Codename: Ghost

Offduty #1

0600 HOURS, JANUARY 02, 2033CE

BORDERLANDS, FANGBORN MOUNTAINS

The elevator went down, down, down. Past the barracks. Under the surface. Below the sublevels. All the way to the bottom of our elite mercenary army's fortified homebase, finally letting me out.

I was the first to enter. With my work ethic, I would also be the last to leave.

The elevator whispered closed behind me. A landing light glowed above. Beyond this soft illumination: Covert Ops "Advanced Educations Center" spread far out into the seemingly endless cavernous darkness. Distant vague shapes waited. My memory identified them all. Giant support pillars. Dark light arrays. Shadowed training areas...

The gym.

The gun range.

MTZ.

Codebreaker.

The climbing pit.

Midpoint.

The Living Maze.

More...

All was silent. Still. Buried so deeply underground that only a tactical nuclear strike could ever hope to disturb its tomblike sanctity. This was the secret heart of our army...

Begin.

I walked gracefully away from the light. My soft-soled black boots made no sound in the silence. Shadows engulfed me, and my black leotard left only my pale face visible. A wrinkle marred my forehead, however. Troubled sleep had recently plagued me. My thoughts often strayed to re-examining performance on past missions. Not terrible performance. Or even bad. All successfully completed, but... imperfect. With too much room for error.

That wouldn't do. I HAD to be better. My dream was to change the world, an impossibility without improving enough to finally pass Zero, my last remaining rival and a legend in his own right, and claim the top rank in my army's classified covert ops.

Empty space ahead. My eyes hardened.

Zero. I was bound to see him today at the mandatory group training session. But that was still hours away. Until then, all of my free time would be spent chasing perfection...

Stretching.

My lower body sequence began: I stopped amidst empty space, reaching down to press both of my palms flat against the cold stone floor. Hanging. Breathing. 

Present. 

Afterwards, I sat down. Touched my toes. Bent my legs. Contorted into various yogic shapes, and released. Child's pose. First half complete, my upper body sequence followed. I rose back up to standing. Positioned both arms straight. Bent. Twisting. Cycling through every position until final release. Second half complete. My body should be ready for action. A quick test would prove it. Warmup Action Sequence #3: I danced left, jabbing punches at an imaginary foe, then twisted into a quick right roundhouse kick. My black ponytail whipped around. Then I mirrored by dancing right, jabbing, doing a ferocious left roundhouse kick, and...

Done. Total time: about fifteen minutes.

Cardio.

I jogged slowly deeper into darkness...

Motion sensors picked me up. Floodlights activated. The MTZ (mixed traversal zone) was illuminated. It had three concentric tracks of steadily increasingly difficulty: the "easy" outer track flatly circled everything, the "medium" inner track crossed an oscillated hill of randomized natural/urban obstacles, and the "hard" innermost track looped its tangled center. All would test my physical traversal skills.