Cammy came back to consciousness curled in a tight fetal position, coughing and gagging, her hands scrambling to clutch at her throat where the knife had slid across her neck, but the skin was smooth and unblemished. Her clothes were blood free, and the dirt where she was lying was spongy but dry.

  Dirt.

  Not just dirt either. Dried leaves, dead moss, and tiny insects flitting to and fro sometimes landing on her face.

  Her mouth was dry, and her body felt wrung out, her tired muscles spasming like she'd run a marathon.

  With a great effort of will, she uncurled herself to shakily get onto all fours.

  She was in the hollow of a tree, a giant tree with massive, moss covered roots that formed walls to either side of her before curling around to create a bowl, the bottom of which had been her bed for who knows how long. Gentle bird calls came from above where the jungle canopy let in only tiny rays of sun through a sea of gently swaying green. The breeze up there didn’t seem to translate to any moving air where she was, however. The oppressive heat pressed in on her from all sides, and tiny beads of sweat ran down her neck and made muddy trails down to her collar.

  Getting to a standing position was a chore, requiring her to support herself on the mossy roots and convincing her wobbly knees to support her weight long enough to get upright. She felt like a newborn deer trying to take its first steps.

  “It’s always hard the first time.”

  Cammy’s heart jumped up into her throat, and she whirled, nearly falling over again in a panicked attempt to face her attacker, or at least what she’d assumed was her attacker. Instead, she found Hoffman looking perfectly at ease with his hands in the pockets of his gray suit pants, the sleeves on his white dress shirt rolled up on his forearms like a Depression era pugilist. He waited patiently, watching the sway of the foliage like a man on vacation as Cammy fought to hold onto her support root and resisted the urge to pass out again.

  As soon she’d gotten herself back under control and felt like she might be able to make a grab for the Master at Arms’ throat, the man turned her way and smiled knowingly. “I know how you’re feeling, Ms. Johansen. The discomfort will pass in time." His tone didn’t seem dismissive but more on the side of amused. "Then you can try it.”

  “What is this?” she asked. Her throat was scratchy and dry like she’d not spoken in some time.

  Hoffman looked up and around, turning in a full circle. “It’s a jungle, lass.”

  “I think you know what I meant," Cammy growled. Something about having her throat cut then waking up here had a suppressing effect on her sense of humor.

  “Aye, I know what you meant. Some people enjoy a lighter tone at this point of the test, but I see you’re not one of them.”

  “I’m funny that way,” she replied, braving a single step up and out of the hollow of the tree and onto the game trail where Hoffman now stood. “What happened to me? How did I-” She trailed off, not quite ready to express the sentiment out loud.

  “How did you die? An opportunistic assassin used your moment of distraction to approach from your side and cut your carotid artery, causing exsanguination and death,” he stated. It seemed a clinical explanation for something as personal as dying.

  “Why?”

  A sympathetic expression flashed across his face but it was replaced by a stoic frown almost immediately. “Because you let it happen, Ms. Johansen.”

  Cammy said nothing, the phrase ‘cheap shot’ floating on the ocean of outrage she felt.

  “Of course, I know you won’t be satisfied with just that answer. That part of the test showed you just what this section of our facility is capable of. What you’re experiencing now is part of the stakes of your trial. This place is ‘real’ in that you can see and feel everything that happens to you. The sensation you felt when you died of blood loss is as real as we can make it, though some people’s experiences vary. The neuro disruption you have right now happens to eighty percent of users when they experience their first major trauma in here. It will pass. Just know that you will experience things on B-10 with a high level of fidelity.”

  He paused as he seemed to remember something, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a bottle of water and offering it to Cammy with an outstretched hand. ”You'll probably notice you can't really smell anything, though, and for good reason. It's not real. Just don’t try to eat anything during the test except what I give you. If you’re hungry or thirsty, just let me know.”

  Now that Hoffman mentioned it, other than the oppressive heat and humidity, the jungle did seem off, and the lack of olfactory stimulation was probably why. She'd never been in a real jungle, but the part of her brain still attuned to her ancestors' hard won survival over the millennia told her there should be a myriad of things like pollen or musk floating around in the air. Their lack made things feel uncanny and dreamlike.

  Cammy took the offered bottle of water, just managing to grip it with weakened fingers. It felt cold in her hand, and the condensation on the outside instantly wetted her skin. Popping the lid and bringing it to her lips, she drank deeply. Her dry throat instantly felt better.

  Hoffman waited patiently. After a long period of gulps and a tiny, polite(ish) burp, she was ready for more questions.

  “What happens if I eat something?” she asked, feeling more curious than upset now.

  Hoffman picked up a rotted plank of wood and observed the little clumps of termites crawling around on it with a little smile. “It varies, but the sensory stimulation causes some processes of the human body to work on their own even without real fuel. Let's say you're starving and eat one of these little ones. Your body will detect something in your stomach and begin processing it, but there's nothing there. Nothing to burn. No water. It stimulates certain bodily processes, accelerating dehydration and sometimes hypoglycemia, and those are not part of this test.”

  “So, may I ask what is part of the test? I haven't failed yet, have I?”

  “Like I said before your untimely death, this isn’t a pass or fail thing.," he restated, nodding mechanically like he'd given this answer thousands of times. "You are guaranteed to fail. The nature of your failure and your reaction to your failure is where the value in the test lies.”

  That seemed unjust to Cammy. What kind of test didn’t offer a way to win, even if it just boiled down to losing to a lesser degree? In her experience there was always a path to success even if you had to make your own. She'd put this belief to the test many times in her life, and she'd not been wrong yet. If it was impossible here, she would need to lose in a way that impressed whoever needed to be impressed. What would give her high marks? Was she already failing just by asking?

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  She looked around at the jungle. The sounds of insects and rustling leaves were everywhere, but she saw no immediate goals to shoot for. No one was jumping out of the bushes to bring her death count to two either.

  “What do I do?” she asked feeling comfortable enough to pace on the path to get a better feel for the ground and how it felt. The water really did help a ton.

  The Master at Arms put his hands back in his pockets and took a few lazy but graceful steps down the trail before he turned around to answer. “Whatever you want, Ms. Johansen. Fight. Run. Hide. Lie. Cajole. Seduce. Surrender. However you want to play this, you can. Take as much time as you want. Ask me anything. Ask me for anything. Just don’t ask me to stop the test.”

  “What happens if I asked you to stop the test?”

  “Instant failure.”

  “And not the good kind, I assume.”

  Hoffman put a finger up to the side of his nose. “Not at all.”

  Cammy nodded, beginning to understand. So, this was an endurance test, not just physical but mental. She needed more intel. However, her next question was cut off by a bundle of padded cloth hitting her in the face with a *plop*. When she pulled it away, Cammy saw the familiar design of a standard Company combat suit.

  “Put it on. You’ll need it,” Hoffman said.

  Cammy looked around, narrowing her eyes suspiciously. She imagined old balding guys with clipboards hunched over monitors, unblinkingly observing her from behind their glasses. “Can I at least get some privacy?” she asked,

  That got a laugh out of Hoffman, the kind laugh you had when only you were in on the joke. “You have no idea how uninterested I am in seeing you in the nude, Ms. Johansen.”

  “No one else is here?”

  “Just you and me, lass,” he answered with a backwards wave, striding off down the game trail and disappearing from sight.

  Only then did Cammy start the process of slipping out of her clothes, shoes first then working her way up. The combat suit was a single piece black thing with pads on all the more common impact areas like the elbows, knees, feet, and ribs. The material was frictionless and super breathable, so much so that she felt underdressed even if she was covered from her collarbone to her toes. As she zipped it up the front, the thought occurred to her that this thing might just be made from hard light as well.

  She shrugged. There was nothing she could do about it anyway. She certainly wasn't going to traipse through the jungle in her jacket, heels, and skirt.

  Dressed now, she jogged up the game trail, around a bend and through a dry stream bed. She found Hoffman in a clearing of sorts, one big enough to have a hole in the canopy where she could see the noon sun at its zenith overhead.

  The Master at Arms looked her up and down appraisingly. “Looks like you’ve shaken off the neural disruption then.”

  Having already thought of a few questions to pose to the man, Cammy decided to get started. “So, if we all eventually have to defend ourselves out in the field, why not include this as part of basic training?”

  “Because we spend significant time and resources on your training, and we found that our groups of trainees had significantly higher turnover rates if we frontloaded this test," he said, using his hands to type on an unseen keypad.

  Cammy detected the presence of a half truth. "You mean before we're emotionally invested in our assigned super."

  "Figured that one out did you?" Hoffman replied rhetorically. "Good. There's a reason you're paired based on psych profiles. You and your super should get on like a house on fire if the assessments were done properly. That's what it takes to make you an effective team. As for the test, I admit that it is highly irregular for you to go through this a matter of days after your first assignment, but most liaisons do not get into firefights as… eagerly as you did.”

  The ragged exhaustion she’d felt just after her shootout reemerged and threatened to drag her down for a moment, eminating from her stomach to her limbs. The thought of the man she'd shot doubling over and sliding back into his truck. Was he still alive? She'd not had many chances to think about it. Did she kill someone not one day into the job?

  “He shot at me first,” she said softly.

  “I am not blaming you for defending yourself and neither does the Company. You simply found yourself in a firefight before we could establish a baseline for your behavior out in the field. What concerns us is what you did afterward. After being told to rest and get to know your super, you made highly suspect decisions such as leaving your AI companion behind multiple times when he could have been an asset then attempting to question a civilian involved in the case you were specifically told to drop. That is not to mention your lack of a report on the hospital incident.”

  She had no answer for this one. The Company didn’t exactly have hard proof of her trying to go off the books to track down Hugh, but this was not a court of law. If they suspected her, the Company could act as it pleased.

  A rogue thought surfaced in Cammy’s mind. Did the timing of this test serve other purposes for the Company? Was it a method of getting her out of the way? Were they removing her from the temptation of performing her investigation?

  "We all handle trauma differently, lass. It was you or him, and you chose yourself just like anyone else. You're a proactive agent though, Ms. Johansen. We're concerned that you might have some misplaced desire to see your attacker brought in personally-" Hoffman said, his expression darkening with every word. "Or worse, taking on the role of vigilante. It's happened more often than we'd like."

  Uncomfortable with the direction the conversation was going, Cammy sought a change of subject. “So, I can ask you anything?”

  No longer typing into thin air, Hoffman put his hands back into his pockets and nodded, looking relieved to go back to the test as well.

  “So, what’s with the jungle?”

  Hoffman extended an arm and made a sweeping gesture to encompass their surroundings. “Ah. This scenario is one of mine. A simple one. You are near a basecamp you’ve established to support your partner in his mission to capture a high value belligerent super. However, while he is out, a second super has slipped into the jungle to find you and eliminate you.”

  “And I can ask for anything like, say, a bigger gun?”

  “Yes.”

  “An airstrike?”

  “Air support would take time to get off the runway and into the area but yes.”

  “This suit isn’t made of light is it? When the simulation drops, I’m not going to just be in my underwear?”

  He nodded. “It’s real. You, the clothes you brought, your combat suit, and that water bottle are the only real things you’ve encountered down here so far.”

  “What about backup?”

  Hoffman gave Cammy what she thought might have been his first truly genuine smile since she’d woken up. She’d said something right at least. “Good instincts. Other people are a resource to be leveraged as well. Additional human resources will be provided to you based on the scenario.”

  “What do I know about the evil supers who are after me?”

  He typed in a couple commands in front of him, yet again, squinting and nodding a little theatrically. “The one that is here in the jungle with you is a fairly standard mimic. She can assume different shapes and has heightened flexibility and speed.”

  “Where’s my basecamp?” Cammy asked attempting to peer through the dense greenery.

  Hoffman waved a hand in the air, and the jungle seemed to shift in such a way that, despite there being no sense of movement per se, Cammy experienced a split second of vertigo all the same. She blinked, and when she opened her eyes, a pair of tables sat knee high next to her with warbling radio equipment already picking up encrypted signals. A collapsible satellite dish sat off to the side, propped up on a rock and pointed up and out of the trees and into the sky. Camo netting was draped over most of the equipment so as to confuse observers in from above.

  The terrain and environment here was dense, probably good for concealment in any other circumstance, but since she’d already been discovered according to the scenario…

  “Alright, Mr. Hoffman. I have some requests.”