Training Days

It had been a good two years since I accepted Tamara's offer. It was coming up on Christmas 2006 when I survived and graduated with the Legion's idea of basic training designed to be as close as possible to hell on Earth. I still remember the first words our instructor spoke on our first day in that training camp in the Swiss Alps, "You, pitiful bunch, are the worst overweight, drooling, brain-damaged monkeys, no doubt all spoiled and still searching for mama's apron strings…."

I never learned his name, but I will always remember his tirade of profanity-free insults and remarks that covered my physical, mental, moral and genetic shortcomings in detail. That was just the first half hour of the morning on the first day.

After six weeks of twelve-hour days in physical hell and almost nightly middle-of-the-night training, we folded up our cheap cots, carried them ten kilometres with fifty kilograms of extra weight on our backs, and put them in a storage shed. Things only got worse from that point onward.

Everything was the invention of incredibly calculatingly evil and sadistic surgeons to carve away those that would not survive the final field test. Those that dropped and were still breathing were transferred to other things, from intelligence to logistics and supply, even research and development. We started with two hundred; after six months, about 135 had rotated out. Then the field test.

They threw us out of helicopters in the Swiss mountains with nothing but basic clothing and scattered us over fifty square kilometres of territory in the middle of winter. We had to make it through forty kilometres of mountains towards a pick-up point.

I found it relatively easy because I could shift forms, cover ground quicker than most, had fur for warmth and was able to eat what I hunted without cooking it. I completed the test in good time, and then we spent a further three weeks in the mountains to locate the remains of those that didn't make it.

Those that failed? They died. They were cremated, their ashes scattered to the winds and remembered in the Halls. They were not the first to die in training and would not be last.

The last eighteen months focused on combat: Drills, exercises and manoeuvres at all hours of the day and night. Everything was as close to live fire as possible. One in ten was a live round. That provided a real incentive to take cover when you heard a bullet hiss and snap past your ear before the audible crack of the rifle.

Our training involved hand-to-hand combat, blades, knives, and all kinds of guns. We learned about explosives and demolitions and how to improvise a weapon from just about anything. Scary how many ways you can kill someone with just a length of wire. And lectures, lots of them about what we were facing and fighting.

I was separated from the rest and given private instruction, spending time with the other ten or so like me. Shapeshifters, blessed and cursed with learning to control and channel that monster in my head and many other things I cannot reveal.

Finally, 47 Initiates graduated from my batch of 200, and I was shipped back to Lausanne, where Tamara welcomed me back with a bout of sparing.

The mat was thick enough to prevent the floor from being marred, but I kept my focus on her, hands raised and poised as I spread my legs out, coiled on the balls of my feet; I slowly tightened the circle, tracing around her. She mirrored my movements and guard as I stepped in and struck with a fast left jab.

She stepped back, maddeningly putting herself just out of my reach. A quick side step, and she struck with a swift crosskick. My left hand was deflecting before I countered with a standing sidekick to the ribs.

Her backspin contained all the elegance and poise that I'd come to expect from her, and my foot shot past her as she smiled, that same equally maddening smile of a parent when your kid has comically gotten themselves in trouble. Her left arm rose and locked itself around my wayward ankle as her free hand slapped onto my shoulder and grabbed a handful of shirt, building momentum to fling me across the practice mat.

I turned her throw into a controlled landing and pushed off the wall, my claws flashing. I'd lost count of the hours spent mastering these little things until they were second nature, and I found myself grasping at empty air.

She'd spun out on the ball of one foot, and then her hands coiled around my waist. Brought down, the wind knocked from me; I rolled, breaking her hold. I flipped back to my feet as she came at me with the fury of a scorned woman, a dazzling combination of high-low punches and kicks that I deflected, even managing to counterattack on several occasions.

Then she shifted, and her fighting style, already fluid and fast, sped up even more, and it took her only seconds to overwhelm my guard, her left fist thundering home, and then claws were spearing into my flank.

I growled, grabbed her wrist and snapped it with a jerk. To her credit, she made no sound. Pulling her hand free of my ribs, I tossed her across the practice mat. The beast, the monster in my head, demanded that I finish her, but I quelled its bloodlust with a thought. I'd learned those particular lessons well. That ended another round, and I used the remains of my shirt to wipe the blood from the already healing wounds, "Didn't see that one coming," I muttered.

"Adapt and improvise," she replied through gritted teeth as her wrist snapped back into place. "Learn as many different styles of unarmed combat as you can; that way, when you fight, you'll be formless and adaptive to the situation's needs and not reliant upon rote responses that can be detected, countered and defeated."

I had temporary quarters and was happy to take a scalding hot shower. Two years of daily physical abuse at the hands of borderline psychotic instructors had taught me that aching muscles would scream in protest for a moment before everything would soothe itself and help the aches fade away.

The regenerative ability of a shifter means we can recover from almost any wound, from a scratch to a fatal injury. But the cost of healing such wounds is the body consuming thousands of calories. This means healing itself could kill you if you were not careful.

I eat at least four full meals daily because part of that regenerative ability is a hyperactive metabolism. Some days, it seems like all I do is eat.

But that night, I ate what felt like a triple helping of everything because it would be my first official hunt and prove that I could make it as a part of the Legion.

Almost everyone can survive training; what happens in the real world counts.