Chapter 3: This is Merely the Beginning

He remembered the feeling from all of his training on how to use those pods. He had to learn for about a week how to operate them safely: like how to set up and activate them, and how to get used to the feeling of being in a body outside his own. All of this extra training was necessary for soldiers to be able to fight in the simulator, but since it was designed so accurately, most soldiers had no trouble at all with function in an outside body during their first link.

An instant after the feeling of falling asleep, Hannock felt as if he woke up again. Only without the groggy feeling and sloth-like movement when he usually woke up. Once again, he was all too familiar with how this felt. He took note of his surroundings. The first thing he noticed was water. Lots of it. He was standing in the middle of what looked to be an ocean. He couldn’t see what he was standing on. It was probably just some invisible platform. Whatever it was, he knew it was there, and that it only existed because of the system he was in. Next, he noticed he was all alone. He thought they would all be there together, but there was no one near him. He couldn’t even see land. There was just blue. Nothing but blue as far as he could see.

 And then he fell. It was so sudden; he didn’t even register what was happening at first. That is, until the g-forces told him what was going on. He barely had enough time to hold his breath before his body broke the surface of the water. He was scared, confused, and had many other emotions running through his head as he tried to get his bearings and understand what was going on. He had just been dropped in the middle of the ocean with no one around, nothing to hold on to, and no land anywhere in sight. This was clearly the work of X-Ray. This was what he meant by his tests. Except he said that they would be psychological, not physical. Hannock knew he wasn’t an expert on psychology, but he could tell pretty easily that this was a very physical challenge. So he just had to tread water for as long as he could. That was the test. See how long they could last. What was going to be the next day? Put them in a desert and see how long they could run? He was questioning everything he was just thinking about X-Ray. He had played his game and lost. He saw him as a very mysterious man and long-term thinker. However, now it just looked like he was as good as any other physical trainer. He kept thinking all of this as he was keeping himself above the water line. He noticed that he was going to get tired rather quickly doing this. He leaned onto his back and spread out his limbs to take up as much surface area as possible and let him float on top of the water. When his legs reached the top of the water. He noticed he had a flare gun strapped to his left leg. He grabbed it and looked it over. It had a waterproof covering over the barrel. Clearly because it was set up for this exact scenario. Still too predictable, X-Ray, he thought.

As if on cue after thinking that, he could hear a plane propeller from a distance. He heard it growing closer and closer. Is it over already? He thought. That had seemed really quick to him, he wondered why these were considered challenges. He found the plane in the sky; it was still pretty high. He thought that maybe they couldn’t find him. He grabbed the flare gun and fired it in the direction of the plane. They should have been able to find him with that. No one could ever miss a flare…except for them. The plane continued flying on. Not even the slightest sign of turning around. They had just left him there. What was going on? He thought he was going to be rescued and leave that place. Now he just watched as what should have been his ticket out continued tallying the miles as it flew away from him. He felt more alone than when he had first gotten there. Not only was he sent there alone. Now he had been blatantly abandoned. His heart sank. He was going to die out there. He had forgotten everything about the simulation. His mind had begun to believe that where he was was real and that he could very well die in this world. He started to panic. He was looking around, frantically searching for even the smallest speck of land that he could swim to. Looking for a ship or another plane, anything. He still saw nothing. He tried to calm himself down.

“Ok, calm down. Focus. Think of another way out of this.”

He looked around his body, seeing if he had any other equipment given to him. He had nothing. As if to add to his sinking feeling, he literally started sinking. Gradually, at first, unnoticeable. Then he started sinking faster. He was freaking out. He was doing everything right to keep himself floating, and yet he was still sinking. He started thrashing at the water to keep himself up. This worked for a short amount of time before the gravity, or whatever was pulling him down, grew stronger than his own power. He was barely keeping his head above the water. Gasping for breath before the waves would flow over his head and plunge him underneath the water yet again. Eventually, the pull became too strong for him to even keep his mouth or nose above sea level. He held his breath for as long as he could, but just as time moved on, so did his breath. He couldn’t hold on for any longer and opened his mouth, hoping for some air. However, all he got was water. The salt burned his throat, causing him to choke more. He could feel his strength leaving him as he continued thrashing towards the surface. Everything had begun to go dark around him. His thought was going cloudy. His strength continued to soften. Was this death? Was this how it felt to drown? He had always imagined it being much worse. Fighting all the way down. The pain of choking holding him all the way, until he died. However, this was different. He felt weak, and tired. He was forgetting everything that had happened, his struggle, his pain, all of it. Until everything finally went completely black.

All of a sudden, his body jerked forward, but was restrained by the straps around him. He was still in the pod. He was alive. After he regained his bearings on everything, he noticed all of the other recruits were watching him. He must have been the last one. He ejected his pod from the system, digitally, not physically. Once the system recognized that his pod was no longer linked, the straps released Hannock and unlocked the doors around him. He stepped out, still horrified at what had happened. He had experienced death, and came back to remember it. And, by the looks of it, everyone else felt the same. They had to go through seven days of this. No one knew how the elder soldiers had gotten through this and still be as relaxed as they were. Only one thing was for sure. X-Ray was bringing his best, just as he said he would. This man was something else, something beyond man. How he had planned all of that so meticulously was beyond him. The protest, the fight, the arrogance, the safety. All of these things had been actions by Hannock and all of these things had been used against him.

“What the hell was that!” screamed Hannock.

“Watch your tone, Recruit,” said X-Ray, unfazed by his anger, “You completed the first challenge, that’s all that happened.”

“I’m not talking about that! What was with all of those things you did to screw me over?!”

“Did I ever promise you that you would be fine?”

That stopped him. It was true; X-Ray had said they would experience terrible things during these challenges. That meant he had grounds to do whatever he wanted while they were in there. Hannock realized he was completely out of line with his tone towards his leader. Something that made him curious, though, was that X-Ray wasn’t going berserk over it. Why was he just taking it? Most officers were more than happy to put someone in their place when they acted beyond their rank. Yet he just responded to all of it with a simple question that had now seemed just as effective at shutting him up.

Hannock decided to figure something out, “How do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Everything you just did. Where you break all the rules of being an officer by just letting someone below your rank yell at you and then you just take it.”

“I wasn’t aware there were rules to this.”

“But why do you work that way? Does that mindset actually work for you, as a leader?”

“You tell me. You’re the one who was yelling earlier.”

He paused for a moment. X-Ray was right; it worked. He somehow made Hannock realize his own mistake and stop himself in the process. There was no way that was Hannock’s decision alone. Somehow, X-Ray had made him stop himself with just a few words.

“Alright, I get it. It did make me stop. I just want to know why you decided to do it this way. Surely, you went through cadet training and even had a leader of your own, right? So why didn’t you decided to copy the way they did it?”

“Actually, you just answered your own question. Copy. I’ve never wanted to do anything the way others do. That’s why I don’t abide by the unwritten ‘rules’. I also don’t want other teams to be able to understand my way of thinking. It would make it easier for them to beat us.

Hannock just looked at his leader. He understood everything he said, but this way of thinking was just so strange. It went against everything he knew from every officer he had seen until now. At the same time, however, he understood why people followed him into battle. He wasn’t just a leader; he was your leader. He only thought and acted for his team. He put everyone on equal terms with himself. Which explains why he listened to everything Hannock said during his vent. He wasn’t listening to him as the new recruit; he was listening to him as he would his own right-hand man. He may not treat everyone the same since they all have their own ranks, but he trusts everyone the same. Therefore, this was what kept him his soldiers. Everyone he had had probably come to realize the same thing that he had and that made them want to fight for him.

Something else seemed off to him. Everything that came out of X-Ray’s mouth was cold, and yet, he just couldn’t see him being a cold person. He kept thinking that he should just understand that he was rough, but he couldn’t. Every time he analyzed X-Ray’s words, he could feel an understanding to them. It felt like X-Ray was just trying to help them understand everything about their situation as quickly and easily as possible, no matter how harsh some of it may sound. It was just too much for him to think about. He needed some rest after the horror he had experienced that day. Plus, he would need his strength for whatever he had to go through the next day.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

            “So, how did they do?” Reaper was the first to speak as X-Ray entered the barracks.

            “Fine, most of them were on par with how our soldiers did last year. One of them held out for a quite a while, even after the gravity amplified part of the challenge.”

            “Oh yeah, that’s quite the kicker,” Reaper chuckled a little bit.

            “The one that lasted the longest came out of there screaming bloody murder. Sometimes you just gotta let ‘em vent.

            “You’ve gotta stop being so understanding. Sometimes a brat needs to be smacked instead of soothed.”

            “Well I can promise you that I certainly didn’t soothe him. The kid had to hold his head to keep it from spinning by the time I walked out of there.”

            “Aside from his issues with knowing his place, how does he perform?”

            “Well, he has good survival technique and a surprising reaction time.”

            “Really? How so?” Reaper looked curious to hear about that.

            “He was this year’s sacrifice to try to get out of Hell Week. When we started, I threw a shoulder charging attack at him and he dodged it easily. I wasn’t holding back either, the kid’s got some speed.”

            “However I’m sure you had him on the ground in under 10 seconds after that.”
            “What makes you think that?”

            “You never let information like that slip by you without learning how to completely destroy your opponent using that one technique against them.”

            “Sounds like you’ve been doing a lot of research or something.”

            “Or maybe I’ve been working at your side for the past five years.”

            “Four, I became your leader after my second year.”

            “It matters,” replied Reaper, sarcastically, cutting off the conversation, “Anyway, I’m gonna go do some blade practice. I’ll see you around.”

            With that, Reaper left the room. X-Ray decided to go look for Hannock. He wanted to explain a few things and try to learn more about this interesting new soldier of his. He walked through the corridors, searching. He eventually found him sitting by a window, staring out into the mountains. Well, I broke him, he thought. He walked over to him and began speaking.

            “You messed up, Soldier?” he asked

            “Excuse me?” Hannock replied, confused.

            “Are you messed up? It’s a simple question.”

            “I suppose not. Why do you ask?”

            “Because you look like a mental patient who can’t do anything requiring any brain coordination and has to sit at a window for entertainment.”

            “Look, I don’t know how long it’s been since you experienced something like that but that was the first time I’ve ever ‘died’ and the fact that I can remember the feeling is ruining my thought.”

            “You don’t know how long it’s been for me, huh? Well I can tell you. It’s been as long as last week. I was killed during a training battle with Red; they blitzed our defensive position and caught us while we were panicked.”

            “And you’re just ok with that?”

            “I’m not ok with the fact that I let myself be killed, but I am ok with dying. I’ve done it enough times that the memory means nothing. Have you ever watched football?”

            “I have. What does that have to do with this?”

            “There’s a saying about quarterbacks in the NFL that they need to have short memories. If they throw an interception, they can’t let that scare them into never throwing again. Same thing here, you need a short memory, don’t let a death in there effect you out here. Either accept it or learn from it, but never run from it.”

            Hannock nodded, this was working for him. Everything he said made sense.

            “Listen, you’re gonna die in there, a lot. Don’t worry about it. This system was designed to let you die. Its core purpose is to let soldiers learn from their mistakes before they make them in the field.”

            “What about the rest of the challenges you have for us, do they all kill us to make us immune to it?”

            “Some do, some don’t. You see, this challenge has three stages to it. The first is to break you. Bring out the worst horrors you can imagine so that you experience it and remember it. The second is to make you immune to the responses you’ll have to these scenarios. This makes sure you don’t freeze during battle or run off, leaving your friends behind. The last one is the most important. The last stage is turn you into a warrior against the horrors. Make you so immune that you want to defeat them rather than ignore them. This will make you a strong soldier in battle. One who will jump towards a cliff to catch his friend, or one who will take a shot even if held at gunpoint.”

            Hannock sat there thinking everything over. It was a lot to take in. X-Ray liked to unload a lot of information at once, but he got the idea. He just had to be prepared, not assume anything, especially after what he had seen that day. X-Ray really wasn’t as bad as he seemed, or maybe he was just a good counselor outside of being a leader. He was, all of a sudden, really impressed with X-Ray’s leadership and the challenge itself.

            “Wow…this challenge really is something. I’ve never heard of anything more elaborate before.”

            “This doesn’t mean I’ll make it any easier, we still haven’t finished the first stage yet.”

            “But now I’ll be ready for your worst, not arrogantly this time.”

            “Then this will be all the more interesting.”