The Five Unnecessaries

Chapter 7

Two days had passed since I had been renamed a number. I'd promised that I would try to save a life. But I didn't know if I could, because my chance to do that was being judged by how effectively I could reach a stupid piece of red tape on the floor.

My knee shook in front of me, crushing under the weight of a one-hundred-pound barbell balancing on my shoulders. If I had enough strength, I'd throw the weight off. Or onto someone. I would have loved to throw the barbell at the person who had been screaming at me for the past two days.

"Move!" Collin yelled, his eyes looking tortured instead of the calm blue I had first seen. He kept repeating it, echoing off the walls in the room, stifling from the high humidity being simulated from the steam walls. I was afraid he would make it rain again.

I felt a burning inside me, motivating me to move forward. But the blaze that propelled me fought against the burning in my muscles, like fire fighting fire. My leg could not pull up from behind me fast enough to do another lunge. The mist forced me to take shorter breaths. I felt as if I was drowning on land, unable to breathe the air.

"You need to go faster!" he shouted again. "It needs to be a fluid motion. If you stop, it only makes it harder!"

My thighs burned, but I used any strength I had in reserve to push up and make another lunge, then another. I stopped again, as the weight felt unbearable, and my knee hit the mat in front of me. The piece of tape was still four feet away, mocking me.

"You are not just doing an exercise." He dropped his face down into his hands. "Remember why."

The barbell on my shoulder burned as if the metal was hot because my anger surged. I knew why I was practicing this. It was because the girl behind a dumpster in the Republic right now or the boy cowering in the sewer might not be able to run or walk at a good pace. They could be a lab defect, a botched job because someone thought they could do better than God at splicing DNA together. That child needed to cling to my back while I ran, or a drone would end both our lives. They would be five years old.

So, I thought of the girl grasping, crying, scared, and lost without me. Collin still had his head turned to the side, revolted by my lack of effort. I wish I could've done the same.

Any trust between us had evaporated in just two days of training. But I tried to hear the girl as if she were real and her voice would burn in my ears and give me the strength I needed. I pushed ahead one more step, but my ankle almost twisted.

"I can't do it!" I meant to scream but almost choked. Collin surprised me by crossing the room in seconds and removing the weight. The pressure and pain evaporated the instant he pulled the weight off seemingly without effort, but an equal amount of shame came crashing down on me.

"One step," Collin sighed. "It wasn't enough. Push yourself more than that for me."

"For the record, I didn't do it for you," I said, infuriated at both Collin and my lack of progress.

"For the record—" he said, then stopped himself. "That's a good thing. You remembered why. Pulse."

I held out my wrist, and he placed his two fingers on the edge and pushed down. I tried to breathe deeply to slow my pulse. He had criticized it too many times, as if my heartbeat had a flaw like everything else about me. Yesterday, he had said a few encouraging things, but shook his head as if he had just made a mistake. All his other words cut deep at any confidence I'd built, but when I would cry or scream, he acted like he would regret it. Briefly. It was like riding a wave; either lifting or crashing.

He spoke, calmer than I expected. "You need to keep up the momentum, so all the weight is moving forward with you, not pulling you down. Train your mind with a simple thought: you stop, and you die."