Burning Grace

The Perfect Soldier

Bishop

The Next Day

      "I.... am..... not... weak!" I grunt, pressing the bar up with each word. It's about four in the morning and the medical building's weight training room is empty except for me. The room is cold and mostly unlit except for the single fluorescent light I turned on above my weight rack. Pausing before the next set, I take in a few deep breaths. After Aaron and the others fell asleep, I cleaned up the area we'd been using for the fights and came here, using the free time to get some work in and just enjoy the physical enhancements the academy has given me.

     When we first got here I was pathetic, I was bullied at the orphanage and here. I had to depend on Aaron to look after me. Not anymore, I can handle myself now and if anyone tries something like that first night, they'll be lucky if I just send them to the infirmary like Aaron did to Butch and the others.

     Before I can stop myself, the memories come rushing back and I'm a kid again, sitting in the infirmary as one of the doctors presses a bandage to my swollen eye. It's my third visit that week due to me being beaten on a nearly daily basis by Onyx and the others whenever Aaron and the administrators aren't around. I'm whimpering as the liquid the doctor soaked the bandage in causes my cuts to burn and bubble up but manage not to say anything. Out of my good eye, I see a man in a crisp uniform, one of the administrators, standing in a nearby corner and staring at me with a look of aggressive disappointment. He meets my gaze and it's clear he knows exactly what had happened to me, rather than the story I had given the doctor about me falling off one of the elevated courses in the forest. The administrator won't do anything though, and I know why. This academy is supposed to be training the most effective soldiers that the planet has ever seen, and someone who cannot even defend himself from his peers has no place among those soldiers.

     I pull myself back to the present but the fear is still coursing through me and my arms go weak, causing me to drop the bar I was benchpressing, along with the seven hundred pounds on it, directly onto my chest, which forces the breath from my lungs. Realizing my moment of weakness could have just cost me my life, rage pours strength back into my limbs and I roll the bar down to my thighs. This allows me to stand up, hang clean the bar so that it is now level with my shoulders, and place it back on the rack.

     Sitting back down on the bench, I place my hand on my chest, which is now a deep shade of purple, and gingerly probe for any more serious injuries. Unable to locate anything particularly concerning, I focus on steadying my breathing, which is coming out in staggered bursts. After a few minutes of this, my breaths are fluid and rhythmic, and the bruising on my chest has already deteriorated to a small red mark. I'm still furious with myself for allowing this to happen, but I appreciate the opportunity to fully appreciate the capabilities of my enhancements.

     Years ago, when we started to hit puberty, they had decided that heavy conditioning wasn't enough and used some experimental treatments on us. As soon as a trainee began going through puberty, they were taken from their normal schedules and moved to the medical building, where over the course of a year, they had been given chemical cocktails meant to hasten and enhance the changes puberty already brings about. If the doctors thought a trainee could handle it, or wasn't going to meet administration's performance expectations, the trainee was subjected to more dangerous treatments that would hopefully bring about equally more impressive results and reconstructive surgery that corrected any imperfections they had. A couple kids had issues with the treatments but the vast majority, myself included, adapted seamlessly to the changes they had made to our bodies.

     Although I'm only about one-hundred-seventy pounds, I can bench over five times my weight, making me one of the strongest students here. The goal was to make us stronger than anyone we might go up against during a mission, but to also make our bodies inconspicuous enough so that we could blend in with a crowd. For all intents and purposes, I have the body of an average seventeen year old boy, an exceptionally athletic one at least.