Alex was unable to look away from the gun in his hand.
“That’s generally what happens when you shoot someone,” Mitsuru replied gravely.
“No,” Alex said shakily, letting the gun clatter to the floor. “No way. That’s not me.”
“Christ,” Mitsuru started, wincing. “You need to be more careful with loaded guns, kid. I’m teaching you an important lesson about being a soldier. You and me, Alex, we are both the same in this — we don’t ask why when we’re told to pull the trigger. You’ll get yourself killed, worrying about that. Let the bosses be concerned with who and why. It will take everything you’ve got just to do what needs to be done, and survive the process. Understand?”
“No,” Alex said miserably.
Mitsuru sighed and rubbed her head.
“The lesson is simple — there’s no point in teaching you to shoot, Alex, if you aren’t going to pull the trigger when you are told to,” Mitsuru explained, clearly frustrated. “No point in sharpening a blade you aren’t going to use. We aren’t going to wait until you’re in the field, until your life and the lives of other Operators are on the line, to see you pussy out. Suck it up, pull the trigger, and then we both can go home.”
Alex looked down at the ground. His nose still ached a great deal, and it was bleeding consistently enough to make him sniffle.
“I guess I’m not cut out for this,” Alex said a moment later, sounding reluctant. “If that’s what this all means, then I don’t want any part of it. I quit, alright? I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m done.”
“Alex, Alex,” Mitsuru chided. “We already know that you are cut out for this. That’s what precognitives are for. What you want is irrelevant. We’re concerned with what you can do, not what you want do,” she said, shaking her head. “There would never be enough soldiers if we asked for volunteers. I told you, none of this will be fun, or easy. Most Operators would rather not do what they do. But they can, and the need is there, so they do what they have to.
“This is fucked up, right here,” Alex said slowly, staring at the pistol in his hand as if it would speak to him. “Do Rebecca and Michael know that you are doing this shit to me?”
Mitsuru tittered, and Steve burst into laughter.
“I would think so,” Mitsuru said, smiling. “They’ve both completed the Program themselves, after all. Rebecca helped design the Program.” Mitsuru shook her head. “Okay, question time is over. Are you ready to do what you have to do?”
She looked at Alex, hard, for several moments, but he refused to look up at her, transfixed by the weight, the sheer reality of the gun in his hand.
“No,” he said, softly. “Why should I? Why should I do anything?”
“Because you have to,” Mitsuru said, looking mildly disinterested. “Again.”
“Right,” Steve said, from immediately behind Alex.
Alex jabbed an elbow back, digging it into Steve’s midsection, but he just grunted, his arms wrapping around Alex, one forearm reaching across his neck. Alex tried to lower his head, to put his chin between Steve’s arm and his throat, but he was too late for that. He stomped on Steve’s foot, several times, with all the force he could muster, grinding his heel against the boy’s instep. He drove a few more elbows into his body, but he couldn’t put much power behind them. Steve’s forearm crushed steadily into his larynx, and soon all he could hear was himself making ghastly strangling noises.
Alex woke on the floor, with his face in a shallow pool of vomit, unable to swallow and struggling to breathe. Mitsuru crouched above him, holding out the gun. He brushed her away with one arm, and then everything reset again.
This time he didn’t bother with conversation. When Mitsuru asked him if he was ready to use the gun, he ignored her. He put the echoes of the pain and the fear out of his mind, as best he could. He focused solely on Steve, standing a few meters away, looking like he hadn’t even broken a sweat, grinning like it was his birthday. Alex was ready when he came forward this time.
He was ready for Steve’s jab, too. He had gorilla-like arms that gave him a reach advantage, but Alex kept his hands up and his head moving, and Steve couldn’t do anything more than clip him. Alex was patient, protecting his head, absorbing the occasional shot to the side or the arms, waiting for his chance to close.
Steve threw a combination that ended in a right hook that was a little off, and Alex saw his footwork was bad, that he was punching while he backpedaled. Alex blocked the punch with his left arm, and then stepped inside, putting everything he had into a hard right that sank into Steve’s kidney.
Again, there was no apparent transition. Steve was simply one thing, and then he was the other. Alex didn’t even see it before he made contact. His hand crumpled against Steve’s rocky skin, folding and tearing like paper where it collided with the stone, and then he fell to the ground, while Steve kicked him with his heavy stone foot and laughed his booming laugh. Alex closed his eyes, protected his face as best as he could, and waited it out. He didn’t want to open them, because he might have seen what he had done to his hand.
When he finally did, he saw Mitsuru crouched over him, holding out the gun.
Alex refused three more times, and it ended horribly, three more times. Then he gave in.
The pistol was somehow louder with that shot than it had been when he shot at the range, the trigger much more difficult to pull. And when Alex stood and stared at the intact remainder of Steve’s head, most of his brain dripping off the far wall, Mitsuru put her hand on his shoulder like a friend.
“Combat isn’t fun, Alex,” she said, with surprising gentleness. “It hurts, and it is frightening. There are no good choices, only a series of compromises and things that you will regret later. This isn’t training, Alex, and it isn’t theory or philosophy. This is fighting and surviving, or it is fighting and dying. Nothing more. And it is the only thing that matters.”
She gently prized the Glock from his fingers, and then activated the safety.
“Welcome to the Program. When we are done with you,” she said, her bloodshot eyes full of sincerity, “you won’t even recognize yourself. Reset.”
Alex heard the door close behind him, and congratulated himself on not running. Mitsuru’s ‘class’ had turned out to be an eight-hour nightmare; Alex hadn’t seen Gustav again until right before Mitsuru dismissed him. Alex still wasn’t sure exactly what had happened, but he was fairly certain that much of it had been due to the old man’s purported telepathy.
Whatever they had done, though, it had consequences — Alex had bruises forming along his chest and above one eye and across the bridge of his nose, and he felt a strange lingering pain everywhere he’d been injured. Steve had left looking totally untouched, and Alex was fairly sure that the mess at the end of the session had been solely for his benefit. Mitsuru had bemoaned his performance, but Alex didn’t feel like he’d done too badly.
After all, it was his first time killing anybody. That he could actually remember.
Steve wasn’t about to let himself get shot, of course. He’d been grimmer, after the reset, but he seemed angry more than traumatized, which gave Alex the feeling that this was not an entirely new experience for Steve. After that, Alex was faced with an enraged, moving target, and he only managed to tag Steve once in the entire rest of the day, meaning that he was forced to go hand-to-hand with someone who was bigger, stronger and more experienced.
Given the circumstances, it could have gone worse. Mostly, things had ended with Steve bashing in his head, either with his elbows or against the floor, and Steve’s obvious wrestling background made this kind of close- quarters ground fighting particularly hopeless for Alex. But near the end of the day, Steve had gotten sloppy while setting up a choke, and Alex had managed to get a thumb up into Steve’s eye socket, and forced it in as far as he possibly could. Steve howled and reeled away from him, clutching his face, and Alex had time to pull himself to his feet, wipe the blood from his eyes, and find the Glock that Steve had knocked to the ground when he tackled him.
He hadn’t shot him. He’d intended to, of course, but instead he’d walked up behind the blinded kid and struck him in the base of the skull with the butt of it. He didn’t stop hitting him when Steve fell down, or when he stopped moving.
He’d only stopped when he heard Mitsuru laughing.
Alex stepped out of the hallway, and into the chill of the evening and the setting sun, never quite so grateful to be out of a classroom.
