Stronger

chapter thirteen

The next time he woke up, food was sitting beside his mattress again. He was sprawled out in the middle of the floor, a now dried puddle of blood around him. It looked like his healing took care of most of the wounds he'd gotten, as now he only had bruises and a few cuts.

Blood was smeared on his ripped clothes. His hair was stiff with blood and it covered his skin. He was exhausted after yesterday.

He sighed and ate his food. He would need to eat to keep his super healing working.

Right when he finished, some guards came in. They didn't say anything, just grabbed him and started taking him somewhere.

Peter was tempted to fight them but felt weak and with his fuzzy head, it would be wasted energy.

Now that he thought about it, he wasn't sure how long he'd been out. Had it been a few hours? More than a day? He couldn't even see if it was day or nighttime because of the lack of windows.

They arrived at a large room entirely made of concrete with high walls. It was decorated with mats, punching bags, weights, and more. There was a shooting range on one side that could be used for all types of weapons, not just guns. It was a training room for sure, but why were they there?

He figured that out pretty quickly. They were starting the experiments with his powers. Envo was in the room, overlooking the experiment.

They started with fighting. He was told it was to help measure his strength, speed, agility, and fighting skills in general.

First, he fought a seemingly average agent. Not huge, not that quick, with average fighting technique. Peter took him down pretty quickly.

Then, there was a huge guy. He stood at least a foot taller than Peter and was very muscular. Peter managed to take him down too, but he'd taken a lot of hits as well. His vision was swimming, his stomach hurt, and his ears were ringing.

He stayed on all fours to try to recover until someone pulled him up for the next fight. Envo warned him, reminding him of rule three. Listen and do what he's told.

The next fight was against two girls. One was slightly taller than him and thin, the other was short but stocky. They were both almost as quick as him. This fight took longer, but got the same result as last time; he won, but everything hurt.

And the same happened when he fought a lean guy, the same height as him. But this guy had tons of knowledge on fighting techniques and was an expert in watching people's sequences and techniques to counter them.

He was barely standing after that fight. New cuts littered his body and he'd surely acquired new bruises. His balance was off and black framed his vision. He could smell blood.

They rushed right into the next fight.

He had to fight three people at once–two boys, one girl–and in this fight, he lost. He was on all fours coughing up blood as they stood viciously around him.

This time, they gave him two minutes to recover. Not because they wanted him to be prepared for the next fight, but because it would skew their data if he wasn't fighting as well as normal. How thoughtful.

When the two minutes were up they told him to get up. He didn't–couldn't. He was warned, but couldn't move. Envo turned on the shock collar, telling Peter he broke the rules.

He lost count of how many fights he went through.

If he didn't get up for the next fight or he stopped, he'd be electrocuted with the shock collar. Trying to fight with it made it even harder to breathe. The two-minute break he got was the only one. He didn't get the luxury of water or time to catch his breath.