More Than Human

Chapter 8

June 9th

"How many times do I have to tell you?! Short strides! When you reach full speed, then you can take long strides!" shouted Daryl.

He was making us run laps until we dropped. And he expects us to go full speed?! We can hardly stand! I don't know long we were running for, but it seemed like forever.

I sat down with my back against the gym wall. Fay dropped to her knees and lied down.

"You two! Get up, now! You have five extra laps before we get to the next activity, but because you're such wimps, you now have ten."

We groaned as we picked ourselves up. A tear leaked out of my eye. I missed home. The school gym classes where we do nothing but play dodgeball.

Gloria gave an 'I told you so' look, which ticked me off. Well sorry for not being Supergirl!

He blew the whistle and I ran as fast as I could, which wasn't that fast anymore. My legs felt like they filled with lead and I could barely breathe, I was running out of breath so fast.

Ten laps of torture and yelling later, he took us into the weight room.

"Well. That was worse than ringette," I muttered to Gloria. I also missed ringette, even though the coach pushed us until we almost broke with skating drills. I'm just in a really sad and homesick mood right now. Wonder why.

"That was worse than getting chased by zombies," replied Gloria, trying to cheer me up. "Oh wait, I was getting chased by zombies. You guys."

"Heeeeey!"

"Okay, now I want you to do bench presses." Daryl cut into our conversation. "Lift as much weight as you can. If I think you're wimping out, I'll add more."

We exchanged glances. That sounded bad. Very bad.

Daryl blew the whistle, and I went over to a bench with an empty rod.

"Hey Maddie?" asked Gloria as I added a five pounds to the empty rod.

"Yeah?"

"What's a bench press?"

"Yeah, what is that?" chimed in Fay.

I was used to it. They were some pretty weird girls, after all. I added five pounds to the other side, lied down on the bench, and demonstrated.

"Okay, got it!"

Gloria and Fay each went to their own bench and I quickly added more weights before Daryl decided I was 'wimping out' and made me lift 150 pounds, which, by the way, I can't do.

After the bench presses, we did other sorts of weightlifting and strength training, all under Daryl's instruction.

By the time we were done, we couldn't even walk.

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"Well. Now I'm convinced," said Gloria. We were laying on our beds in the dorms after training, too tired to do anything else.

"Convinced about what?" asked Fay wearily.

"Escaping this place. They're holding us here against our will and most likely training us for something. So I'm getting out. Who's with me?"

"I don't know," I replied. "I don't want to be here either, but how would we escape? There must be guards or something. And they'd probably- no, definitely come after us."

"And we can't leave without Lea," added Fay.

Right. Lea. Something I tried not to think about. It caused too much pain.

The door opened. I filled with excitement, hoping it was Lea. But it was just the woman from this morning, Amanda.

"Time for supper."