Juncture 3.1

The day after the ceremony, I said goodbye to Major General Siegfried. I was starting basic training, and since he was only in charge of recruitment, I would no longer be under his care. He wished me good luck, and walked me to one of the nondescript doors in the building. He left.

I wasn’t nervous, per se, but from what I’ve seen Siegfried do, the speed at which he moved against the velociraptor, he had to have gone through some serious training to get to that point.

I knocked. From inside the door, I heard a voice say “it’s open”. It sounded oddly far away. I looked around for several seconds until I remembered that the doors were ID based. I had gotten one earlier today, and I held it up in front of the small scanner. The door whooshed open.

I was surprised to see that it was an exit. There was no indication that this was an exit, but I was standing on the cusp of a large, empty green field. Like, riding off into the horizon large. I stepped out into the field and heard the door close behind me. I turned.

Behind me was a door, nestled cozily within a doorframe. That was all. There was no building surrounding the door, or anything to suggest that I had just come out of a massive facility. I walked around it and saw that there was nothing from the other side either, just the back of the door.

I went around to the front again. My spine shuddered reflexively, and I saw a person, presumably the one who had yelled that the door was open off in the distance.

It’s gonna be hard to get used to this.

I started jogging toward the person in the field, and got to her after around three minutes of jogging. I was out of breath by the time I reached her.

She was standing immobile, not really staring at me, but with an intense look in her eyes that showed that she despised my being here. She was really short and was wearing camouflage pants, a white sleeveless shirt, and army boots. Her brown hair was cut into a utilitarian, short style, and her arms were decorated with tattoos.

“Hi,” I said panting, “I’m Marc.” I held out my hand for her to shake. She looked at it, then at me, still not moving.

“Avice,” she responded, curtly.

It was quiet for several seconds, but for my heavy breathing. I didn’t know what to say, and apparently she felt no need to say anything. Both of these culminated in an awkward silence that was mercifully broken by Avice after some seconds.

“You’re here for me to train you?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I responded.

“Okay. Start with pushups.”

“Now?” I asked, still gasping from the jog over.

“Now!” She barked. When she spoke like that, you didn’t really have a choice but to listen. I got down on the ground and started to do pushups.

One. I was doing okay. I could do this. I had never really been one for exercise, and I could probably count on one hand the number of pushups I had done until now.

Two. I was doing fine. This was easy. As I rose to the apex, Avice put a boot on the small of my back, and put enough pressure on to make my back straighten. It suddenly got a lot harder.

Three. My arms were starting to shake. Her boot became heavier.

Four. My limbs were on fire and my back was breaking. This was torture. This was nothing but long, drawn out torture. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to continue. I went down, and I didn’t know if I’d be coming up again. Avice yelled something at me, I couldn’t make out the words. The pain was intense.

Five. I managed to pull my weak body up one more time, my arms screaming in protest, her boot was a point of red-hot pain on me. I dropped to the ground after.

This was embarrassing. I didn’t know that I had gotten this out of shape, but apparently I couldn’t even do more than five pushups at a time. Avice growled and removed her foot. I turned over weakly, panting. I was sure that my face was dark red.

I looked up at her. She had the same distasteful expression as before, but somehow she managed to make it look even angrier. She stuck her boot in my hitching side and pushed into it.

“Five? You could only do five pushups?” she said, in a quiet voice that made me feel like she was thinking about how fast she could kill me. The worst part was that I could only pant, I didn’t have enough breath to answer her. She uttered a deep-throated growl, and I slowly started to stand.

When I was up, she moved up in front of me, taking an intimidating stance. The closeness really made me notice that she was almost three-quarters of a foot shorter than I was. She poked me in the chest with one hand, tilting me backward. I reeled, and swung my arms forward to bring myself back to a standing position.

“Tomorrow, you’d better be ready to actually train. That means no stopping. That means no giving up. You understand me?”

I nodded.

“Good,” she said, “Now get out of my sight. Be back here by dawn tomorrow, and be prepared for pain.”

I tried my best to back away and get some of my personal space back.

“GO!” She yelled. I turned and started walking toward the door. When I got to it I swiped my ID, the door opened, and I walked inside. There was an immediate change in pressure that I hadn’t felt the first time I had walked through. It felt… heavier inside the facility, in a way I couldn’t really put into words.

I went to dinner.