Page 22 of Puck Your Feelings
COACH MARTIN IS standing in the middle of the outdoor training area looking way too awake for someone who should still be in REM sleep. He's holding a clipboard and wearing a smile that promises pain.
"Morning, weaklings!" he barks. "Hope you got your beauty sleep, because you're going to earn your breakfast today."
Beside me, Wall mutters, "I didn't sign up for the military."
"Yeah, you did," Petrov says from his other side. "Says so in your contract. Small print."
Coach launches into the warmup, which is actually just disguised torture. High knees, butt kicks, lateral shuffles, bear crawls. My lungs are burning, and we haven't even started the real conditioning yet.
Kane's three people ahead of me in the line, moving through each drill with surgical precision. His form is perfect. His breathing is controlled. He looks like he could do this for six more hours without breaking a sweat.
I hate him.
We move into sprint intervals—thirty seconds all-out, thirty seconds recovery. Except the "recovery" is jogging, which isn't recovery at all, it's just a different flavor of suffering.
Wall pulls up beside me during one of the recovery jogs, his long legs eating up ground. "How's the roommate situation?"
I gasp out words between breaths. "He... organizes... his protein powders."
"Monster."
"By... nutritional... content."
Wall whistles low. "That's serial killer behavior."
Petrov joins us on my other side, not even breathing hard because he's twenty-one and apparently immortal. "But is he hot?"
"Is who hot?" I wheeze.
"Kane." He says this like it's obvious. "We all see you staring."
"I'm not—" Another sprint interval starts, cutting me off. I push through it, my quads screaming. When we hit recovery, I continue, "He's annoying."
"That's not an answer," Wall points out.
Groover catches up to us—how is everyone so fucking fast?—and shoots Petrov a look. "Leave him alone. They just met."
"Exactly!" Petrov grins. "Is still new relationship energy!"
"There's no relationship!" I gasp out. "There's forced cohabitation."
Ace blows past all of us like we're standing still, and I hear him call back, "Twenty bucks says they hook up before camp ends!"
"I canhearyou!" I yell after him.
"Good!" He's already twenty yards ahead. "Want in on the action?"
Coach Martin saves me from having to respond by blowing his whistle and gathering us for the next phase of torture: stairs.
The facility has this massive staircase leading up to the main lodge—has to be at least a hundred steps.
We're doing sprints.
Up and down.
Repeatedly.
Until someone dies, presumably.
