Purgatory

Chapter 30

Purgatory felt colder than ever before.  The white hallways were lined with the glossy gleam of a modern day prison, and yet no one tried to escape.  I passed by the lift to the surface three times before heading to training, each time I placed my hand on the panel to access its doors.  The voice would deny my access after a buzzer after every attempt, and I finally tried to move the doors manually.  My fingers slipped across the silken surface with seemingly no friction.  The doors were cleverly designed to prevent unauthorized access to the lift.

Training was mostly a quiet affair after recent events.  I wasn’t afraid I’d let something slip, and I didn’t feel awkward around Cole.  I just didn’t know what to talk about because every topic that came into my mind was either depressing or wasn’t genuinely interesting to me.

Cole worked with me almost as relentlessly as Midvar did in my training.  I was constantly given slots in the dark room to go up against other observers or the occasional guardian.  Most of the time I had an opponent while in there, but every now and then I would be in that room by myself.  I had to distinguish the way things sounded and smelled when I was by myself versus when someone else was near.  Eventually I became capable of honing in my sense of smell through my facial apparatus, and while I couldn’t memorize everyone’s scent, I could tell someone else was around.

I also started paying attention more to the way the air moved around me.  In the nearly stagnant air of the dark room I could feel when someone passed by me from feet away.  Most of the time it was never a sense that helped me in gaining the upper hand, because usually they were already a step ahead of me in their strategy.  My hearing wasn’t fantastic, and it’s likely due to how often I would tune out the world in my old life.

As frustrating as my defeats would be to me, Cole never talked down to me afterwards.  After the first several times he explained to me that I needed to listen more, but after a while he gave up beating the same advice into me only to see the same results.  It wasn’t that I wasn’t trying, it was just that it wasn’t coming as quick as I would like it to, and my frustrations with it would show as I was submitting to a yield.

Curse caught on quickly as to what happened with Cole and me, but would still hang out with me when he wasn’t working.  I worried about him constantly as I wondered when he would get caught.  There was never an “if” floating around in my head with him because I felt so sure that Purgatory would find out about Curse being the mole.

“Uvine is getting everyone together from Freedom Squad,” Curse said to me as we walked through the potted woods of the recreational ward.

“Oh?  What for?” I asked, scuffing my feet across the synthetic grass lightly.

“I don’t know, honestly,” he replied.  “She wants to do it tonight, though, since she has a mission all day tomorrow.”

“Everyone can make it?”

“Yeah, amazingly enough, we all have tonight off,” he said with a nod.  “That hasn’t happened since before we got promoted.”

“Why didn’t she send out a letter or something?” I asked.

“You’re asking me questions I don’t know the answer to, Helena,” Curse said with a laugh.  “Hey, want to see if the dark room is free for a spar?”

“I’m kind of terrible at sparring in that room,” I admitted.  “I don’t know if I’m up for another defeat today.”

“Come on, I’ll go easy on you.”  Curse smiled at me, but I could sense he had something else in mind other than sparring.  Curiously, I followed him to the dark room and willingly stepped into the blackness before he did.  I nearly ran into someone in front of me, and quickly moved to the side as she gasped.