by J B Cantwell
Designation: Green
I found my feet headed toward the door, toward the scowling man. My head swam, but I stayed upright. Suddenly I felt terrified of what might happen once I was in that room. My resolve forced my feet forward, head down, not daring to look up into the man’s accusing glare.
I stood in the middle of the room, eyes on the floor, aware only of the flickering light overhead, the sharp smell of astringent in my nostrils.
He quickly approached me as the door shut behind him. He grabbed the tag around my neck and scanned it into a device he wore around his wrist. When he was done, he turned and picked up a gown from one of two chairs.
“Change,” he said, tossing the gown to me. “Underwear only.”
He turned and walked to another door on the backside of the room and left me alone.
I kicked off my boots and looked around the room. It was perfectly clean, antiseptic, as if it had been prepared just for me and me alone. To perfection. I struggled out of my jeans and top and draped the gown around me. I felt cold and exposed even though I was covered up. Not knowing what to do next, I waited against the wall, trying not to look too terrified.
“On the table, please,” the examiner said, reentering the room.
I glanced up just for an instant. His face hadn’t changed. I moved to the table and climbed up, feeling like a young child with my feet dangling above the floor. The table was metal, cold against the bare backs of my thighs. A shiver ran through me.
The examiner ignored me, studying a tablet, presumably looking at the information he had transferred from the tag around my neck. His eyebrows rose at a detail that had caught his attention. Immediately, his demeanor changed. When he finally looked up at me, a forced smile spread across his face. I tried to smile back, but I could barely breathe. His teeth reminded me of fangs, gray and mossy.
“Your test scores are impressive,” he said quietly. “Most impressive.”
I forced myself to let out a breath.
So I had passed the first round. The answers I had given to the odd, sometimes disgusting questions I had been presented with in the locked room had been deemed satisfactory. Impressive, he’d said. But that knowledge did not make me feel better. I had answered the questions the way I imagined they wanted to be answered. I chose each time the most violent choice I could make.
And that had been impressive.
“But as you know, recruit, there are other tests you must pass,” the man continued.
I looked around the room, eager to put my eyes on anything but his face. A small table of metal instruments stood off to one side. In the corner of the room stood a treadmill, several long tubes extending from its console. On the side of the examination table, several screens waited to monitor … what? Would he be able to hear my heart racing through that machine? Would it prove that I was nothing more than a coward trying to play in a grown man’s game?
The examiner put down the tablet and moved to the table of instruments.
“I’ll need some blood first,” he said, snapping on a pair of thin, white gloves.
He retrieved a tourniquet from the tray and approached. I had only been to the doctor four times in my life. Once, when I caught pneumonia from the cold winter air mixed with the gas from the burning plants, and another time when my throat became so swollen that I could barely breathe. The time I had broken my finger in the apartment block. And then, of course, when I had broken my leg. I had fallen from the top of the jungle gym at the school, cracking the bone on the concrete below. I was just eight when the accident occurred. It was during a time when my mother still cared for me, or at least still cared enough to go through the motions to take care of my injury. It had been hard to breathe through the pain I had gone through in those first days. It seemed an endless stream of pills were slipping down my throat, numbing the pain and my mind for weeks on end. Finally, after two months at home, I was deemed fit to attend school with a huge cast and a flimsy pair of crutches. There were no more pain meds for me. Mom had taken the rest of them for herself.
Now I couldn’t breathe, either, but for an entirely different reason. The doctor grabbed my hand roughly, straightening out my arm. He smelled faintly of liquor, and I wondered how he was able to work in such an official role with the smell trailing after him. His examination would determine whether I was accepted, or if I would go back home, defeated.
I hoped his drink had left him in a good mood.
He wrapped the tourniquet around my arm, and I flinched. He flicked at the skin behind my elbow. The tourniquet was making my arm numb and was uncomfortably tight.
He turned and grabbed a syringe from the table.
I nearly gasped out loud when I saw it. I had never had blood taken before, not while I was awake at least. I hadn’t imagined a needle quite so large. As he approached me, grabbing my arm, I started to turn away, not wanting to see what was coming next. But then I realized that looking away from something as simple as a blood draw made me a coward, and I doubted cowardice was on the list of desirable traits for new recruits.
The needle punctured. I bit my lip. He didn’t find the vein at first, and instead moved the needle around beneath my skin, hunting. Finally, the syringe showed a droplet of blood, and he stopped moving the needle. I watched the blood flow into the syringe, and then another, and then another. I wondered what in the world they needed so much blood for. But then the test was over. He snapped off the tourniquet with his other hand, and unceremoniously removed the needle from my arm.
“Hold this,” he said, pressing a cotton ball to the skin.
He made some notes on each of the vials of blood, then crossed the room and opened up a small door, a tiny window to a different room. He handed someone on the other side my blood and closed the door with a snap.
I held tight to the cotton ball, scared again about what might be coming next. But what followed was harmless enough. He drew out an instrument with a light on the end. He checked my eyes. My throat. My ears. My reflexes. His hands patted my bare stomach, searching for what, I wasn’t sure. He took my weight. My height. He measured me across the shoulders. Hips. Every little test he did he notated on his tablet, instantly sending details into the military’s computer system.
When he was finished poking at me, he moved to the treadmill machine in the corner of the room, turning it on with a flick of his finger.
“Your shoes,” he said, indicating the pile I had left my boots in.
I stared.
“Put them on,” he said, irritated. “Unless you would rather run barefoot.”
“Oh,” I said, moving quickly to the chair and pulling on my knobby socks. As I grabbed for my boots, I wished I had time to change into something more suited for running. As it was, I now stood half naked in a medical gown and my army boots. These boots were the only shoes I owned, and during the days when I had trained my leg not to wobble as I ran, they were the ones I wore. I stepped up onto the machine with my backside hanging out of the flimsy robe and my boots laced to the top.
The doctor began to place small, sticky circles all over my skin. He was all business when he moved the front of my gown to one side to attach several of them to my chest and midsection. I blushed, turning away, but he didn’t linger with the robe and let it fall as soon as he was done. I wondered how many different girls he had performed this exact test on, how many bare chests he had seen. Maybe staring at the exposed bodies of the recruits had never held much interest for him. Or maybe, like a worker moving cattle through a chute, he simply no longer cared.
Once I was attached, my heart rate was visible on a monitor on the wall. With each little beep the machine made, I watched my heart push the needle up and down, each beat the same as the last, a perfect rhythm.
He watched the monitor for a few moments, checked some information on his tablet, then indicated that I should hold the handlebars on the treadmill. I held onto the spongy surface of the bars and he tapped into his tablet. The treadmill began to move, slow
ly at first; for a minute I was just walking at a comfortable pace. On the monitor above where my heart rate was displayed, a timer started. That was when the treadmill started moving faster.
I had never liked exercise, especially after the accident that had left my leg broken. But by the time I was a teenager I had to face the fact that the Service would be my easiest escape from Brooklyn. And Service meant physical ability. I began doing extra exercise early in the mornings at school, running every day, pull ups, squats, anything I could think of to strengthen my body. And eventually the muscles in my leg began to lend extra support to the break, taking some of the pain away from my walk. After a while, I was able to run for miles with little argument from my leg, but I always had trouble when it came to speed. No matter how hard I pressed myself to move faster, there was a threshold I could never seem to reach while staying steady.
Now, as the treadmill slowly increased in speed, I moved into an easy jog. My eyes glanced at the clock. 1:34
“How long does this test take?” I asked. I immediately regretted the question. It had barely begun, and already I was asking when it would be over.
The man didn’t answer. Instead he tapped again on his tablet.
The speed increased.
On the console of the treadmill there was a number. It had read 1 when I started, then 2 when the jog began. Now it had jumped to 4.
Miles?
Miles per hour.
That was ok. I could do this. I had run four miles an hour for years, just a fifteen minute mile.
My breathing increased and I let go of the handlebars to balance myself at the quicker pace. On the wall, the heart monitor beeped louder.
With another tap the console read 6.
Maybe not so easy now. I upped my pace again. A slight twinge came from my leg, almost tripping me, but I powered through it, refusing to recognize the familiar pain.
Sweat broke out across my forehead and back as I ran. The man checked the heart monitor, and then looked back to his tablet.
The timer read 5:56.
How long was he going to make me run like this?
I tried to fall into an easier breathing pattern, but with every minute that ticked by I had a harder and harder time forcing my body to keep up.
Another tap to the tablet.
I was sprinting outright now. My leg was throbbing. I clenched my teeth for a moment, resolved. My breathing was ragged. The heart monitor was going wild.
I couldn’t give up. I wouldn’t give up. Not so soon. No matter how violent the questions were on the exams. No matter how tired my body would be from this test. I imagined leaving this place and returning to our apartment, lost and defeated.
You can’t do that.
I pushed harder. The heart monitor was a ringing in my ears. The console read 10. Sweat dripped into my eyes, stinging. I could barely see now, and I knew that soon I would no longer be able to draw breath.
ALERT. ALERT. APPROACHING MAXIMUM RHYTHM CAPACITY.
The lens flashed red across my vision.
The timer read 10:48.
I had to get off this thing. My legs were weak, and I no longer noticed the pain in my thigh.
And then my knees buckled.
I hit the belt left-knee first and was thrown backward off the spinning machine, hitting the wall behind me hard. The man tapped his tablet and the treadmill slowed to a stop. I pushed myself to my hands and knees. I was breathing so hard it felt like my lungs were collapsing instead of expanding.
I had failed.
I knew that in combat we wouldn’t be running like that, not every day. But sometimes we would have to sprint. Away from what didn’t seem to matter. Not anymore.
It took many long minutes for my breathing to slow, for my heart to stop trying to blast out of my chest.
The man didn’t inquire about my state. Was I injured? Was I okay? Instead, he moved away and returned with a mercilessly small cup of water. I gulped it down, wanting more. But he didn’t look like it was a good idea to ask now, not after I had fallen.
I crawled up to my feet and put the cup on a small metal table that stood next to the door. I wiped the sweat from my eyes with the sleeve of my gown, but the salt still burned like acid.
“Remove the cardio sensors, please,” he said, his voice cool as he stared down at his tablet, making several notes with his stylus.
I unceremoniously ripped them off my skin. When I had a handful of wires, I looked toward him, wondering if I should hold them out to him. He ignored me. I draped the sensors over the arm of the treadmill.
He worked at his table for several minutes, then finally looked up. He stepped aside and spread one arm, indicating that I should enter a large cylinder tube in the corner of the room.
My breathing had almost returned to normal when I stepped up into the strange little room. As I turned around to face outward, he spoke.
“Hold your arms out,” he said, grabbing onto my hands and thrusting my arms apart. “Feet, too,” he said, kicking the inside of my left foot. He stepped back and, satisfied enough, slid the door closed around me.
The inside of the cylinder was hot, and my legs were shaking even more now. Sweat poured off my body and soaked my medical gown. I stood still, feeling as exposed as a victim being prepared for dissection.
“Stay still,” the man called from the other side of the door.
I looked up and realized there was a small opening in the top of the cylinder. A camera.
He was watching me.
I stayed as still as I could. My breath quickened again, this time with anxiety.
A loud buzzing sound came from the machine, and odd lights turned on and off at intervals. Then, as the heat was feeling heavy enough to suffocate me, it was over. The door slid open, letting in a whoosh of cool air, chilling my sweat-drenched skin, and I stepped out of the machine.
The man’s attention was no longer on me, but instead was focused on the giant viewscreen on the the wall.
I gasped at the sight of it.
Only at my head and torso now, with a wave of his hand he inspected my entire skeleton piece by piece. Slowly the image moved downward, displaying my pelvic bones. And with another wave, the femur bones in my thighs were in clear view.
I gulped as I stared at the misshapen bone. We hadn’t had the money for the surgery I needed when I’d injured the leg, and setting it was the best they were able to do. Now, watching the screen, I could see the way the bone hadn’t healed quite right, the way its jagged pieces had mended awkwardly back together.
The man paused, looking up at me with raised eyebrows. He made a tick on his tablet, then moved the image down to my shins and feet. I breathed out now that my thighs were no longer on display, but I knew he wouldn’t forget what he had seen.
And then it was over. With one flick of his stylus, the door on the opposite side of the room slid open.
I stood awkwardly in place, not sure of what to do. Then he turned off his tablet with a swipe of his hand and stared at me. I realized with a start that it was the first time he had made eye contact with me since I had entered the room.
“There comes a time,” he said, “in most people’s lives when they must make a choice. I have just made a choice about you, and it is your turn to now do the same. You have failed.” He touched the edge of the tablet with one finger, delicately tracing down one side of the screen.
My breath caught.
“Oh, don’t worry,” he went on. “I have sent along your information to the tracking station, and when they read the file, they will see that you have passed your exams. Indeed, if it were not for your exemplary scores on the digital test, I would be saying goodbye to you now for good.”
I tried to swallow as I watched him. His hand moved now to the table, and he leaned over until we were eye to eye.
“So now you must choose,” he said. His breath smelled rotten, and I felt certain that several of his teeth were in need of replacement. “Will you take the opportunity I hav
e given you, or will you decline and walk back into the world you are trying to escape?”
My blood ran cold, both from the threat in his voice and the things left unsaid. I didn’t speak. I didn’t breathe.
I could choose. I could cheat. He was opening a door for me that might otherwise have been kept closed. But what would the price be?
Time passed. Minutes maybe. Or maybe just moments. I struggled to find the right choice, like on the test. What was the answer they wanted?
Finally, he took my silence for assent.
“Good,” he said, straightening back up and picking up the tablet. “We will be friends, then. Friends who look out for one another.” His eyes were on me again from behind the tablet screen.
I felt frozen in place. My voice seemed lost a million miles from here. The unknown of his future expectations loomed over me.
“You’ll go to tracking next,” he said. He picked up another device and began entering information.
I paused for several long moments, still unsure. Then, skin crawling, I gathered up my clothes, put my head down and bolted from the room.
Chapter Nine
I was grateful that the hallway before me was long. It led away from the other examination room doors, and I could see another room at the far side of it. My heart was still trying to right itself after the stress of the treadmill and the doctor’s words combined, and it beat anew, now with an awkward rhythm.
I stood in the hallway with nowhere to go for privacy. I pulled off the medical gown and quickly covered myself with my t-shirt. When I was fully dressed, I simply left the gown behind, a rag still drenched in my sweat.
I checked over my shoulder several times as I walked down the hall to make sure I wasn’t being followed. Tracking. That was my next stop. With every footstep I took closer, the decision I would have to make once I stepped through the door loomed larger. These people, I thought, when all was said and done, would know all my secrets. Every secret that my body could hold. Flesh memory of every touch. Proof of injuries I had casually left off of my intake form. What else would they learn about me?