Chương 64: The Day of Qualification

The last three days before the exam brought neither nerves nor anticipation, only crushing boredom. The sense of absurdity surrounding my presence here grew stronger with every passing hour. The local physical training program, clearly designed for inexperienced teenagers, had turned into meaningless busywork for me. I ran laps and did push-ups simply because the regulations demanded it, gaining absolutely nothing from the process. The academic side was no better.

I could already recite Selina's lectures from any random point, and the only entertaining part of her classes was the occasional lively discussion where it was still possible to pick up something new. The general military courses had become equally pointless. The only real breath of fresh air was the hour and a half I spent each day training in Sam's dojo. The rest of the time, my mind craved self-improvement, but Selina had strongly advised me to ease up on experimenting with my body and mind.

So I obeyed and waited. To avoid completely losing my sanity from inactivity, I buried myself in the library. One of the computers happened to have the legendary Serious Sam installed, a relic from my childhood back when buying a game meant going to a store for a physical disc.

"Hey, Tom," Ted said, rudely yanking my shoulder and forcing me to pause the game.

"Didn't know you played too. Wanna join us for some Spider Zero?" I froze for a second, mentally flipping through the folders in my memory palace. I quickly searched through every archive connected to gaming, but the title triggered absolutely no associations. Some new release, apparently. I had zero desire to learn unfamiliar mechanics from scratch, especially if it meant competing against teenagers.

"No thanks," I answered calmly, turning back to the monitor. Almost immediately, an old corporate politeness reflex clicked into place in my head. Teenagers, much like difficult clients, required soft conversational exits.

"I've already started the campaign. Wanna finish it first."

"Alright then." Ted shrugged carelessly and wandered back to his little gang. Yeah, my integration into the group was falling apart fast, and I was openly sabotaging Danny's advice. Then again, Selina had once casually mentioned that after graduation, the paths of our group would probably never cross again. Spending energy maintaining social connections that were destined to disappear soon was irrational. The final night before the exam greeted the barracks with the rustling of pages and anxious breathing.

Ted and Nick were frantically cramming Selina's notes. I silently lay down on my bunk, stretched my legs tired from the day, and closed my eyes, preparing for sleep.

"Tom, are you seriously gonna sleep?" Ted's voice drifted from the neighboring bed, carrying a mixture of genuine disbelief and mild resentment.

"Yeah," I replied without opening my eyes. The plan was simple: activate [Special Command] and sink into deep sleep. But an old office instinct, sharpened through years of watching coworkers panic before audits, told me they would not leave me alone so easily. There was too much fear packed into this room. Fear always needed a lightning rod.

"Tom..." Exactly as expected. I reluctantly opened my eyes. The two boys awkwardly shifted from foot to foot at the end of my bunk, reminding me of guilty interns standing outside a department manager's office. Finally, Ted forced out the real question.

"Tomorrow's the final test... how're you this calm?" I propped myself up slightly on one elbow, looking at their pale faces.

"What's the point of freaking out?" My voice came out even, almost lazy.

"Back in college, I figured out one universal rule: the only time you should panic is when you're planning to cheat. In every other situation, stress is just a waste of resources. If you studied, you'll pass. If you screwed around, you'll fail and take the retest later. Simple math."

"But a retest's basically a mark against you, isn't it?" Nick asked quietly, gripping his notebook so hard his knuckles turned white.

"Who told you that nonsense? Nobody's getting kicked out of the Corps over it, and nobody's stamping Idiot across your forehead. Worst case, you stay in camp a couple extra weeks to catch up. And honestly, is this place even that bad? They feed us three times a day, and the food's decent. We've got free access to computers between classes. Enjoy it while you can before they throw you through a portal." I meant every word, because I had already considered that possibility for myself.

But after carefully calculating everything, I realized staying here longer than necessary was inefficient.

"What if I'm the only one who fails?" Ted visibly deflated, his teenage self-centeredness immediately switching into worst-case-scenario mode.

"I'll be stuck here alone like some loser for a whole month..."

"Impossible."

"You think you'll fail too and stay with me?" A faint spark of hope appeared in the boy's eyes. He desperately needed company in his hypothetical disaster.

"No," I cut him off immediately, bursting the bubble.

"I'll pass. But even if you somehow mess this up, nobody's locking you here for a month. It's not like you're relearning the alphabet. Actually, guys, wanna hear a piece of classified information?" Both of them instantly leaned forward, eyes wide.

"Definitely!" Ted barked so enthusiastically that I mentally noted never to trust him with anything more serious than a weather forecast. The guy clearly couldn't keep secrets. Luckily, my insider information was completely harmless.

"Professor Langstrom personally confirmed that the Corps archives contain zero records of any cadet failing this exam twice."

"Seriously?" Nick practically stopped breathing.

"I'm serious. So turn off the lights, close your notebooks, and get some sleep. If you don't make it on the first try, the second one'll feel easy." My therapy session worked. I could physically feel the tension draining out of the room. The boys lazily shoved their notebooks into the lockers and crawled back to their bunks. At least tonight they would sleep instead of burning through their nerve cells until dawn. The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Naturally, I did not tell them the second half of the truth. Double failures did not exist simply because the instructors here were pragmatists. They never allowed cadets near the finish line until they had squeezed a full one hundred percent understanding out of them. Which meant that especially hopeless cadets could remain here far longer than a single month. Morning arrived without the usual military chaos. There was no screaming sergeant, no emergency wake-up call, no exhausting run through the wet grass.

Command had made a generous gesture and allowed us to sleep almost until breakfast. But after we lazily demolished our portions of omelets and bacon, the easy life ended. The entire group was marched onto the central parade ground for the physical qualification tests. This was where the Corps' evaluation system truly showed its strengths: individual calibration, cold parameter analysis. Each cadet's requirements were adjusted according to age, weight, and body type.

As a fully grown adult male with dense muscle mass, I received the highest standard: a minimum of twenty pull-ups. Our tiny Mary got the luckiest deal of all. She only had to do one.

"Ross, on the line! Move!" the sergeant roared, his booming voice echoing across the parade ground. I stepped forward calmly, waited for the stopwatch to start, and began following the sergeant's instructions. No more, no less. Technically, I could have exceeded the requirement by a factor of ten and set an absolute camp record, but there was no practical reason for it. Cheap displays of superiority in front of a bunch of teenagers held very little appeal. Ted went next.

The guy was visibly drenched in sweat from nerves, his palms slipping against the metal bar, but he still met the standard. I had never doubted my temporary protégé. During our joint workouts, he had consistently handled that level of strain, so muscle memory took over here. Nick, on the other hand, was a complete disaster. He shook during push-ups, his back sagged badly, and he stalled on the pull-up bar after the third rep.

The only remotely decent result came during the hundred-meter sprint, where he barely squeezed under the limit. The outcome was perfectly predictable. He and Ted had completely different builds and physical foundations, yet the camp's training manual stubbornly shoved them down the exact same standardized track. Louise's failure genuinely surprised me. The female cadets trained on a separate field, so I had no real understanding of what things looked like on their side.

Apparently, the situation over there was far worse than I expected. Mary went last, and naturally, everything went perfectly for her. But now that I knew the full story behind her background and understood that the girl had been professionally trained since early childhood, her success no longer felt impressive. Give me eight years of elite training inside a closed facility with an unlimited budget, and I would have steamrolled this entire camp by myself.

The sergeant snapped his tablet shut and swept us with a heavy stare.

"Final results'll be posted tomorrow morning. Dismissed. Move out!"

"You see that?! Did you see that?!" Ted was practically glowing from the adrenaline as he slammed into his gloomy friend.

"I passed! Totally crushed it!"

"Yeah, good for you," Nick muttered with a sour expression.

"Looks like I'm stuck here till fall."

"Don't be so dramatic," I decided to throw in my two cents before the guy completely fell apart.

"At least now the sergeant'll switch you to individual training. The group circus is over, so he'll squeeze the numbers he needs out of you pretty fast."

"Ah, screw that sergeant!" Ted slapped Nick on the shoulder like an overfriendly idiot, then turned to me expectantly.

"Hey, Tom, why don't you train him instead? His results shot up right after your workouts!" Ted flexed his arm, trying to display something vaguely resembling a bicep.

"According to regulations, I'll lose access to the camp training grounds after official graduation," I replied dryly, immediately cooling his enthusiasm.

"Oh... right, yeah," Ted mumbled awkwardly, scratching the back of his head after realizing he'd said something stupid. I chose not to explain that my primary objective was to get the hell out of this place as quickly as possible and never return. Though, considering Selina's grim predictions, there was a very real possibility that I could get assigned back here as a babysitter for another batch of clueless rookies. As we passed the bleachers, I spotted Louise.

The girl sat hunched over on a bench with her face buried in her hands, her shoulders trembling slightly. Mary was nowhere nearby, which made sense. She had already headed back toward the barracks. The female division's sergeant had also vanished at a remarkably inconvenient moment. That raised an obvious question: should I get involved? My corporate experience offered an immediate answer: no. The clearest sign of efficient management was proper division of labor. If you could solve a problem, you solved it.

If you could not, you delegated it to someone whose job description actually covered the necessary skills. And when it came to comforting crying teenage girls, I knew absolutely nothing. Which meant a different approach was necessary.

"Guys," I nodded toward the administrative building, "let's go find the female division instructor." The process took only a few minutes. The woman sergeant, who almost certainly had adolescent psychology somewhere in her service record, immediately took control. A brief professional conversation conducted in raised voices later, Louise was already wiping her nose and pulling herself back together. Problem solved. The next stage was the theoretical exam inside Selina's lecture hall.

The atmosphere felt like a courtroom before sentencing.

"In front of each of you is an exam sheet containing exactly one hundred questions," Selina said, bracing her palms against the podium while scanning the room with an icy stare.

"Every question includes three answer choices. Your task is to mark the correct answer in ink. Time limit: ninety minutes. Questions?"

"I've got one, Professor," Nick said uncertainly, raising his hand.

"What's the minimum passing score?"

"Ninety-seven correct answers."

"How many?!" Ted practically jumped out of his chair, nearly knocking his papers onto the floor.

"That's basically a hundred percent! Wouldn't half be enough to pass?"

"Cadet Drake, you're not attending a public school where writing your own name correctly is enough to move on to the next grade," Selina's voice instantly turned into razor-sharp ice.

"Here, you're studying the anatomy, behavior patterns, and vulnerabilities of xenomorphs. Without complete understanding of those factors, any expedition into the portals becomes guaranteed suicide. The Corps has no intention of paying for your funeral simply because you've gotten used to an easy life." The discussion died before it even began. The hall filled with the dense scratching of pens. Personally, I had no difficulty with the test whatsoever.

First, the entire body of data regarding xenomorphs had already been rigidly structured and stored inside the rapid-response sector of my memory palace. Second, Selina built her lessons around live case studies and constant debate during lectures. The human brain retained interactive conflict permanently, unlike dull memorization. Watching the others confidently fill out their answer sheets, I came to the conclusion that her methods would work even on these kids. Everyone would probably pass the written section.

Next came the practical S-Armor piloting exam. Nothing new there. It was a standard coordination and motor-skills assessment. All we had to do was instantly mirror the commands demonstrated by the sergeant. And that was where the younger cadets started malfunctioning. Simple nerves caused some of them to mix up toggles on the left control panel, lose balance, and crash to the floor, turning a serious certification process into complete farce. The final stage covered general military terminology.

Another written test, though far more mundane this time. The number of chevrons on a lieutenant's shoulder straps, field maintenance regulations for radio equipment, preservation protocols for rations. Standard bureaucratic routine, the kind of material I already processed effortlessly.

"That concludes today's examinations," the sergeant announced, slamming the journal shut.

"Dismissed. Move out!" The cadets immediately clustered together near the exit, noisily and nervously comparing answers, constantly groaning in despair whenever somebody discovered another mistake. I silently separated myself from the swarm, planning to head for the cafeteria and grab a few crackers, when Sam suddenly stepped into my path. A wide grin stretched across his face from ear to ear.

"Tom, I don't even doubt your papers went in without a single mistake," he said, giving me a firm man-to-man slap on the shoulder hard enough to make the fabric of my uniform creak in protest.

"Tomorrow, right after they post the lists, we'll finally settle our agreement. I'll be waiting in the dojo." I looked into his excitement-filled eyes and smiled faintly. Well then. The day had finally arrived.