SMOKE (The Aurum Trilogy Book 2)

Chapter 6

SIX

Lauren

I woke up early to train despite Dr. Carter's best efforts to tell me that I am not yet physically apt to do so. I rose up from bed quickly heading to the bathroom. I had a quick shower after brushing my teeth. I dressed in the training clothes laid out for me by Argentum which consisted of a black tank top and tight-fitting pants. I searched the room for my ever trusty belt and combat boots but remembered that they only existed in the simulation.

My name is Lauren Alison Steel. I'm seventeen. I've been under simulation ever since I was 5. I'm an experiment. P-0001. I was created to be Argentum's soldier. I was created to kill and not to feel. I was created to destroy Aurum and win this war.

I snapped out of my thoughts and slipped on a pair of slippers. They were a bit too big for me but it would do. I needed to train. I needed to train to forget the hurt. I needed to train to focus on my purpose. I needed to keep myself busy to push the thought of Jonathan away.

I swiped my newly made access card and the sliding door swung open revealing the neat white halls of the laboratory. I memorized the route very fast because of the unique characteristics of my brain. Dr. Carter told me that my memory skills were enhanced and exceptional. I had a high IQ. My photographic memory was strong and reliable and things register in my mind in a fast pace. One of the advantages of being an experiment.

I arrived at the training room. Aside from human experiments, soldiers of Argentum utilized the laboratory's training facilities as well. Dr. Carter told me that this training room was small compared to the ones in the military camps. He informed me that I'll be sent there after my personal training her in the lab, right before they would send me to Aurum to assassinate its leader. Before I began target practice, I've explored all three floors of it. Each floor had a training specialization.

The first floor is designated for mental and psychological training. This is where Dr. Carter would ask me questions about my identity, making sure I knew what was real and what was not, who was the enemy and who was the ally. The floor housed several rooms and laboratories, each of them having special purposes. One room was intended for honing survival skills. In that room, they put your brain on simulation as you go through challenges on how to survive. It was just like my simulation, only when you engage in it, you are conscious and actually performing the actions. A room is structured and patterned like a real-life maze. it changes every time that it's used. You can pick the difficulty and adjust its surroundings depending on what challenge you would want to encounter. One room is for wiring and technology. In this room, you are trained to hack computers, acquire secret data, and learn how to diffuse bombs and make dead engines work. Anything that has relation with wires and mechanical objects can be found in this room.

The second floor was designed for physical training. It's the one with the widest space among the three floors. This is where we train for combat and do extraneous activities. This floor has a manifoldness of tests. The difference that it had from the first floor is that in every activity you did here, you were conscious and it was your very body doing the action. The second floor offered multiple challenges such as getting through laser beams, swinging blades, passing obstacle courses, and making it out of crushing walls. They also had sparring areas and rooms intended for swordfighting and hand-to-hand combat. The floor also offers an area for sports, exercise and recreation. Dr. Carter took me there on the first days of my training in order to bring my muscles back to life. He helped me with some exercises and stretching. Before that, I wasn't moving much. It wasn't easy to be frozen in a span of seventeen years and suddenly wake up with the expectance and task of being a trained killer. The rooms in the second floor held all my interest. They had different types of training using various weapons, from guns ti throwing daggers.