"Good morning," I hear Abby's voice say to me. "We have your new job," she says to me, and I open my eyes to see her standing above me, face about a foot away from mine.
"What is it?" I ask, starting to sit up as she backs up.
"You are going to be a security guard," she says to me, "So is Tara, but Marcus is going to be a trainer for those who are very weak. Congratulations, and if you decide that you don't want to be a security guard then you can become a trainer like Marcus. It's up to you, but you have to choose one of those two things," she continues, a big smile on her face.
"Okay," I say and see Tara talking to Cary. "Are we going to be trained or anything?" I ask her.
"Yes, you and Tara get to train together, and your job overlaps with Marcus's too," she says, voice quieter than usual.
"Got it," I say to her, a little freaked out now. "Where do I start training?" I ask her, still looking at Tara.
"Follow me and you can start your training," she says and motions for me to follow her. "If you have any problems with anything you can come to me," she says to me, the smile on her face growing.
"Thanks," I say to her as we get up and start to walk, Tara and Cary following behind us.
We walk to a large room with punching bags, treadmills, weapons, targets, etc. "Go ahead, after a couple days of training you will be promoted to guard." Cary says from behind me, her voice loud, but soft.
"Okay," Tara says and walks over to me, "Come on, let's train," she says sarcastically. "We want to be promoted to guard don't we?" she says and smiles to me, waving as Abby and Cary leave.
Once they leave she walks over to a punching bag, balling up her fist then swinging it back then forward, each hit followed by a grunt.
"Ow," she says and waves her hand around as if she is trying to shake the pain off. Her hand is now turning black and blue with scabs forming on her knuckles.
I turn to my own punching bag, copying what Tara does. "How did you learn to punch so well, and deal with the pain so well?" I ask her, holding my hand, which is now hurting after one punch.
"In the test that I survived I had to kill my friends, beat them to death, it was torture for all of us, but mostly for me since I survived. I learned that the physical pain is nothing compared to the emotional and mental pain that I have gone through," she says and punches the bag harder.
I don't respond until I see her face turn red from both anger and sadness. "Why don't we go to the treadmill?" I ask her, pulling her away from the punching bags and over to the treadmills.
"That would probably be best," she says and glares at the punching bag as if it attacked her instead of the other way around. "How did you meet Marcus?"
I stop walking before I speak, "They found me in my test," I say simply.
"They?" she asks, eyebrows raised. "Marcus and who else?"
"His sister, Sarah. She, and a couple of other people, who I never met, were burned alive, then the doctors brought all of them back, bodies burned, and they tried to kill us," I say, shuddering at the thought of that test.
"Oh," she says and we start to run on the treadmills, not talking.
We train for hours, eating snacks in the cafeteria every now and then, until we eventually decide that we need some rest.
"Goodnight," she says to me as we go to sleep in our room.
YOU ARE READING
We All Fall Down
ActionSubject A-486, also known as Aria, grew up confined to a tiny cell, a test subject, with only one other friend who is also a test subject, Subject A-352, or Sophia. She has been tested in all sorts of ways; injections, chambers of gas, rooms with cr...