Prepared

Chapter Three

It felt good to be able to run at any pace I wanted to without being surrounded by tall trainee soldiers around me. I sprinted the whole eight laps and flew by the obstacle course and the exercises, finishing ridiculously early.

From Tuesday to Saturday I breezed through all my lessons. Everything was the same as always. Everyone was quiet during lessons, doing the work at a steadily fast pace, listening to instructions, explanations, theories and examples.

Everyone was at the same level for every subject – Maths, English, Physics, Biology, Chemistry and Languages. I was ahead only in I.T and Sports – the I.T was courtesy of my father and sport was courtesy of my mother.

On Sunday, everyone’s day off, I was sent to my parents for the majority of the day. Some people couldn’t go home because their parents were either dead or out on a job. That was the reality of life.

“Hello Olivia, it’s been three weeks since I’ve seen you,” my father said.

I nodded, “Yes, it has been three weeks. How did hacking into Al-Qaeda systems work for you?”

“It worked okay but they aborted and moved out.”

“That must have been frustrating. Do you think you will ever find them?”

“Yes, eventually. I just need to find the base of their signals, but they cut it off and never send live videos.”

“Where’s mother?” I asked.

“She’s on her way back from a mission. She’ll be here in a few hours to start your training. In the meantime, are you ready for me to teach you some more about computers, databases, firewalls and hacking them?” he asked.

I nodded; I was always ready for any lesson. Well, any lesson apart from the ones my mother gave me.

After a few hours of fighting my dad’s firewalls and trying to fend him off with some of my own, my mother arrived.

“Olivia, get dressed and be in the combat training hall,” she said as she walked past the room, not bothering to look inside to see that I was dressed.

I walked out of the room without question, going straight there, seeing the ripped right sleeve of her leather jacket as she ran up the stairs.

I was in the hall, waiting for her arrival.

She stormed through the doors.

“Are you ready for your training Olivia?”

“Yes, what happened to your sleeve?”

“I will not discuss my personal matters with you. We are here to train. Choose your weapon.”

I frowned, confused. We had not moved on to weapons training. She had not yet taught me it, which could only mean one thing – improvise.

I took the 1095 Steel Katana Sword. It was light with a good grip due to the ray skin on the wooden handle. I took it out of the scabbard and held it to my side.

My mother also held out a Samurai sword. It was the reason I had picked the one in my hand – because I knew she favoured swords above all weapons and the best way to match her would be with a sword.

No one fought like this anymore but it was the discipline of overcoming fear that drew my mother to this sport. It was hard not to cower away from the long sharp blades with the knowledge of what they could do to you. She was certain that if you could fight with swords without cowardice, fighting someone who had a knife while you were without weapon should be flawlessly easy.

Another thing she always liked to teach me was improvisation – she said it was the key to survival. I couldn’t fault her theory, but I believed anticipation and being one step ahead were also keys to survival that no one shouldn’t have.