The Beginning Chapter 28
A Novel - Book One - Text and Audio
Chapter 28 Audio:
Chapter 28
Half an hour later, the two women walked side by side down a hallway in a part of Command Willow had never seen before. There was light-colored paint on the walls, but it was peeling off. The lighting was sparse with most of the bulbs dim or flickering. In the distance, down intersecting halls, two doors were adorned with unilluminated exit signs. Willow wondered where—if anywhere—they led.
“Where are we,” she finally asked, barely above a whisper, when another turn led them to a set of large wooden doors, scarred by time.
“It’s part of Command,” Stella replied. She, too, spoke softly, but whether she did so out of unease or secrecy, Willow could not decide. “We’ll probably need to make better use of the space in the next year or two if our numbers keep increasing at the current rate. There are plans to renovate soon. For now, though, it’ll serve our purpose.”
“What purpose?” Willow looked to her left and right, slowly assessing her surroundings.
In contrast, Stella moved quickly, pulling open one of the doors by its rusted, metal handle. “Somewhere for you to train without Price knowing about it.”
As soon as the words made their way through Willow’s preoccupied brain and into her awareness, she followed Stella into the newly revealed space.
The room looked, to Willow, like it might once have been a gymnasium—like the creaky, wood-planked floor she stood on should have been painted up like a basketball court. If it ever had been, though, the darkness in the room and the years that had passed since those days made the markings impossible to recognize. There were no goals hovering above her at each end, no bleachers surrounding her. In fact, all she saw when she looked up were more flickering lightbulbs and a handful of signs bolted onto the walls, all of which were either too faded or too dirt-covered to decipher.
It took several seconds for Willow to complete her evaluation of the mostly empty room and return her focus to Stella. The other woman had been waiting patiently but she stood with her arms crossed in front of her, a degree of tension in her shoulders that Willow hadn’t noticed before.
“We’re hiding from Price?” Willow asked, thinking of Stella’s words from seconds earlier.
The MidCommand gave a non-committal shrug, expressions of worry, then annoyance, then forced calm flickering over her face.
“You don’t think he’s training me well enough?” Willow wasn’t sure why it had taken so long to follow the other woman’s thought process, but it seemed clear now.
Surprisingly, though, Stella shook her head. “I don’t know.” She paced a few steps beyond Willow, stood facing away for the span of a couple of heartbeats then spun back, outwardly composed. “Price is the best instructor we have and one of the most dedicated LO members I’ve ever met. In all likelihood, he is training you correctly. If he is, we’ll never come back here.” She took a slow breath in, released it. “On the off-chance that your training proves not to have been up to the appropriate standards, we’ll return tomorrow night. And every night after that for as long as we need to.”
Willow wanted to ask a dozen follow-ups but had the feeling that Stella would say no more than she deemed necessary on the subject. “How will we know if he’s training me well enough?” she settled for asking.
“I’ll know,” Stella answered.
“And who will train me if you find out he’s not?”
“I will,” Stella said.
Willow waited several seconds for further explanation then accepted that none would be offered. “Okay. Where do we start?”
“What has he taught you so far?” Stella questioned, standing less a few feet in front of Willow, pulling her hair into a slightly lop-sided ponytail at the top of her head.
“Nothing,” Willow replied, realizing only after she spoke, how true the statement felt. “My individual training hours are nothing more than workout sessions. Mostly running. Occasionally, I’m at the punching bag, but even then, the main reason I know anything about correct form is because we worked on that in group sessions during the first week of training. Dak taught that part of the class.”
Stella waved her hand toward the gym bag she had asked Willow to bring along. “Get out your weapons. Let’s see where you are with those.”
Willow looked down at her bag then up at the other woman. “I’m supposed to have received weapons by now?” Taking the fact that Stella merely closed her eyes as a yes, Willow mirrored the other woman’s actions, doing her best to keep her breaths even and her temper under control. “Price has barely mentioned them. And when I ask about anything specific, he always says I’ll learn it when I need to. I assumed that meant we didn’t receive the weapons until officially graduating as a Rescue FullTrain.”
Stella shook her head. “You will need to be proficient in the use of all Lucky Ones weapons in order to pass your practical exam.”
Willow went motionless and stayed that way for as long as she could, fearing that the slightest movement could rattle loose the anger she was trying her best to keep a grip on. “My practical exam?”
“Yes,” Stella answered, sounding much like Willow felt. “Which you have to pass in order to graduate from Rescue training.”
The building fury subsided a little, replaced by resignation—not to defeat but to the situation Willow now found herself in. “That would be Price’s reason for not telling me any of this,” she concluded.
Stella gave one pained nod of agreement.
“And you can teach me what I need to know?”
There was only a second’s hesitation. “I can.”
Willow walked a slow half-circle around the spacious room. It was hardly the high-tech training facility on the other side of the Lucky Ones complex, but at least here she would be training with someone she could trust.
She met the other woman’s eyes, nodded. “Okay.”
Stella nodded back. “We’ll start tomorrow.”