The Haven Hotel

Spring

Copperface trains me every day for just over two months. Some days are dedicated to hand to hand combat, others are given to firearm training in a bunker underneath the Haven where the sound reaches nothing but the heavy concrete walls around us. My practice is entirely with low caliber pistols and tiny rifles so the kickback doesn't drastically affect my aim.

In my own time I run around the compound and lift weights and practice techniques that the captain has shown me. I can feel myself improving; each time we spar it's harder for him to get at me, and by the third week he's huffing and puffing almost as hard as I am at the end of our sessions. By the fifth week I manage to actually land some shots on him. 

During this time I learn more about him in drips of what leaks through his calm demeanor. For instance, he mentions once that he was in high school in Pretoria when the Collapse happened, he says in passing that his father was stabbed by a mob in the weeks following the Blue Bomb, and then that he's been living in the Haven since its founding, yet he's not related to anyone in power. Yet all these facts do nothing to tell me what kind of person he is; he says them while talking about the usefulness of different techniques and none of the revelations have much emotion attached to them. 

Everything I learn about Copperface as a person I infer from how he says things and what others say about him. I can tell that he wasn't very close to his father, in spite of having been raised by him alone. Then again, he's not very close to anyone; even among the ranking officers, the man has no friends, no family, no love life, nothing of what everyone else has been holding on to. He's entirely antisocial yet he's not unable to speak to people without making things awkward; his isolation is entirely his choice and that points to a very deep depression.

"Life's been hard on all of us." Omar says at the dinner table. All of the notebooks and papers have been stowed away somewhere and in their place are three plates of egg fried rice. "Some people have different ways of handling it."

"Cop... Captain Copley isn't like us." Yusuf replies with a mouth full of food. "The man's a machine. They say he was assembled by the Chief to be a super soldier."

"We were all assembled by someone to be something and the Chief isn't that someone." Omar points a fork at his son. "And that something is never all one thing."

"You lost me." Yusuf says after a minute of contemplation. He and Omar burst into laughter and I smile as well. The truth is, I have no idea what the old captain meant by his words either. 

"What I mean is, Copley is human, just like the rest of us. He might be a bit stronger or weaker but he feels what we do when he's in the same place. What I'm saying is, we can't judge him for handling things how he does."

"No one's judging him." Yusuf scrapes his plate clean and takes it to the basin. "I'm just saying things about him when I notice things about him."

Omar rolls his eyes slightly, a gesture that implies that he's done with this section of the conversation, then he turns to me. "And you?"

"Me?"

"Yes, you." He snickers. "How have your training sessions with Copley been going?"

"Fine." I didn't know that he knew about those sessions; I've never known Omar to be an early riser so there's no way he would have seen the training firsthand, and Copperface telling him would be the least likely scenario I can think of, so word must have reached him through his son, or the "they" his son always talks about. In any case Omar's tone is jovial. There's none of the disappointment that I expected to hear, none of what prevented me from telling him myself.

He tilts his head to the side and raises his eyebrows. He's a typical parent and "fine" is never a sufficient answer for him. 

"Good." I continue while thinking of something to say. "I'm getting better, you know. It's not even about just learning how to shoot with one hand, it's also about getting stronger."