I straightened, the vow of vengeance now on the top of my mind. I wiped the tear from my cheek - and joined everyone else. There’s a long way to go before that happens, I thought. And weakness has no place here. Les’ computer screen showed an internet record book of every notable computer transaction that had ever occurred.

“Holy shit, Les.” I said. “This probably contains billions of pages of information.”

“Well, we can narrow it down.” He said. “They don’t particularly make it easy, of course. If I bought the product, I could do this much faster, but stealing is what we have, and money is what we don’t.”

“So, what does the stolen file contain?” Seph asked.

“It’s a binary encoded file of every single thing that occurred on the internet since 2011. I’m guessing foreign operations leaked it. It has tons of information stored in a server somewhere, and each bit connects and loads the information. But it takes up almost all the space on my computer.”

“I know just what to do with that.” I quickly fished a group of microchips out of my pocket. Handing them out, I said: “Load a copy of the directory onto this, and keep it on this.”

Les shrugged, and did as he was told. Soon, we all had a copy of the binary directory and server. “So… I’m expecting that searching this will take up too much of our time?” Seph asked.

“Probably.” I said. He sighed. We placed an order for five coffees and went to work… reading.

Yippee, I thought, don’t I just looooooove reading.

Hours passed, with us meticulously glancing over bits of text. Some of it was glitched, some was just missing. Most of it was shit. Oh my god! Another connection error. So fucking exciting!

The dry, sarcastic voice in my head was just getting louder by the hour. Eventually, a soft ringing sound reached my ears. “The phone.” Les said, without missing a beat or glancing .

I squinted, and, sure enough, there was a little black phone attached to the wall. Everyone else was staring wide eyed at the computers. Standing up, I made my way over to the pesky little thing. As soon as I picked it up, Whiteford’s voice blasted into my ear:

“Hey kid. Combat training’s in fifteen. Get your ass in gear and scurry down here.”

I opened my mouth to reply, but she had already hung up. Shaking my head, I turned and faced the room. “Combat training!” I announced loudly.

Seph seemed to jump a foot in the air, and Mel’s eyes widened. Naomi and Les calmly looked up at me. “We’ve got fifteen minutes, so make it snappy!” I followed up with. We all retreated to our rooms, putting on some of the plain, black clothes provided to us.

It was time for some fighting.

𒄆

We all walked slowly onto the open grounds. The crisp evening air was cool against my skin, a nice contrast to our stuffy dormitory room. A large area was set aside for fighting, contained by a barbed fence. Hundreds of others - officers with plenty of more training - lined the field. They were dressed in the exact same clothes as the hackers - but muscles showed through the tight clothes. Most of us were not as fit. Except for Seph, of course. I felt my gaze slide along the curves of his body - the muscular shape. I felt how easy it would be to-

Nope, I am not imagining that right now.

My stupid little brain still dreamt up some scenes that made my cheeks flush red. I tried to ignore that, by looking at the figure in front of the line, supposedly the leader. A surprisingly young, blonde man met my gaze, smiling. “Join the line!” He said joyfully, as if this was a party, not a combat training camp.

We fell into line with everyone else. “And there are our special guests of honor!” The trainer said, smiling brightly. “For you all-” he began, looking at us. “-My name is Jake. I am the current combat instructor at Xarnon. To start, we will be splitting up into two groups - beginner and intermediate.”

I supposed that meant we were stuck in the beginner group. Jake confirmed my suspicion. “Beginners can teach our new arrivals the basics, and I’ll be working with the intermediate, preparing them for the upcoming battle.”

Upcoming battle? I thought. I looked to my left, and saw the four other Xarnon agents present also confused. I look to my right and-

-Jumped a foot in the air. Vivian had somehow appeared next to me, ready for training. She looked at my surprise, and simply rolled her eyes. “I’ll be with the intermediate,” she whispered. “‘Why’ is none of your concern.”

Jake lastly directed us to go to two sides of the open field. We obliged. As soon as we split up, Jake went into some pretty damn cool moves with the intermediate folks.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Pretty damn hard, too.

“Hi!” I whirled around to face the speaker. A young woman behind me. “I’m Shira, and I can help you with these exercises.”

“Pronouns?” I asked.

“She/her works.” She said, smiling. “Follow me!”

Shira led us over to a corner. The rest of the beginners were pairing up, doing some moves that were a lot more do-able, but a lot less cool. And a lot less effective, I noticed.

“I’m assuming you all know how to punch someone.” She said with a smirk. We nodded. “Then demonstrate.”

I wound up and threw a semi-powerful punch that I was proud of. Seph, on the other hand, seemed to execute a perfect blow that would maybe knock a tooth out of an opponent. Naomi frowned, but followed the instructions to a mediocre degree of success. Les fumbled the blow, and Mel’s show was somewhere between me and Seph.

Shira shrugged, and went to me. She quickly glanced at Seph and Mel, saying “You’ll be ready for the next exercise.”

She grasped my arm, and led me through the correct motion. I did it a few times with her, then on my own. I smiled slightly with satisfaction, picturing Valamir on the receiving end of my attack. Shira led us through a few more basic exercises - ducking, blocking, kicking, and more punching.

At the end, I was panting; both adrenaline and exhaustion flowing through me. Shria looked at the five of us with a sideways grin. “There you go! But let’s see how you fare in a real fight.”

She paired us up - Seph with Mel, Les with Naomi, and me with her. We lined up, faced our partners, and got some space to train.

“I’ll go easy on you…” Shira muttered.

“Don’t you dare.” I said back, foolish pride flaring in my chest.

“Three…” Shira began. I took a deep breath. I can do this.

“Two…”

“One…”

I braced myself.

by “Start!”

Shira instantly flung herself at me. Panicked, I raised my hands. Her wrists collided wth my raised fists, starting the true fight.

Shira went to sweep my legs out from under me, but I jumped, almost too late.

“Careful.” She cooed, which made me feel… slightly repulsed. “I might just catch you off guard.”

No, Shira’s nice.

…Right?

A blow to my side knocked me back into the present. I coughed, but darted away. She followed, dashing with raised fists. I went for a blow to her cheek. She grabbed my fist. I brought my leg upward in a kick, and caught her thigh.

She stumbled, and I lept toward her, fist out. Then she was gone. I felt a sharp pain on my side, and gravity took control. I-

Pain flared through my jaw, dirt in my mouth. I had landed face-first onto the ground. My face hurt, my everything hurt.

I raised my head, my vision blurry. Muddy bits of soil attacked my taste buds. I spat the foul mixture onto the ground, again and again.

“Faaaaauuuuuuuuuck.” I moaned.

Something cold bumped my head. I looked up to see Shira, offering a plastic water bottle. I unscrewed the cap and filled my mouth with the cool liquid. Swishing my mouth a few times, I spat it out, then greedily drank the rest.

“Should’ve let me go easy on you…” Shira sang. I lifted myself from the ground, ignoring her.

It seemed Seph had beaten Mel and Naomi had defeated les. “Is that it?” I panted, turning back to Shira. “We’re done, right?”

Shira laughed. “Of course not, silly! We’ve got a lot more to review than just fistfighting if you want to combat Valamir’s forces eventually.”

She directed us to move back and join the line. Jake addressed everyone. “For this next exercise, we will all be in one group.” He directed a group of workers to bring out a large cart. “We’ll be working on your shooting.”

The workers walked down the line and gave us each a gun and a pack of ammunition. “Of course, the bullets are padded and won’t kill. They’ll hurt like hell though.” Jake continued. After the workers had armed us all, they retreated to Jake, who grabbed a controller. At a button’s press, a range of targets raised from the ground, from easy ones - close and fixed, to almost impossible ones - far and moving around quickly.

I loaded the pack of padded bullets into my gun. It wasn’t the best, or the worst, based on what I observed. I readied the weapon. I had fifteen shots - and I intended to make each one count. I started by aiming at a target not too close, but not too far either.

“Open fire when I say ‘go.’” Jake said.

“Three…” He began the countdown.

“Two…” I readied myself.

“One…”

“Go!”

BANG! I pulled the trigger, and the target flopped down, marking it as defeated. Gunfire filled my ears, deafening. I reloaded, and aimed for a further target. BANG!

Shit. The bullet landed somewhere on the back wall, missing.

I shot down four more medium targets. Some people had already stopped firing.

My next three shots hit easy ones still left.

I breathed in, and shot at an almost impossible far-away target.

The bullet sailed far and true. The target fell. With my remaining five bullets, I managed to shoot a few mediums and decently difficult targets. I lowered my gun.

I had done it.

I had just managed to hit one of the hardest targets in the practice. A bubbly feeling of elevation stirred in my chest. Pride, I recognized. I am proud of what I have done.

The gunfire came to a stop.

Jake pressed another button on his controller, sending the targets back into the ground. As the workers collected the guns just as they had given them, he walked up to the front. “Good job today, everyone!” He began. “I am so glad to see everyone progressing. We will be going back to our dormitories in a second.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. My muscles ached. “After a few days, we will schedule the next - and perhaps final - lesson.”

Final? But, we’ve only just begun?

“Unfortunately…” Jake continued. “Half of us will probably be leaving for Russia soon. After the strategy meeting and normal activities, we will have our final practice before the war truly begins.” Jake looked at us, the Xarnon agents. “You six will be attending this strategy meeting. Whiteford told me to inform you, but to also say that the date is not set in stone yet.”

We nodded.

“Alright. You are all dismissed.”

Seph, Mal, Naomi, Les, and I all walked together. Vivian, as we were used to, had vanished. “How was that for the first lesson?” Les asked us.

Seph smirked, having done exceedingly well at everything. “It wasn’t the worst.”

“It was a start.” Naomi said.

“Hey,” I put it. “If it’s a step closer to beating the shit out of Valamir’s whore-ass face, then count me in.”

We all laughed.

But in my mind, I pictured doing a whole lot more to Valamir than just stabbing him.

He should expect pain in his future - because I was not going to let him off easily.