Recovery

Ren awoke and sat up. He looked down at his body. He was absolutely covered in bandages. He began to pull them off, expecting to see mangled flesh, but to his surprise, there was nothing of the sort. In fact, his body was absolutely fine.

He finished taking off all the bandages and began to realized he was extremely hungry. He then noticed food waiting on the floor for him by the door. He sprangout of the bed to retrieve the food and began to stuff his face frantically.

As he finished up chewing his last bits of food, his door opened to reveal Sergeant Adams accompanied by Dr. Donovan.

"You're finally awake," commented Dr. Donovan. "I'm just here to retrieve a blood sample and verify that your recovering proper..." The Doctor stopped short, his mouth open in awe as he realized that Ren didn't have a scratch on him. "Amazing..."

As the Doctor finally pulled himself back together, he pulled out a syringe and proceeded to collect the blood sample. As the Doctor was doing this, Ren asked what day it was.

"It is Wednesday afternoon, which means you have been asleep for two whole days." replied Sergeant Adams. "You should count yourself lucky, Alex woke up a short while ago, but he still has some deep wounds that need to heal as well as some broken bones."

"How is it that I am still alive, after losing so much blood?" asked Ren.

This time the doctor replied, "This is all the Core's doing. As soon as it senses you have sustained an injury, it determines what caused it, and immediately begins to repair what was damaged, making it more resilient to whatever caused the damage in the first place. You will also find that you can run faster and for a longer period of time because of all the running you did."

"Since it is all ready the afternoon, you have the rest of the day off to recover. Hopefully by then, Alex will be recovered enough to continue," stated Adams.

"If I may ask, sir, what are we doing tomorrow?" asked Ren.

"The same thing as Monday. Endurance and speed is a base that you absolutely need to master to a certain degree first before anything else," replied Adams.

"Are you emplanted with a core as well, Sir."

"Yes, you will find that most here are implanted with them. We have few ability users."

"Do you still train as well?"

"Only every now and then. I have pretty much gone as far as I can go with the Core. You see, I am only 54% compatible, the lower end of the compadibilty range. The higher the compatibilty, they more one can utilize the core. The Core won't even be able to be utilized if you are any lower than 50% compatibility." Adams looked fairly disappointed when explaining this. "Those with anything above 70% compatibility are absolute monsters. For example, the Commander is one of the strongest people in this whole facility. He has a core as well. He was one of the first to recieve the surgery and was... I want to say around... 73% compatible."

"That's the reason we are so interested in you. You are going to be able to push far past anyone else with the core," interrupted Dr. Donovan.

Ren felt a bit downcast after hearing this. All he wanted was to be able to join the military officially, serve some time, and spend his life with his friends after serving his country and reaping the lifetime benefits that were shared by the government. The government did this in order to lure more people into its ranks.

He didn't ask for this core, if he could give this core to get his friends back he would "...but my friends were killed, by the very people who gave me this power!" thought Ren. " Not only that, but.... that's right, my parents."

Ren almost forgot that his parents lives were dependent upon his actions because of all the pain and confusion that was thrown his way recently.

"Sir, since I have the day off, would it be possible for me to see my parents?" requested Ren.

"I'm sorry, but that's not possible, they're..." Adams stopped when the Doctor shot him a look. "That is part of the deal. You can't see them. This ensures that you will do everything you can and cooperate with us in order to turn the tide of the war."

Ren caught the look that Dr. Donovan shot Sergeant Adams. This made Ren very suspicious. "I have to seem them. I have to confirm that they're alright," thought Ren.

'Would it be ok if I take a walk around the facility then?" asked Ren.

"I guess that's alright. I'll have to escort you of course," answered Adams.

The Sergeant guided Ren and gave him a tour of the three buildings, all the parts that Ren was given access to see anyway. The three buildings were in a triangle formation, a north, east, and west building. The names of the buildings were simply the direction it laid on the compass.

The North building housed all the men including the trainees and the security officers. The trainees are all first kept in the cell rooms until they gain more trustworthyness, then they can move into different rooms more comfortable for living that have showers included. They can also begin to move without escorts after a certain length of time.

The West building held all the women trainees and security officers. The men and women were seperated for obvious reasons, but they were allowed to intervene in the East building. This building houses a variety of rooms built for specific training senerios. It also holds the main food court. They were smaller ones with lesser quality food in the North and West buildings, according to Sergeant Adams.

There were security checks into every different section of the East Building. You had to check in with a badge that has all your information on it, complete with a picture of the badge holder. This badge was obtained at the entrance of the East building. This was probably, Ren thought, because this is the building that also holds all the files and research of this facility on the upper floors, which were of course off limits to any one without the all access stamp on their badge. A basic trainee such as Ren only had access to the food court and to most of the training rooms.

Ren didn't get any clear indication of where they might be holding his parents.

"Where would they hold the other hostages of others who aren't willing to cooperate unless done so," questioned Ren. " Unless they have some other means of convincing them? That can't be it. They kill all the witnesses and they take the handicaps from where they are most likely to be... their home. This means they kill or capture their friends and family. If they couldn't do that, they could threaten to kill the handicapped person, but that would seem unlikely because they need as many handicaps that they can get their hands on."

The more Ren thought about it, the more he realized that Adams and Donovan were keeping something from him.