The Touch

Chapter 23 - Test

The training turned out to be completely amazing. I thought I had trained hard before, and I had with Max, but this training was unlike anything I had ever seen or done. There was not only martial arts, karate and floor practices but there was gun target practice, cross bow shooting, weight training, kick boxing, abseiling, distance running and even lessons in nutrition and what to eat to nourish your body to make sure you could train at your peak performance.

Days turned to weeks, weeks turned to months and all along I had kept Blind Bird a secret from the CWT, and the CWT a secret from Blind Bird. My body had become leaner and muscles started to show in areas that I didn't know that I had. We saved more children and families by working together as a team and the population at the CWT grew rapidly. In fact it grew so much that half of them were soon transferred out to the Main CWT Centre.

Although I was never given any information on where this other centre was, as it was top secret, Slade did tell me that it was a long distance away from here and was larger than any of the institutes that the government owned. It was also in an area where the children would be safe and where they would learn to utilise their skills if it was ever needed.

I had to say goodbye to some of my new found friends and their parents as they left in the latest move up to the Centre. There were tears all around as I had grown to know each of the children, but I hoped that I would see them again someday soon when things were safer.

My training with Slade was exhilarating. As soon as we entered the training area he would become the teacher that he was born to be and the students under him excelled with the passion he had for combat training. I often wondered where he got his strength and resilience from. I asked him one day and he told me that he let his students hit him, drop him, kick him because he felt that it just made him feel stronger because they were learning skills to defend themselves. I felt that whatever happened to Slade the day his mother was killed made a huge impact on him. In training I noticed that his face seemed to change, as if he was someone else when he was training.

When it came to my training I succeeded in beating him in Karate and Martial arts, but he had other moves that I had not learnt and I was often the one found on the mat with the wind knocked out of me. But I tried to never show him any weakness. Instead when I was fighting against him I looked at him like he was one of the Watchers that had killed my family and gave everything back in strength that I could. Sometimes both of us fighting each other would leave us bruised and exhausted, but we would laugh about it afterwards.

The target and gun practice plus the cross bow training took a little bit more time to get used to. I had a gun in my apartment but had never had any cause to use it, in fact I had only done target practice once. But down here in this hidden city I found I had a passion for it and it became something I looked forward to doing in my training.

I didn't end up going to Max's dojo anymore and when he saw me one day in the street he hardly recognised me. He looked a little hurt and asked where I was working out now. I just made up some excuse that I had joined a gym which was teaching cross training. Of course I could tell that he knew it was a lie, but what else could I tell him? I couldn't tell him about the CWT, or about my life now so therefore a lie was the only thing I could tell him.

Three months after I started training with Slade and the others at the CWT, I was put through a training test to see how far I had progressed. My combat skills were pass worthy but I was still concerned about my target shooting skills, especially when it came to the Crossbow as my frame was smaller than most so holding the bow correctly always seemed to be an issue.

There was a council of three men in the test room and I knew some of the men were parents of children with the Touch. Jeffrey was also seated with them but was not part of the deciding council.