I GAVE UP trying to sleep at five thirty and slipped out of bed and into the bathroom. When I came out, freshly showered and dressed for running, the room lights were on and everyone except Mitsuko was awake.
Giselle pushed past me, towel in hand, into the bathroom. She shut the door and the shower started up. Hanna was already dressed in a tracksuit, hair in a ponytail.
“Aren’t you going to shower?” I asked, not really bothering to keep my voice quiet. Mitsuko didn’t stir from sleep.
Hanna, on the other side of the room, applied sunscreen in front of her mirror and looked at me. “They told us we’d be running first thing. No point in showering now, when all the hot water will be gone anyway. I don’t care what anyone here thinks of how I look.”
I shrugged a shoulder and went over to the wall mirror to twist my wet hair into a thick, tight knot, then spread sunscreen across my face.
A few minutes later, Giselle emerged from the bathroom in a cloud of steam, her hair hanging in dripping strings around her bare shoulders. Hanna slipped in after her and was back out within five minutes. Efficient.
Just as the three of us were about to walk out the door, Mitsuko rolled out of bed, fully dressed. After a grand total of thirty seconds in the bathroom, she stuffed her feet into tennis shoes and turned off the lights behind us.
“Beautiful morning, ladies!” she said as she caught up to us in the hall, gathering her long black hair into a high ponytail.
“Nice breath,” Giselle said, the first words I’d heard from her. “Ever heard of a toothbrush?”
Mitsuko just grinned.
There had been a daily schedule loaded onto our tablets. Breakfast was at seven every day. First class today was at eleven. Lunch at one. Classes the rest of the day with each of our four instructors.
The suspicious amount of time between breakfast and class had me running mental scenarios. Something was going to fill that time. And I suspected it was going to be something big—something to weed out the unworthy ones.
We were on the early side, but soon kids poured out of doors on both sides of the hall, joining the throng on the way to breakfast. We passed the set of double doors we’d entered through on our first day, the ones painted red like a giant stop sign. It was almost eerie to look at it, as if I were breaking a rule by noticing its existence.
The exit.
We entered the cafeteria with most of the other candidates. A line formed for the buffet: piles of every kind of breakfast food imaginable, and some things I couldn’t even identify.
I took a plate of eggs, a waffle, and an apple, and picked up a bottle of water. Somehow, by default I guess, I ended up sitting with Giselle, Hanna, and Mitsuko.
“Good, the gang’s all here,” Mitsuko said, leaning in over her plate of eggs and cantaloupe. “We should discuss our strategy.”
“It’s not a team effort,” Hanna said.
“Not yet, it isn’t. But if we work together, we might be able to outlast some of these yokels.”
Before anyone could reply, a body slid into the empty seat between me and Giselle. “Good morning, beautiful ladies,” a male voice said.
I snuck a look at him from the corner of my eye and groaned inwardly. That preppy trust-find type who had been bothering Hanna yesterday.
“So what do you think they’ll have us do today?” he asked, settling in. He must have already eaten, because he didn’t have a plate.
“I’m sorry, who are you?” Mitsuko asked, her voice suddenly unfriendly.
I decided I wanted her to stick around a little longer.
The guy’s gaze passed right over Mitsuko and lingered on Hanna like she might introduce him, but she didn’t look up from her toast.
Changing tactics, he turned on the charm like nothing had happened. “Landon Blake,” he said. “I would have thought you’d heard of me.”
“No,” I said quickly. “The only guy here I know is Luka Kereselidze. His dad is an ambassador for the UN. You know him? He’s sitting right over there.” I nodded over to where Luka sat, alone. He looked kind of forlorn, but like he was used to it. I felt a little bad for him, actually. The fact that I was sitting at this table with four other people was a temporary fluke. Normally I was the lone wolf in the lunchroom.
I took a small amount of guilty pleasure seeing Landon’s smug expression fall just a little. Once he realized he wasn’t recognized or welcome, he slid out of his chair with a sour look and wandered to find a new group to bother.
“Did you guys get some weird brain scan thing?” Giselle asked. “In all those medical tests?”
“An EEG? Yeah, I think I remember getting one of those, somewhere between the eye tests, the blood draw, and the pee test,” Mitsuko said.
“That was weird,” I agreed quietly.
“Yeah, wasn’t expecting all those electrodes.” Giselle popped a chunk of biscuit into her mouth. “Just wondering.”
“Do you think it’ll be a race?” Mitsuko asked.
“Yes,” Giselle said firmly. “I bet they’ll cut everyone but the top ten. Or maybe even the top five. That’ll get the pool down quick.”
“They won’t cut it short so fast,” Mitsuko said, sounding far more reasonable. “There are people with a lot of different talents here. It depends on what they’re looking for. This isn’t the Olympics.”
I flinched as a shrill whistle broke into the quiet din of small talk. Colonel Pierce marched into the room, flanked by two women holding stopwatches.
“All right, campers! Welcome to your first day of training.” Colonel Pierce’s voice bounced off the walls. “Breakfast’s over. Everyone outside, now!”
There was an orderly stampede to the doors. Everyone left their plates on the tables.
We followed the colonel to a quarter-mile track. A barbed-wire fence, maybe fifteen feet tall, lined the perimeter. Empty yellow prairie grass and scattered cacti stretched for a long, long way.
It was August, the sun was barely in the sky, and already it was in the eighties. Swarms of gnats flitted against my ears and eyes and ankles. Gross but familiar. I’d run plenty of miles in Alabama summers, which I hoped gave me an edge. The humidity was so thick we might as well have been swimming. A few wisps of hair stuck to my forehead, my neck. And we hadn’t even started running yet.
Colonel Pierce blew his whistle again, and the whisper of conversation hushed until the only sound was the buzzing insects. I had to constantly wave my hand in front of my eyes to keep them at bay. God, they started early.
“My assistant’s handing out some numbers. It’s random, so don’t go fighting about which one you get.”
Pierce and his assistant moved through the crowd, handing out numbers. Mine was eighteen.
“If you hear your number called, you come over and sit on the grass. Everyone else, keep going till we say stop. We’ll be making cuts as we see fit. There is no grievance policy. If we say you’re out, you’re out.”
Some guy up front raised his hand. “Sir, but—we just ate.”
I had to stifle a laugh. Had he even been here yesterday? Had he thought a man who expected us to call him jackass would give us time to digest our breakfast before sending us out into the heat to run? This was a competition.
The colonel’s face contorted into something between a grin and a grimace. “I didn’t fail to notice that, Number Fifty-Three. Hopefully you all had the foresight to eat light this morning. Believe me, puking in your space suit is neither fun nor pretty. You’re lucky in that all that will happen to you here on Earth is a free ride home.”
I tried to take deep, calming breaths. I felt the weight in my stomach of the few bites of breakfast I’d been able to eat—light, but noticeable. The water I’d drunk was the worst part. I could feel it sloshing around.
“You get five minutes to warm up. Starting—” Colonel Pierce clicked his own stopwatch. “Now!”
The group scattered, each person trying to make enough space for themselves. I found a bubble of open grass for myself and did a few lunges, heart already pounding from sheer adrenaline. This air was like breathing soup. I filled my lungs from my diaphragm, trying to prepare them for what they’d have to do. The good thing about the heat was my leg muscles were already pretty warm.
“And that’s five. Everyone line up on the track. Spread yourselves out some.”
I jogged to the track, relieved when the liquid in my stomach stayed put. I situated myself near the back of the pack. The bodies in front of me would give me an edge in wind resistance, and the inside edge was a shorter circumference than the outside.
The others all wanted to be first, to have their numbers easily visible. But that wasn’t important at the beginning of the race; it was only important at the end.
I looked around me and saw Hanna had the same idea—she was right behind me. Mitsuko was somewhere in front and to my right. Giselle was nowhere to be seen.
“Hey, Cass!”
The boy who’d sat next to me in the auditorium came up behind me. “Emilio Esteban,” I said. “The boy with two names.”
He grinned. “You remembered!”
I jumped around a little, shifted my weight on the balls of my feet. “Good luck.” It seemed like a nice thing to say to end the conversation. Sort of like “have a nice day.”
“Don’t need luck. But same to you!”
Another shrill whistle to quiet us down. Colonel Pierce’s voice came flying over our heads.
“This is not a race,” he called out. “On the next whistle you will start to run. You will keep running until you hear a second whistle. Feel free to stop before that time. We don’t want any heatstroke cases today. But we also don’t want any quitters on our team, so keep that in mind. Ready!”
I sucked in wind, my nerves jumpy.
The whistle blew. It took a few seconds for the front half of the pack to get going enough for me to start up, but by then I was more than ready. For the first lap we were all jogging the same leisurely pace, staying together in one entity, like a school of fish swimming in slow circles. It was hardly an effort, barely more than speed-walking. After the first two miles, the wheat began to separate from the chaff.
I stayed about in the middle, letting the slower ones fall behind me, not trying to advance. Endurance was the name of this game.
Five miles in and I was feeling good. Hanna was now nearly beside me, and though she hung back I didn’t think it was due to weakness. We were in the front third now, our feet pounding the cushioned pavement in a rhythm that made it easy to keep going.
Humans really are herd animals. I almost always ran alone, but it was so much easier to keep going when you were surrounded by other people.
Sweat ran into my eyes and down my back, and the air began to feel like water in my lungs, heavy and slow. But the rhythmic pounding, pounding of many feet, was like the beating of a giant heart that never stopped. It propelled me forward.
I heard coughing somewhere behind me but didn’t look back. I wiped the sweat from my eyes and slowly let go of my thoughts, letting consciousness fade from my body, which was just a tiny segment of this beating heart muscle to which I belonged.
Rounding the corner to the thirty-second lap, people began to fall out. It was bound to happen. I’d seen vomit on the track the last few rounds.
I was just starting to feel fatigue. I tried not to look at the people bent over on the grass, heaving, gasping like stranded fish. The failures who couldn’t hack it. It would be too easy to stumble and give up. Too easy to become one of them.
I lost track of the laps after that. Round and round we went. My cheeks were on fire, my quadriceps burning, my feet hot in shoes of cement. The group thinned out and I lost the rhythm of the beating heart. Sweat ran down my face like water, unable to evaporate in the humidity, unable to cool my body even a degree. My tongue grated against my teeth, dry and thick as wool. Everyone I passed was floundering.
Each time I rounded the corner, I glanced furtively at the colonel and the two women staring at their stopwatches, hoping that this would be the last, that someone would look up and realize they’d forgotten to tell us to stop.
My lungs ached.
How long were we supposed to keep going? I couldn’t keep this up forever. How long had it already been? My inner clock had become unreliable. The sun was higher than when we’d started, its face scorching the dry earth. Despite the sunscreen, my skin felt like a raw egg on a hot skillet, charring beneath the heat.
Until now, everyone who had fallen out had done so voluntarily. Now that we were so far apart from one another, our numbers were visible, and we began to hear them called out.
“Number five!”
I’d passed number five three times already. He was not even jogging anymore, but walking with a little bit of a jump in between steps.
So we couldn’t just stay in the game. We had to keep up.
A sharp ache grew in my stomach, like a little knot of pain rocking back and forth. Jolting around inside me.
This wasn’t just a physical test; it was a psychological one. Some lesson about the unknown quantity of time passage in space, the monotony of it, how it can fracture people’s minds.
I’d run miles and miles before. But I always knew when I got to stop. I was in control of it. Not knowing when it would end was brutal.
That must be the point.
I began to miss breaths. My stride shortened. No, no no no.
What the hell was wrong with me? I’d run this long dozens of times. Hadn’t I?
“Number thirty-seven! Number fourteen! Number twenty-two!” Nearly everyone behind me went away.
I was next.
Someone passed me. I looked up and blinked away sweat, my exhales as loud as my footfalls.
It was Hanna. Our eyes met as she passed.
The fair skin on her cheeks flamed red. Her blond ponytail was plastered to her neck and she limped slightly on her left side. She was struggling just as much as I was. Yet she was passing me.
Her eyes narrowed. She held my gaze a second longer than was comfortable. And I knew suddenly what she was saying. I dare you to keep up.
I felt my stride lengthen until we were evenly matched. My lungs protested, but as long as we were both last, we were both safe.
I hoped.
Silently egging each other on, we caught up to the runners ahead of us. The group was a fraction of what it had been. Emilio was ahead of me, black curls matted against his forehead but huffing along in a comfortable and strong rhythm, like he’d been born running.
That should’ve been me.
Luka was leading the pack. He was pouring sweat like the rest of us, but his rhythm was solid, his breathing steady, his form still perfect. His face showed no sign of stress. What the hell was this guy, a robot?
We jogged together so long I felt that this would simply be my life from now on. Jogging, heat pouring from our combined bodies, sweat staining the red track until an asteroid destroyed the earth and we all dissolved into atoms.
Was that a whistle I just heard?
“That’s it! Catch your breath,” Colonel Pierce called.
My first thoughts were incoherent strings of thanks to all the merciful gods who’d kept me alive. My second thought was that I was going to die.
My body screamed and seized. Lungs wheezing and legs trembling. Streaks of pain arced up my legs. Brain fuzzy. But I forced myself to walk and not stop. My heart was pounding so fiercely that if I stopped, it might just gallop right out of my chest and keep on going without me.
Groans of relief surrounded me, and as soon as the gray faded from my vision I was able to see who else was left. Hanna was bent double with hands on her knees, grimacing and covered in sweat. Mitsuko stood on the track, stretching, graceful as a gazelle. Emilio broke out into a huge grin and began moving through the crowd to high-five everyone who could raise their arm. Luka smiled as Emilio slapped his hand.
The girl in the hijab was still there, too—she’d managed to keep pace even with her head and arms covered. Holy hell. Now that demanded respect.
I caught her eye, gave her a nod, mouthed “wow” because I didn’t have breath for words. She jerked her chin up in acknowledgment, like she’d expected to be underestimated. Expected to exceed our expectations.
Emilio jogged over to me, huffing but somehow still animated. “Guys. That was awesome. We did it!”
I couldn’t talk. All I could do was nod breathlessly, sucking wind like I was drowning.
Mitsuko caught my wrist with both her hands and leaned her forehead on my shoulder, grinning with relief. I couldn’t help but smile, too.
We’d made it.
We walked a victory lap together to recover and then collapsed as one on the finish line, gasping and retching and rubbing our calves and yet unable to stop grinning. I looked over to find Hanna sitting on the track with us, bent over and heaving up a liquid version of her breakfast. Well, at least she managed to hold it down until the whistle.
Water had been left out for us in ice-filled coolers. As soon as I could breathe normally I chugged all the water in my bottle and lay flat on my back in the dry grass, feeling my heart knock against my ribs with less and less force.
Colonel Pierce had been conversing with his two attendants, comparing notes. Now he looked over at us pathetic lumps on the ground. “Everyone still on the track—congratulations, you’re in. When you’re ready, you twenty-five can go inside and cool off. Everyone else, we’ll escort you to your rooms to pack your things.”
I climbed to my feet gingerly—every individual muscle and tendon in my legs groaning at once—and a sudden white haze came over my vision. The world evaporated away from my eyes, and some small part in the back of my consciousness realized I no longer had any idea which way was up.
Hands reached out and grabbed me at the elbow, kept me up. Gradually the colors of the world bubbled back through the haze. I swayed, unsteady, but the dizziness was draining away.
“That was weird,” I mumbled, confused. Time seemed to stand still. My eyes moved slowly up the arm that was keeping me vertical.
Luka was looking down at me—he was taller up close—with a look of concerned bemusement.
His hands were wrapped around my upper arm. He’d caught me. I’d basically fallen into him.
Emilio bounded up beside me, hands closing around my other elbow. “Whoa, Lola, you okay? Come on, let’s get you back into the air-conditioning.”
My brain was running slow. I could’ve sworn Emilio had just called me “Lola.” I looked back to Luka, but he was already gone.
The losers glared at us as they went inside. Limping back into the building, my entire body was in agony. Everything was sticking to me—my skin feeling like I’d rubbed it raw with hot sandpaper, throat dry as wood shavings no matter how much I drank. I collapsed into a chair, put my forehead against the cool slate table, and closed my eyes. The dizziness was still there, tossing me around like gentle, insistent waves.
After a while I realized Giselle had been among the ones who had thrown up and been tossed out early. I didn’t see her leave. Landon, whom we all were supposed to recognize, was gone, too.
I thought we’d go straight back to our rooms, but Colonel Pierce and Ms. Krieger came to us first. Today she was dressed casually, white polo tucked into khaki pants, but her hair was still blow-dried Texas high.
“Congratulations,” Ms. Krieger said. “You made the first cut! I’m sure you’ll all be very relieved to know that you passed the hardest physical test we plan to give you. The rest will be academic and psychological, and those tests, for some people, will be much harder. Good luck on the rest of your week!”
The colonel spoke. “We’ve ranked you based on your times on the track. These rankings will be posted here in the cafeteria and will change depending on your performance throughout the rest of the selection.”
We were dismissed. Most headed back to their rooms, though a few stayed in the cafeteria to load up on some more food. Personally, I didn’t want to see food again for a week. I wanted a shower and a nap, preferably at the same time.
Emilio and some of his friends whooped down the hallway, jumping and waving their sweat-soaked shirts around over their heads like victory flags.
“How are they able to do that?” I complained. My muscles were barely working.
“Oh God,” Mitsuko groaned, clamping a hand over my and Hanna’s shoulders to support herself. “I feel like all my bones are made of shrapnel.”
Hanna pried Mitsuko’s hand off her shoulder, where it left a white handprint on her flushed skin. “Yeah? Well, my skin feels like it’s been baked, so let’s ease up on the touchy feely.”
Our room felt slightly bigger without Giselle and her luggage. I was about to fall headfirst on my bed when Mitsuko called out, “Don’t!”
I only had enough energy to raise my eyebrows.
“You’re disgusting. No offense. But who wants to sleep in dirty sheets?” She fell backward onto Giselle’s bed with a soft thump and raised an upside-down eyebrow like a question mark. “She won’t be using it again.”