Closer

Chapter 8

The next few days went by somewhat smoothly. I hadn’t really spoken to Eric since our conversation in the infirmary. He had pointed out the flaws in my interpretation of the combat methods that Four had began to teach us, but that was it. I caught myself looking at him more often than usual. His softer tone still echoing in my head. Maybe he wasn’t as cold as people thought.

Our training routine had only slightly changed. Instead of shooting in the morning and knife throwing in the afternoon, now it was both in the morning and combat training in the afternoon. We would have an hour or so of instruction from Four and then he would send us to the bright orange punching bags to practice. 

Today, unfortunately, was the first day of actual fighting. We were told that our performance would weigh heavily on how we were going to be ranked during the first phase. No pressure, right?

“Who do you think they’re going to pair us up against?” Olivia asked Kristen and I as she walked beside us. I could tell she was nervous, but I couldn’t blame her. Her fighting over the couple of days hadn’t been great, but coming from Amity, it was expected. She should still make the cut though.

“I don’t know to be honest,” I shrugged as we walked into the training room after lunch. Knowing Eric, I was expecting the worst. My fighting had surprisingly been pretty good. My brother was astounded at this fact, but didn’t expect anything less. He told me that he too had caught on pretty fast at the fighting aspect of training during initiation, so it was only expected that I did as well. He said it was probably due to the fact that we were trained to pay close attention to the things we were taught when we were younger due to our overbearing father.

Our trio was the first to return to the training room. Eric stood with his back to us as he paired names together on the chalkboard. I couldn’t see my name yet so I turned my attention to Four, who was cleaning up some of the knives from earlier. I excused myself from the girls and made my way over to him.

Without a word, I began to help him clean up the scattered knives. It felt so natural and familiar. It reminded me of when we used to wash the dishes after supper. It was something I always looked forward to at the end of the day. We would just work together, sometimes in silence, sometimes in conversation. We would talk about our day and other little things. 

After I had gathered so many knives that I had no room left in my hands, I looked up at him, giving him all the metal that I had collected. He gave me a thankful, yet grim look. 

“What is it?” I asked, just barely loud enough for him to hear. I followed his eyes as he looked over my shoulder. I briefly caught sight of a scowl that was firmly planted on Eric’s face before he turned away from us.

“He’s having you fight Seth,” My eyes dragged across the chalkboard, searching for my name. Sure enough, just as Four said, it was paired with Seth’s. I was good, but Seth was better. And bigger. And stronger. I was fucked. “Watch his eyes,” Four pulled my attention away from the board as he spoke.

“Huh?”

“Seth. He looks at the exact point he’s about to aim for. It’s one of his major flaws in his fighting. Use it to your advantage when you’re defending yourself.” Four looked around, making sure no one was paying too much attention to us. 

I nodded as we finished collecting all the fallen knives. I made my way back over to the group of initiates that had started to trickle in over the past five or so minutes. My eyes found Seth as he entered the room. I sized him from head to toe. He was at least a foot taller than me and I knew for a fact that he would love nothing more then to finish what he started months ago. I didn’t have Jake to protect me from him now.