M.I.A.

“Pain will be a normal thing during your training here,” Steve said very seriously. “The more you listen, the fewer mistakes you’ll make, and the less pain you’ll deal with.” He paused for a moment still looking at Zach. “Your turn.”

 Zach was shaking from head to foot as he walked over to the rope. He took great measure to step over the pool of blood on the ground below the rope as he reached up and grabbed the rope. Steve didn’t ask him if he was ready, didn’t say anything else as Zach began to ready himself to climb the rope.

 "Go!" Steve yelled at the top of his lungs way before Zach was holding onto the rope with both hands. Zach’s shaking subsided as he concentrated on climbing the rope and reaching the bell at the top of the rope. He forced himself to look up and only up as he grabbed one knot after the other and pulled his feet to the next knot.

 Part of him was climbing only out of fear of Steve; the other part was climbing just to climb. He had no true want to climb the rope to the top but he knew he had no choice. The drop of sweat he felt drip down his cheek told him he had to keep going. He hadn’t really realized how high the bell was till he was twenty feet off the ground and still felt no closer to it than he’d been while standing on the floor. He could feel the sweat in his hands more than ever as they began to slip from underneath his grip and if it wasn’t for the knot below the part of the rope he’d grabbed he’d have found himself tumbling to the ground as he slid through his sweaty fingers.

 He didn’t ever give up though and just continued to grab each knot one after the other until he was in arms length of the shining gold bell. He reached for it but felt his other hand slip on the rope and his arm came flying back down grabbing the rope. He forced himself to try again and this time he made contact with the bell and heard it’s loud ring chime in one ear and out the other as if he’d hit a gong with his own head

 "Well done!" he heard Steve yell up to him from below. Zach finally took the risk of looking down and wished almost instantly that he hadn’t. It seemed a lot higher when looking down than looking up. He could feel his head pounding, his heart pounding, and he was just beginning to realize how little he’d been breathing during the climb. He started to climb down without waiting for instruction from Steve for he knew he wouldn’t be able to hold on forever and he didn’t want to be so high up if he did happen to let go of the rope.

 Zach reached the bottom and released the rope from his grip and almost felt like he was falling a few feet before his legs hit the ground even though it was no more than a few inches. His legs buckled from weakness and he felt himself fall down on his knees but quickly righted himself worried it would be counted as weakness.

 "Two minutes and fifty-five seconds," he heard Steve say. Zach was shocked, he looked up at him and couldn’t believe he’d been faster than the first boy, it hadn’t felt any faster. 

            "You climbed that rope faster than some of my fully trained adult assassins," Steve said. "You may become one of my top assassins, especially if this program proves to be as successful as theory says it will.”