A little after one in the morning on Tuesday night, Alex stood in the yard behind Sam's shop with his hands on a radiator.
The scrap man had dropped it on the pallet that afternoon, cast iron, twelve sections long. It took two men and a dolly to move it, and they were red in the face and swearing.
The street was asleep, lit red from the wall.
'Just to know. Once, all the way, and then never again until I have to...'
He took his left hand away, got his right under the middle section, and stood up.
The iron was cold and rough with rust, and it was heavy, really heavy, the first thing in two weeks that had felt heavy at all. He pushed it up past his chest and his face until his elbow locked over his head, and held it there while he counted to sixty under his breath.
His arm never shook. Somewhere around forty he started grinning and couldn't stop.
'Two men and a dolly! Two men and a dolly, and I'm holding it with one hand!'
He set the radiator down so slowly that the pallet didn't make a sound, and walked home with his palm still cold from the iron.
***
The assessment was on Wednesday morning, in the old tram sheds behind the east gate.
Rails ran half buried across the concrete, and the air smelled of machine oil and cold dust. One wall was a screen with thirty-two names, each followed by a row of empty boxes. Alphabetical. Alex was twenty-ninth.
This morning, the feeding bar at the edge of his vision had moved again.
44%
He'd worn his old taped glasses to look ordinary, though the far wall was a blur through them now.
He could hear every heart in the shed, most of them going fast. Everyone kept glancing at one guy about Alex's age, lean, with nothing wasted on him. He was kneeling in front of a heavy kid whose wrist strap was on backward, doing it up for him without a word.
He caught Alex watching and came over.
"You're the repair shop. You fixed my father's radio last week. He said the kid at Sam's had good hands. It's a decent trade. So why are you here?"
"Same as you," Alex said.
"No." There was no heat in it. "There are sixteen places. Eleven people in this shed have someone on the wall tonight. My father's been up there nineteen years. Think about that before you take a place for the stipend."
He held out his hand.
"Ross Naylor."
Ross had a firm grip. Alex squeezed back with about a third of his strength.
The shed went quiet when the woman came in.
Major Helen Reyes, Wall Command, East. Forties, short hair going gray at the front, her weight on one leg.
"Sixteen of you leave here provisional," she said. "That means a card, a stipend that won't cover your rent, and a blade in a cleared corridor behind someone who knows what they're doing. Make Rank Two, and you can take the Course. I know some of you are here for it."
She let that sit. "Three injections, and a booster twice a year for as long as you serve. It'll make you harder to kill. It won't make you anything else. And it isn't yours to keep. Leave the wall, and the Service takes the Course back out of you. They have a way of doing it. Medical first. Four stations after that. The board does the rest."
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
***
The medical was a nurse at a folding table, reading off a tablet.
"In the last ninety days, any sudden change in strength, eyesight, hearing, appetite, body temperature or dentition?"
"No."
She eyed his glasses, said they were scratched, ticked a box and asked for his arm.
His blood came up the ordinary color. On the tray sat thirty other people's blood in sealed glass tubes, and he could smell every one.
His mouth filled with spit. He swallowed and counted strip lights.
'Please look normal. Please just look like anybody's blood!'
***
The first station was the carry. Sixty kilos in a steel frame, forty meters down the shed and forty back.
On graduation day at the Residence, the same carry had pulled him over onto the mat with his whole class watching.
Now the frame came up like it was empty. Last night he'd held a radiator over his head with one hand.
'Way too easy... slow down!'
He matched the man in the next lane, who was red to the ears, made his arms tremble on the turn around the cone, and put the frame down two seconds after him.
"Sixty kilos, repair shop," somebody said behind him. "It's not a phone."
It was a provisional with a silver ring in one ear, waiting for his lane.
"Careful with those glasses. Oh, wait. Somebody already broke them."
The line laughed. The heavy kid with the backward strap didn't, and neither did Ross.
Alex pushed the taped glasses up his nose and said nothing, though he could have set the frame down on the guy's foot with one hand.
In the sprint, the same guy drew the next lane. The guy ran with a hitch in his left foot. Alex could hear it on every stride, and he still let him finish ahead. Alex came in third, half a step behind. Ross came in first.
On the reaction lights, Alex missed two on purpose, left side, near the end, where someone tired would.
***
The last station was a frame with four swinging padded arms. You dodged them and hit the marked panels when they lit.
His body wanted to duck before the first arm even moved. He held it back and ducked late.
On the third arm, a flash of green lit the edge of his eye.
MOVEMENT PATTERN IDENTIFIED
He could see all four arms at once, and he knew where each one would be, the way he'd read the I.Zombie boss's shoulder before every attack.
For two seconds, he let go. He slipped between two arms without turning his head. His palm hit a panel before its light finished coming on. Behind him, somebody said, "Huh."
He caught himself and took a pad on the forearm on purpose.
A man stood at the barrier. Late fifties, gray at the temples, short beard, a Hunter jacket with nothing on the sleeve.
He was watching Alex's feet.
***
At the end, the boxes on the screen filled in. NAYLOR, R. was at the top, every box green.
Second, two boxes short, was the provisional with the silver ring. He found Alex's name down the list and laughed through his nose.
WALKER, A. was fourteenth. He was in, and low enough that nobody would remember him.
"Fourteenth," Ross said, passing. "That's honest. Welcome."
Alex was almost at the lockers when someone said, "Do that again."
It was the man from the barrier. Up close, Alex knew who he was. Arthur Kessler, Rank Four, as high as the wall went, twenty years on the national response unit. There was film of him killing a bone ram with his own left arm out of its socket, and they showed it to schoolkids.
Kessler nodded at an empty mat. Alex stepped onto it.
Kessler threw a foam baton at his chest, hard.
Alex caught it without thinking.
The second throw was faster. Alex let it hit his shoulder.
"Too late to hide it," Kessler said. "You caught the first one."
"That was luck."
"No."
By the lockers, the second-place man had stopped with one shoe on. Kessler stepped closer.
"How long have you been hiding it?"
"Hiding what?"
"Whatever changed."
Alex kept his mouth shut. Kessler pushed a card into his hand. There was a phone number on it in blue pen, and that was all. No name. No rank.
"If you start to feel ill, you call that before you go near a hospital. If I'm right about you, a hospital will ask questions you don't want to answer."
He walked off, right past Major Reyes, who was standing at the board with her arms folded.
Alex's hands were shaking, but he was smiling.
He put the card in his jeans pocket.
***
The tram home braked hard at the second stop. A boy of about twelve, curly hair sticking out everywhere, lost his grip on the pole. His school notebook fell out of his open bag and slid toward the doors, which were just opening.
Alex caught it with one hand before it went out the gap.
The boy stared at him. "Whoa. Like a goalkeeper."
"Theo, come ON," a girl shouted from the platform.
Alex saw only the back of her head as she went down the steps. Red-brown hair, falling out of a clip. She stuck one hand out behind her without turning around, and the boy jumped off and grabbed it.
The tram pulled off. His phone buzzed in his pocket.
--Provisional Intake--
Result: PASS (conditional)
Placing: 14 of 32
Condition: medical review
Friday, 09:00, East Wall Annex, Clinical Wing
Reviewing physician: Dr. E. Ward, Director
'Dr. E. Ward... the booster guy? Why is the Director looking at me?'
That name was printed at the bottom of every booster notice Alex had gotten since he was a little kid. Now the man who ran the whole Medical Service wanted to see him in person, Friday morning.