“We met on that train or bus or whatever it was we rode in on, but I don’t really know much about you, Hudson,” Vince said. He was a fairly talkative kind of guy, and aside from walking along the bottom of the ravine, there wasn’t much else to do.

“Ah yeah, well, I grew up in Ohio. Went to college there, got a job. Never left the state, really. Have a cat at home. Had a cat, I suppose… I hope Max is alright…” Hudson trailed off, thinking about his pet. “How about you?”

“I’m from northern Virginia. DC area. Was going to graduate high school in a few months,” Vince replied.

“How were you kidnapped? Did an ‘old aunty’ come grab you as well?”

Vince looked embarrassed. “I wasn’t exactly kidnapped.”

Hudson stopped and stared at Vince. “You chose to be here? And know about all this S.E.C.T. stuff?”

Vince shook his head vigorously. “I know nothing about it, really. All I know is that my parents paid a bunch of money – like a ridiculous amount of money, they’re very rich – to send me away for what they called, and I quote, ‘the opportunity of not just one lifetime, but multiple lifetimes.’”

His voice took on a deeper, mocking tone for the last part.

Hudson couldn’t believe his ears. “Your parents… paid for you to be here? Like it’s summer camp?”

Vince looked even more embarrassed. “This is not summer camp, obviously. And yes, I’m sure my parents knew more. I’ve heard of ‘cultivation techniques’ before as well, or at least the term. My parents were talking about it once when they thought I couldn’t hear.”

“Unbelievable,” Hudson said. He shook his head.

“And you, Cor? How’d you end up here?” Hudson asked as they walked along the bottom of the ravine. It was much harder going, now, and they frequently had to scramble over piles of scree blocking the path.

“I was born and raised in Alabama, but left the farm as soon as I could and joined the Army. Never looked back,” Cor said. He slung his sledgehammer off of his shoulder and clambered over to a large looking boulder slightly off the path.

“Saw the world, as they say, although by rights I reckon I saw too much of the world and that’s why I’m here.” He spat on his hands, lifted the sledge high over his head and slammed it down into the boulder. It split in two with a sharp crack.

Looking inside the boulder, Cor didn’t see any of the crystalline rocks they were supposed to gather. With a disappointed look on his face, he moved on down the path after Hudson and Vince.

“I was hoping that boulder was like a geode, with some of them silvery crystals inside. No dice.”

“What do you mean, ‘saw too much’?” Vince asked.

“Oh, I stuck my nose where I shouldn’t have. I knew better. Twenty years in the army taught me better judgment. But I saw something I shouldn’t have. No trial, no goodbyes, no nothing – they just put me in a dark box for a long time, before I ended up here. I reckon I should be thankful I wasn’t just killed.”

“What did you see?” Vince asked eagerly.

Cor looked over at him with a frown. “You sure you want to hear it, son? I still see it with my eyes closed. You want me to paint that picture for you?”

Vince nodded, eyes wide open and full of interest.

“What happens when one of these people with superhuman strength and speed punches a bunch of regular people into itty-bitty pieces?”

Hudson blanched and cut in hurriedly. “I don’t need more of a mental image.”

“You are the one who actually might need to hear it,” Cor said. “You’ve got one of these cultivation techniques? You working on getting some super strength yourself?”

“Yeah,” Hudson nodded uneasily. “I guess so. I was in karate class, trying not to stress out about work. Trying to focus on my breathing… and somehow I started breathing a certain way.”

He had been about to tell them both about Chiang-sensei, but then belatedly remembered her warning not to say anything about her.

“To me it was like a breathing technique to reduce stress. I could focus really easily, and I didn’t feel so angry any more. Or at least my anger didn’t bother me so much. I didn’t even realize it made me stronger, until…”

Hudson trailed off as he thought back to his last meeting with his boss.

“Until what?” Vince asked.

“Until I lost my temper and accidentally destroyed my boss’s office.”

Cor let out a few hearty chuckles. “Show me some of that super strength then, Hudson. Let’s see what you can do with it, and maybe how you need to be careful with it.”

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He looked around for a suitable target before pointing with his sledge. “Go and whack that rock wall over there with your pickaxe.”

About fifty feet ahead there was a giant boulder smack in the middle of the path. The ravine walls periodically grew wider and then came closer together, and at that point they had created a narrow point that was partially blocked by the boulder. The boulder was at least eight feet in diameter, and looked like it had recently fallen from higher up on the ravine’s cliff face. There were piles of scree on both sides of the boulder and in front as well.

Hudson clambered up the path to the boulder and took a stance. The boulder was large – at least twice as tall as he was, and just as wide around.

“Hit it normally first,” Cor called out.

Hudson nodded, readied his pickaxe and swung down, as hard as he could.

There was a high-pitched plink and a few pebbles broke off the boulder. Hudson’s hands felt needles of pain from the pickaxe handle shaking in his hands.

He focused on his breathing. In… out… In… and out. He tried to find the starting breath, the ignition, but he was having trouble.

He thought back at the fight this morning – he’d been angry. The same in his boss’s office, and the same that night he copied Chiang-sensei. Maybe the anger helped him unlock his technique.

He imagined he was back in the office with his boss. His co-workers looking down at him and laughing at him, taking credit for his work and blaming him for their mistakes. His heartbeat increased, his breaths sharpened, and he found the rhythm.

The air was bursting in and out of his lungs as his muscles filled with greater speed and power. He raised the pickaxe above his head. The head of the pickaxe began to glow slightly, shining with a silvery glow. Hudson paused slightly in surprise, before he brought it down with a crash.

The large boulder split in two with a large bang. Scree blasted to the sides, and there was a rumbling as more rocks fell from the sides of the ravines, knocked loose by his blow. Hudson stared in confusion at the pickaxe – it was hard to believe it had done so much damage to the rock.

If he had hit any of the participants in the Challenge that morning with power like that, they would have been blown to pieces. Maybe there was something special about the pickaxe as well? Magnifying his strength?

“Well would you look at that,” Cor said for the second time in less than an hour.

“I split the boulder, but it’s hard to believe, even for me,” Hudson said. “And did you see the head of the pickaxe? It was glowing.”

“Well, that was mighty impressive too,” Cor said. “But take a look up yonder. We finally got ourselves some work to do.”

Hudson looked up to where Cor was pointing, and sure enough, some of the rock wall on the ravine had fallen off, revealing a seam of glowing, silvery quartz. The minerals gleamed in the star-lit night, giving off coruscating rainbows in the dark.

The seam of minerals was difficult to reach, but not impossible. They quickly got to work mining the crystals. Cor scrambled up a long bank of loose scree but was able to find decent enough footing to swing his sledgehammer. He got to work breaking the precious resources out of the crack in the ravine wall.

There wasn’t enough room for two people, so they took turns swinging at the wall to break off pieces of crystal, and picking up the material as it slid down the slope. They packed the canvas bags they had brought – they had needed to ditch the wheelbarrow some ways back, as the terrain became untraversable for the bulky box on a wheel. When they filled up a bag, one of them would run back and deposit it in the wheelbarrow.

Hudson avoided using his breathing technique again when it was his turn to hammer the crystals out of the surrounding rocks – the purpose was to gather the materials, not disintegrate them.

“What I wouldn’t give for a nice, cold lemonade right about now,” Cor said. Sweat had completely soaked his shirt and was dripping off of his face. Hudson wasn’t much better, and was sitting with his back against the boulder he’d split taking a break. Vince was, perhaps unsurprisingly, the least sweaty and winded. He’d offered to do the majority of the runs back to the wheelbarrow.

“Don’t even start with that,” Hudson said. “Maybe next time we should ask the Director if we can take some water bottles or something like that.”

“You think there’ll be a next time?” Cor asked.

“I don’t know, but I’d think so. While we’ve been working, I’ve been thinking that there must be some reason we’re doing this, as opposed to regular people or even robots. The technology of that hangar, the rifts, and the doors that open almost magically out of seemingly solid walls… That’s out of a sci-fi movie. If they can do that, then why make us? Why not use a bunch of drones, or modern mining equipment? Also, if it’s really valuable, why make it optional and not compulsory for the people in the trial?”

“Lots of good questions,” Cor said.

“And not a lot of answers,” Hudson said in response. It was very frustrating to not know what was really going on.

“Hey guys,” Vince said, trotting back up to the big boulder. “Our armbands just ticked back down to one. I think we should probably start to head back.”

They had gathered most of the big chunks of crystal, and the wheelbarrow was mostly full as well.

“Alright, let’s gather up these last few chunks and head back.”

Picking up and pushing the now-full wheelbarrow was actually quite tough. The weight was considerable and the wheel was sinking inches into the dirt path. The crystals they had gathered, in addition to having a silvery sheen to them that made them seem like they were almost glowing, were also abnormally heavy for a rock their size.

Vince couldn’t shift the wheelbarrow at all, and Cor had trouble doing it for any significant distance. Hudson was the only one able to decently maneuver, and only when he got his breathing technique activated.

It was a little troubling that he could only seem to get it going when he was angry. He also had trouble keeping it going if he was interrupted by talking or something else took his attention. Chiang-sensei had told him to keep it going all the time. He wasn’t sure that was possible, or even desirable. He could smell the black ichor coming through his pores, pushed out by the breathing technique, just from the minimal amount of breathing he was doing now.

Vince and Cor hadn’t said anything, but they did walk upwind and a few feet away from him.

They passed by the cave, where the path had made a fork, but didn’t see or hear any of the other team. They finally made it back to the end of the ravine after about forty-five minutes of heavy pushing and stop-and-start breathing from a now-exhausted Hudson.

Using his breathing technique also seemed to take a lot more energy out of him than when he just breathed normally. He was completely wiped out, not to mention incredibly hungry and thirsty. Towards the end, he had lost concentration numerous times due to the hunger pains gnawing at his belly.

The cave with the rift portal was still there, and one by one they pushed through. The eerie, cold sensation of the rift was gone as soon as they felt it, and they were greeted by the bright lights of the S.E.C.T.’s trial hangar.