Chapter Five: Training

March 1st, 2027, 6:00 a.m.
K47 Training Unit 833, K47 Training Facility, Atlantic Ocean

Katia arrived in training unit 833, Sgt. Foles was already waiting for them, “Welcome back,” he said, “today we begin the first week of training. This training unit is a highly sophisticated fabrication machine, to demonstrate.” He clicked a button on a remote and strange particles came out of the walls instantly creating a military obstacle course, and a butt load of mud. “Today we’ll be working on endurance training, this is a mile long stretch of obstacles that you have to go through. As the days carry on, they will become more and more difficult, one person will be eliminated from the squad after every course, so don’t be last. On your marks… Go!” They all dashed forward, into the wet mud, hoping they wouldn’t come in last place…

15 minutes later...

She finished climbing the rope and reached the top of the wooden platform, already out of breath and her arms sore. They were only a quarter of the way through the course, but everyone else was at least two obstacles in front of Katia. She grimaced, don’t be last, she told herself as she swung across a fifteen foot gap. She had to catch up, she couldn’t be the one to fail on the first course, not this time. She’d failed enough times in the past, and never did anything about it. It was time for things to change, “I’m Katia Fucking Managan, I’ve got this.”

She burst forward with speed and determination, no more time to play games. She passed one trainee, another, then another, she ran forward and hurtled a three foot wall. “No sweat,” she thought, “just another half mile, but I’ve gotten ahead enough to start taking it slower.” There were still a few people ahead of her but she was fine, about sixth or seventh place, she didn’t want to waste much needed energy. She stopped for a minute, catching her breath and viewing the next obstacle, someone had tried ahead of her and failed. It was about a five and a half foot jump from the platform to a small swinging pendulum like mechanism, with a fifteen foot drop into thick mud. If she failed she’d have to do the past section over again, after this jump there was only a quarter mile left. Katia backed up, getting the timing ingrained into her brain, one… two… three! She got a running start and jumped, she messed up the timing by a millisecond, her left hand slipped, leaving all her hope on her right arm. The pendulum started spinning around, her grip faltering, her brain switched into overdrive, she barely saw the next platform wizz past. She let herself spin one more time around and jumped tumbling down the ramp to the next section, she laid there in the mud for a minute, her energy gone and heart racing. She had to get up, had to go on, she faltered up, her sides hurt like hell, but that wasn’t going to stop her.

Katia continued on, the five people ahead of her had slowed down a bit, probably from exhaustion, she eased herself into a jog up the ramp, intermission over. Next was a thirty foot stretch of out of sync hammers, swinging back and forth, Katia looked ahead, and witnessed the one argonian get hit point blank off the bridge. She winced as they hit the ground with a painful thud, they took a few seconds to get up and head back to the beginning, holding their arm and limping. Katia rushed forward, missing a hammer by an inch, then the next, she hesitated and saw one out of the corner of her eye, she rolled forward, feeling pain shoot up her shoulder. She barely ducked under the next which would’ve taken her head clean off, and continued to prone forward. Katia got up for the last few feet and rushed forward, the last two hammers right next to each other and in perfect synchronization. She dove forward into a roll down the ramp, the last hammer missing her legs by inches, she tumbled yet again down the wooden ramp into the dirt. There it was, the last stretch, and the longest by far, probably ninety or one-hundred feet long, full of tripwire hooks and other traps.

There was a path leading from the ramp to a small hole in the barriers of the last obstacle course, she entered it and a huge wall with metal spikes sticking out of it followed her. It moved at about five miles an hour, and Katia realized she had to sprint for the last one-hundred feet of the course. Not being prepared to run she panicked and triggered a trap, two walls moved in to crush her, she barely slipped through them without being crushed. The wall following her stopped for a second and broke the trap barricade she’d set off, this made things even scarier, she jumped forward and her foot fell into a circular hole in the ground. “Shit!” Katia shouted, she fell over trying to shake her foot loose from the gap, the wall moved in closer. Katia gave up and left the boot, she now only had one boot and her bare paw was sprinting across the splintering wood. She stepped over a wooden pressure plate, releasing two flame throwers, she jumped in between the two flame columns singing some fur off of her left arm. There was only about thirty feet left to go, Katia looked up from the trap strewn ground, at the end of the course there was a fifteen foot climbing wall. She was never going to make it, she had to act fast, no hesitation, quick but precise. Katia ditched the other boot so she could climb faster so when time came to climb she was ready, she didn’t pay too much attention to the other traps she set off. All that mattered now was precision and speed, she grasped the first hold and launched herself up, adrenaline pulsing in her veins. For a second she was surprised by the amount of air she had in that jump, then decided to use it, going five feet every jump. She reached the top and the walls spikes were about three feet from the climbing wall, Katia walked down the ramp to meet Sgt. Foles, her heart still pounding.

“Congratulations Miss Managan, you completed the first task.” He frowned, “But you missed one important thing, never panic, if the wall was about to crush you, I would have stopped it with a click of a button beforehand.” Katia’s adrenaline faded, leaving her arms throbbing in pain and exhaustion, she did it, the first step was taken, now there was no turning back.