“It’s our last day of training before tomorrow, so we’re going to take it pretty light. In Glimmer, we’ll have three weeks to train as hard as we can. And then the tests in only two days.”
Bolton took a piece of chalk, and as he had been doing for the past three months, drew a very misshapen circle on the stone floor.
“I’ll get it one day,” he said.
Zain smirked.
“Anyhow, you guys will just be practicing your combat skills with each other. Whoever manages to get the other person out of the circle first wins. And the winner gets . . . this bouncy ball that I found when walking in.”
Zain and Cameron both bluntly stared at Victoria—the only person who would be getting a prize was her.
“Cameron and Victoria, you two go first. Remember the rule—don’t actually hurt each other. We don’t want anyone injured right before the big trip. Start when you like.”
Zain gladly watched as Victoria flipped Cameron upside down and dragged him out of the circle. He wasn’t as glad when he stepped into the circle and she did the exact same thing to him. Bolton just laughed the whole time while giving Zain and Cameron advice with every new loss.
It went on like this for a while. By the end, Victoria had gotten her ball and happily sat in the center of the circle while Cameron and Zain watched Bolton put away the chalk.
“I think you three are ready,” Bolton smacked his hands together and watched as the chalk powder drifted to the ground. “For combat and for everything else. It may not seem like it, but you three are a lot stronger and smarter than you think. Just wait till you see the other recruits struggling to get through the trail of dust you leave behind. All three of you bring something to this team.
“Oh, and I have one more thing to say—I’ve seen hundreds of recruits rejected from the PRO because they freeze up when the moment comes. You’ve already done the hard work. That’s half of it. The other half is having the confidence to use your strengths. Don’t psyche yourself out. Scared people don’t make it far.”
Bolton pulled everyone into a group hug (Cameron’s stiff posture resembled that of a canned sardine) and then walked over to his car and left—not before asking anyone if they wanted a ride, of course.
“I wonder what Glimmer will be like,” Zain fell back onto the ground and stared at the roof.
“Probably full of all kinds of training facilities and workout areas and obstacle courses,” Victoria said dreamily. “Maybe even a pain simulator or something! To see what a real fight feels like!”
Cameron and Zain both stared at Victoria.
“You’re crazy,” Zain said.
“Reminds me of that one day you had coffee and you started saying all that crazy stuff,” Cameron added.
For the first time in Zain’s memory, Cameron chuckled.
“You said some of the craziest things I’ve ever heard that day. You should’ve been there, Zain. Bolton thought she was going to burn the place down.”
“Well, why don’t you try drinking coffee for a morning and we’ll see what happens?” Victoria stood up. “Maybe you’d be less glum all the time.”
“I do. Every day.”
“What are you like without coffee, then?” Zain always thought Cameron was at his lowest possible energy state.
“I don’t exist without coffee.”
Cameron stood up and wiped all the sweat off of his face. At the moment, the whole room smelled like sweat.
“You’re like my parents,” Zain said. “They can’t survive without coffee either.”
Victoria lost concentration mid-stretch and began to laugh.
“Bolton might be the only adult in the universe that doesn’t have a strange addiction to coffee,” she said.
“And Cameron might be the only kid in the world addicted to it.”
“Very funny.”
With that, Victoria, Zain, and Cameron began the walk home. They were lucky their Sectors were near the heart of the city. For a few weeks, Zain wasn’t going to be seeing these homes. Both his excitement and nervousness were overwhelming.
The next morning, Zain arose at 8:00 and quickly changed from pajamas to his crimson cloak and black shirt and pants. He slipped on his black boots as well—according to Bolton, they had to wear the full uniform today, not just the cloak. On his right breast lay a pin with the symbol of the PRO branded onto it: the opposite of the Pacifem symbol. Instead of an empty hourglass placed in the middle of a circle, the hourglass was filled halfway with sand and more was still falling through the little hole in the center.
Somehow, he had managed to wake his siblings and Uncle Malek for a short bit to say goodbye.
While Zain pulled Sana into a hug, she leaped back and punched him in the stomach. She was much smaller than him, so Zain only felt a small tickle.
“Good job,” she said proudly, noticing his lack of response. “That means you’re finally ready.”
Zain grinned. “Thank you, Sana.”
Zain’s parents, on the other hand, were very much awake and ready to walk to the entrance of the Sectors with him. When they arrived, Victoria, Cameron, and Bolton were already waiting next to Bolton’s dark green car. No one had brought any heavy luggage. Almost everything would be provided for in Glimmer: clothes, food, hygiene.
Zain’s mother gently kissed him on the head.
“We’ll come and watch live for the first test, alright? Good luck. I know you can do it.”
“Don’t get nervous, Zain. Believe in yourself.”
After two tight hugs, Zain left his parents and headed into the low-roofed car. He hadn’t expected to get emotional, but here he was solely concentrating on not letting a single tear drip down his cheek.
The car ride took about an hour. Cameron fell asleep within the first few minutes and Victoria was reading a book about combat. Zain just stared out the window. It was summer now, but raindrops were hurtling towards the ground and adding to the greenery that was already so prevalent. A gray haze could be seen in the distance. Dull rays of light broke through where the holes in the clouds.
As he followed a raindrop’s jagged path down the window with his eyes, he wondered about what he would do if he actually made it into the PRO. Maybe he would meet Kiara again. And maybe this time he could actually stand a chance. The thought of him beating up Kiara pleased him very much. Mostly though, he just sat there happily going over all the blessings that had happened to his family and him these past few months. For the first time, he actually felt like he was doing something with his life. Like he had some kind of purpose, other than running away from Pacifems.
When they finally reached their destination, the road has stopped ages ago and the path was covered in deep puddles. Worms creeped around like maggots. They had arrived in some kind of redwood forest. The thick trees towered above everything else. Zain tried to spot the tips of Totum skyscrapers reaching for the clouds in the distance, but they were too far out.
“Stay close to me guys. Don’t talk with anyone else right now. They want this ride to go as smoothly as possible.”
“Are we not in Glimmer yet?” Zain asked.
Bolton laughed for a short second.
“No. Glimmer is two hours away from here by train. I haven’t been here since I was your guys’s age.”
As they walked along the paved path deeper into the forest, the sunlight shrunk and the darkness grew. Heavy, thick branches blocked the light from reaching the ground.
When they reached it, the station was full of students and mentors in differently colored cloaks. Each person resembled a small colorful piece in a large bowl of cereal. In the center of the crowd, on a podium, stood the same square-jawed woman Zain had seen at the fair three months ago, wearing the same white cloak.
“Quiet down, everyone!” she yelled as Zain and the others jogged to join them. “I assure you’ll have the time to enjoy yourselves once we enter the train. My name is Trainer Cleareye. I will be the Head Instructor for everything that goes on in Glimmer. I have a few announcements to make.
“Firstly, we expect all of you to act mature and not misbehave during your time at Glimmer. At any time, a mentor can decide any degree of punishment depending on any action you commit, so please don’t break any rules. Secondly, and most obviously, don’t do anything that could endanger the secrecy of Totum or Glimmer. And lastly, for this trip you will all be assigned different animals for your respective teams for organization purposes. The sign I’m pointing to has each team name on it and also where you can find your train car. Throughout your time at Glimmer, your team will be referred to by your animal tag. Am I understood?”
“Yes!”
“Good. When we arrive at Glimmer please follow your mentors—they’ll know what to do. Otherwise, feel free to go look up your team animal and head to your respective train car. We will have a debriefing at dinner tonight.”
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Cameron covered his ears when the frozen crowd began to melt. People all around were pushing and shoving to find their names on the sign. In the crowd, Zain managed to spot Blythe, Evan, and Ellie but he couldn’t see their mentor anywhere. All three of them looked over. For some reason, Evan sneered at him. Cameron placed his hand on top of Zain’s head and turned it towards the tiny sign.
“Whatever you do, don’t let Evan get to you. He’s good at it.”
“Has he gotten to you before?”
“They should have made it bigger,” Cameron ignored him, referring to the sign.
“Come on, let’s go check!”
The four of them unfortunately could not push through the thick crowd, and were forced to wait about ten minutes before they reached the sign. Victoria eagerly placed her finger on it and traced downwards as she looked for her team.
“Leopard, Shark, Orca . . . here! Found it! We’re . . . we’re Team Seahorse.”
“Seahorse?” Zain moved Victoria to the side to see the sign. “Why are we Team Seahorse? Why can’t we be Team Lion or something?”
“One way or another, someone was going to end up with the less thrilling animals,” Cameron said. “And seeing as we’re near the bottom, it makes sense.”
“That’s not fair,” Zain muttered.
“I like seahorses,” Bolton said, pulling them away. “They’re unique. We should go find our cabin. The train’s leaving in ten minutes.”
As according to their initial luck, their cabin happened to be all the way at the end of the train—one hundred cars down. They ran there and made it with one minute to spare. Cameron’s long hair was disheveled and stood up at the back. It almost looked like he had a mullet.
“Here we are, Car 100.”
“We can see it, Bolton,” Cameron grumpily walked in first. He didn’t like running very much.
“I know you can.”
Inside, the cabin was much smaller than it looked on the outside. Unlike the tram in Totum, there were not innumerable platters of food and desserts for them to consume. Instead, they stood in a plain, dark green room with two benches and a dark oakwood table.
“I’m going to sleep,” Bolton slumped down on one of the chairs and placed a fedora over his face. “Don’t wake me up please.”
Cameron and Zain sat down in the chairs as the train began to trudge forward. Victoria, on the other hand, was much too excited to sit. Instead, she placed her hands on the ground and swung into a hand stand against the wall.
“We’ll have to beat 95 other teams if we want to make it in,” she said, her face slowly turning red.
“And Evan’s team better be one of them. I want to see the look on his face when he realizes he hasn’t made it into the PRO.”
“But Blythe’s on that team too!” Zain pointed out.
“It’s an unfortunate arrangement. But there’s nothing I want to see more than Evan realizing he’s failed at something for once. Maybe that’ll knock down that overflowing ego of his a bit.”
After a minute of soaking in what had just been said, Zain asked what he’d been wondering for a long time.
“No offense, Cameron, but why are you even trying to join the PRO?” he said in the nicest way he could. “It doesn’t seem like you like it very much.”
Cameron glanced at him for a moment, pondering whether he should speak or not.
“I didn’t have a choice. When my mom got custody of me it was either the PRO or nothing. I still had the choice to go to school, but I would have been years behind.”
“What do you mean by custody?”
Victoria gave Zain a look (upside down) that told him he shouldn’t have asked that.
“When my parents divorced, one of them got custody of me and the other got custody of Blythe. Eventually I was moved to my mom, but I lived with my dad for a long time.”
“Divorced?”
Now Victoria looked genuinely worried.
“Look, you’ve only known me for six months. If you don’t know what that means you can go ask someone yourself. I’m not going to sit here explaining everything about myself to you just because you don’t understand it.”
Bolton, dozing away, had finally noticed what was going on around him—or at least that something was going on, because all he asked when he awoke was: “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” Zain said quickly. “Just talking about Glimmer.”
Cameron averted his eyes towards the ground.
“Now, if none of you mind, I’m going to sleep,” he pulled his legs into his chest and rested his chin on them. “Don’t wake me up.”
Once Zain was sure Cameron was asleep, he turned to Victoria and whispered, “What’s divorced mean?”
“It means his parents split up, Zain. They’re not together anymore.”
“So Cameron stayed with one parent and Blythe with the other?”
Victoria nodded.
“Why’d he leave his dad?”
“That’s for Cameron to tell you, not me.”
There was no windows on the train, but the heavy pounding coming from the roof made it very clear that standing outside for ten seconds would have drenched anyone. Zain and Cameron both appreciated this temperature very much.
“And what about your parents? Are they still together?”
“If my parents weren’t still together, I would have told you by now Zain. It makes me sad for Cameron, though. Before he stayed with his dad, Cameron was known for his kindness, believe it or not. He was really little back then. There wasn’t a single person I trusted more than him. If I was hungry, he would give me all of his food and go find something else to do. And most of the time he went off to go help someone else. Now he wouldn’t give someone food even if they were hungry.”
“You’ve known Cameron for a while, haven’t you?”
“I don’t remember not knowing him. Or Blythe, for that matter.”
The rest of the ride was silent. Zain tried as hard as he could to fall asleep, but he couldn’t, even after Victoria did. The room smelled too much of fresh paint and the train car was rumbling so much that he wondered how Bolton had even gotten into a sleep deep enough to snore.
When the train slowed to a stop, Cameron and Bolton both fluttered their eyelids for a few seconds and stretched.
“Victoria, wake up. We’re here,” Zain patted her shoulder.
“We’re here?”
She wasted no time in waking up. Victoria jumped up so fast that her head collided with Zain’s, who was knocked back a few inches.
“Oh—I’m sorry! Are you alright?”
Zain nodded, clutching his head. More astonishing was the fact that Victoria expressed no sense of pain, not even in the slightest. It had to be adrenaline.
“We’re here, we’re here, we’re here!” Victoria could hardly contain herself. She was jumping left and right and forwards and backwards. “I’ve been waiting my whole life for this!”
“I can see that,” Zain remarked.
“You might want to calm yourself down before exiting the train,” Bolton straightened his cloak as he stepped out to the doorway. “Some people may not appreciate your undying excitement right after a long nap. Not us of course, but some people.”
“Why would they not be excited?”
She was still leaping.
“Everyone’s excited,” Bolton placed the hat in his bag. “Some people just take longer to really wake up.”
Slowly, Victoria tapered down until she was lightly bouncing on her toes.
“All right—follow me. Don’t leave unless I say so.”
The four of them slowly filed out of the cabin and into the shade of more redwood trees. Either the forest they left from was giant or they had entered a new one. As far as Zain could tell, there was no building anywhere in sight.
“This is Glimmer?”
Bolton chuckled.
“It’s still a bit of a walk. Don’t worry, not too tiring.”
All around, people of different colored cloaks strolled along behind their black-cloaked mentors.
“What’s with the mentors in white?” Zain could only see one or two.
“That means they’ve trained a team that’s made it into the PRO. Seeing as you’re my first students, it hasn’t happened yet. But who knows? Maybe now is the time.”
Far to their left, another mentor in black waved to Bolton and beckoned him over.
“I’ll be right back,” Bolton said. “Just going to catch up with a friend. Keep walking.”
Zain and Victoria watched as Bolton’s tall figure shrunk the farther away he got, while Cameron awkwardly stared at his feet as he paced forward slowly.
“I wonder if Glimmer has some kind of crazy obstacle course or something,” Victoria shook Zain very hard. “Or maybe even a ropes course!”
“How would a ropes course help in the slightest on a mission?” Cameron said. “Are we going to fight the Pacifems while swinging through the jungle?”
“I don’t know . . . maybe if we’re at the top of a skyscraper or something!”
“Okay, Vic.”
As they continued pacing forward, Zain got a good chance to look around at all the different recruits bustling around. It was like a vibrant painting.
Suddenly, a tall woman staring down at her notepad rammed right into Cameron, knocking him to the ground. Upon closer inspection, Zain realized that it was the woman in the white cloak who had given announcements earlier. Up close, her face wasn’t as staunch and stern as it seemed from a distance. Her jaw was still as strong and her eyes just as angry, but her lips looked tired and the corners of her eyes sagged slightly downwards. Zain gave Cameron a hand up.
“Next time, please watch where you’re going,” the woman snarled. “It’s not fit for a recruit to interrupt their mentors.”
“You ran into me,” Cameron fixed his ruffled cloak.
“Is that so?”
Cameron stared up at the woman with dead-set eyes.
“What’s your name, boy?”
“Cameron.”
“Cameron. Cameron, do you know who I am? Do you know my name?”
“You’re the lady who tells us the stuff we need to know.”
The lady who told them stuff frowned.
“I suppose that’s a way to put it. You will refer to me as Trainer Cleareye. Now, I believe I made it quite clear when we left Totum that we expect you to act your age and be mature. Is that what you’re doing right now?”
“Maybe you should ask yourself that.”
Zain turned to Cameron in shock. Why wasn’t he just saying okay and moving on?
“It’s not a big deal, come on, Cameron,” he said.
“Listen here, Cameron. Do you know what we do here to little boys who’s egos precede them? Who think they can argue with the Head Advisor of Glimmer—if you don’t know, I am one of the only reasons the PRO exists. What we do to these boys is we kick them out and all their dreams are spilled on the floor right in front of them. I’m sure you don’t want to be one of those boys.”
“Maybe you both just apologize and we can move on,” Zain suggested. “That way we can split the blame.”
“Two little boys to throw out of the recruits! All for the simple fact that they can’t admit when they’re wrong.”
Now Zain was just confused. She had to acknowledge that it was at least a tiny bit her fault. Suddenly, Zain and Cameron’s arms were trapped in a death-grip from Victoria’s squeezing hands.
“We’re very sorry, miss,” she said hastily, pulling the two of them back in line with her. “They’re just tired after the long ride. They really don’t mean any of what they’re saying. We won’t cause any more trouble, I promise. Don’t you two agree as well? Don’t you?”
After a long pause and a steely glance from Cameron, both of the boys awkwardly muttered, “I apologize.”
Zain had no idea what he was apologizing for, but he didn’t want to get in trouble right off the bat.
“Good. And next time anything similar to this happens your team will be eliminated, am I understood?”
“Yes, ma’am!” Victoria might have broken her neck with how fast she was nodding her head.
“Now keep on moving. I don’t want to hear another measly excuse about a long ride. All of us were on the train.”
Slowly but surely, the three of them inched away. It was only when Cleareye muttered “Ignorant children,” that Cameron once again wheeled around.
“And what makes you think you’re so high and mighty? You tell us we’re acting immature yet here you are mumbling for the last word like a child.”
While Victoria looked like all hell had broken loose, Zain just grew more confused. Did Cameron already hate this woman before they met or something?
“THAT’S IT! WHO IS YOUR TRAINER?” Cleareye stomped up to Cameron and stared directly down at him with a quivering lip and twitching eyebrow.
“Bolton.”
“Please, ma’am—“ Victoria tried
“I am going to have a chat with him now. Farewell, children.”
After she left, Zain, Victoria, and Cameron stood there blankly gaping at the floor for a few seconds. Victoria’s slap following this left a mark on Cameron’s face. There seemed to be an agreement that Zain had done nothing wrong.
“What were you thinking? You could get us kicked out of the PRO! All because of some stupid squabble!”
“I’m sorry, Vic,” Cameron said. “Really, I am. I just—I can’t handle it when someone acts like that. Like they have power over us.”
“She does have power over you, Cameron.”
“No she doesn’t. No one has more power than anyone else. I’m done listening to people who act like they’re better than me. I’ve been doing it my whole life. With my dad, with Evan. So I’m not listening to Cleareye.”
“Well, if you two actually care about us or any of the work we’ve been putting in then you’d realize that maybe staying quiet for a bit is worth the reward,” she was almost in tears. “If we don’t get in then we’ll be stuck in school, alright? So listen to whatever Cleareye or anyone else says. Otherwise we’re done for.”
With that, Victoria walked off and left Zain and Cameron standing right next to the front of the train to think about what they had just done. It hadn’t occurred to Zain that he could have ended his time with the recruits, even after Cleareye’s warning.
“We should keep walking,” he said glumly as Cameron followed behind. “I don’t think we can afford arriving late after that.”