The three friends had already agreed that the best strategy was to get as far from the Unitas establishment as possible. This meant making sure they qualified for the tougher, Apostle-led assignments. The ration compensation for these missions was greater, which would help Jordan’s family. The team members had less oversight since they were more specialized and autonomous, which suited Marnie’s plan to escape the fellowship entirely. And—though she still hadn’t voiced it aloud to Marnie or Jordan—going farther afield made it more likely that Gabi would come across someone who could help her challenge the council. Someone who had nothing to lose. Their secret strategy made the essay fun for Gabi. At every possible turn, she chose the most daring course of action, asking herself, What would Cleo Walker do? She barely noticed when the bell rang at the end of hour five, signaling the completion of the written portion of the test.
Chapter FIFTEEN
AS GABI’S group filed into the smaller gymnasium for the physical test, she stole a furtive look at Marnie and Jordan. Marnie’s eyes were bloodshot from staring at her test paper, but when she saw Gabi, she stuck out her tongue so far it touched the underside of her chin. Jordan was flexing fingers cramped from gripping his pencil, but he gave her a shy smile before following the girl in front of him into the gym.
Gabi estimated there was one freakishly fit test proctor for every three or four recruits, lined up along the far wall of the gym like bullets in a chamber. Among them were Luke, Ruth, Zach, and Beth, as well as a handful of other counselors from camp. Luke caught Gabi’s eye and gave her a thumbs-up. For a beat, she warmed toward him, but then she remembered the glade, the gun, and his oily adoration of Sam and she quickly regained her senses. Ruth was cool and hard as marble in her uniform, and Zach looked like he was having an allergic reaction to something, so swollen did his muscles look under the tight material. Beth’s eyes were strangely pink and puffy and she was staring holes into Marnie, who stood in the lineup a few places down from Gabi.
The gym was a balmy oasis compared to the airless testing hall, due to two large doors thrown open to the outside. Gabi was shocked at the brilliance of the afternoon light. The written exam had taken its toll, and it felt more like the middle of the night. In the center of the room stood a pile of large identical backpacks, bulging with mysterious weight. A hulk of a man, scarred and poured into a black-and-gray uniform, stood beside the mountain of packs. Fluorescent lights blared down from the iron scaffolding to bounce off his shiny, bare skull, and after a silent, steely assessment of the recruits, he spoke.
“Welcome to the fitness portion of your Witness exam,” he said in a voice that was not too loud to be dignified, but still managed to ring throughout the gym. “I am Chief Trainer and Witness veteran Quentin Foulkes. This portion of the exam is designed to test your endurance, agility, and practical knowledge of basic hand-to-hand confrontation. But more than that, it is designed to show us whether you possess the raw ingredients to be trained as a Witness.” As he spoke, the scars on his face tugged at the healthy skin around them, creating creases and wrinkles along vectors where wrinkles did not normally form. This interplay of tissue and the extreme definition of his body made him look like a cyborg, all greased gears and interlocking plates of steel. Gabi sensed no menace radiating from Foulkes, though he looked as dangerous as any of the assault weapons in the back pages of Mission Possible.
“We don’t expect anyone to walk in here ready to serve as a Witness tomorrow. Our training facility and instructors are top-notch, as is our curriculum. However, since you have all been recruited to take this exam, we assume you will be able to complete the test without risking serious harm. Anyone among you who is not 100 percent confident you can safely endure the next five hours of testing should excuse yourself from the exam now. Unless you are ready for the most physically challenging few hours of your life, please show yourself out.”
When no one headed for the door, Foulkes signaled to the training proctors, and they fell into formation behind him. “Recruits, count off to twenty. There should be four of you to a group. Wait until the counting is done, then find the proctor holding up your number. Your proctor will lead you through some basic exercises, then test you on holds, blocks, and takedowns. The only people allowed to speak for the next five hours are the proctors and myself, unless you are having a medical emergency. Any breach of this rule will result in immediate disqualification from the exam. Count off.”
The recruits had just reached their second round of twenty when the doors behind them swung open and the bespectacled lady from the testing hall entered, followed by two Minder-sized men in proctor uniforms. The lady approached Trainer Foulkes, who held up his hand to halt the count and bent his missile-shaped head toward her so she could whisper in his ear. The woman withdrew a piece of paper from her suit jacket and unfolded it for his inspection. Foulkes skimmed the document as the recruits shifted nervously, adrenaline making them antsy. He nodded, and the woman spun on her heel and walked straight up to Marnie. She pulled Marnie from the lineup and said a few words in the girl’s ear. Marnie looked at the Minder-sized men by the door, her body coiling as if in preparation for flight. With a glare in Beth’s direction, Marnie followed the older woman’s stiff back as she marched out of the gym.
The brief process was carried out with surgical precision. Marnie had been removed from their presence like a malignant growth, and no one apart from Foulkes or the stern woman had the slightest idea why. Gabi discarded the possibility that it was a ploy to psych the rest of them out before the exam. Trainer Foulkes was demonstrably unhappy with the disturbance, and he did not strike Gabi as having a flair for drama. Jordan’s head poked out from the lineup to catch her eye, and Gabi shrugged at him to demonstrate that she was as clueless as he was.
“Continue the count,” Trainer Foulkes barked, and they did. Who knew why Marnie had been removed from the exam, but no one was taking any chances that they might be next.
Gabi agonized over Marnie, but the minute she realized Zach would be the one proctoring her team, she decided to prioritize survival over torturing herself with worst-case scenarios. She would be no use to her friend in a full-body cast. Wasting no time, Zach whipped out a stopwatch and directed his group to start doing jumping jacks to warm up. Gabi was warm after the first minute and gasping for air after five, but Zach did not click his stopwatch until minute twenty-five, when even the fittest among them were struggling to raise their arms. Only one exercise down, and Gabi’s lungs already felt like they were filled with hot lead.
After stretches it was time for push-ups, which Gabi had been dreading ever since she returned from camp with her injury from the trust fall. The only way she could endure the pain in her shoulder was to go through the hatch in her mind and do the push-ups on autopilot. She didn’t know how many she was able to bang out during the ten minutes Zach gave them, but judging from the pool of sweat on the mat when he called time, she hadn’t taken many breaks. Next were sit-ups. Gabi was good at these, since they didn’t require arm strength or much lung capacity. Still, ten minutes was a very long time. Zach was in his element, shouting encouragement at them as he logged their repetitions and worked the stopwatch. Wall sits, lunges, calf raises, planks, squats, pull-ups, dips; Zach seemed to have an endless repertoire of exercises to inflict upon them. Grunts ricocheted around the gym in a bestial melody for the two hours it took to get through the first portion of the test. Then, they were given a ten-minute break to use the bathroom, drink water, and bolt down small plastic cups of trail mix.
Leverage is key, Gabi reminded herself when it was her turn to square off against Zach on the mat for hand-to-hand work. The sound of bodies hitting the floor all around her threatened her focus, but she knew her ability to sense her opponent’s intent only worked if she concentrated with all her might. Zach was shorter than Mathew, but he was stronger and faster, bouncing on his toes as he and Gabi circled each other. She found that by keeping her gaze soft and focused in the general dir
ection of Zach’s torso, she could read the lines of tension in his body. That, combined with the crackle of energy and ozone smell that built to a peak just before he made a move, helped her evade most of his assaults.
Her senses may have been quick, but her body was heavy with the buckshot of fatigue, so it didn’t always respond to her commands in time. The blocks hurt her forearms and shins, but she was careful to deflect the force away from her rather than take it dead-on. This was part of what Mathew had taught her about leverage. The other part had to do with using Zach’s own force to take him down, which she did more than once to everyone’s great surprise. She spent plenty of time getting slammed to the mat herself, but far less than the others on her team. When the bout was over, Zach slapped her on the back and called her “champ.”
After a five-minute water break, it was time for the backpacks. As the training proctors submitted their assessments for the first three hours to a runner waiting to take them to the analysts, Trainer Foulkes explained there was a cross-country course across 160 acres of terrain that began right outside the gym. While carrying the forty-pound packs, the recruits would attempt to complete the course in the shortest possible time. The record, achieved by Cleo Walker at the age of sixteen, was seventy-two minutes, thirteen seconds. The worst was four and a half hours, though some failed to finish at all.
“This isn’t just a test of endurance,” boomed Trainer Foulkes, pacing around the jumble of packs as the proctors distributed them to their teams. “It’s a test of character. Of will. You will feel pain. You will want to quit. You will be convinced to your very core that you have nothing left to give, and that is precisely when you must dig deep and give more. That is the difference between a Witness and a civilian. Many of you will not finish quickly. Some might not finish at all, but that is not the point. The point is to show us how far your will and your faith can carry you beyond your own limits. As a Witness your will and faith must carry not only you, but your teammates and the people you serve. You must be beyond failure.”
Gabi noticed that the diamonds of light patterning the gym floor were growing dim. She had never tried to carry anything nearly as heavy as a forty-pound pack at any pace and had just managed to gather her legs under its weight when Foulkes blew his whistle to signal the proctors to lead them outside at a jog. If she didn’t follow suit, she might have to find her way around the course alone and in the dark, but a jog? Gabi forced herself to plod toward the open doors despite the concrete boots that seemed to have replaced her sneakers. The straps of the pack grated against her sweaty shoulders, and the waist belt, which she’d wrenched tight so her hips could bear some of the load, made breathing even more difficult. With every step, her heart felt like a panicked animal flinging itself against the bars of a cage.
Jordan appeared beside her, his pack looking inconsequential on his frame. He didn’t speak—the prohibition against talking remained—but he matched his long stride to her shorter one, and she knew he would stay with her for as long as she needed. Gabi appreciated the gesture, but unless Jordan was planning on putting her in his backpack and carrying her, she didn’t think moral support was going to get her very far.
Jogging became a lost cause within a few minutes on the trail. She could barely pick up her feet and, despite her exertions, her fingertips were cold and blue. Her lungs felt like they were bleeding molten lava, even when she slowed to a stumble. Jordan had one of his big hands under the bottom of her pack, lifting it up to take a little of the weight off her shoulders.
As the group dispersed along the trail, the proctors scattered themselves among the recruits to assess their progress. When Ruth rounded a curve up ahead and jogged toward them, Gabi shook off Jordan’s hand and nodded for him to go ahead of her. Marnie hadn’t come back from wherever they’d taken her, and Gabi would be lucky to make it across the finish line at all, but if Jordan got caught helping her, it would be over for both of them. He hesitated for a moment, then loped off ahead, passing Ruth on the way. Ruth took no notice of him, however. Her eyes were locked on Gabi like a mongoose on a juicy snake.
“Hey, Gabi,” she chirped as she bounced up to her and began jogging alongside. “I want you to know I think it’s awesome that you’re doing this. Everybody knows about your health problems, but here you are! Your faith is so inspiring. It’s really lifting up the other recruits, I can tell!” Gabi was saved the ordeal of responding by the “no talking” rule, but Ruth was content to hold up both sides of the conversation. “You know, being a Witness is prestigious, but it’s not the only way to be of value. Your call as a Messenger was strong, and I know your dad can’t wait until you start sharing your gift. Just think how much further along you’ll be than the folks who go off on Witness teams. You’ll have all of that extra time to practice!” For Ruth, as for Mathew, Gabi’s failure to make a team was a foregone conclusion, but Gabi didn’t have to have the best time to succeed. She just had to prove she was beyond failure.
Eventually Ruth tired of her monologue and left Gabi in peace. The course straightened out over an open plain. It had once been used for agriculture but was now a fallow field of rocks, mud, and biograss, so Gabi could see exactly how far behind she was. The closest recruit was at least a quarter of a mile ahead. The sides of her neck pulsed relentlessly, and the soft places behind her ears felt as though someone was driving bolts into them. Midway through the field, Gabi’s legs went numb. She could feel nothing below the abrading clench of the waist belt, and everything north of her hips felt like it was being squeezed in one of Trainer Foulkes’s iron fists. For the first time since Jordan left her, Gabi pried her eyes from the sneaker marks on the trail in front of her and raised them to the sky. The sun was a half wedge of tangerine on the horizon, veiled in swaths of garnet and fuchsia. What color was left in nature, in Alder at least, was in these glorious, gaudy sunsets.
“Pollution,” Gram would mourn when she and Gabi stood in their backyard to watch yet another stunning lightshow. “But we have to take our beauty where we can find it, don’t we?”
The memory of Gram shot a gust of air into Gabi’s lungs. Over the course of her preparations and the day’s trials, Gabi had lost sight of her true motive for taking the exam. With every leaden footfall, it came back to her: Gram, the Care Center, Marcus and Nicolas, the sanctioned torture of Consecration Camp—these were wrongs that had to be made right. Gabi’s pace increased, and soon she heard nothing, not her breathing or the faint shouts and whistles of the proctors herding recruits along the trail. Nothing but a refrain pounded out in the blood-dark mud beneath her. Run.
Chapter SIXTEEN
“DEHYDRATION. EXHAUSTION. Cyanotic when Foulkes found her. Lucky we didn’t lose her.” The voice, arcing toward Gabi from somewhere above meant only one thing. She had failed, and opening her eyes would make it real. She would see fluorescent light tubes affixed to the ceiling of a Care Center room, the beeping—why weren’t they beeping?—machines stationed nearby, and the faces of her caregivers. She knew too well the feeling of surfacing from one of her episodes, swaddled in heavy blankets with the sound of adult voices heard as if from the end of a cardboard tube.
“The blood tests confirmed there was no trace of the medication in her system. It’s possible she cleared it with all of that activity, but if she had taken a pill anytime in the last week, it should show up regardless. Her new prescription is very potent.”
Gabi clenched her fists under the blankets and felt the pinch at the inside of both elbows that told her needles had been inserted into her veins. IV electrolytes flowed through one of them, no doubt, and through the other? The poison that had stolen so many years of her life. Who knew how long the needle had been dripping its venom into her bloodstream, but it was long enough that Gabi felt dull and heavy, though the ache in her neck was gone. It took everything she had not to thrash herself free.
“I’ll be back tomorrow morning before work to replace the bags and check her vitals,” the voice said. “I’m guess
ing she’ll sleep right through, which would be a blessing. Her doctor predicts she’s going to feel pretty awful until the medicine hits proper levels. He’s got her on a stronger dose for another few days.” Gabi recognized that voice. It was Noel’s mother, Nurse Sutton. What did she mean by “before work”?
“Thank you, Vera. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate all this,” Sam’s voice replied. “I know you’ve got your hands full with the Returned situation.”
“I’m just sorry we couldn’t get her a bed,” Nurse Sutton said as their voices retreated. “We’re at maximum capacity on all floors, and that’s after triaging the noncritical cases to the clinic in Birch. I don’t know why they won’t open D Wing. It’s so badly needed, but they just keep saying something about construction debris. Could you pull some strings, Brother Sam?”
“I wish I could, Vera, but it isn’t fit for man nor beast in there right now. They’re still ripping out the drywall and old insulation to get to some bad plumbing. Can I offer you anything before you go? I’ve got some extra tea rations these days. They haven’t been readjusted since Mom passed, and the kids won’t touch the stuff.”
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