Some describe fighting as a dance.
An intricate art that needs to be mastered and harnessed.
Fighting is nothing like a dance.
It is not graceful.
Or intimate.
Nor is it elegant.
Fighting is an animalistic urge installed into humans in order for them to survive and thrive.
Fighting is to seek out pain and destruction. It is to look at your opponent and loath his very being.
Humans fight for peace but also to reek havoc, to rule, to dominate, to injure.
To kill.
Sometimes just for the fun of it.
Humans that don't tap into that urge, that rage, well those aren't humans. Those are sacks of flesh who add no value to the world.
A person who cannot fight is a person that cannot live.
As Konnor and Rye stood back to back facing off against the animal shifters - each bullet to the chest, each blow to the head, each body to fall lifelessly to the ground, one couldn't describe it as a dance.
Using his peripheral vision, Rye observed Konnor's fighting style in order to accommodate his own with it. He was pleased to find out that Konnor was just as good with a gun as he was. He watched as the other boy aimed and fired seamlessly over and over again. Unlike the way he'd faced the shifters before, Konnor was fighting more to kill than to survive.
He seemed to think that, because they were in a simulation room, he could play with his life. His advances weren't careless, more like foolish. Rye wanted to call him out, but something was holding him back. It wasn't until he'd noticed the multiple injuries that Konnor had sustained in the last two minutes of battle that Rye knew he had to say something.
Konnor was having fun.
Too much fun.
Due to the heightening of his pain threshold the major injuries he was sustaining only felt like paper cuts. Every shot that rang out into the air gave him a bigger sense of accomplishment, each bullet that reached its target left him feeling happier and happier.
It was almost as if he was in a trance. He couldn't feel the pain, which in result left him feeling the power.
Until he couldn't feel at all.
Until he felt weightless.
Until he was sucked back into a time where fighting was his only escape, where all the anger had consumed him and he'd finally snapped.
"Konnor!" The sound of Rye's voice pushed through his thoughts.
"Konnor, stay with me OK!" He tried to turn and look at Rye but his head felt limp and heavy.
He felt his chest tighten.
"Konnor! You need to keep your eyes open or you will die."
Again, he tried to turn his head but he couldn't. What was Rye going on about, he couldn't die in a simulation room. He giggled and tried to reassure him but he couldn't form the words in his mouth.
"Konnor!"
Why was he shouting, he wasn't making any sense.
It didn't make sense.
It didn't make sense.
.+*+.
Rye had managed to carry Konnor's body to the medical bay not too long after the boy had fully lost consciousness.
As he cleaned the blood from the bullet wound on Konnor's chest, he tried to keep as calm as possible. His mind was racing: Konnor shouldn't have felt the pain of the bullet piercing into his skin. That was the whole point of the simulation rooms.
Someone had to have changed the settings from the outside - made them more susceptible to pain.
He hadn't even noticed Konnor was in pain until he didn't get up after receiving a shot on the right side of his chest.
Rye'd had to slaughter the remaining animal shifters to reach the doors of the simulation room and then go back to drag Konnor's body out of the room and through the dark corridors to the medical bay.
He applied the tourniquet before fastening it tightly and checking to make sure he was breathing.
The wound itself didn't look too bad, it was just the fact that it shouldn't have happened in the first place.
After checking over Konnor again and giving him one last glance he came to the conclusion that some sluck and a good nights rest would be enough to mend Konnor's wounds.
Slowly he walked towards a chair in the corner of the room and sat down, his mind full of questions without answers.
He'd only been in the Academy for eight hours and he'd already seemed to have made some enemies. At least he assumed he was the one who was being targeted. Konnor seemed too sweet for anyone to want to hurt him.
In fact after more thought he realised that he'd been targeted twice today.
And he needed to get to the bottom of it.
D'ya like?
Not my best but eh
YOU ARE READING
THREE STARS BURNING
Science FictionThere were fifty in the beginning. Thirty-two of which had already been eliminated. Each boy had only one thing on their mind. Survive this for a better future.
