Fortitude
Definition
: of mind that enables a person to encounter danger or bear pain or adversity with courage
Fortitude comes from the Latin word fortis, meaning "strong," and in English it has always been used primarily to describe strength of mind.
The last test of our Academy was the hardest and most destructive. You passed it and you were in - you were officially an employee of one of the most exclusive firms in the world.
Fail it and, well, let's just say you wouldn't be employable by anyone after that.
It changed year to year, student to student so you would know what to expect and could do no sort of advance preparation.
I'd heard rumours from the other students that one year, the entire class had been abandoned at the north pole and had to make their own way back to civilization, another had tales of them being dropped in the deep southern jungle - after first being infected with malaria, yet another of those forced to infiltrate a drug smuggling ring and either take over the operation or disband and destroy it from the inside.
As outrageous and embellished as these rumours may have been, our teachers were that sadistic and imaginative, they still fell within the realms of possibility.
As I sat in my own final exam, I felt my body want to tremble (it no longer could of course, not after the many nerve manipulation surgeries I'd undergone that were compulsory at the Academy. You don't want a random twitch to give you away after all. Therefore it was mandatory for all students to go under the knife. Once you have passed the initial trial period, and then the second trial period and then the third and fourth, you were considered to have some potential - or at least some stamina - so you were outfitted with many internal nanobots that gave you complete muscular control over your own self. Of course, any student exhibiting uncontrolled, subconscious body movement after that was harshly punished. No random finger twitches or facial tics allowed. After the surgery you were given two weeks to adapt. If you couldn't figure out how to make your own heartbeat and lungs breathe after that, well, what do you think would happen if you couldn't figure out how to breath?)
So no, my body did not tremble, my face was still and calm with an expression of pleasant interest as i sat is the hard and uncomfortable chair and waited for them to tell me which hell i was to be dropped into.
In the end, my mission was, relatively, straightforward. I was to be admitted to the most brutal psychiatric hospital in the world as a patient and then survive there for a month. After a month, they would , if I was still in a somewhat reasonable state, come and collect me. If my mind was still intact, I would have the job. If it wasn't, then surely I was in the best place possible for me they said oh so reasonably.
Lunar Psychiatric Hospital was located in a small southern country that was constantly in political turmoil with new despots/tyrants/sacrificial lambs coming to power every week it seemed - and then every week being disposed of. With the constant civil strife, armed riots and rapidly declining welfare of its inhabitants, no one really had time to do any proper legislation of medical practices.
Which is how Lunar Psychiatric Hospital got away with the shit it did. Had it been running in a stable and just country, the hospital (along with the staff) would have been burned to the ground by now.
Outdated medical treatment practices such as electroshock and cold water dunking were still happily practised, patients were used for various drug and medical testing, the staff sometimes even entertaining themselves by forcing hallucinations on the patients and laughing at their reactions. Patients were barely fed and kept on a starvation diet in order to remain physically weak and to 'be better managed by the staff'.
