Once the rest of the group had gone, Susaki directed Kayla and Rose to continue. Kayla climbed freely and fidgeted restlessly while she waited for her buddy. Rose took her time to catch up, and her progress was clumsy, but deliberate. Eventually they came to the high scaffold, a wooden, four-story tower with no walls and floors five feet high.

At the bottom, as she had been shown by the instructors, Kayla braced a leg, which Rose stepped on to climb up to the next floor. Then Kayla reached to grab the ledge and pulled hard, while Rose grabbed her shirt and belt to help her clamber up. Kayla turned around and positioned herself to jump to the next floor.

“Be ready to grab my leg and give me a shove,” Kayla said.

Rose nodded, but her skin had turned sickly white.

Kayla paused before continuing. Was Rose going to be able to handle the whole obstacle? With no choice but to continue, she shook her head and jumped for the next ledge. The boost came quickly, and she scrambled the rest of the way. The climb was challenging, but fun, though when she lay down to reach for Rose, she saw her eyes were as wide as saucers.

“Um…” Rose began, and swallowed. “You won’t let go, will you?”

Kayla wanted to curse her for her weakness. All this time acting like the role model for the galaxy, but when push came to shove, she was just a scared girl. Unfortunately, the rest of the course was still ahead, so Kayla chose her words carefully.

“I want to beat this course as much as you do, right?” she said. “Let’s get through this, then we can go back to smack talking.” She grinned. “Imagine how jealous everyone will be when we set the best times.”

Roses nodded, though she didn’t seem convinced. She swallowed again, then jumped up on the ledge. Kayla grabbed her, pulled hard and felt Rose scrambling desperately as she tried to get her feet up. There was a thud as a limb smacked the wooden planking. Rose climbed onto the deck, blood dripping from her knee. She looked like she was going to vomit.

“I guess I’ll go first again,” Kayla said. “Only two more stories.”

She stepped back to the edge, turned, and reached for the next floor. When she hauled herself up, she felt no help from below, but she was a good enough climber to get a leg up and scramble the rest of the way on her own. Once she was secure, she looked back down and saw Rose clutching one of the scaffolds’ struts and staring at the ground.

“Let’s go Rose. Almost there,” Kayla called.

Rose didn’t answer her, perhaps didn’t even hear her. She stayed frozen in place, knuckles white as her nails dug into the thick wooden post.

Kayla decided they both needed a quick break. She turned around to check out the forest. The beach, crowded with recruits, was visible through the gaps in the trees. In the other direction, the low mountains framed the training camp. A fresh breeze rustled the leaves and Kayla almost lost track of time. After a while, she looked down again, but Rose still hadn’t moved.

Kayla wondered if her ‘buddy’ was irretrievably stuck and began to lose her patience. “Come on Rose, let’s go. The freakin’ school tower was higher than this, and you did it when you were nine.”

Rose didn’t react, maintaining her death grip on the stanchion.

Kayla tried a few more taunts, but nothing seemed to work. She looked around for an instructor, but they had all moved off, managing the distant crowd of recruits at the end of the course. However, maybe her problem had been solved after all?

After exhausting all her options, Kayla huffed and slapped the scaffold in anger. “You know what Rose, I think you’re getting kicked out. Susaki said she’d send you home if you couldn’t do it, didn’t she?”

No response.

“Whatever. Stay here then. I guess they’ll assign me another buddy.”

Kayla dropped off the ladder and headed to the next obstacle, happy that she could finally get on with more climbing. After the scaffold was a rope netting, and she enjoyed the bouncing undulation her movements caused.

“Barnes! What are you doing?” An enraged call broke the silence.

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Kayla’s gut knotted up as a jolt of fear stabbed through her. Susaki had apparently returned to check on her progress. She turned her head and saw two Instructors climb up to where Rose was still frozen on the scaffold.

Susaki approached the bottom of the netting with a look of fury on her face. “Get down right now!” she snarled.

Kayla did so, though her hands shook, making the climbing difficult. She was obviously in serious trouble.

Once she stepped off the bottom, she turned to Susaki. “Instructor, I was just—”

“Enough. Go to that tree and wait for me. I don’t even want to look at you right now.”

Kayla waited where she was told, watching the instructors help Rose get off the scaffold. She looked terrible and was on the verge of tears. Susaki spoke quietly to her, before the other instructors walked her back to the camp.

Then Susaki stalked over to Kayla with a venomous expression. “Follow,” she snapped, as she walked straight past her.

Kayla wanted to argue. She had tried everything; helped her buddy as much as she could. But Rose was too scared—obviously didn’t belong in the training. Kayla said none of these things, knowing full well that all her excuses would be rejected.

She was led to the beach, which Susaki followed north away from the camp until they came to an estuary at low tide. It was fed by a stream with a weak flow. A wide channel of mud stretched inland as far as Kayla could see.

“Get down on your hands and knees,” Susaki ordered.

Kayla did so and felt herself sinking into a substance as thick as syrup. She tried to pull her hand out but struggled against the suction pulling it back in. She looked up to see Susaki glaring at her.

“It’s a simple enough exercise,” the instructor said. “Crawl up the stream bed until I tell you to stop.”

Kayla knew she would be wiped out in minutes, but she had no choice. She started to move, and as she pulled her limbs out of the mud’s grip, she began to feel nauseous. Susaki was going to put her through hell. Pulling out her hands and knees from the mud required an immense effort, and Kayla tired very quickly. She started blinking quickly to keep sodden lumps flicking into her eyes, and she stopped, gasping for breath as she looked up at the merciless gaze that followed her.

“I didn’t say stop,” Susaki said, “so I guess you must be asking to quit. Is that right?”

Kayla shook her head and started to move again. Every muscle in her body was on fire. Her head spun, and she wondered if she was going to throw up. But she could not allow herself to stop.

“The thing is,” Susaki went on, “I got a call from a mutual friend of ours, who wanted to know how her special recruit is doing.” She spat the word ‘special’ as though it revolted her.

Kayla kept pushing. She was happy that Urtiga was interested in her progress, but this announcement could only mean worse treatment was to come.

“You know why Urtiga is famous here?” Susaki asked. “Why everybody respects her? I can say that she has personally saved my life on more than one occasion.”

Kayla kept moving, and soon she was catching specks of mud in her mouth as her chest heaved to take in air. She wondered if Susaki would let her stay in the training if she had to be rescued from drowning. Probably not.

“Stop crawling,” Susaki ordered.

Kayla nearly collapsed, grateful for the respite, but afraid of what was next.

Susaki knelt in the mud until she was eye to eye with Kayla. “I know you have figured out how old the organization is. Believe me when I say that I have watched generations of women pass through this course, and you don’t hold a candle to any of them.”

She grimaced. “I’ve seen a lot of death. But what really scares me is that an arrogant, ego-driven fool like you gets one of my friends killed. And the first thing the rest of them will do in their anger is demand to know which worthless excuse for an instructor let you pass through boot camp.”

Kayla trembled as she waited for more.

“Tell me something Barnes, who’s the most popular recruit on this course? Who do the other girls look up to and respect, and want to imitate?”

Through the fog of pain in her mind, Kayla struggled to think. “Rose?” she panted.

“Nope. It’s you. You hang out with the most respected recruits, you’re even with Rose for the top PT scores, and you crush everything we throw at you. On top of that, the whole class has heard by now that you were personally recruited by one of the most respected operators in this organization.”

Kayla didn’t speak until she managed to catch her breath. “I thought they all hated me. Since the school, everyone I met hated me.”

Susaki watched her carefully. “Crawl.”

Kayla started again, blinking back tears from the effort.

“I don’t know where you came from, Kayla,” Susaki said, “and I don’t care. What you did to Rose back there… leaving your buddy stuck, so you could go off on your own? If you did that in a real unit, they would probably take you somewhere quiet and beat you into a coma. Whatever problem you had, get past it.”

Kayla gasped. “Yes Instructor.”

“Urtiga and her damned prodigies. You may have impressed her once upon a time, but you’ve been throwing away the respect you’ve gained here. I’m telling you right now, I don’t like you, and I don’t want you in this organization. I am just itching for an excuse to send you home, and there are other instructors debating it. After everything we taught you over the past few months, you show our traditions and principles nothing but contempt.”

“I’m sorry, instructor!”

“You’re sorry you got caught,” Susaki said with derision. “Alright. Well, you seem to thrive on challenges, so you’re going to crawl until my anger subsides. Dig deep, and don’t worry about drowning—I’ll pull you out If I feel like it.”

Kayla tried to look ahead through the mud that was clogging and burning her eyes, but she saw nothing. She didn’t need to, just like she didn’t need to feel or think. She just had to crawl. A desperate fear drove her forward—and not only that she might lose everything she had worked for. Maybe Rose had been right about her all along. Maybe she was too selfish to be useful to anyone.