground was muddier than the rest of the field. There weren't many trees next to the shed which meant fewer leaves had fallen around it when Fall had come months before. She heard the squishy sound her boots made while walking on the mud and wondered about the tracks she was leaving for the soldiers to find. This was feeling like a bad idea already, yet curiosity made her continue on her trek to see what supplies she could find inside the shed.

  Behind her, she could hear the soldiers getting closer. With her enhanced sense of hearing she heard them whisper with each other, planning. It didn't matter, by the time they got to the first cabin she would be gone. She was faster, stronger, and better than them in every way; she knew that now. She had ample time to search the shed and still spend the next twenty hours out of reach of the two men and woman who pursued her.

  With her newly acquired tranquilizer rifle over her shoulder, Rebecca stood in front of the shed's door taking the last bite out of the granola bar she had stolen. It was nice to taste something sweet after having tasted the sour animal blood. As much as she examined the shed's walls, she found nothing that told her it was rigged in any way. It was bizarre, and she planned to keep being cautious. Taking the rifle, she used it to push the door open.

  The shed would have been nothing more than a small wooden shack built decades ago if not for a modern cage waiting inside it. It was big enough to hold a person. The cage's door was open, inviting, and Rebecca could see a sophisticated mechanism was waiting to lock someone in. No doubt it was put there to trap her. Too bad she was planning to put up a fight. In fact, why didn’t she just shut the cage and activate the lock, rendering the cage useless? If the other two sheds had a similar trap, she could pay them a visit as well.

  She gave a step forward to lean over and close the cage. Unfortunately, she underestimated the soldiers' cunning, because the moment she put a foot in that shed, she activated a very different trap. For a moment she wasn't sure what the clicking sound had put into motion. In fact, there was a sudden silence before the mechanism erupted in an explosion of noise and movement. The earth itself shook and the whirring of an engine brought with it the scratching of metal. Rebecca ran outside the shed, but by then it was too late.

  Outside and surrounding her, four metal walls over fifteen feet high had grown out of the ground. They encapsulated the shed, and Rebecca, in a small enclosure with no way out. Rebecca looked up to the cloudy sky, realizing she could not just jump out. She tried, regardless. Jumping to the shed's roof, she heard the wood almost give in under her weight. Being mindful of her next step, she pushed herself to jump to the closest wall hearing the wood crack where her boots had been. It was to no avail, her hands were feet away from the top of the wall. The metal was smooth and cold, and unclimbable. The roof wasn't stable enough to try again, so instead, she jumped from the ground up, running to gain momentum, trying to hang onto something - anything to get out.

  It was too high.

  Looking around at ground-level, she found the door. It was locked shut; the perfect trap.

  Minutes ago she had felt so competent, so superior, and now...

  She was nothing. A fool.

  But she refused to believe it was over. She refused to give up. There had to be a way out. She had to figure it out. She refused to fail when she had trained for so long, sacrificed so much. She was a vampire now; she needed to act like one.

  She could hear the soldiers' voices excited as they learned what had happened. She could hear their cheers when they realized they had won. They kept coming closer, their confidence growing with every step they took, knowing all they needed to do now was fill her with tranquilizer darts; enough to get her inside the cage that waited for her in the shed.

  In a panic, she began to hit the hard metal, making her fists bleed without even making a dent to the wall. No, there had to be another way. She had to think out of the box, literally.

  Game over! Rebecca heard their leader laugh. It made her blood boil. She would not give them the satisfaction.

  It then came to her. If she couldn't get out by climbing, she would get out by digging. Quickly, she was on her knees, her hands moving the wet soil from under one wall. As much as she dug, the wall ended when a brick wall began. She would need to break through that. Unless...

  Standing up, she dropped next to the door, digging under it. There, an opening. There was a space between the door and the brick wall right there. A way out. Finishing moving the mud out of the way, she slid through the opening, slithering through the mud like a worm until she reached the other side.

  Yes, she was free.

  Looking at her dirty clothes, filled with mud, leaves, and sticks, gave her an idea. I
t didn't take long to bathe herself in it; her face, her hair, her clothes. She then filled the hole she had slid through back with mud. Once ready, she sprang back to a tree trunk, holding tight. The soldiers were closing in; they were only a few feet away. They wouldn't even see her coming. Camouflaged in the trees, she watched them reach the clearing where the walls had grown to trap her.

  As she waited, she wondered if Dylan would be proud of the way she was handling herself. She wondered if he would approve.

  No matter what he thought, she was enjoying her own success; she was having fun.

  "Remember, shoot her multiple times," she heard the soldier she had stolen the rifle from speak, Francis. He was so close now she could almost taste his blood. "You wouldn’t believe it by looking at her, but she’s fast and strong."

  "Not strong enough for those walls, I hope," their leader said.

  "Well, be alert, there’s something strange about this woman. For all I know we’re up against some kind of super soldier."

  Super Soldier. Yes, that was an accurate description, Rebecca thought.

  The soldiers stopped talking as they came out of the trees and into the clearing where the fortress stood. Rebecca could see the three of them now, together for the first time. The soldier she had robbed now held a handgun, the other two aimed their tranquilizer rifles at the metal doors before them, ready to shoot.

  “Is she special forces, do you think?” The woman, Heller, asked her companions.

  “I don’t know,” Francis said, searching the area. “She has to be something,” he told them. “Just be ready and don’t be fooled by her appearance.” Nodding to the others, he signaled them to spread out. The others began walking around the wall.

  “We have you surrounded!” Rebecca still didn't know their leader's name, but she now knew his face well. Smiling in triumph, she watched as the soldiers gave their backs to her, unaware of her presence. “You can either lock yourself in the cage by yourself or we will open the door and we will shoot you with enough tranquilizers to put down an elephant.” The soldier seemed to be waiting for an answer, getting none. “There is no way out, ma’am. We've got ya.”

  The leader made a fist, a signal to his subordinates. Rebecca decided she needed to know more about that language if she was going to pose as an FBI agent. There were so many things to do once the test was over. So much to learn.

  Francis walked in front of the locked door; standing next to a panel, he entered a code. Rebecca watched in silence, remembering the four digits he used. The door unlocked with a bang. Heller was next to Francis, rifle in hand and ready to act against their prey as soon as the door opened. Too bad Rebecca wasn't inside. Instead, she took the rifle with both hands, her legs holding her on the tree trunk as she aimed.

  She shot her first dart, straight into Francis's neck. His hand went to his neck as he felt the stinging on his skin, cursing before his legs gave in, dropping to the ground.

  “She’s out here!” Heller watched her partner drop on the floor like a marionette. “Take cover!”

  The woman ran into the fortress hiding from view. Their leader stayed behind the wall, evaluating the situation.

  “Heller!” the called to her subordinate.

  “I’m here!” she called back.

  “Do you have a visual?”

  “No,” her voice now had a slight tone of panic in it.

  The soldiers stopped exchanging words. Rebecca waited, hanging onto the tree, her weapon aimed at the door, waiting for the soldier to come out. On the other side of the tall rectangular prism, she could hear the rustle of leaves as the leader moved around trying to figure out what to do.

  Suddenly, from the door, came a small object rolling on the ground.

  Was it a grenade? It couldn't be. No one was supposed to die. It was only a test. Then, what was it?

  Rebecca stared in suspicion as the little metallic cylinder stopped between a few branches. Then it exploded, creating a cloud of pink smoke that served as a protection the soldiers needed to get away. Rebecca tried to aim following her sense of hearing and smell. The woman's light steps exited the fortress, but Rebecca couldn't get herself to shoot. Without her eyes, she doubted the rest of her senses. She needed to see them.

  Taking advantage of her undecidedness, the two soldiers ran out of reach. Soon, they would regroup and they would try to bring her down again. Unfortunately for them, they had now lost one of their own. When the smoke cleared, Rebecca saw Francis's unconscious body left behind by his comrades.

  She knew the other two soldiers would not bother her while she made sure Francis was out of the race. Jumping down from the tree trunk, she took the soldier by the armpits, dragging him inside the fortress and then inside the shed. Making sure his entire body was tucked in the cage, she searched him one last time to make sure he had nothing that could allow his escape. Then, she locked the cage, trapping her first victim.

  “One down, two more to go,” Rebecca sighed. Raising an eyebrow at the unconscious soldier, she added, “Not bad for a dance teacher, uh?”

  It was time to keep moving. Rebecca searched her pocket for her map. It was surprisingly dry and clean, considering she desperately needed a shower and a change of clothes. As she looked at the other two shed locations, she realized what they were for. Three cages for three soldiers. The cages hadn't been put there for her, on the contrary. They were there to help her trap each of her hunters. That made her smile; if the soldiers were in their cages, they couldn't hurt her and she wouldn't hurt them.

  She chose the next shed by following the scent of blood the soldiers had left when they escaped. She knew where they were headed, and she planned to follow them until she had them where she wanted. All the excitement had depleted her energy, too. She would need to feed soon. Perhaps she would go back to the lake to fish as a reward for capturing all three soldiers. If they were all contained, she could start a fire and have a decent meal. It was a good plan she was looking forward to putting into action. All she had to do now was hurry to the next shed.

  To save energy, she walked instead of climb up the tree trunks to move around. She spotted a few traps, but she didn't stop to disarm them. Soon, the traps would be useless. She was confident the soldiers wouldn't be a match for her once she confronted them.

  It was that same overconfidence that got her in trouble again. Thinking she had spotted a trap, she walked around it to avoid it. She didn't notice the ground was slightly different under her. The ground gave in, revealing a huge hole on the floor. Rebecca slid through the mud a few feet until she reached the bottom of the pit.

  “Damn it,” she reprimanded herself. It had been her own fault. Climbing out of the hole was more difficult than she predicted. Its walls were wet and slippery. Eventually, she would be able to climb out, but the energy consumed meant she would need to feed soon after. Her head jerked to one side as she heard the soldiers running in her direction. They knew she was trapped somehow and were running to claim their victory.

  Rebecca reconsidered climbing back out. She had a new plan, and she was positive it would work. Readying her weapon, she made sure the rifle was aiming to shoot. She planned to take them down before they got to her. Then she would climb out of the hole and take them to their cages. They were right above her, she could sense them.

  “We have you now!” the leader called.

  “Really?” she yelled back. “I thought you needed to get me in one of your cages. Aren’t those the rules?”

  The man laughed, “It’s two against one and you’re trapped. I would just give up if I were you.”

  “Well, come and get me, then!” she replied.

  As soon as she saw a glimpse of a gun, she would shoot. And when the first soldier peeked down from the edge, Rebecca shot him. The shot had been right on her mark, but the man had some kind of scarf around his neck, protecting him from the dart. Not only that, but he was also wearing a mask. They both were. Unable to get a shot, Rebecca stared at the two of them looking
more like a couple firefighters than soldiers.

  Rebecca then watched as Heller took out something from her pocket. Another cylinder like the one she had used in the first shed, only this one was black and not metallic gray. Casually, she let it drop in the hole. Rebecca tried to reach for this gas bomb to throw it out of the hole, but it was too late, green smoke was already coming out. Holding her breath, Rebecca tried to climb out of the hole before the gas affected her. In her panic, she couldn't climb fast enough. It was no use. Taking a deep breath, she inhaled the gas and everything turned dark.

  Nothingness, but not for long.

  Once the smoke dissipated her body was able to wake up. She felt her surroundings again. First came the smell of blood. She was thirsty, and she knew it was because every time she healed, jumped to a tree or did any activity, it took out energy away from her body. No matter how much she craved it, she had to put her hunger behind until she took care of the two soldiers.

  Still with her eyes closed, she could hear their breathing. They were next to her, walking around her unmoving body. She felt the thick rope that tied her hands behind her before she realized they were about to tie her legs.

  There was no way to tell how long she had been out, but it had been enough for the two soldiers to come down the hole and tie her up. She couldn't let that happen. Without thinking, she pushed the man away from her. The strength of her kick had been too much, sending the soldier to the muddy wall.

  “Shoot her!” the leader commanded as he tried to find his bearings.

  With Rebecca now awake, her powers were restored. Her hands cut loose from her bindings. Once free, she took the rifle away from the woman's hands, pushing her to the opposite wall. Taking a tranquilizer dart from the rifle, Rebecca pulled the scarf out of the way and injected the dart into the woman's neck.