Deathwatch (The Faded Earth Book 1)(35)
Reeves hinted that today would be worse, but this concern was something Beck brushed away from her mind. The courtyard was filled with the scratching and chittering sounds of Pales recorded in the field and played back to unnerve them. The sun beat down on her face, making even her tightly-shut eyes a sea of red instead of black.
But Beck found that empty place inside her and held to it, her mind seizing on the precise state she had put it in like a child finally finding its balance.
She was so deep into the emptiness that the sensation of something touching her bare forearm didn’t intrude on her awareness. She knew it was there, probably a clump of dust or a flake of stone pulled from the edge of a building by the wind, but its significance went no further than a feather touch of acknowledgment pressing against the bubble of pure calm wrapped around her.
The electric shock that came from it a few seconds later made a much deeper impression.
“Motherfucker!” Beck shouted, eyes snapping open as she jumped in place. This was unfortunate since finding her balance from her knees when startled was virtually impossible. She was not alone in toppling over like a tower of poorly stacked bricks. A cacophony of groans and muttered curses filled the courtyard as the rest of the cohort untangled their limbs and righted themselves.
Reeves stood against one of the columns leading from the courtyard to the narrow footpath beyond, waving a small control pad in his hand. “Did you all like that? We call them zap drones. About half the size of a finger, but they’ll give you a jolt you wouldn’t—well, I suppose all of you would believe it, now.”
The buzzing of tiny metallic wings could be heard over the grumbles of the recruits. The swarm of zap drones returned to Reeves, landing in a cluster on the right shoulder of his uniform. “We use these things to herd Pales from time to time. The shock is enough to steer them away from a target. Won’t drive them off completely, but in bad visibility, a swarm of these things can send Pales just far enough off course so they miss where you’re hiding.”
He reached behind the column and produced a length of metal about four feet long and tipped with a pair of small metal prongs. “This lovely number does the same thing but on a much larger scale. Since I don’t want to leave you pissing yourselves in a puddle of your drool, I’ve dialed it down to merely painful rather than strong enough to disrupt your nervous system. Though it’s also possible I won’t shock you at all. I might just hit you with it.”
Two people away from her and slightly forward, Beck saw Caleb clench his jaw and hands at the same time, his breathing sharply ticking up. Reeves either missed it or didn’t care, continuing in his maddeningly casual tone. “I know it’s a tough lesson, but you need to learn it. From here on out, this training becomes brutal. If you think what you’ve been through already was as much as you can bear, then I have bad news. Our time together so far hasn’t been much more than priming you for what’s to come. When I’m done, you’ll be able to maintain control regardless of circumstance. No more meditating with your eyes closed. From now on, you either learn to find your center no matter what your senses throw at you, or you fail. That includes pain.”
From the back of the courtyard, a young man with a reedy voice spoke up. “What possible justification could you have for that? It’s needlessly cruel.”
His tone and diction weren’t quite alien to Beck; they were how people spoke on the few vid broadcasts that filtered down to a backwater like Brighton. It was the voice of someone from the Inners, hailing from a place with more than one class. Brighton was a working Rez, with no striation between citizens beyond the Watch and regular folk, but larger Rezzes were more metropolitan. He was surely from a family with wealth, or as close to it as anyone could come, and probably power, which would remain a constant in human society for as long as there were humans.
Reeves surprised her by not responding with derision or anger, but with a simple nod. “Cruel, yes. But not needlessly. I have seen men missing limbs stand tall and remain calm enough to give orders that saved lives while their ragged stumps were stitched closed. Do you believe it’s impossible you might be injured in the field? Or maybe you think you’re so good you’ll keep yourself together without any conditioning?”
Reeves’ face grew stony. In it, Beck saw years of fighting and loss, endless days sweating inside a suit of armor while trudging through the badlands. “The old world was softer. Its people could afford to be, right up until they couldn’t. In those days it was commonly understood that you couldn’t know the measure of how a person would react under pressure until the moment came. We don’t have the luxury of taking that risk. We have to know what you’re made of now, and if needed make you into something better. You’re all raw steel. I’m the forge.”
17
Eshton watched Parker Novak do science, and he was bored. He idly wondered if Beck would be any more interested and decided that no, she wouldn’t be. She was the type to lose herself in doing, not watching others. At least if she were here he would have someone to talk to. Novak seemed perfectly happy to work in silence, humming contentedly to himself as he buzzed about the lab performing tests.
Mostly he fiddled with his tablet. Knowing there would be no outside Mesh connection while he was here, Eshton had loaded it with a ridiculous volume of books and video. A small fraction of the total was for his entertainment, but the rest he had been asked to bring to answer the questions Stein had been ill-prepared to field during her shift guarding the man.