Year Five

Rule #4: Do not back down from a challenge

Mister Wilson was what Dr. Schreyer called 'a mercenary'. Stormkrigeren wasn't especially good at understanding what people meant when they said things, but she understood enough to know that the way Dr. Schreyer said the word meant that it was a bad thing. Which was a little bit odd, because everyone seemed to treat the man with a lot of respect.

Stormkrigeren didn't think Mister Wilson was a bad person - if anything, she thought he was just a little mad. At what, she had no idea, but she was pretty sure he wasn't mad at her.

She liked Mister Wilson. He was very quiet and didn't talk a lot, which was okay because Stormkrigeren didn't like talking much either. It was better that way - fewer sounds meant less 'over-stim-you-lay-shun' as Dr. Schreyer called, which basically meant that Stormkrigeren's head hurt less than usual. Mister Wilson liked it for two reasons: less talking with your tongue meant that you got better at reading people's body language - which was something that Stormkrigeren still struggled with - and it also meant that your ears could focus on listening for other more important sounds.

One important sound was breathing. Everybody did it, and no one could hold their breath forever (except maybe Stormkrigeren, who had accidentally figured out that she could hold her breath longer than even Mister Wilson when she really tried). Even so, it was still one of the best ways of finding a person was to shut out all the other noise and listen for their breathing. Slow breaths probably meant that they were asleep or unconscious, and quick, deep breaths meant they were scared or angry. Mister Wilson made her practice listening for his breathing by covering her eyes with a blindfold and having her try to find him using only her ears. It was very hard - even when no one was speaking, her Rooms were always full of noise.

Dr. Schreyer would always say that the Rooms were one of the quietest places that she had ever been in, but Stormkrigeren didn't think so. There was always some machinery or light or door lock or water pipe that was tapping, buzzing, humming, clicking, gurgling, or making some small, barely audible noise that echoed in her ears incessantly. She hated all the sounds - they were always there, always being loud and drowning out the silence.

Her Rooms weren't silent at all. They were very loud.

The lights were loudest. Across the ceiling of her main Room ran five rows of fluorescent tube lamps in protective casing (installed after one training incident involving some sharp gravel and maybe an over-excited Stormkrigeren), but the casing did very little to dull the buzzing of the lights. Even when the lights were off, Stormkrigeren swore she could still hear the buzzing as loud as if it were in her head, and the darkness only made it worse. The bright overhead lights would turn off every night, leaving her blind to the world and forcing her to rely on her ears instead of her eyes. But her ears weren't much use when all they could hear was the damn buzzing, leaving her vulnerable and alone with a hundred sounds echoing all around her, so she was always deeply relieved when the lights turned back on the next morning and she could go back to using her eyes to watch for danger.

Stormkrigeren existed in a state of 'brightest silence' as Mister Wilson called it - constantly surrounding herself with light and a lack of sound would teach her to focus on the opposite. She had to always be on the alert for anything dark or loud or threatening to the carefully engineered isolation Herr Luthor had cocooned the Subject in. Her world was black and red and gray and silver and white, the colors of noise and light, or lack thereof. Her Rooms were the color of focus, because without focus there is no survival.

Mister Wilson didn't like her Rooms very much. He thought they were too blank and sterile and presented no real challenge in terrain, which was true enough considering that they were just concrete walls with a floor, a ceiling, and some mirrors and doors. So after the first weeks of combat training - which hadn't quite progressed past basic kicking and punching - he switched tactics and instead decided to focus on building up Stormkrigeren's strength and stamina.

He never told her how he intended to do that, but she knew it had something to do with the pallet boards and bags of gravel he had requested that Herr Luthor have placed in the storage Room. Her curiosity was rewarded when her teacher arrived for the next training session with a black duffel bag slung over one shoulder, from which he removed a pair of hammers and a box of nails. They spent the next few hours nailing pallet boards together into makeshift obstacles, such as walls and the occasional small climbing tower, though it went much slower than Mister Wilson would have liked as he first had to teach his student how to use a hammer.

Stormkrigeren caught on quickly, and together over Mister Wilson's next few visits, they managed to construct a decent 'arena' designed somewhat like a military training course. That's where the gravel came in - they spent a full four hours spreading it anywhere there was open floor space, piling it up in some areas and spreading it thinly in others to imitate variations in terrain. The small, sharp rocks were much harder to move quickly over compared to smooth concrete, but to Mister Wilson, that was the entire point of not only practicing, but living in such a different environment for a few days until his student was comfortable in it. Stormkrigeren needed to be able to adapt quickly to any physical obstacle she was presented with - be it climate, terrain, atmosphere, expanse, barriers, or even simply people themselves.

Dealing with social interaction was another lesson in itself, so Mister Wilson chose to focus on the more easily manipulated variables. Climate and atmosphere were both simple enough - Stormkrigeren's Rooms had climate control systems that were advanced enough to range from scorching heat from in-floor heaters to torrential rain caused by overhead sprinklers, not to mention that they had originally been designed for the sole purpose of maintaining a balanced low oxygen/nitrogen level in the space. The training course student and teacher built together counted as both terrain (gravel) and barriers (the pallet board walls and towers). The expanse of a space, or lack thereof, was more of a psychological obstacle than a physical one, but was still just as important. Stormkrigeren had spent the entirety of her short life in a Room only slightly larger than a gymnasium, but because it was so empty, it often seemed larger. Filling it with obstacles would force her to develop a stronger sense of navigation and spatial awareness, and also get rid of any claustro- or agora-phobia that could arise. If Stormkrigeren could comfortably exist in any space or situation, she could focus easier - and focus was the key.

Student and teacher began training in the 'arena' the day after it was completed. Mister Wilson would map out a route for her to take over various obstacles and terrain, creating a sort of military-style course to test her strength and speed. Once he was thoroughly satisfied with the difficulty, he had Stormkrigeren memorize it as well as she was able before she took her place at the start of the course, fists clenching and unclenching as she prepared herself for the race against the clock. A short, sharp whistle from Mister Wilson and she'd be off.

Stormkrigeren was a quick runner, and though the sharp gravel hurt her bare feet, she did not allow the pain to slow her down. Within a few moments, she had reached the first obstacle - a towering wall of pallet boards with barely any room between the planks for her to get a grip, but she was tenacious and did not halt her progress until she had clambered up.

At the top of the wall, she had to drop a few meters back onto the gravel, then get down on her stomach to crawl beneath a rope net spread barely a foot above the ground. After that came another wall, at the top of which a steel pole was positioned horizontally with its far end resting on yet another tower of pallet boards. Without missing a beat, Stormkrigeren swung herself up to hang from the beam with her legs folded over it as she shimmied her way to the other side. Her muscles were burning now and she was panting hard, though she kept pace as she quickly crossed over a balance beam and through a winding maze of high walls.

The narrow passage suddenly opened up into a small open space where her next obstacle stood waiting - Mister Wilson himself, primed for combat with a karambit in his fist.

At a signal from her teacher, Stormkrigeren stepped forward only to duck beneath the blow swung at her throat. She instantly retaliated with a sharp sweeping kick at his ankles as the blade came down once more, but she lunged out of its path just enough that the steel only left a long cut on her arm instead of a gash. The pain was barely noticeable now that her blood was up, though she was not going to allow the wound to go unavenged.

Stormkrigeren raised her arm to fend off another one of Mister Wilson's blows, and with the other aimed a solid punch at his jaw. Coming from so sharp an angle (that was the issue with being so much shorter than one's opponent), her fist merely glanced off his chin, leaving only a bruise and causing Mister Wilson to stumble back for a moment, but it was long enough that Stormkrigeren managed to scramble away from the fight and on to the next obstacle.

It only took her a few minutes to reach the end of the course after completing a series of hurdles, another climb up a slippery pole and across yet another balance beam, before she finally managed to overcome the last wall that stood between her and the end of her first lap. A ten-second rest, and she went at it again.

Stormkrigeren managed a total of twelve laps that day, all but the last completed as fast as she was able. The short combat with Mister Wilson was definitely the hardest part of the entire course, though she managed to carry on each time with nothing more than a few scratches and bruises. When her teacher finally decided that she could go no longer, he declared the training session ended and Stormkrigeren was finally allowed a rest and some water. By the end of the session, she was covered in scratches, bruises, and splinters - not to mention she was still nursing some badly skinned knuckles - but the approval in Mister Wilson's tone when he told her that they were done for the day made it all worth it.

They trained in the arena for three more days - more courses, more combat, more bruised shins, and skinned knuckles - until it was finally time to take down what they had built. Within a few hours, Stormkrigeren's Rooms were once again empty and blank of anything but herself, and she was left waiting for the next lesson.

V*V*V*V*V*V*V

The next day was a testing day.

Testing days were okay. They were the busiest day of the week because lots of people would come to Stormkrigeren's Rooms to give her the test. It wasn't actually a lot of people - just Dr. Angklow, Dr. Lee, and Dr. Schreyer - but it felt like a lot. They would make her sit down at her desk and answer all sorts of questions while Dr. Schreyer drew her blood: how was she feeling, did she feel any different from last week, could she remember anything in particular that they told her last week or a month ago or the year before, which number was Dr. Angklow pointing to on his chart, and how many times had anyone used the word 'are' or said a number in the last ten minutes (Stormkrigeren got very good at holding still while her blood was drawn during all of this).

After the blood samples were taken, Dr. Schreyer would do a few mouth swabs so that they could have some of her saliva and skin cells for testing, then there were some more measurements taken on her blood pressure, pulse and respiratory rates, skin density using a special poking-needle-thing, and the dolorimeter test. That was the worst part of testing day - the little box burned every time it touched her skin, giving her hard shocks that made her flinch if she wasn't ready for it. But Stormkrigeren got very good at not flinching, and she always did her best to sit still and not make any sound until the testing was over.

The best part of testing day was when Dr. Lee would give her a snack that he always kept in his white coat pocket. Sometimes they tasted or smelled or looked weird, and she had to eat whatever it was with a pulse oximeter on her finger and another sensor on her throat, but Stormkrigeren was a good girl and ate as she was told. One time Dr. Lee brought peanuts for her, and another time it was shrimp, and the time after that it was some gross little beans called soy. She really didn't like those, but Dr. Lee said that it was okay and gave her a glass of orange juice instead.

Sometimes there would be a long worksheet for her to do while her caretakers watched, and Stormkrigeren had to do her very best to get all the correct answers as fast as she could. The questions were sort of easy if she read through them slow enough - they were mostly based around reading comprehension and mathematics, and sometimes even a little calculus or translating passages from different languages that she knew. Dr. Angklow usually held a stopwatch while she did these tests, and he always seemed very proud when she finally put her pencil down, and all of her caretakers would say she was doing very well in her studies.

Sometimes Stormkrigeren would have to do tests even if it wasn't a testing day. Those tests were very different and usually conducted by Mister Wilson during one of her training sessions. They weren't always obvious and very often looked nothing like her other tests, but Stormkrigeren grew to recognize when someone was testing her reaction time or spatial awareness. An object flying towards her from across the Room wasn't often part of their training, but she would catch it all the same before glaring in the direction of her Teacher who had thrown it, and they would get back to training.

The tests never stopped, to be honest.

On and on, day after day. Mazes and examinations and tests and procedures, cold calculations all designed to figure out what exactly made Stormkrigeren tick. She didn't know what made her tick - she just knew that whatever it was made her different from every other person she saw. And Stormkrigeren wasn't sure if she liked that.

She was treated differently. She had to live by herself in her Rooms and she could never go outside. She always had to sit still and be quiet and keep her mouth shut until she was given permission to speak - Dr. Schreyer never had to wait for permission to speak, she was always the one telling Stormkrigeren to sit still, especially during tests.

There was a word for it, a word to describe things like her that got shut up in a room and poked. It was a bad word, and it meant a lot of things - expendable, subject, expensive, creature, different, and so many more bad things, it hurt her head just to think about them. The word was 'experiment'.

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary Dr. Schreyer kept in one of the storage cupboards, an experiment was 'an operation or procedure carried out under controlled conditions in order to discover an unknown effect or law, to test or establish a hypothesis, or to illustrate a known law'.

That made it sound like a good thing, something to help the world improve.

Maybe she was helping the world improve by staying in her Rooms and letting herself be poked.

Not that she could leave her Rooms, even if she tried. She couldn't leave until the experiment was over, and Project Stormkrigeren was far from being finished. So Stormkrigeren had to stay and sit still when they poked her - not because she liked it (she hated it), but because she was a good girl and she was going to help the world improve, even if it meant being an experiment.

Author's Note: FF net is really weird and only allows me a certain number of characters in a chapter title, so the listed title and actual title for this chapter are a bit different. The original is 'Rule #4: Do not back down from a challenge'.