To say that my time with Captain Whorl was uncomfortable would be an understatement. Going back over everything that had happened was unpleasant, to say the least, but it did feel good to talk it out, to cry a bit, and have someone else say out loud that what I’d experienced was awful. We talked for well over an hour and when I was finally dismissed, Captain Whorl gave me a hug.

“Come again tomorrow,” she said, “after breakfast.”

“Okay,” I replied.

“You should be able to find your platoon still doing PT,” Captain Whorl added.

I saluted and left her office. I felt somewhat better, overall, considering I’d spent a fair amount of time in the last two days just crying. As I reached the training yard I saw my platoon running through an obstacle course. I reported to the drill instructor and then fell into line with the others. One by one we were sent through the course. For most of the other supers, the trick was to make their way as fast as they could through the obstacles. For me, the trick was to make it through without breaking everything. As my turn came up, I approached the first obstacle which was a vertical wall with a rope hanging from the top. I ignored the rope and jumped over the wall instead. Next was a series of ropes set up like trip lines that you had to step over. I jumped over the entire section as well. Next was a series of wires you had to crawl under. I considered jumping over this one as well but figured I was pushing my luck as it was.

Crawling was only difficult for me because the ground was so soft. My hands churned through it as though it were soft mud or sand and I made a mess of the ground. I still moved faster than anyone else, though. There was a rope swing over a pit filled with water, monkey bars, and tires that you had to step through that I accidentally wrecked. At the end, the drill instructor approached me.

“Nayak, you broke my course!”

“Sorry drill sergeant,” I replied, saluting and worrying I was still doing it wrong.

“I’d ask you to fix it but I think you’d only make it worse.”

He was right up in my face now and I struggled not to blink.

“So instead, I want you to do push ups until you break a sweat.”

I wasn’t sure if that was even possible, considering how strong I was now but I didn’t dare say that out loud. Instead I dropped down and began doing push ups.

“Don’t bother counting,” he said as he started to walk away. “I know this’ll take a while and I don’t want to get annoyed by hearing your voice for hours on end.”

Everyone else did the best they could with the broken parts of the course. Some supers were sent off for replacement ropes and tires while others tried to get the monkey bars bent back into shape. As I did my endless set of push ups, I began wondering at how many young supers there were here. It had never struck me before, but now that I had some time to look, I began to think about how we were all basically child soldiers. Wasn’t there some international law against that? Maybe it was only wrong if we were sent into combat but training us was okay? I knew a few guys who had joined ROTC before they were eighteen but that was a college program so they had a few years before they’d be doing anything official in the military.

“Nayak!” the drill instructor shouted over to me, “Are you trying to dig yourself into the ground!”

I hadn’t realized it but I’d been flexing my fingers and digging into the ground. I was already up past my wrists in dirt. I shifted my body to the side a few inches so I was back on solid ground and resumed my push ups.

There certainly seemed to be a different atmosphere here than there had been the rest of the time I’d been here. There were hardly any explosions and not once was I pelted with bullets from the firing range. Before, there was an undercurrent of fear to everything we were doing. Now it almost felt like a summer camp. A summer camp where people yelled at you a lot, but still a lot less stressful than it had been. Even still, with this more relaxed atmosphere, I didn’t want to be here. I still wasn’t a soldier and I didn’t want to be one. I should have never believed Colonel Trenton. Even with my quarterly weeks off, I wasn’t free to do what I wanted. I was a prisoner no matter how I looked at it.

That thought made me feel even worse about my situation. I was being forced to serve in the military. I had nothing against the armed forces themselves, but nobody should be forced into them like this. Perhaps I would feel differently if America required military service like some other countries did, but that wasn’t how things were done here. We were supposed to have rights and freedoms and currently mine were being denied.

As I did my endless push up, confused and conflicted by my situation, I determined that I was going to get out of this. Somehow I’d get my freedom back. I didn’t want to fight them, especially after the threats Colonel Trenton had given me, but I wouldn’t be their weapon. Just because I was strong enough to break whatever I touched didn’t mean they had a right to that strength.

“Come on Nayak, don’t tell me you’ve gotten tired already!”

I hadn’t realized I’d stopped doing push ups. I resumed, once again shifting to the side since my hands had dug up the ground again. This time I formed my hands into fists so they wouldn’t dig in so easily.

How would I get free, though? I doubted anyone in the military chain of command would support me. I was too valuable to be let go. What if I could make the public aware of my situation? I was told that memories could be modified but they couldn’t possibly modify everyone’s memories. If this became a news story and people all over the country knew there were underage supers being forced into the military like this…I couldn’t be the only one here against their will either so if I could find others and get a list released.

It was all very risky. All it would take was one person to snitch and my whole plan would come crashing down, not to mention how was I going to get any sort of list out there? It would have to be during one my weeks off, though I was certainly going to be monitored closely during that time. I had to put them at ease so they wouldn’t be so suspicious of me. I had to be the perfect little soldier for the next three months and convince everyone that I was okay with it all now, and at the same time find out if anyone else was here against their will. Even if I was the only one, that should be enough of a story to get on the news. I can’t imagine how much trouble that will stir up but if it means I’ll be free then it will be worth it.

Push up after push up I worked on my plan, looking around for any other young supers who looked like they didn’t want to be here, figuring out how I could approach them, get to know them, and find out whether they were here by choice or not.

I never grew physically tired doing push ups and eventually it was lunch time. The drill instructor had no choice but to let me stop and go eat with the rest of the platoon.

“No more breaking my course!” he said and I saluted.

He looked at me like he was about to shout some more and I figured that I wasn’t supposed to have saluted just then, but the moment passed and he waved me on. They were definitely taking it easy on me, which I wasn’t about to complain about, but I also determined to figure out how to do this right so they would have just that fewer reasons to be thinking or worrying about me.