The week it took to recover basic motor functionality was the longest of Kayla’s life. Her body was nothing but a cage for the restless animal within. Worse, the doctors were unsupportive of her determination to push beyond the point of exhaustion until she was thrashing around in fury. Wasn’t this what boot camp had trained her to do?

Eventually, she managed to get out of bed and stumble around, and someone took her to a treadmill to try walking. As soon as she could hobble, she tried to jog, and fell flat on her face. The doctors gave her a stern talking to after that. She ignored them, and her rehab session ended with them pulling her away from the machine.

Progress came slowly; treadmills became elliptical machines, became bikes and pushups, until eventually she was doing a full bodyweight routine. By the end of the week, Kayla could easily manage a hundred pushups, and her strength kept growing. She often stopped herself to make sure her form was correct; that she wasn’t cheating herself. But her muscles were becoming powerful enough to do anything she asked of them.

Thandi and Christie had only started learning to walk, but Rose wasn’t far behind her. After a fast workout in a rowing machine, Kayla wiped it off with a towel. She went over to the squat rack, and, as she slid forty-five-pound plates onto the bar, she looked up and saw that Rose had taken her place.

“Trying to beat my speed?” Kayla taunted her.

“You know it,” Rose gasped, as her arms snapped back and forth. She got close to Kayla’s record but failed by a few reps per minute. Panting hard, Rose sat back and fixed Kayla with a stern look. “You take one too many breaks… then you’ll see.”

Kayla laughed. She liked the challenge, but she also detected an edge to Rose’s voice that she didn’t like. It wasn’t even that she was intimidating; Rose sounded angry with herself.

They met a new specialist, a physical fitness coach, who talked with them about how their nanite enhanced bodies would be developed over time.

“It will actually take at least a couple of decades for you to develop your maximum potential,” the coach explained. “In that time, you’re going to find that you are genetically gifted in certain areas, and lacking in others, just like any other athlete. For example, Kayla, I noticed you’re an excellent sprinter, but you’re a little weaker with your cardio. For now, I’m going to help you develop a basic beginner program that’s going to target everything, because you have a lot of room for improvement. As time passes, you’ll want to customize your training based on what’s important to you and your role in the Ranger Battalion.”

“Are we going to be… you know…butch?” asked Rose.

Kayla tried not to laugh at her concerned expression. None of the women they had met up to that point had been excessively muscular. Even after all they had been through, Rose was still absurdly vain.

The coach smiled. “The timeless principles of infantry warfare require us to limit size and weight wherever possible, and in the case of these nanite modifications, size isn’t a factor. They do more with less.”

Rose seemed happy with that response.

In another short class, Collective researchers taught the Rangers about the stress–recovery cycle, and the effective weight to rep ratios that had been discovered throughout the organization’s history. In the end, they concluded, everyone was different, but some things worked for everyone. They explained the difference between type one and type two muscle fibers, and how bad form or posture could lead to poor growth, or even injury.

The Rangers learned that strength wasn’t the same as stamina, that both were different again from explosive power, and that all three had to be addressed in a weekly plan. The specialists explained that physical fitness would be an endless evolving journey during their time in Valkyrie. Every soldier and scientist had to take regular fitness reviews to check their progress, and their score would have a significant impact on their careers.

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There was a boxing ring in the complex, so in their downtime Thandi showed Kayla basic moves, and soon others joined in. Once the Rangers got bored with punching each other, they clumsily attempted wrestling or Jiu Jitsu techniques, trying to imitate the competitive fighters they now watched religiously on the institute’s holo-screens.

After a painful sparring session with Thandi, Kayla collapsed on a bench. She was bruised and exhausted, having failed to land a single strike on her friend.

“Hey,” Kayla said, after she caught her breath. “Uh, where did that last punch come from, orbit?”

Thandi chuckled. “I wouldn’t worry about it,” she said as she ripped her gloves off. “You have a long way to go.”

Kayla smirked. “I nearly caught you, like, twice.” Just another few days, and she would have Thandi on the ropes.

“You might not want to hear this, sweety, but I’m taking it really easy on you. Really easy,” she said again with emphasis.

Kayla scratched her neck. Maybe more than a few days then. “That’s nice,” she said. “Now my ego is as bruised as my face.”

Thandi shook her head. “Come on Kayla, I’ve been doing this for years, and you started a few days ago. You’re progressing well, but you’re crazy impatient.”

“I’m not impatient, everyone else is slow!” Kayla shot back as she wrung the sweat out of her ponytail. She turned to the punching bag where Rose was slowly repeating the basic strikes Thandi had shown her. “Want to go, Rose?”

Rose looked around and her eyes widened. “Really? Your bruises have bruises.”

Kayla shrugged. “I don’t care. Seriously, I get a little giddy sometimes. Like I don’t ever want to sleep again.”

Thandi cocked her head. “I’m not a hundred percent convinced that’s a healthy mindset you have there.”

Kayla waved a hand. “Whatever—I’ll fix it some other time. What do you say Rose?”

Rose shook her head. “Thanks for the offer, but actually I have some bike training penciled in shortly.”

“Okay.” Kayla smiled. “But I mean we’re at the same level, so it would make sense—”

“Absolutely. Another time?” Rose returned the smile, and turned to leave.

Thandi gave Kayla a look of curiosity.

“I’d say she was avoiding you,” Thandi said later, when they enjoyed the privacy of an empty locker room.

Kayla lay back on a bench. “I don’t know. She’s always booked with someone else, or working on drills or something.”

Thandi opened her locker and reached in for her towel. “I thought you two were getting along better?” she asked.

“Kind of,” Kayla said. “We don’t argue, but there’s still a lot of history to get past. She never really apologized for the past few years.”

“It might have something to do with the fact that you fight like you’re trying to kill the other girl.”

“Thought that was the whole point, babe?”

Thandi shook her head as she sat down and stared at her friend. “Sparring is for practicing movement, awareness, how to read the body. You need to chill out.”

Kayla’s eyes wandered over the ceiling. No matter what weight she lifted, no matter how hard or fast she punched or kicked, she still felt like she was holding back. There was so much more to learn.

“That attitude is why I have better PT scores than you,” she said idly.

There was a soft snap, and she felt the flick of a towel against her shorts.

“That attitude is why I have more friends than you do,” Thandi said.

Kayla withheld a scowl. How was she supposed to say that to the families of colonists that had died over the years, waiting for her to protect them? “I don’t need friends, Thandi. I have you to take care of me.”

“Uhuh? And who do I talk to about getting a replacement?”

Kayla rose in one quick movement and Thandi ducked to avoid the boxing glove that flew past her head.

“But since we’re friends,” Thandi said with a smile, “I feel it’s my obligation to once again try to convince you to read the Good Book—I even have the best bits bookmarked.”

Kayla shook her head. “Look, I appreciate some of those proverbs you’ve taught me, and some of it’s been really helpful… but I don’t know.”

“Well, you need to go into more depth and then you’ll understand—”

“No, I think I understand just fine,” Kayla said. She got up from the bench and went to her locker. “But I didn’t sign the same contract you did.”

“What contract?” Thandi asked.

“The one you apparently signed before you were born,” Kayla said as she reached for her towel. “The one that guaranteed you the universe had to make sense and provide you with a ‘fill in the blank’ path to fulfillment.” She shook her head. “I just woke up surrounded by insanity, and I don’t have the impression that I’m owed an explanation or that there needs to be a happy ending. No offense.”

Kayla turned and headed for the showers, leaving a silent Thandi behind her.

One month later, and three months after leaving Camp White, Kayla crashed a five-hundred-pound weight back onto the holds of a bench press rack. She felt ecstatic at her development, but the thrill of accomplishment never seemed to last. She had beaten challenge after challenge, and she found that looking for the next one was a habit that was getting harder to shake.