The other eight, p.13
The Other Eight, page 13
“We are looking for soldiers. From time to time they are expected to kill the enemy.”
“We aren’t talking about a man who is simply capable of taking a life. Hocker has been taken into temporary custody four times for assault accusations, and I’m fairly certain that if the police had been aware of how potent his powers really are, they would have upgraded the charges to attempted murder.”
“Can you prove that?”
“Well, no, but…”
“Good. Then keep his name near the top of the list.”
“Sir, in my experience, individuals with his personality markers aren’t likely to discriminate very well between friend and foe once the bullets start flying.”
General Siegel considered the words. “Some of my best soldiers have been a little trigger happy. I’m confident we can teach him some discipline. There aren’t a whole hell of a lot of recruits in this batch who have powers so directly applicable to field deployment. Hocker stays. Move on to the next concern.”
Aiken shot a quick glance to Summers, who shrugged imperceptibly and took a sip of her coffee. “Well, I think it is clear that Chloroplast has severe issues with authority.”
“His aptitude assessments aren’t impressive. Move him to the bottom.”
“I think… wait. Just like that?”
“Yes.”
“Just so that I can be clear I understand correctly, Hocker’s potentially manic bloodlust isn’t reason for concern, but Chloroplast’s middling score in basic drills and his reluctance to take orders is grounds for rejection from contention?” Aiken said.
“That is correct. Please continue,” General Siegel stated.
The doctor resisted the urge to shake his head in disbelief.
“Primadonna has something of a superiority complex, but she should still function well as part of a unit as long as she’s made to feel her role is a prestigious one. The Number’s competitive relationship with her borders on obsession. If they are both placed on the same team, we can expect some friction that will need to be worked through until the, uh, emotional tension comes to a head.”
“That won’t happen. I have my doubts that the team needs one dancer. It certainly doesn’t need two. What about the high scorers? Retcon, Undo, etcetera?”
“Well, as is the case with all of the potential recruits, they suffer from a hero complex to some degree, though none seem to be afflicted deeply enough to actually cause a calamity in order to come to the rescue.”
“And what about Non Sequitur? He’s been putting up disappointing numbers.”
“Ah, yes. That’s the last concern I had. I looked through his personal history, I spoke to him, and I’ve interviewed his mother. He has deep-seated abandonment issues stemming from the loss of his father. Are you aware of the identity and cause of death of his late father?”
Siegel grunted an affirmative. “I was given a file. Given his lineage, you’d think he’d be doing better.”
“Well, had I known prior to the interview, I might have warned you this could be the case. The loss was traumatic, and it’s been exacerbated by a recent relationship that ended on unpleasant terms. The rejection from the breakup is probably what drove him to try out in the first place.”
“Nothing wrong with that. Broken hearts have driven plenty of fine young men into the arms of the military.”
“You don’t understand. He’s at a psychologically fragile point in his life. He has two intense but conflicting emotional needs. On one hand he has the same desire to prove his worth that all meta-humans have. On the other he feels obligated to shield himself from the same fate that claimed his father. I think, with proper therapy, he could—”
“Stop, stop, stop. You lost me at the word ‘fragile.’ If the man needs to be coddled to be effective, then he isn’t effective, end of story. Thank you for your assessments, Doctor. I believe I have everything I need to make the final selections.” Siegel stood.
“But there are still a few days of training and tests.”
“I’m aware of that,” he said, pushing in his chair. “The way I see it, six of these recruits have the mind and mettle to be proper soldiers. Two of them have a couple of parlor tricks that will make the public satisfied they got their money’s worth. The other eight are an ineffective, self-delusional sideshow that I have no intention of letting anywhere near my fighting force.” He cleared his throat with finality. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go listen to a roomful of sniveling politicians explain to me why it is somehow my problem that a cluster of insane idiots went and did something insane and idiotic after we rejected them for being insane idiots. Good-bye.”
In three quick strides he was out of the room, the door slamming behind him. Dr. Aiken slumped in his chair. “Well, say what you will about that man. He may not know much about compassion, but at least he’s decisive.”
Chapter 21
“You know, if they were going to have us sit around in the mess hall all day, they could at least have put food out,” moaned Gracias.
“It is boot camp, not a cocktail party,” jabbed Chloroplast.
Ever since reveille that morning, most of the hero hopefuls had been waiting. The only information they’d received had been that the day’s activities would be focused on group drills, and that, by the nature of the drill, they were not permitted to watch others undergoing the tests until they themselves had completed them. It was now past noon, and the trainees had been peeled off two by two in cabin-based pairs until only Non Sequitur, Nonsensica, Chloroplast, and Gracias remained.
“So? Where does it say you can’t serve pizza pockets during boot camp?” Gracias continued. “I think they’d get a lot more recruits if that was a standard policy. ‘Join the Army: We have snacks.’”
“What if what we do in here is part of the test?” Nonsensica theorized. “Maybe they’re doing a psychological thing, like a double-secret observational exercise, to see how we handle the unknown.”
“Nah. They’d need cameras and microphones and stuff for that.”
Chloroplast silently pointed to the video crew. Gracias looked directly into the camera with deer-in-headlights stillness, then turned back to the others.
“What’s all this snack talk, guys?” he said in an awkwardly loud and theatrical manner. “We should be talking about… guns. And tactics. And maneuvers. Things like that. What’s your favorite maneuver? I’m a fan of the… uh…”
“Heimlich?” asked Chloroplast. “I’m only asking because it seems to me like you’re choking pretty bad right now.”
“Okay, I have to admit, that was a pretty sick burn right there,” Gracias said appreciatively.
“Nonsensica and Non Sequitur, please follow me,” came Sergeant Roberts’s voice from the doorway. As usual, none had seen his approach.
“Sweet Jesus,” Gracias yelped. He turned to Chloroplast and whispered, “We need to put a bell on that guy.”
Nonsensica jumped to her feet and snapped to attention in front of Roberts, Non Sequitur doing his best to match her behavior a moment later. The sergeant turned and marched crisply toward the training area on the far side of the base, the others a few steps behind. As they followed, Nonsensica allowed herself to fall a few more steps behind him and tugged Non Sequitur’s arm for him to do likewise.
“Listen,” she whispered low enough to avoid alerting the sergeant. “This is it. This is a big one, okay. We’ve both struggled a little so far, right? You more than me, but both of us are in the middle of the pack. There’s only room for eight when all is said and done, so we’ve got to get our butts in gear. This being a recruitment drive for a team, I gotta believe the team exercises count for more, so this one could make or break us. You ready for this?”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Not good enough. Hopefully you’ve been doing your best all along, so I’m going to need you to do better than that.”
“How can you expect me to do better than my best?”
“A hero finds a way,” she said, stopping him with a hand on his shoulder and turning him to face her. “Are you a hero?”
“Well, I’m trying to be,” he said.
“Wrong answer,” she said, shoving him. “Are you a hero?”
“Yes,” he said.
“I’m not convinced!” Now she was holding him with both hands clasped tightly on his shoulders. Thanks to the height difference, she had to reach up to do it. She shook him. “Are you a hero?”
“Yes!”
“And are we going to win this!”
“Yes!”
“That’s right!” she proclaimed, raising her fist for a bump. Once it was delivered, she gave him a sharp slap on the butt. “Let’s win it!”
She turned to find Sergeant Roberts observing with the same rigid expression that he’d likely been wearing for the last five years. Nonsensica, unfazed, jabbed a finger in his direction.
“Bring it on, Sarge!”
Their instructor turned and continued on his way, Nonsensica strutting behind him and Non Sequitur a step behind her. As invigorating as her little pep talk had been, the slap on the butt had managed to completely derail Non Sequitur’s train of thought. His brain was still in the process of rebooting when they reached their destination.
It was a rectangular pool of water that Non Sequitur had noticed a few times over the course of their training so far. The pool stretched to probably a hundred yards or so long, and maybe five yards wide. Until now, he’d thought it was a lap pool for some sort of swimming trial they would be doing, but that was clearly not the case. The fact that the water was murky and brown would have been evidence enough, but more telling was the bizarre apparatus now mounted over it. Attached to the tops of long poles that emerged from the water at regular intervals was a sort of elevated obstacle course. Planks, ropes, and assorted gadgets were assembled like scaffolding, stretching from a small padded platform on one side to a matching one on the other. Additional padding ran the length of the pool on either side, and beyond that was the sort of sand you would find in a playground to break the falls of any clumsy children. The first pad had a cargo net leading up to the more complicated elevated portion, and the final pad was at the end of a zip line. At the far side of the pool the other hero hopefuls gathered. Most of them were soaking wet or clearly had been at some point that morning.
“This test is designed to appraise your problem solving and teamwork. Above, you’ll find an obstacle course. It cannot be safely or quickly navigated alone. At four clearly marked points, you will find a numbered flag. Your task is to navigate the obstacle course, collect each flag along the way, and deliver them to the finish line at the far platform. Once you have progressed past the initial platform, if at any point a part of your body touches the water or the edge of the pool, you will both need to start over. Your progress will be timed. Currently the time to beat is four minutes, seven seconds. You may traverse the course in any way you choose. The clock starts”—he signaled a soldier standing at the far end—“now.”
“We don’t even get time to plan?” Non Sequitur objected.
“Come on!” Nonsensica urged, dashing to the net and clambering up.
Despite her heavy boots and cumbersome gloves, Nonsensica was astoundingly nimble, managing to finish her fifteen foot climb before Non Sequitur had reached the halfway point.
“Okay,” she called down to him, surveying the top of the platform. “Not much to see up here. There’s a pole here, maybe ten feet tall. There’s a flag at the top. There’s also a little rope bridge and a door. I’ll climb the pole, you see about the door.” Without waiting for a reply, she launched herself at the pole and began working toward the top.
Non Sequitur reached the platform. Sure enough, there wasn’t much to it. It was square, about ten feet on a side, made of plywood, and had a pole at its center that swayed violently with Nonsensica’s ascent. Attached to the far end was a bridge made from nylon ropes and wooden planks, and from the looks of it, it was designed to be unstable. Measuring twenty feet long, its two ropes acted as handrails, and another pair supported the planks. The problem was that the walkway ropes were only a few inches apart, meaning that a step that was even slightly off center caused the whole plank to pitch to the side. Add to this the utter lack of guy-wires, and the planks being spaced four feet apart, and you were left with a structure that was absolutely eager to dump its passengers into the water below.
He took a few shaky steps onto it, immediately flashing back to the deathtrap of a playground they’d had near his school when he was growing up. It had a bridge just like this one, and, as tends to happen when children are left to their own devices, the ‘games’ involving it all focused on trying to cause grievous bodily harm to one another. Mostly the neighborhood kids would try to run across while their friends tried to knock them off. After dislocating the same shoulder twice and spraining an ankle trying to stay on the playground bridge, he’d gotten pretty good at navigating it.
“This I remember how to do. I can’t remember half of high school, but my king-of-the-hill skills stand the test of time,” he muttered to himself.
“Got the flag!” she called out from behind him. “How’s it going down there?”
“I’ll let you know in a minute,” he replied.
When he reached the end, he found himself standing on another plywood platform, about as wide as the pool below. A tall chain-link fence stretching across its entire width blocked the path. In the middle of the fence was a gate secured with a padlock, and above the platform was a plexiglass box held shut by a tricky latching mechanism. A rope, which led to a pulley near the top of the fence, ran from either side of the latch, then off to another pulley on either end of the fence and down to a handle. Inside the box, which was high enough to be out of reach, was a flag and a key.
“What are you just standing around for?” Nonsensica called. She’d made it to the bridge, and her lighter frame made it much less troublesome to navigate for her.
“There are two switches. I’m going to try to use my powers,” he said, rushing to the first lever and pulling it. Both latches popped, and the bottom of the box dropped open, dumping the flag and the key to the platform.
Nonsensica scooped them both up and set about unlocking the door while Non Sequitur pulled the other switch.
“That’s one handy power you’ve got,” she said, stuffing the second flag into one of the pouches on her belt once she got the gate open.
“You’d be surprised how seldom it comes in handy at a desk job,” he said.
“Just one more reason not to have a desk job.”
On the other side of the gate lay a long narrow plank leading down to a platform nearly level with the surface of the water. It was reinforced with a network of struts and pivoted like a seesaw near the center. Non Sequitur tested the plank with his foot and found that it rotated freely on the pivot, dropping sharply toward the water.
“Okay, I guess we just need to be careful on this one,” Non Sequitur said.
“Look,” Nonsensica said.
Suspended above the plank, a short distance past the pivot point but well out of reach, hung the third flag.
“Simple enough. I’ll go first, then you weigh down this end, and I’ll rise up and grab it. Hold on to it so I don’t drop like a rock when I step on,” she instructed.
He nodded and dropped to the platform, hooking an arm underneath the plank and bracing it. She stepped onto the plank, and when it seemed that her partner would be able to manage her weight, she made her way toward the center. Eyeing up the location of the flag, she nodded to him.
“Okay, take it slow, I don’t want to get launched,” she said.
“You sure?” he asked, supporting himself on the platform and slowly putting weight on the plank. “It’d make for a good highlight for the cameras.”
“If there’s going to be a highlight, let it be my victory dance,” she said, eyes locked on the flag as it neared her reach. “More… more… a little more.”
“That’s it,” he said. “I’m bottomed out. Can you reach it?”
Nonsensica stretched as much as she could, but the flag was still a few inches out of her reach. “Oh, this is blatant height discrimination,” she growled. She tried to jump, but the shift in weight just pushed her side of the plank down slightly and robbed her of any reach.
“We could swap places, but I don’t know if you’re heavy enough to tip me up.”
“Nope, it looks like its going to be a launch after all.”
“That was a joke, Nonsensica.”
“Yeah, well, joke’s over. Reach up to the platform, pull yourself up a little, then push down hard when I say.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, yes! Clock’s ticking!”
He grabbed onto the platform, which was now about shoulder height, and heaved himself up.
“Ready… now!”
He pulled down again, and at the same time, she jumped. “Launch” was a charitable word for it, but the combination was just enough to get her the height she needed to snag the flag. She came down hard on the plank and stumbled forward. Slipping on a slick of water left by a prior run, she nearly went tumbling into the pool below, but she managed to string step after out-of-control step together until she collided with Non Sequitur, who steadied himself against the platform and wrapped an arm around her to keep her from going off the side.
“Oof, good catch.” She looked up at his face, pausing with his arm around her just long enough for the two of them to become self-consciously aware of it. “Come on! That’s three flags down, can’t be much more to go.”
With great care, they made their way up, then down. The next platform was only a few inches above the water. It was half as wide as the pool of water, and at either side was a wooden rail, four inches square, ten feet long, and tilted at a forty-five degree angle. This obstacle must have given the others a great deal of trouble, because each rail was slicked with the water of countless splashes. The rails were far enough apart that straddling the gap between them might be possible for him, but certainly not for her, and regardless, taking a step would be awkward if not impossible. Worse, dangling in the air over the center of the run was the fourth flag.
