Chapter 2
We walked out of our room and headed toward the mess hall. The mess hall was huge. Thousands of black tables and chairs, all set up in perfect rows. Yet only few are used. The walls are crimson red and metal floors. Most of the military base looks like this, minus the tables and chairs.
We walked over to the line got our trays and proceeded to get our food. Today’s menu for breakfast is brown mush, with light brown gunk, orange slime and juice. Yum. We sat down at our table, right, smack down in the middle of the room.
“Gunk for breakfast, oh joy,” said, Torture, as she sat down.
“Come on it’s not that bad,” said Misery.
Torture rolled her eyes. “Your optimism disgusts me sometimes.”
“Thank you,” she said smiling.
“That wasn’t a com-” said, Torture, not even bothering to finish the sentence. She turned to look at me. “Seriously?! She is supposed to be one of the most dangerous military weapons in this entire base?!”
“Yes, now no more fighting. I would like to go one morning without you guys arguing.”
“Fine,” said, Torture. I chuckled slightly. Out of all of my sisters, I think I’m closest to, Torture. Don’t get me wrong, I get along with all of them and we all hang out, but I don’t know I guess me and, Torture, have more stuff to talk about.
“Buenos días, señoritas,” said a familiar voice walking our way.
I laughed, “Hey, Darkness.”
“So eggs for breakfast, yum,” he said sitting on the seat to my right.
“Eggs? I thought they were pancakes,” said Misery with disgust, and pushing her tray away.
“Well, look at it this way, we usually can’t even guess what it is, so it’s better than usual,” I said. Misery shrugged and continued eating. Darkness had already started.
Darkness, I like to consider him my best friend. He was the first person to talk to me when I started my training. Darkness has shaggy brown hair, muddy brown eyes, and he’s really tall too. He was created a year before me, so he’s sixteen. He’s lean, you know, has muscle, but not a lot of it. He’s really nice and is constantly making jokes, he can’t take anything seriously. But hey, every time you need a good laugh go to Darkness, he’ll cheer you up. He has ability’s too I mean why else, would he be here? He can put you in total darkness. All you have to do is look into his eyes. Look into them, and he will take you somewhere. Into darkness. You’ll feel alone, cold, scared, confused, like you completely forget the real world. It goes to in extent where a person could go mad with fear. He’s part of a group called the Fear Brothers.
“Hey, Darkie, gue-”
“Don’t call me, Darkie. It sounds like a dog’s name,” he said cutting me off. Very rudely, might I add.
“Okay, Dark, guess what happened this morning?”
“What?” he said with a mouth full of “eggs”.
“I got in trouble this morning.”
“What?! Miss goodie-two-shoes going bad? What’d you do?”
“I helped, Misery, make her bed.”
He swallowed his spoon full off food. “I take the whole good-girl-gone-bad thing back.”I rolled my eyes and smiled, and then took a spoon full of my breakfast.
“So, Dark, how are your brothers?” said Torture looking down at her food like it held the answers to the future.
“Nightmares, is fine, thanks for asking,” he said giving her this big grin that said: Yeah I knew what you meant by that. Torture blushed. I didn’t know she could do that!
“He’s over there with, Phob,” he said pointing at the table all across the room with a big grin on his face, obviously happy that he made Torture blush. I hit his shoulder.
“Don’t embarrass, Torture, like that!” I said in a hush tone so, Torture, wouldn’t hear. It’s pretty obvious that, Torture, has a little crush on Nightmares, Darkness’s brother. That is the only person she’s nice too! Well, her version of nice anyway. “She is very sensitive!”
“Sensitive?! She got sent to anger management classes every other day for torturing our teacher half to death ‘cuz he made her do push ups!” Yeah I remember that, that’s when she got her first punishment. Never did that again. They are really rough with punishments here. I believe she was… ten when this happened.
“So?!”
“You know, maybe you should talk about me when I’m not right next to you!” said Torture yelling at us.
“Sorry,” me, and, Darkness, said in unison. Torture just rolled her eyes and kept eating. Breakfast wasn’t very interesting. Just a couple of meaningless conversations, as our superior would say. Pretty soon we had to go to classes. Misery, Torture, and Despair went to there classes and me, and, Illness, went to ours.
First class: battle strategy. It’s just basically a general telling us about the different ways we can engage the enemy, different maneuvers and strategies. I love it. It’s my favorite class. I actually think it’d be pretty cool to become a general, but I know that’s never going to happen. Well on the Brightside, General O’Connor is really cute. Dark brown hair, brown eyes, he is really tall, and has nice biceps. This class lasts about an hour and a half.
Now it’s target practice. I take this class with Darkness. It’s actually his best subject. You just stand there with a gun and shoot the target. Usually, for target practice like this, we use hand guns. I’m using a 45 ACP Chief's Special — Model CS45. Yeah, it’s a beauty. Usually the exams we have here consist of us identifying all the guns that they bring, or hitting the target in the area that they tell us too. Not really one of my favorite classes but it can be fun. You can blow off some steam here too.
I am standing in front of my target. Goggles on, ear plugs on, gun loaded, oh yeah, I’m ready. Right when I’m about to pull the trigger, I hear someone yell, “Hey!” I jump, with fright.
I turn my head to find Darkness right next to me. I take off my ear plugs and glared at him. “Never sneak up on me when I’m holding a gun!”
I can tell that he is holding back his laughter. “Sorry.”
“Why are you here anyway? You should be shooting your own target, not spying on me.”
“I wasn’t spying on you, I was just taking a little brake and I wanted to see if you wanted to join me, that’s all.”
“Break? Darkness, the class just started, how could you be taking a break?” I asked him. To which his response was to simple shrug. I rolled my eyes. “Well I can’t right now, I’m busy. But maybe later. You know, after we actually do what we’re supposed to be doing!”
“Okay, okay yeesh!” he said walking away. I rolled my eyes, put my earplugs back on and continued with what I was doing. I held my arm right in front of me, steady and straight. I focused on the piece of paper in front of me. Focused my eyes on the center. I took a deep breath and pulled the trigger.
By the end of the class I got one bulls eye, and a couple of shots around it. Darkness got three bulls eyes. Show off…
Next off is Gym. Well here for gym, we go to an actual gym and we work on what ever they tell us to work on. I went to the changing room and changed into my “gym clothes.” The girls gym clothing consists of a kaki tank top, black cargo pants, and black combat boots, our hair tied up in a bun.
I walked into the gym to find, Darkness, and, Illness, their. Illness was wearing what I was wearing, and Darkness was wearing the boys’ gym uniform. They have to wear a kaki crew neck t-shirt, black cargo pants, and black combat boots. Basically the same thing we wear, minus the bun and tank top.
“I hate gym,” said Illness.
“I know me too,” I said trying to comfort her. We all hate it. What we do here is exercise until we pass out. But sometimes they take pity on us and we only exercise until we nearly pass out.
“Okay, Darkness,” said a ridiculously bulky man. Darkness turned around to face him. The man had brown hair, he had an obvious spray tan, and he was several inches shorter than Dark. “I’ve been told to work on your upper body strength. So come with me.” Darkness looked at me shrugged and followed his instructor.
Pretty soon Illnesses instructor came. They said they would be working on lower body strength. That’s the one I hate the most!
I just stood there for several minutes waiting for my coach, or instructor. “Um, you are… Death, correct?” said someone from behind me. I turned to find a woman looking down at her clipboard. Probably to see what my name was. She had blonde hair that was pulled back into a ponytail, blue eyes, behind her plastic black rim glasses. She has light skin, and is about as tall as me. She was wearing a white lab coat. She looked up from her clipboard and straight toward me.
“Yes, I am.”
“Nice to meet you, I’m Dr. Hadley,” she said giving me a smile that showed all of her pearly white teeth, and extending her hand.
I took her hand and shook it. “Hi nice to meet you,” I said smiling also. I guess she’s new.
“Nice to meet you too. Come with me please.”
“Okay,” I said following her. We entered this dark room with a treadmill, an IV, an ECG. And there was also a glass widow where I could see to more doctors, and there were a bunch of computers there, and an ECG of there own.
Dr. Hadley entered the room. “Um, excuse me, but, what am I doing?”
Dr. Hadley, pressed an intercom button, “We will be performing a cardiac test, don’t worry, everything will be fine.” She took her figure off the button and said something the male doctor to her right. The man got up and walked out to where I am now.
“Hello, I’m Dr. Thomas,” he said walking towards me with a smile. Okay, why are they being nice? It’s scary. He connected these weird thingies all over. He said that he needed to put these standard 10 connections used to record a 12-lead ECG. I just nodded. I really didn’t get what he was saying. Hey, I didn’t go to medical school. He told me to get on the treadmill and that we would begin shortly.
I just stood on the treadmill for several seconds while they got some things ready. “Alright we shall begin now.” I nodded. They turned it on, it started in 2.5. It remained that way for a couple of seconds. Then Dr. Hadley’s voice echoed in the room. “Alright, now we are going to make it go a little faster, ready?”
“Yes.”
I felt the speed go higher. I looked at the speed on the screen. The speed was elevating to 6.5. That’s a bit of a drastic change but I can handle it. I started to run faster. By the next change they didn’t warn me.
I was in there for about an hour and a half. I was now running in 10.8. “Alright, Death, that’s enough for today,” said Dr. Hadley, turning off the treadmill. I got off the treadmill bent over, and put my hands on my knees. I took off all the plugs the put on me and took deep breaths. I am exhausted, my muscles ache, I am so parched, I am gasping for air, and I am sweating bullets. Dr. Hadley wrote something down on the clipboard (she did that a lot during the test). She stood up and walked out, a bottle of water in hand. She walked over to me and handed it to me. I took it quickly, uncapped it, and started to drink it. The water was ice cold and it felt good going down my throat. “You did very well.”
“Thank you,” I said completely out of breath. I took another huge gulp of water.
“You may leave now,” she said with a smile. I nodded and walked out the door. When I walked out I saw Darkness doing bench presses. I walked over to him. My legs feel like noodles.
“Two-hundred,” said Darkness, pulling up. He let it go, and fell o his feet. He was also sweaty, but not as exhausted as me. It’s really no big deal. I mean they make us work on upper body strength once a week. Well for girls. Boys, it’s three times a week.
“Only two-hundred? Your going soft,” I said sarcastically, and still out of breath.
“I know, I know,” he said, trying to catch his breath. “So where were you? And why is your face redder that a tomato?”
“I was doing a cardio test.”
“Cardio test? They never did that before.”
“Well now they do. Not fun.” The air conditioner felt good on my hot, sweaty skin. My tank top stuck to my back. Loose strands that fell from my bun stuck to my neck and face. I need a nap.
“Alright, go hit the showers,” said on of the trainers.
“Gladly,” I mumbled walking out the door. I was the first one to get to the showers. Our shower time was timed. Exactly five minutes to get showered, dressed, and ready for our next class.
The rest of the morning flew by pretty quickly. And now is the best part of the day –aside bed time- lunch. I walked in and saw all of the groups. All of the weapons.
