To call the following weeks hell is an understatement of divine proportions.

  03’s mind is a blur as they are made to train for 12 consecutive hours a day, injected with stims to keep them going, fed tasteless slop to keep them awake, and bombarded with hours upon hours of detailed combat instruction. It all moves too quickly, yet so, so slowly. Like a drunken smear of time spread out over a canvas he was intent on sprinting past to some unknown destination.

  None of it feels real, and the parts that do feel too real.

  The world seems to grow distant, as if he’s watching his body move from some far away place. Watching as he sprints along a track at beyond superhuman speeds. He spreads his wings to fly and breaks the sound barrier while doing so. He pulls on machines weighing thousands of pounds until the muscles in his arms wouldn’t do anymore, only to be tested, medicated, and made to do it again, and again, and again.

  He struggles to keep the noise at bay, struggles to keep his mind alert and aware, struggles to not lose himself as every fiber is ground down and rebuilt over and over. More than once he cries at night, struggling to keep his promise, fighting against the incessant drone of agony in his head as he thinks of their names, their real names, his real name.

  More than once he catches 08’s eye, the pain behind them much like his own, he thinks.

  Every morning they eat slop, every night they eat slop. Every night they shower 03 turns the heat up until the pain on his back is too much to bear. Every morning he wonders if he can actually open his eyes, only to be forced to obey as he hears James’s voice echo in his mind, driving him to act even when he wants to sink away into nothing.

  But he can’t sink into nothing, not yesterday, and most certainly not today.

  “Vanguard.” Doctor Yiva speaks at a normal volume from her spot at the entrance of their shared living space. Despite being on the opposite end of the building, she knows that everyone can hear her, so she makes no effort to raise her voice above its normal volume. “Today marks the end of your power conditioning, and the beginning of your specialized combat training. Be ready in ten minutes.”

  Doctor MacArthur, Doctor Yiva, and James, are crafting them into soldiers, into assassins, and now it’s time to finally become just that.

  03 will become the best. He wants to please them, he needs to please them, so he will do it... but he also holds on to every part that brings on the noise—holds on to it, so that he can just barely bear it.

  ***

  A fist connects with 03’s jaw, sending him slamming into the dirt below with a heavy thud. He barely recovers in time to see a leg ripping through the air to finish the job.

  Bracing, 03 grabs the leg and leverages it upward, sending 01 off kilter and onto the back foot for only a moment, but a moment is all 03 needed.

  He closes the distance with a single step, anchors his left foot, and brings his right up high into a vertical split before sending it tearing downward aiming the heel at 01’s jaw.

  She teleports away the moment before impact, the lack of contact sending 03 reeling as his foot craters into the earth with a cacophonous rumble. Anticipating her re-appearance, he spins around just in time to catch 01’s follow up kick.

  Grabbing her leg once more, 03 brings his body in tight to throw two heavy punches into her ribs. She doesn’t flinch as they connect, instead she rolls through with them, catching 01’s arm up in her powerful legs and spins him to the ground.

  03 wills himself to teleport, but he is just a moment too late. The speed in which 01 moves is incredible. Her hand drives into his stomach like a knife, ripping through the skin three knuckles deep before he manages to teleport away, reappearing inches in front of her with his hand extended out like an eagle talon ready to rip into an unsuspecting rabbit.

  “Stop!” a voice calls, and 03 stops, his claw-like grip a hairs length from tearing out 01’s eyes, while 01’s knife-like hand freezes, a fraction of a second later and it would have been buried up to the wrist in his thigh.

  The force of the sudden stop sends a rippling shockwave across the battlefield, kicking up a storm of dust as the sky cracks with supersonic thunder.

  “Good work. Break off and grab a new partner,” Doctor Yiva says, moving to watch as 04 almost effortlessly tears 07 apart. The smaller boy's blood splatters against the ground, soaking 04’s arms nearly to the elbow. 04 smiles a crooked, hatchet wound grin, as he relishes in the violence, lost in the slow methodical process of picking apart his food before he eats it.

  “Will they stop it before 07 dies?” 08 asks as 03 moves to the sidelines, a large canvas tent with one wall rolled up to allow a clear view out into the open desert.

  “With how much they have invested in us? I would be surprised if they let 04 kill him.”

  08 nods along, but he doesn’t seem too convinced of the fact. Looking back to where 06 rests, he too is pretty badly torn up. His tanned skin is littered with deep lacerations that the med teams refused to heal. Doctor Yiva had said healing would be performed after all training had finished.

  “I wonder why they let so many of us die before coming here,” 08 continues.

  “Doctor MacArthur explained.”

  “Shit explanation.” 08 crosses his arms.

  “It doesn’t matter now, besides. Those were strangers. We aren’t them any more,” 03 replies flatly. It’s a simply a matter of fact, there is no point in dwelling on the details of memories belonging to a different person, especially when they had no impact on performance here. That is what he has to tell himself, the lie he needs to weave to keep his expression normal, to keep his readouts level and his reports clean. As much as 03 wants to relive the memories for the sake of those who didn’t make it, he can’t allow his mind to linger too long, especially while the doctors are watching.

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  It doesn’t look like 08 holds the same sentiment. His eyes wander out to the open desert before him, his mind working silently behind a soldier's mask.

  03 wants to say more to him, but Doctor Yiva is approaching, 04 on her heels with that horrible, blood curdling grin while 07 is placed onto a stretcher and hauled into the tent adjacent to their own.

  “05, 08, you’re up.”

  08 takes in a steady breath, and turns his attention to the muscle bound giant who continues to just look almost as apathetic as 01, though a faint glimmer in the big teens eyes imply he might even be a little happy about this.

  The moment they step out into the battlefield, 03’s perception of time slows dramatically. He doesn’t understand how or why his brain knows to process certain information at different speeds but it lends itself to a nauseating shifting in relative perspective.

  Whatever his body and mind register as both important and fast moving slow down, allowing him to see the details of the movement in glass time. Meanwhile that same sense of slowness never appears during normal conversation, or when walking from point a to point b. It will return once more if his own speed picks up, or if someone else moves quickly nearby, such as when 04 had tried to catch him unaware in the shower to prove a point.

  He was going about his business cleaning the dirt from his body when almost out of nowhere the water around him began to fall in slow motion. He could sense the pressure of the air shift, he could feel 04’s body too close to his, and he managed to deflect the blow at the last half second, only granting him a tiny cut across his cheek as opposed to something much worse.

  04 said he was curious, and no one else was willing to test his theory on an unsuspecting target. While 03 found it slightly flattering that 04 thought he was the one most likely to survive his sneak attack, it still made 03 want to break his arm in two after catching it.

  He watches now as the pressure waves created from supersonic bodies crashing into each other move across the sand, picking up the dirt and sending it their way. He brings his wings out from his back to cover his eyes as each one hits, curious to see how this particular fight plays out.

  05 is larger, nearly twice his friends weight and a full head taller. He is a monster of a teen, and even more of a monster when fighting. Each strike is earth shatteringly strong. A single point of contact would make 03’s organs explode, and in fact that's exactly what had happened to 06 the first time they had done this type of training. 03 had never seen so much blood eject itself from a person without a single visible wound on the outside before...

  But even with all of that strength, 08 is smarter, the better fighter, and more likely to win. 08 baits out wider and wider strikes from the monster, keeping in close at first and slowly putting more space between them to guide 05’s body in the direction he wants. 05 might be fast but he’s predictable. 08 doesn’t need to see where the strike comes from if he can predict the combos and arcs before they are even thrown.

  01 leans forward, her eyes assessing, she’s impressed too. She might be the most technically skilled of the group so far but her ability to improvise is lacking, and 08 has that skill in droves.

  05 swings down in a wild haymaker, and 08 finally capitalizes on the largest opening yet. Tucking himself inside he delivers a rapid fire series of strikes into the monster's ribs, finishing with a knife hand into his armpit.

  05’s shoulder pops and goes limp entirely. The bigger teen roars in frustration and whips around, throwing another wild strike at the place 08 used to be.

  His fist hits only a flurry of black feathers as 08 appears on top of him, his legs around 05’s neck as he brings three heavy fists down onto 05’s face. Breaking his nose and sending a fountain of blood down the front of his shirt.

  It looks as though 08 has won, but Doctor Yiva doesn’t stop the fight. Instead, 05 grabs hold of 08’s leg.

  03 watches with wide eyes as the black feathers swirl around 05’s hand, shifting like a liquid until it takes the shape of brass knuckles, tipped with heavy studs made of the same black feather material.

  03 stands, but 04 grabs him by the shirt and stops his advance.

  05 drives his newly summoned weapon into 08’s leg. With a sickening crack, pop, and gush of blood, 08’s leg explodes at the knee, sending him off balance atop 05’s neck.

  05 grabs hold of 08’s other leg and throws him to the ground, using the severed limb as a bludgeoning weapon to crunch down onto 08’s face.

  08’s eyes are wide, his body unable to move even as 05 mounts him, and throws another first down, aimed for 08’s sternum.

  It’s going to kill him.

  03 teleports in as 05’s massive arm moves in slow motion, the tip of the massive teens feathered weapon a fraction of an inch from 08’s chest.

  The stims might be able to repair near critical damage but it can’t bring people back from the dead, and 05 is moving too quickly for Doctor Yiva to react.

  Reality itself seems to shift, then. Ice water fills his veins, as black ichor collapses down around the edges of his mind

  03 can feel a piece of metal in his hands, as he spins himself towards 05, the same piece of metal a stranger used to gut the guard.

  Black feathers swirl round him, circling him as they are pulled from his extended wings to take the shape of a sword.

  His muscles burn as he pushes himself far beyond his body's limit, his speed is nearly imperceptible to even his own eyes as the rest of the world moves so impossibly slow.

  The blade's edge crackles with sparks and light, its mass moving so quickly it compresses the atoms in the air and burns them up like a ship on atmospheric reentry.

  The tip of the blade makes contact with 05’s own weapon, and there it holds for what feels like an eternity.

  Then, the pressure wave hits. 03 watches as his sword bites into 05’s feathered knuckle dusters, then carves a path through it, his own strike outpacing the ripple of 05’s flesh as his body reacts to the blow. 03’s carves a path up through 05’s arm, splitting it in half until it exits through the elbow, completing its arc. Still the force tears through 05. His body hasn’t had time to react. His bones explode, his muscles rip apart, his skin burns from the heat generated off the compressed air around him.

  08 teleports away, 05’s body breaks the sound barrier as it’s thrown into the distance and all at once time resumes its normal flow.

  The sonic boom reaches him then, his ears used to the sound though still muffling it slightly.

  Wind expands away from him, desperate to escape the power he is exerting. The canvas tent is gone, the other members of vanguard brace with their wings as dirt continues to blow past them at hurricane speeds.

  The sonic crack reverberates through the sky above, playing over and over again.

  Doctor Yiva taps away at her tablet with a smile.

  “Good, the first weapons have been summoned. 01, recover 05 and let's continue.”

  03 looks down at the straight blade in his hand. It looks almost like a medieval longsword, he thinks. Its straight edge is made of a collection of his own black feathers extending out to a total length of 45 inches. Its crossguard and grip are similarly made of his own wing feathers, though despite his wings having quite the substantial heft to them, the blade in his hand feels utterly weightless.

  He tries to drop it, but instead of falling the feathers simply swirl around his body and rejoin the feathers at his back like ink spilling in reverse, adding to the mass.

  Looking back to the others, all eyes are on him. Each one watches his movements intently, a faint trace of fear working its way over their expression. Only 04 seems to be enjoying this, watching with that same cruel smile, a smile that only widens as his eyes meet 03’s.