The Future isn't Bright

Twenty-Three

From the minute I picked it up, the knife felt natural in my hand. Chloe was by the station by me, holding a shortened sword as Jennie slowly explained how to duel while hitting her sword lightly onto Chloe's. The way Ulysses explained it, we were to spend two hours at each station. Something immediately drew me to the knives, I didn't know why. There was a table covered with knives of different sizes, each a different size or hilt. Mac came over to me after having helped a boy with dark skin that kept on dropping his dagger.

"Knives, eh?" she stated, "Let's find one that suits you," She lowered my hand, in which I held a short dagger with a dark brown hilt.  

"Just spread your hand, like this," she spread out her fingers, "And try to find a blade that's as big as the length from the tip of your thumb to the end of your pinkie."

I did as she asked, stretching my fingers apart. Mac frowned.

"What happened to your hand?" she said, looking at my faint cuts on it.

"I... Uh... Lost my temper," I stammered. What was I supposed to say? I hated the way I looked and I punched a hole through my door because I was angry at myself?

"It happens," was all she said, "Flip your hand palm-side up,"

I did, and she pulled my hand over to the table, checking for a knife that would suit me.

"Ah, here we go!" she said as a longer bladed knife with a deep purple hilt floated up and landed gently on my palm. My eyes widened as she measured it with me hand. It was perfect.

"The five-inch diamond blade. Not many people get the hang of it, because if you turn it facing straight toward you, it's shaped like a diamond."

She was right, it wasn't just a regular flat blade, but thicker, and the diamond shape made it look like a minuscule sword. That was probably why it weighed much more than the blades I had tried before.

"Wanna give it a test run?" Mac wiggled her eyebrows. I shrugged as if to say "why not?" and followed her to a line of five targets. There were four kids my age already flinging their daggers at their targets, which ranged from the bulls-eye kind to actual human-shaped figurines, which worried me slightly.

"Um, Mac?" I stopped, "Are we actually going to have to kill, well, people?"  

"Of course. So that they don't kill you first."  

My face must have paled at least three shades, but I walked on to the target anyway. It was one of the two bulls-eye ones. There was a line painted onto the real grass about fifteen feet away from the target, not too far. I wrapped my hand along the hilt, and it felt like it molded to my grip.  

"Go for it," Mac stated, crossing her arms. I relaxed my shoulders and focused on the target. I raised my left throwing arm until the knife was behind my ear. I exhaled and focused on the center. Then, I whipped my arm forward and watched as the knife glided through the air, as if in slow motion, and penetrated the target. I wasn't expecting to get a bulls-eye, but it landed in one of the middle rings, slightly below where I was aiming.  

"Nice!" Mac clapped, "That's really good for your first try! It's in your blood. All recruits have inclined fighting abilities in at least one of the fields of training: archery, swordplay, knife-throwing, or hand-to-hand combat, which I think you'd be good at."

"Can I go get the knife?" I asked her

“I got it,” she said as the knife dislodged itself from the target and flew through the air, into Mac’s grip. She held her hand out and let me take it from her.

I looked over at the target next to mine, where a red-haired boy flung a knife right onto the bulls-eye. I watched in awe as he walked over to recover his knife.