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Chapter 7 — Training
The next morning began before sunrise.
Not because I owned an alarm clock. Because someone apparently believed doors were meant to be opened with enough force to qualify as a structural failure.
The metal door to my cell slammed open with a deafening bang, bouncing off the wall hard enough to make the room vibrate. I jerked awake instantly. For one glorious second, my half-asleep brain wondered if I was back home.
Then reality arrived. Cold concrete. White walls. A room barely large enough for a bed, a sink, and my rapidly declining optimism.
Right. Bloom.
The guard in the doorway looked exactly as enthusiastic about life as every other guard I'd met. "Subject Inala. Follow."
Not a people person.
"I was hoping for breakfast first," I muttered as I climbed out of bed.
No response.
"I'll take that as a no."
I was beginning to suspect Bloom deliberately recruited people who considered conversation a dangerous hobby. After splashing cold water on my face, I stepped into the corridor. Two guards immediately took their positions beside me.
Apparently I'd earned the deluxe escort package. How thoughtful.
The underground corridors looked identical no matter where we went. Endless white walls, bright ceiling lights, polished floors. No windows, no clocks, no decorations. Nothing that could help someone figure out where they were. It wasn't a building — it was a maze designed by someone who believed personality was an infectious disease.
As we walked, more doors opened. Other subjects emerged under identical guard escorts. Some looked exhausted. Others stared blankly at the floor. A few glanced around nervously before quickly lowering their heads again.
Nobody spoke.
The silence felt wrong. Yesterday, after testing and calibration, people had been whispering whenever the guards weren't watching. Today it was as though the building itself had stolen their voices.
Eventually the hallway widened, then widened again. The ceiling rose. The walls pulled apart. A pair of enormous reinforced doors rumbled open.
I stopped walking.
"...That's..."
Large didn't begin to describe it. The room stretched so far that the opposite wall looked almost hazy. The ceiling towered several stories overhead, supported by massive steel columns thick enough to park vehicles behind. Training equipment filled nearly every section — obstacle courses climbing toward the ceiling, climbing walls covering one side, rows of heavy punching bags, sparring rings at the center, running tracks around the perimeter, shooting ranges, balance courses, weightlifting stations, and entire sections of equipment I couldn't even identify.
This wasn't a gym. It was a military training complex. Big enough to prepare an army.
Or brainwash one.
Fifty trainees already stood inside in neat formation — five rows, ten people each. The guards guided me into an empty space and stepped away without a word.
I looked around properly for the first time.
Everyone was roughly my age. Teenagers. Young adults. Nobody looked older than their early twenties. Bloom clearly preferred recruiting — or kidnapping — people young enough to be shaped.
I studied the faces. One boy stood ramrod straight, shoulders back, eyes fixed ahead — either military experience or a very convincing performance of someone not terrified. Several others weren't managing it. A girl near the front bit her lower lip hard enough to worry me. Another boy kept rubbing his palms against his pants. Someone farther down the line stared blankly into nothing — no fear, no anger, no hope. Just emptiness.
That expression bothered me more than the frightened ones. Fear meant you still cared. That look suggested he'd already concluded nothing he wanted mattered anymore.
I silently hoped I never started looking like that.
It didn't take me long to find Anita — three rows away, looking considerably better than yesterday. The dark circles had faded. Color had returned. Apparently those Type One Nutrients actually worked.
Seeing her standing on her own feet lifted a weight I hadn't realized I was carrying.
She noticed me almost immediately. Our eyes met briefly. No smiles, no waves — just the slightest nod. Enough to acknowledge each other without attracting attention.
Then I noticed the person beside her.
A boy. Maybe fourteen, fifteen at most. Short black hair, thin build, uniform hanging loosely from his shoulders. His hands trembled constantly. His breathing came too fast. Every few seconds he swallowed, glancing around as though expecting something terrible at any moment.
"Nervous" didn't cover it. The kid looked one unpleasant conversation away from complete emotional collapse.
Anita leaned slightly toward him. I couldn't hear the words from this distance, but her calm expression told me she was trying to reassure him. His shoulders relaxed — just slightly, but enough.
Apparently Anita had already started making friends. Or more likely, she simply couldn't ignore someone who looked that frightened. That sounded more like her.
A movement at the front of the hall drew my attention.
Someone had entered.
My brain refused to process it for a moment.
"...No."
I blinked. The figure remained exactly the same.
The man standing at the front had bright red skin. Not slightly red, not sunburned, not "spent too much time at the beach" red. Actual, vivid, unmistakable crimson. The kind normally reserved for warning signs, emergency buttons, and cartoon devils.
I stared. Surely there was a reasonable explanation. Body paint? A bizarre condition? An advanced hologram?
The closer I looked, the less likely those became.
He was enormous — nearly seven feet tall. His broad shoulders looked capable of supporting a small car without noticeable inconvenience. Muscles shifted beneath his black training uniform with every small movement. Short black horns curved backward from his temples.
I stared harder at the horns.
Those were definitely horns.
"...Well."
I silently revised several opinions I'd held about reality.
*So demons exist.*
Interesting. Concerning. Mostly interesting.
He had his massive arms folded across his chest and a smile on his face. Not a friendly smile, not an angry one. Cheerful — which somehow made him significantly more intimidating than fury would have. If he'd looked furious, that would have been predictable. Instead he smiled like someone genuinely excited to begin whatever came next.
If someone told me this man collected souls as a hobby, I probably wouldn't argue. I'd ask whether it paid well.
He scanned the rows slowly. Those golden eyes passed over each of us, and when they briefly settled on me, a strange pressure landed across my shoulders — lasting only a second before moving on.
I resisted the urge to exhale.
Without warning — *CLAP.*
The sound exploded through the hall. Not loud. Violent. Like a rifle firing inside a steel room. Several trainees flinched. One girl actually jumped. Every whisper died instantly.
The instructor smiled wider.
"Excellent." His voice rolled through the hall with effortless authority — deep, warm, powerful. "You can follow simple instructions."
A few nervous laughs escaped the crowd.
He waited. The laughter died.
"That," he said pleasantly, "is the first requirement for survival."
Nobody laughed again.
He walked slowly in front of the rows, hands clasped behind his back. Each footstep echoed. "My name is Instructor Varak." He stopped. "From this moment onward, your old lives are over."
Nobody moved.
"You are no longer students. You are no longer civilians. You are no longer children." The smile never faded. "You are Bloom's future. Whether you deserve that future depends entirely on you."
He turned toward the training grounds behind him and spread both arms wide.
"Welcome to training."
No inspirational speech. No promises. No encouragement.
Just: "Begin."
And training began.
That single word turned out to be the start of several months of carefully organized suffering. Not ordinary suffering — professional suffering. The kind designed by people who had clearly spent years studying exactly how much punishment the human body could endure before politely requesting death.
Bloom appeared determined to find the answer.
The first morning started with running. Not a jog. Not a warm-up lap. Running — the kind where instructors expected people who had barely finished yesterday's testing to sprint like Olympic athletes.
"Ten kilometers," Varak announced.
Several trainees looked relieved. That relief lasted three seconds.
"To warm up."
Silence.
"...Warm up?"
A few people laughed nervously, convinced it was a joke. Varak didn't laugh. The other instructors didn't laugh. The realization spread through the group like a contagious disease.
He was serious.
"Move."
We ran.
The training hall was enormous, but even it wasn't large enough for a ten-kilometer track. The route wound through connected underground corridors and chambers before looping back. The first kilometer wasn't terrible. The second began separating the athletic from the optimistic. By the third, breathing had grown heavier and footsteps uneven. By the fifth, sweat soaked through nearly every uniform.
The fourteen-year-old beside Anita had fallen toward the back, his face pale as he fought to keep moving.
One trainee finally collapsed to his knees. "I... can't..."
Varak appeared beside him so quickly I never saw him move. The enormous red-skinned instructor looked down with the same pleasant smile he'd worn all morning.
"Excellent. You've discovered your limit." The smile widened. "Now exceed it."
The trainee stared up at him. "I..."
Varak grabbed him by the front of his uniform. With one hand. Then casually lifted him completely off the ground.
Every runner slowed slightly.
"I said..." Varak's voice remained strangely gentle. "...move."
The trainee immediately began running again.
Fear truly was nature's greatest performance-enhancing drug. I made a mental note: never stop running.
The run was only the beginning.
Stretching came next. Ordinarily not particularly difficult — unless your instructor believed flexibility meant folding human beings into shapes that violated several laws of anatomy.
"Lower."
"I am lower."
"Lower."
"I physically can't."
"You lack imagination."
I wasn't convinced imagination affected hamstrings. Apparently Varak disagreed.
Then came strength training. Push-ups, pull-ups, squats, burpees, lunges, medicine ball exercises, weighted sandbags carried across obstacle courses and then carried back. The moment someone completed an exercise, the instructors simply increased the difficulty. The objective wasn't improvement — it was discovering new and creative ways to make us regret existing.
By lunchtime, half the trainees looked ready for medical attention. The other half probably needed it too. They just hadn't admitted it yet.
Lunch lasted exactly twenty minutes. The food wasn't terrible. It also wasn't good. It existed — that was probably the highest compliment I could honestly give it. Gray protein, vegetables, rice, something resembling soup. Everything tasted aggressively healthy.
I silently mourned pizza. And burgers. And chocolate. And every unhealthy decision I'd ever taken for granted.
The afternoon introduced a different form of torture.
Classrooms. Bloom classrooms.
Rows of desks filled a massive lecture hall, each trainee before an individual screen. The moment everyone settled, the displays activated. Varak walked slowly between the rows.
"This afternoon, we study observation."
The first image appeared — a crowded train station, dozens of people, maybe hundreds. Three seconds. Gone.
"What color was the woman's handbag?"
Silence.
"...Which woman?"
Wrong answer.
Varak pressed another button. The image returned. Three seconds. Gone.
"What color?"
"...Blue?"
"No."
"Green?"
"No."
"Red?"
"No."
The trainee swallowed. "I... don't know."
Varak nodded pleasantly. "You are dead."
"...Because I forgot a handbag?"
"Because you failed to observe your surroundings." The smile never changed. "Observe everything. Always."
Fair enough. Terrifying, but fair.
The exercises grew progressively more difficult. Faces flashed for one second, then vanished. "Name." "Occupation." "Dominant hand." "Hidden weapon." A busy shopping center appeared: "What changed?" An office building: "Identify every security camera." A family photograph: "Which person doesn't belong?"
The information never stopped. Every detail mattered. Every mistake had consequences.
Gradually I realized something. Bloom wasn't creating soldiers. They were creating operatives — people capable of entering any environment, gathering information, and disappearing without leaving evidence they'd ever been there. A person couldn't blend into a crowd if they never noticed the crowd in the first place.
Fortunately, observation happened to be something I enjoyed. Patterns have always fascinated me. By the end of the first week, I found myself cataloguing details instinctively: the guard entering the room favored his left leg; Varak always positioned himself where he could see every trainee simultaneously; one student tapped his fingers when nervous; another blinked rapidly while trying to remember things. Individually meaningless. Together, useful.
The memorization exercises eventually became absurd. Two hundred faces flashed across the screens — less than a second each — along with names, addresses, occupations, family members, schedules. By the end of the lesson we were expected to remember all of it.
Someone actually cried. I couldn't entirely blame them.
Failure had consequences. First mistake: extra assignments. Second: additional physical training. Third: nobody wanted to discover. Remarkably, fear proved educational enough that most people improved before reaching that point.
By the end of the first month, something strange happened. Varak displayed a photograph for half a second. It vanished.
"Name."
My hand rose almost automatically. "Daniel Mercer."
"Occupation."
"Corporate accountant."
"Marital status."
"Divorced."
"Dominant hand."
"Left."
"Scar?"
"Behind the right ear."
Varak studied me for several seconds. Then nodded once. "Correct."
A few trainees looked over. Someone whispered something under their breath.
A month ago I'd struggled to remember where I'd left my phone. Now I could identify complete strangers after seeing their faces for less than a second. Life was strange.
Stealth training began during the second month.
If observation had been mentally exhausting, stealth proved physically and emotionally abusive. The instructors led us into a sprawling underground complex built specifically for infiltration — corridors that twisted endlessly, security cameras covering nearly every angle, motion sensors beneath the floors, pressure plates, infrared scanners, laser grids, and automated turrets loaded with rubber projectiles that were technically harmless and apparently extremely painful.
Bloom believed learning through suffering built character. Personally, I thought it mostly built resentment.
Our first objective sounded simple: reach the exit without triggering an alarm.
Nobody succeeded.
The first trainee walked directly into a motion sensor. *BEEP.* Red warning lights flooded the corridor. Game over. The second forgot to check above the doorway — pressure sensor, alarm. The third brushed a laser beam. The fourth made it halfway before an automated turret detected movement and put three rubber rounds squarely in his back. His scream echoed through the entire facility.
I winced sympathetically. Those looked painful.
When my turn came, I crouched near the entrance and didn't move.
There was always a pattern. Security systems relied on predictable behavior — rotating cameras, timed patrols, repeating sensor sweeps. People rushed because they were nervous. I waited. Counted. Observed.
Camera: left, pause, right, pause. Four seconds between rotations. The infrared sensor pulsed every three seconds. The laser grid flickered for a fraction of a second before resetting its cycle.
Nothing here was random. Everything followed a pattern. Patterns could be understood, and anything that could be understood could be exploited.
I took a slow breath. Then I moved.
One step — camera turned away. Two more — infrared pulses passed harmlessly behind me. I slipped through the doorway as the laser grid reset. No alarm.
The next corridor was narrower, pressure plates everywhere. Tiny seams between the metal panels gave them away. I crossed one careful step at a time. A camera rotated toward me — I froze, let it pass, moved again. Every obstacle demanded complete concentration. One careless movement, one lapse in judgment, one moment of panic — that was all it took.
By the time I reached the exit, my uniform was soaked through.
The final door slid open. No alarm. No lights. No rubber bullets.
From the observation platform, Varak looked at me for several long seconds.
"Acceptable."
That was apparently the Bloom equivalent of enthusiastic praise.
The other trainees did not appreciate this nearly as much.
Several glared openly as they restarted the course for the fifth, sixth, tenth time. One boy stumbled out of the entrance after another failed attempt.
"I hate this place."
"So do I," someone answered immediately.
A girl collapsed against the wall. "My legs have officially resigned."
"They're not allowed."
"Can I resign instead?"
"No."
"Thought so."
Even exhaustion couldn't kill sarcasm. That was oddly comforting.
The courses became harder every week. Hidden microphones, heat sensors, moving patrols, multiple systems operating simultaneously. Some exercises required pairs, which usually ended badly.
"You moved too early!"
"You told me to move!"
"I said wait!"
"I thought you meant emotionally!"
"...How do you wait emotionally?"
"I don't know!"
*Alarm. Restart.*
By the end of the second month, nobody celebrated completing a course anymore. People sighed in relief and tried not to think about the next one.
Combat training started shortly afterward.
If stealth was frustrating, combat was educational in the most painful way possible.
Varak stood at the center of the sparring hall — a room whose reinforced walls were covered in dents I chose not to think about too carefully.
"The objective of combat is survival," he said, folding his massive arms. "Victory is optional. If you survive, you may improve. If you die, you learn nothing."
Hard to argue with.
The demonstrations were brief. One instructor stepped forward, another attacked. Three seconds later the attacker lay flat on the mat staring at the ceiling. No flashy techniques, no dramatic poses — just efficiency. Every strike targeting a vulnerable point, every movement eliminating wasted motion. No spinning kicks. No flourishes. No shouting the names of attacks.
Reality, unfortunately, wasn't an action movie.
Then the instructors divided us into pairs. That was where my problems began.
My first opponent outweighed me by at least twenty kilograms. He smiled apologetically. "I don't want to hurt you."
"That's considerate."
The instructor blew a whistle. My opponent moved — much faster than I'd expected. I barely raised my arms before his shoulder slammed into my chest and the impact launched me backward. I hit the mat hard. Air exploded from my lungs.
"...Ow."
"Dead," the instructor said.
"Feels accurate."
"Again."
Round two lasted approximately four seconds.
Slight improvement.
The following weeks weren't much kinder. I got punched, kicked, thrown, pinned, swept off my feet. One particularly enthusiastic trainee somehow launched me over his shoulder — I landed with enough force to briefly reconsider every decision that had led me here. Bruises became normal. Sore muscles became permanent. Waking up without something hurting started feeling suspicious.
I hadn't even known my elbow could ache. Apparently it could.
Fortunately, I had one advantage nobody could see.
Transfiguration.
I couldn't use anything obvious — Bloom monitored us constantly, and suddenly becoming superhuman would invite uncomfortable questions. So I made tiny changes. Microscopic ones. The kind nobody could notice.
I started with my eyes. Not their appearance — their structure. The retina, the optic nerves, the tiny muscles controlling focus. Nothing dramatic, just optimization. The first few attempts were nerve-racking; modifying your own eyes was exactly the sort of experiment that could end in permanent blindness. But Transfiguration proved astonishingly precise.
Once the changes settled, the difference became immediately obvious.
Everything looked sharper — not visually, but temporally. Movements that previously seemed instantaneous now unfolded just slightly slower. Not because time had changed. Because my brain was processing visual information more efficiently. Tiny details became impossible to ignore: a shoulder rotating before a punch, weight shifting onto one foot, fingers tightening, eyes focusing on a target. Every movement announced the next one. The body always revealed its intentions. Most people simply couldn't read the language.
I could.
The next sparring session went differently. My opponent threw a straight punch — and a fraction of a second before he moved, I already knew where it was going. I stepped aside. He blinked. He kicked. I shifted backward. Missed again.
I still wasn't stronger or faster. But I was reacting earlier. Because I recognized the attack before it happened.
Varak tilted his head slightly. "Hm." That single sound somehow carried both curiosity and approval.
The improvements didn't stop there.
Every night, after everyone else fell asleep, I meditated. Universal Energy flowed through my body, and Transfiguration began — this time targeting muscles. Nothing dramatic. A slight increase in fiber density, a small improvement in elasticity, better energy efficiency, less fatigue. Each modification consumed surprisingly little energy. Individually the improvements were almost impossible to measure. Collectively they accumulated, week after week. I became slightly stronger, then slightly faster, then slightly tougher. No sudden transformation. Just steady progress — exactly the kind nobody questioned.
Bones came next. Density increases required careful calibration; too quickly and they became brittle, too slowly and there was no benefit. Finding the balance required constant experimentation.
Fortunately, experimentation was one of my favorite hobbies. Even when the subject was occasionally my own skeleton.
The instructors gradually began pairing me against stronger opponents. I still lost — just not as badly. Instead of lasting four seconds I survived ten, then twenty. Eventually I started winning occasionally. Not by overwhelming people. By making fewer mistakes and exploiting more openings.
After one session, an instructor stopped me before I left the mat.
"You've improved quickly."
I shrugged. "I learn fast."
He studied me. "Natural talent?"
"Mostly repeated failure."
He nodded. "Correct answer." Then he walked away.
Apparently Bloom considered getting beaten repeatedly a valid educational strategy. Hard to argue. It had worked.
As my confidence grew, so did my curiosity.
Eyes and muscles had responded well. What about the brain?
The idea sat with me for several days before I acted on it — and when I did, I moved with extreme care. Unlike muscles, the brain wasn't something you experimented on casually. One mistake could destroy memories, personality, consciousness. Everything that made me *me*.
Rather than changing anything major, I focused on improving existing neural pathways. Better signal transmission. Slightly increased processing efficiency. Nothing revolutionary, nothing irreversible.
The results surprised me. Information became easier to organize. Patterns emerged more quickly. My thoughts flowed with less friction. Names that once required repetition stuck after hearing them once. Faces became almost impossible to forget. Complex problems untangled themselves faster.
I wasn't becoming a genius. Just a better version of myself.
The realization filled me with equal parts excitement and unease. How far could Transfiguration actually go? Every week I became a little stronger, a little faster, a little sharper. It was exhilarating. It was fascinating.
And somewhere in the back of my mind, it was also slightly terrifying.
Not everyone improved.
No matter how relentless the instructors were, no matter how many hours we trained, no matter how desperately people wanted to survive — some simply couldn't keep up.
One girl made it impossible to ignore.
She wasn't lazy. That was the cruel part. She worked harder than almost anyone. She arrived first, left last, endured every exercise and every punishment without complaint.
And still she finished near the bottom.
During physical training she struggled to keep pace — ten kilometers, and she ran them, but she crossed the finish line long after everyone else, barely standing, breathing like something was wrong, legs shaking. Sometimes she vomited from exhaustion. The instructors handed her water and ordered her to start the next exercise.
In observation classes I could actually see her lips moving as she silently repeated names to herself, trying to hold the information in place. By the time a question came, she'd lost half of them.
Stealth training was worse. Fear made people careless, and she was afraid — visibly, constantly. Every movement carried hesitation. She would stop just before stepping through a doorway, second-guess herself, wait too long. The patrol would arrive. Alarm. Restart.
Combat was painful to watch. She wasn't weak — she just hesitated. Every attack came a fraction of a second too late. Every defense a fraction too slow. Those tiny delays decided everything.
Punishments accumulated. Extra laps, extra drills, extra surveillance exercises. Then extra calibration sessions.
That last one chilled me every time I heard it. Most people dreaded physical training. I dreaded the chair — the machine, the voice, the manufactured thoughts that didn't quite belong to me. Giving someone more exposure to that thing wasn't discipline. It was something else. Bloom called it motivation. The trainees called it cruelty, quietly, when no one was listening.
For a while she kept smiling. Not often, but enough. Whenever she failed she'd pull herself back up. *I'll do better next time.* The words became almost routine.
Weeks passed. The smile disappeared. She stopped talking at meals, stopped sitting with the others, stopped making eye contact. Dark circles formed. She flinched whenever an instructor called her name — sometimes even before they spoke. Fear had become instinct.
The mistakes came more frequently. Not because she was getting worse, but because she expected to fail. Every exercise began with doubt. Every doubt became hesitation. Every hesitation became another mistake. Bloom never interrupted the cycle. They simply kept pushing.
One afternoon during combat practice, the instructor ordered her to attack.
She didn't move.
"Attack."
Nothing. She stared at the training mat with eyes that held nothing — no anger, no fear, no sadness. Just blankness. Like someone whose mind had quietly stepped away from reality.
The instructor waited. Then nodded toward two guards.
They entered immediately, took her arms, led her away. She didn't resist, didn't speak, didn't acknowledge them.
Training resumed. As though she'd never existed.
The following morning her place in formation was empty. No explanation, no announcement. Just a gap. The instructors ignored it. Eventually the trainees did too.
That frightened me more than any punishment — not that she'd disappeared, but that everyone accepted it. Like disappearing had become normal.
I caught myself staring at the empty spot several times that day. Each time, I forced myself to look away.
The weeks continued. Every seventh day: calibration.
Bloom insisted on that word. I preferred "brainwashing" — shorter, and considerably more honest.
Each session lasted longer than the previous one. An hour, then two, eventually longer. Strapped into the chair, unable to move, watching impossible patterns on the screen while speakers whispered the same suggestions over and over.
*Give your life to The Bloom.*
Every session ended the same way. Headache. Confusion. Thoughts that didn't entirely belong to me.
Fortunately, I wasn't facing it alone.
The moment calibration began, I felt Anita. The psychic connection had become routine — reliable, like someone quietly taking your hand before walking into a storm. Sometimes we talked. Sometimes we joked. Sometimes neither of us said anything. Her presence was enough to remind me which thoughts were mine and which had been placed there.
Meanwhile I experimented carefully. If Bloom wanted to reshape my mind, perhaps I could reinforce it first. Transfiguration moved through my nervous system — not touching memories or emotions, that felt far too dangerous, but strengthening existing neural connections and improving resistance to outside interference. Tiny adjustments. Whether they accomplished anything, I honestly couldn't say. But doing something felt better than waiting to be rewritten.
Opportunities to speak outside training remained rare — meals, medical examinations, the occasional walk between facilities. Guards were always nearby. Privacy didn't exist inside Bloom.
Still, we learned to communicate with surprisingly few words.
One evening while waiting outside a medical room, Anita spoke quietly.
"I found him."
I looked at her. "Found who?"
"My brother."
For the first time in weeks, a genuine smile appeared on her face. Small, but real. Relief softened the exhaustion around her eyes. "Khan."
"He's alive?"
She nodded. "And healthy."
A weight I hadn't realized I was carrying quietly disappeared. Good. Very good.
"What ability?"
"Enhancement. He strengthens different aspects of his body — strength, speed, durability."
Simple. Straightforward. Effective. Honestly, rather terrifying in the right hands.
My imagination immediately betrayed me. I pictured Khan standing dramatically on a mountaintop, wind through his hair, one fist raised toward the sky — then, in the deepest voice imaginable: *ONE HUNDRED TIMES STRENGTH.* The ground shatters. Mountains explode. A giant sea monster flies into orbit after receiving the world's most enthusiastic punch.
I might have watched too many action movies before getting kidnapped.
"What are you smiling about?" Anita asked.
"Nothing."
She looked unconvinced. "I don't believe you."
"That's probably wise."
She sighed.
For a moment, things almost felt normal.
Months passed.
The people around me changed — not physically. Mentally. The frightened teenagers who had arrived at Bloom together slowly disappeared, replaced by something quieter and harder. Laughter became rare. Conversations grew shorter. Even friendships seemed distant. Everyone had learned the same lesson: attachment hurt. The fewer people you cared about, the easier survival became.
Exactly what Bloom wanted.
One evening after combat practice I stopped beside one of the training hall windows. The glass reflected my face. I stood there for several seconds just looking.
Same black hair. Same eyes. Same features.
But something had changed. The softness I'd once had was gone. My posture stood straighter. My gaze looked calmer. Sharper. Older — not from time passing, but from experience accumulating.
The person staring back looked dangerous.
I tilted my head.
"I officially look like the discount version of the Winter Soldier."
A pause.
"...I'm not entirely sure that's a compliment."
The routine continued.
Until one morning it didn't.
Every alarm in the facility activated simultaneously — not the emergency sirens. The assembly signal. The announcement echoed through every corridor:
> *All trainees report immediately to Central Hall.*
No explanation followed. That alone was unusual. The instructors looked tense. Even Varak's permanent smile seemed slightly smaller.
The trainees whispered as we walked. "What do you think it is?" "No idea." "Maybe another test." "Please don't say that."
My personal priorities were considerably simpler. Maybe they were finally letting us go home. Maybe I'd get my phone back. Maybe I could spend an entire day lying on a couch scrolling through social media.
A truly impossible fantasy. But hope was free.
The enormous central hall filled quickly — not just trainees this time. Every instructor was present, including Varak. That had never happened before.
At the front stood someone I'd never seen. Not physically imposing — not especially tall, not especially muscular. But the moment he entered, every instructor in the room straightened instinctively. Respect, or fear, or possibly both.
He smiled pleasantly. Somehow that smile reminded me of the calibration machine: warm, comforting, and completely artificial.
The hall fell silent. He stepped forward.
"Your training has now been completed."
A murmur swept through the trainees.
He raised one hand. Silence returned instantly. "Only one final examination remains. A test that will determine whether you are worthy to serve Bloom."
Before I could even begin constructing an appropriately sarcastic response —
The trainees erupted. Cheers. Actual, enthusiastic, genuine cheers. People smiled. Some clapped. Others looked proud. Excited. As though someone had announced they'd won a lottery.
I stared.
Then understanding landed.
The weekly calibration sessions. Month after month. Suggestion after suggestion. Tiny changes, carefully planted. The seeds had finally grown.
Bloom's brainwashing had worked. Not on everyone — I stood there still calculating escape routes, and Anita's expression stayed guarded, and a handful of others looked uncertain. But most of them were already lost. Already celebrating the opportunity to serve the organization that had kidnapped and systematically reprogrammed them.
I turned my attention back to the man at the front.
His satisfied smile said everything.
This was exactly the outcome he'd expected.