Alex did not go back to the dorm.
He walked straight from the hospital doors across the compound and into the gym, with a guard trailing a few steps behind him. The permit card was still in his pocket. The woman at the reception desk looked up, saw the orange jacket and the pale face, and said nothing. She waved him through. She had come to recognize him over the past few weeks.
The rubber floor felt strange under his feet. He had not stood on it in nearly a week. The machines sat in their rows, cold and quiet, and for a moment he only looked at them.
’Ok,’ he thought. ’Let’s see what’s left.’
He started on the floor with push ups. The first ten came easily. The next ten made his arms tremble. By the twenty fifth his elbows were burning, and by the thirtieth he had to stop and lay flat on the mat with his cheek against the rubber, breathing hard.
His body was rusty. That was the honest word for it. Five days in a hospital bed had eaten away at what he had built. The strength was still there, buried, but it moved slowly, like a door that had not been opened in a long time.
He pushed himself up.
’Again.’
He worked through it. He did not think about the shaking, or the ache behind his eyes, or the sharp throb that still pulsed along his spine whenever he bent forward.
He did another set. Then another. He moved from the mat to the machines and dropped the weights well below where he had left them, then built them back up rep by rep. His muscles complained. He ignored them.
Somewhere in the second hour, the door opened.
"Alex?"
He turned his head.
Jerry stood in the doorway with his hands in his pockets. He looked smaller than Alex remembered, with dark rings under his eyes and his hair sticking up on one side. For a second neither of them spoke.
"You’re out," Jerry said.
"Yeah."
"They said five days. I counted."
"I heard."
Alex explained he only got released today the sixth even though he expected it to be the day before.
Jerry stepped inside. He crossed the room slowly, looking at the machines as though they might bite. He stopped beside the bench Alex was sitting on and stared at the floor.
"I didn’t come to the gym," he said. "I know. I was being stupid."
"It’s fine."
"It’s not." Jerry took a breath. "I’ll spot you. If you want."
Alex looked up at him. Then he shifted on the bench and nodded at the bar.
"Sure."
They did not talk much after that. Jerry stood behind the bench with his hands hovering under the bar, and Alex pushed. When his arms shook, Jerry counted him through the last reps in a low, steady voice. When he needed a break, Jerry handed him water. They moved from machine to machine, and by the fourth hour Jerry had picked up a set of light weights and was working through them beside him, awkward but determined.
’He came back,’ Alex thought. ’On the last day.’
He did not say it out loud.
They trained until the light outside began to fade, then ate a quick dinner in the cafeteria and climbed the stairs to the dorm. Jerry slumped onto the top bunk and pulled the blanket up to his chin.
"Aren’t you going to sleep?" he asked.
"In a bit."
"You should. Tomorrow’s the big day."
"I know."
Jerry yawned. A minute later his breathing slowed, and by the time Alex had washed his face and sat down on the lower bunk, the boy was out cold. He slept the way only someone with nothing left to fear could sleep, with his mouth open and one arm hanging over the edge.
Alex did not sleep.
He tried. He lay back and closed his eyes and counted his breaths, and nothing happened. His mind would not settle. It kept circling the same few words. Tomorrow. The suit. The number.
Call it anxiety, or nerves, or something else. He did not have a name for it. He only knew that lying still felt like waiting to be executed, and he could not do it.
So he got up.
He moved quietly around the small room, careful not to wake Jerry. He did push ups on the floor, slow and controlled, letting his arms warm up. He did sit ups until his stomach burned. He did squats and lunges and wall sits, counting under his breath. When his legs shook too badly to continue, he switched to stretches. When the stretches were done, he picked up books he’s read I and read Chapter he had already read over again.
The hours passed. The clock on the desk ticked on toward morning. Outside the window, the sky went from black to deep blue to gray.
He worked through all of it. He worked until his muscles were empty, and then he worked a little more. There was nothing else to do with the night, and he refused to waste it.
Jerry snored softly above him.
At six, a distant horn sounded.
Alex stopped mid squat and straightened.
’This is it,’ he thought.
The word landed differently than it had all month. It was not a dread. It was not quite excitement either. It was a heavy, quiet certainty, the kind that came right before a door opened.
It was the morning of the ceremony.
Today he would stand in front of a suit. Today it would read him, and give a number, and say whether he was a pilot or a corpse. If he awakened, his talent would be assigned to him. A color, a power, a name in the register. If he did not, the story ended.
Everything was riding on this.
’And I’m not scared,’ he realized.
It surprised him. He listened for the fear inside his chest, the sick clench of it, and found only a strange, steady calm. He had already made it, some part of him insisted. He had already won. It did not make sense, and he knew it did not, but the feeling was there all the same.
He crossed to the window and looked out at the gray light.
’If there is a system out there somewhere,’ he thought, ’and I’m supposed to awaken one, then it might as well be today.’
It was a small hope, and a private one. He had told himself a hundred times to stop expecting it. But the hope did not listen.
Behind him, the bunk creaked.
"Morning," Jerry mumbled, rubbing his eyes. He blinked at Alex, then at the window. "What time is it?"
"Six."
"Did you sleep?"
"No."
Jerry looked at him for a moment. Then he swung his legs off the bunk and stood.
"Let’s go," he said.
They dressed in silence. The orange jackets felt heavier than usual. Alex pulled his straight and fastened the last button, and touched the collar at his neck. The light was green.
They walked down the corridor together, past the closed doors. Other inmates were emerging into the hall, pale and quiet, dressed in the same orange. Nobody spoke. Their footsteps echoed on the polished floor.
At the bottom of the stairs, a guard directed them toward a set of wide double doors at the end of the ground floor corridor. Alex had never seen them open.
They stepped through.
It was a hall, a vast one, with a high ceiling and rows of metal seats arranged in a wide semicircle.
At the front, a platform stretched across the whole width of the room. Above it hung a screen the size of a wall. Sixty four inmates already sat in the seats, in scattered rows, silent as stones.
Alex and Jerry found two empty seats near the middle and sat down.
Nobody spoke. Somewhere behind them, a guard closed the doors, and the sound of the latch echoed through the room like a gunshot. The hall was sealed.
On the platform, Dr Hela stepped forward. She wore the same white coat, and her tablet was in her hand. Her eyes swept the rows once, and something in her face was different. It was not cold. It was tired, and it was steady.
"Good morning," she said. "You know why you are here."
Nobody answered.