Dan

Dan soared through the air until a concrete pillar stopped him. His back ricocheted off the pillar and he flopped onto the cold metal floor. As a tier one level agent, Dan’s resilience had been put through the test throughout the two months since the last mission to investigate rebel activity in the desolate Amethyst.

Jane Sunheiser had promised him that she would build him up to be a hyper competent agent of the Alpha Corporation, even promising that one day, Dan would stand beside her as her equal. Dan could certainly feel the love when she grabbed him by the neck and flung him across the training arena.

“Get your ass back up. An agent of your calibre should have gotten back up from that in less than a second,” Jane shouted.

If there was one thing Dan knew wasn’t going to change about Jane, it was her skills at motivational speech. Dan got on his knees and slowly got himself back on his feet, even with all the aches and pains that protested against him.

“Your Krav Maga leaves much to be desired, Dan,” Jane said. She pointed at him. “I know you’re better than this. You need to remember that this isn’t some training course for infants.”

All agents who reached tier one in rank were put through another mandatory set of difficult training to further prepare them for the harsh expectations of their shard. According to Jane, a tier one agent was the functional equivalent to a special forces soldier in a conventional military.

In the past few weeks, Dan has learned bomb defusal with live explosives, stealth takedowns with and without tools and many hand to hand fighting techniques. All under Jane’s drilling and rigid structure. As his squad leader, it was Jane's responsibility to put Dan through these exercises to better prepare him for the harsh life of an agent.

As per Jane’s recommendation, Dan spent his ten unallocated stat points to give him the best possible odds of surviving Jane’s training sessions.

Agent: Dan “Arctic” Orion

Age: 18 M

Shard: Alpha Corporation

Rank: Tier 1 | Level 15

Strength: 20

Agility: 20

Endurance: 21

Intelligence: 28

Supernatural: n/a

Healing Factor: n/a

Reflex: Average ++

Even with the increase to his endurance stat, Dan wondered how he was still alive after weeks of this harsh routine. He took a few steps and faced Jane with raised fists, a basic combat stance. Jane had put him through training fourteen hours a day without any days off. Outside of time in the combat simulators and training arenas within the Alpha facilities, Jane assigned Dan reading material. Text on the basics of warfare and battle strategy, dating as far back with text as ancient as The Art of War.

The only periods of sleep Dan had gotten in the past month were occasional two or three hour naps mandated only by Jane. He learned the hard way what would happen if Jane caught him sleeping without her permission. Dan could still feel the stinging pains at the back of his head from Jane “politely” waking him up and getting him back on track.

Jane walked toward him in slow and deliberate fashion. Even after a month of this intense training, watching Jane’s confident, if not intimidating stride, always filled Dan with anxiety. The difference in power between the two was so great that he doubted Jane was using even a fraction of her actual strength against him in these training sessions.

Dan did his damndest to maintain his confidence against such a superior opponent. He was breathing heavily while his ears were treated with the uncomfortable wheezing coming out of his lungs. His hands were still shaking, even through his full body armor. Something warm flowed down the side of his face. Dan was sure that wasn’t sweat.

“In a real battle, an enemy agent wouldn’t give you this much time to get back on your feet,” Jane said. “Don’t forget that I’m still holding back against you.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Dan said with little enthusiasm. “Thank you for being so generous. I could really feel the love when you threw me across the arena.”

Jane wasn’t wrong, but this was insane. The last time he slept was ten days ago and all of the days since had blurred together into one constant loop. Train, get his ass kicked by Jane. Read and study theory, get lectured by Jane. Accidentally falling asleep? Get a hard slap to the back of the head.

By Jane, Dan thought, smiling beneath his mask.

Jane had stopped a few meters in front of him, then she got to work. Dan's eyes didn’t have a chance to follow anything that happened in the next few seconds. Jane took one step and the squad leader seemingly disappeared from thin air. One second she was there, and the next Dan was forcibly bent over with one arm folded behind him by an iron grip.

It all happened so fast.

It took a bit before Dan’s brain caught up with what had just occurred. Jane used her superior speed to circle around and get behind him. Jane took Dan’s arm and forced him into a lock.

“You’re worn out,” Jane said, stating the obvious. “A week ago you would have at least had the speed to turn around and receive a gut punch for your efforts.”

Dan’s right arm was basically unusable so long as Jane held it. Her grip strength was insane. Her hand wrapped around his wrist and felt like a metal chain binding him.

Jane narrowed his eyes at him. “It’s time for you to give up.”

“I don’t think so,” Dan said. “I know what this is. It’s another one of those trick situations you’ve been putting me through. You always love to trap me with this kind of shit. You put me in between a rock and a hard place, and no matter what I pick, I always get an earful from you. Am I wrong?”

Jane’s expression didn’t change. “Every decision made has an outcome, whether that be good or bad. It’s simple, really.”

“I didn’t know you were a philosophy teacher.”

“Give up. You’re in an unwinnable scenario,” Jane said with more sternness behind her voice than usual.

Dan stared into Jane’s eyes, attempting to match her resolve with his own. He grimly recalled the entire mess that was the mission to deal with a group of resistance members in one of the Alpha Corp’s lesser maintained cities. Dan had survived numerous scenarios that were considered “unwinnable.” He ultimately walked away, becoming a stronger agent hardened by his experiences from that one mission alone.

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He also walked away with two of his teammates dead and one being a traitor.

“Give up? Unwinnable scenario? Do you actually know me at all, Jane?”

His squad leader maintained her steely expression on him. In just a mere moment, all of the emotions he experienced from that mission rushed through his mind and he remembered the rage he felt toward Kate Razor, a former teammate that backstabbed him. The one who murdered Benjamin Colt, their team medic and Hailey Monsoon, the team sniper. He recalled being chased around like prey by the Kodak agents on the dark, rain-soaked streets and narrowly surviving all of his encounters with those enemy agents.

Distant memories of his childhood, dealing with gangsters constantly stealing from him or hunting him down came flooding back and fueled Dan’s defiance.

“Cut the bullshit and yield,” Jane said sternly. “That’s an order.”

Dan locked eyes with Jane and said, “Ben told me to run while he bought time for me to get away. He got his neck broken by Kate for that. There is no fucking way I’m giving in. You can chop my arm off if you want. But I ain’t folding.”

Dan wasn’t just having a staring contest with Jane. He made a split second glance down with his eyes to determine where Jane’s feet were to get himself ready for his counter attack. He slowly inched his right foot to get ready for a kick to Jane’s ankle to break himself free from the lock.

“There’s no need for such false bravado,” Jane said. “I’m the one hosting this training exercise. I’m ordering you to stand down.”

Dan let out the hardest kick he could muster with his last bit of energy and felt the satisfying impact of his foot smashing into Jane’s ankle.

Jane grunted and was seemingly surprised at the brazen move. This was Dan’s chance to break the lock. Dan tried to run forward and shrug his right shoulder to pull away from Jane’s grip.

When Jane’s grip didn’t loosen, not even a bit, Dan didn’t have time to realize how horribly he miscalculated. Dan looked back and saw that whatever shock Jane had experienced from his attempt to escape the lock had already run its course.

Jane looked at him with an emotionless expression and in one quick motion, snapped his arm. Dan’s body was more resilient to pain thanks to his enhancements. But it didn’t remove his ability to feel pain entirely.

“Shit!” Dan swore as he staggered. He wobbled a few more steps before collapsing to his knees.

Warning: Broken right ulna.

Dan slumped to the ground and couldn’t get back up after that. The pain dominated his senses and for a moment, it was the only thing he could feel. Weeks of the same rigorous routine had sapped his remaining willpower and he remained on the floor in agony.

The pain distracted him and didn’t allow Dan to hear Jane’s footsteps as she walked up beside and crouched down. She grabbed by the shoulder and jammed something into his arm.

Immediately, the icy cold sensation flooded his entire arm and numbed and suppressed the sharp pain in his forearm. Another seven seconds passed and the pain had disappeared entirely.

Dan glanced over his shoulder and saw Jane looking at him. Her facial expression still remained the same but her eyes were soft instead of the intense stare she gave him earlier.

“What the hell?” Dan asked, dumbfounded. “What are you doing?”

“I made a promise to you. Did you forget?”

Dan just stared blankly at his squad leader and Jane sighed.

“I was going to train you to be the best. But for that to happen, I need to break you and then build you back up. That’s the only way you will get better.”

The aches and pains throughout his body also faded as the icy cold gradually spread to the rest of his body beyond his arm. It didn’t magically give him his energy back, but at least he didn’t have to complain about back pain anymore. Dan touched his head and checked his fingers, confirming that the bleeding from hitting the pillar had stopped.

Jane’s lip curled upward. Not quite enough to be a smile, but Dan knew Jane enough to know that was as good as it would get. “I have to admit, I expected you to drop dead by the second week. The truth is that this mandatory tier one training I’ve been overseeing isn’t what you think it is.”

Dan adjusted his positioning and sat cross legged on the floor. “Meaning?”

“I made some alterations to the training structure beyond the baselines that the Alpha Corp provided. What I’ve put you through the past month has been… substantially more challenging than what the other tier ones would normally be facing.”

Dan blinked twice and wondered what the hell Jane was on about. Was Jane that influential within the shard that she could arbitrarily alter training guidelines given by the Alpha Corp?

“So in other words, the actual tier one training isn’t supposed to be this hard and you decided to make a few alterations to make my life hell,” Dan said.

Jane looked at him and gave him the same smile a receptionist would at the front desk. He had to admit that in this context, Jane smiling at him like that was creepy.

“Exactly, though within reason,” Jane said. She did something that Dan didn’t expect. She lowered herself down and sat on the floor in front of Dan.

Normally, Jane would always speak to Dan from a superior position, figuratively speaking. Whether that be standing straight and literally looking down at him or sometimes not even changing her stance or facial expression as she issued him orders or lectured him on proper conduct, Jane would maintain a consistent frame when addressing him as a subordinate. She made it no secret that their relationship was strictly professional.

Seeing her sit down with him was an odd and jarring sight.

“You began as level three when you were first recruited,” Jane said. “In just the span of two missions, you jumped from level three to level fifteen, easily transitioning from a tier zero to tier one in a short amount of time. Your rate of progression is abnormal by Alpha standards.”

“Is that good or bad?” Dan asked.

“I’m not sure, to be honest. It could mean you're some sort of prodigy. I’m still not entirely certain, as your family history doesn’t appear to hint at anything special within your bloodline. I mean no offense, but you’re basically a nobody.”

“Two things. One, none taken,” Dan said. “Second, how do you know anything about my family?”

“Cracking U.S. security is no problem for the Alpha Corp. When you were recruited, the Corp’s algorithms got to work on performing as many background checks as it could. The process of recruiting you had to be sped up since Michael Cynosa made a snap decision to inject you with one of our serums. That’s another odd thing…”

“What is?”

Jane stretched one leg out and bent the other one to use as an armrest. “I tried checking if there was something up with the serum they injected you with. I was barred from certain records even with my current level of clearance. The records and documents I did access on you, two thirds of everything was redacted. So what can I possibly make of this? Well, you’re an anomaly. A complete nobody who got dropped in front of me who appears to be more competent and willing to learn compared to the average recruit.”

Dan wasn’t sure how to respond to all of this new info. Jane was implying that the Alpha Corp was hiding something about Dan with all the secrecy even towards his squad leader.

“But while I have you under my wing, I want to work on your potential. It won’t take too long before you reach tier two. At that point, more opportunities open up for you as an agent. Trust me, tier zeros and ones are cannon fodder to the shards, no matter what PR they spew out. Tier two and above is where your career as an agent truly begins, in my opinion. And I would be doing you a disservice if you were unprepared for the difficulties of being an agent. Do you understand why my methods are this way?”

Dan’s mind briefly ran through the possibilities if he were a tier two. Not only would he be officially considered superhuman by the Alpha Corp, but he imagined the crazy missions and state of the art gear he would be trusted with.

“Yeah, I understand perfectly. I’ll take the ass kicking for now so that I come out being the ass kicker in the future. I think I got it.”

Dan received a notification in his HUD.

Congratulations!

You have reached Tier 1 | Level 16.

You have earned 5 stat points.

“Speak of the devil, I just reached level sixteen,” Dan said.

Jane looked at him and then stood up. She extended her hand out to him, helping him up. “The exercise is over. I’ll be handing you over to Allen. I admire your stubbornness, but you need to learn to reign it in. It will get you killed in a real battle.”

Dan knew she was referring to him not giving up when Jane had him in a lock.

“I didn’t yield because I was calculating a way to get out of that mess. Rolling over and dying is just not my style.”

Jane’s expression returned back to normal. “I understand that. Your records show that you were in a constant struggle dealing with the dregs and degenerates of your hometown. But know this, there are times when you are dealt a shitty hand and you need to fold. Continuing to play and losing all your money in the name of ‘not giving up’ is foolish. Only you lose in the end.”

Dan thought about Jane’s words. He stared at his feet as he mulled it over in his head. For most of his life before becoming an agent, he always fought for scrapes of resources even when doing so would put him at risk. Competing with others in his neighborhood for food, attracting the attention of gangs or corrupt cops, he never once thought about submitting himself to the situation. He fought and found a way to cheat death and forcibly take whatever reward he could, every single time.

Jane picked up on this and said, “Your lack of strength has nothing to do with the deaths of Ben and Hailey. You could have been as strong as Michael and still wouldn’t have suspected Kate betraying us. You need to know when to choose your battles. The enemy shards out there won’t be so generous as to give you time to recover from a broken arm.”

Dan sighed. “Yeah. You’re right Jane.”

“You’re dismissed then. Head off to Allen to continue your training,” she said.