The next day, the training was fairly similar to last night's, but today, G46 didn’t join everyone else in the morning. When most people went to the shooting range, G46 was taken outside to train separately with Reaper. When they returned to their bunks, they had less than five minutes before they were called to a room. This room was a place they hadn’t been to before. As they all took their seats, which lined the walls of the closet-sized room, the anxiety started to build up. In the corners, the dark blue rubber trim started peeling up. Emma started to chew her nails off as the door opened. She tucked her hands underneath her legs to keep them warm and prevent further damage. In front of them was the female doctor who had greeted them upon their first arrival. “Greetings, G46,” everyone turned their heads to the door they had entered through. Hunter came walking in and took one of the empty seats. Beside him was one more chair. “Welcome, Hunter,” She nodded to him and turned to address the rest of the room. “My name is Tabitha Watkins. You have all met with me before for your injections,” She watched the eyes around the room confirm her statement. “As I’m sure Reaper has made you aware, the simulations are very physically taxing. For every minute you spend in real time, is an hour in the simulation. With that, each minute in real time will cause you to burn off an hour of energy. There are safety precautions to protect your neuro functions, and of course, it has been medically tested with success. For optimal results, we will individually ease you into the simulation,” Her eyes slowly trailed over to the empty seat beside Hunter. “It won’t take long to get you all through. We will start with you,” She flipped through her sheets to match the picture up to the person she was staring at. “Dylan?” He stood up. “Come with me,” He walked past her, and she closed the door behind him. The remainder of those in the room started to share weary glances.

  Dylan got into a black padded chair in the middle of the empty room. Tabitha gently strapped him down, even putting a strap over his forehead. He kept quiet and tried to relax as much as he could to comply with how she wanted him. He didn’t tell her when the straps felt too tight. She stuck an IV into one arm, then another IV into the other. Both of them were attached to large, clear bags. He didn’t understand why. He moved his eyes to look at the clock on the wall, memorizing the time. 15:20. She had a purple vial in her hand and put it into a needle, then gave him no warning as she injected it into his arm. “Okay, Dylan. I’m going to ask you a few questions in a moment. Give me a few minutes.” He looked over at the clock again. It was the only thing in this plain white room other than a small shelf on the wall and his chair. The IV was hung on the back of the chair, where he couldn’t see. It was like a dream. He focused on the clock. 15:21. He blinked, but the moment his eyelids fell, he struggled to push them back up. He could feel his eyes opening, but everything around him was dark. He blinked. He could feel it, but he couldn’t see it. He couldn’t move either, but he wasn’t bothered by it. It was simply an observation, that was it. He couldn’t form any thoughts or feelings of his own until a voice cut through the darkness.

  “Dylan, is that your name? What color is your house?” Colors started to form in front of him as he thought about his house. It was small, one story, and white. The house was smaller than all the other buildings around. His yard, always well kept, had clothes lines strung from the front door to a nearby oak tree. All around were small shops and sheds, and behind the house was a big red barn. He had painted it himself. As for the house, though, his family built that before he was born. Long dresses were hanging from the lines, and overalls. There were almost always clothes outside on the line. Next to the door was a big barrel with a scrubbing board and water. “What does your room look like, Dylan?” he found himself walking inside, feeling the familiar crunch of the gravel under his feet as he stepped up the wooden, creaking steps. The moment you stepped inside, you could see the whole small kitchen and a living room with no wall separating the two. He walked forward over the old, cracked tile. He could smell the bread his mom had baked. He kept walking through the doorway and into a short hall. There were more walls than doors. His parents’ rooms were on the first floor. All they had was a plain dresser and a bed with a mirror hanging above it. Directly across from their door was the bathroom. He kept walking two more feet, the pine planks creaking beneath him. He looked to the left into his sister's room, a cradle swinging inside it. A small carpet was in the middle of the room. Next to it was a bed for his brother, but no other decoration was in there other than the quilt patterns stamped on the walls. He took a right into the last doorway, but it was the only door that was closed. He opened it and locked it behind him. His room was lit with blue from the lights stuck to the corners of the walls. He grabbed the remote and turned it to white to see clearly. His bed was plain black, but he had a blanket with a twelve-point buck printed onto it. He had shoes lying everywhere—tennis shoes, mud boots, cowboy boots—and all sorts of hunting equipment. Guns and bows were hanging on the wall, and plenty of camouflage waders were hanging on his closet door. He had a TV in his room hooked up to a PS5, and a small beanbag chair in the corner underneath an Ole 60 poster on the wall. “You seem to be different from your family. Can you show me your parents and siblings?” He walked through his bedroom door and out into the front yard where his father was standing. He had on a plain white, long-sleeve shirt with dark blue trousers and a matching vest. His beard was cleanly trimmed, but still fairly bushy. On his head was a pale, straw hat. Next to him was his wife, wearing a cape dress and a cotton cap on her slicked-back hair tied into a tight bun. His little sister and brother were wearing identical clothing, though it varied in color. He looked down at himself. He was wearing jeans and cowboy boots, and a camo zip-up jacket. He wore his cap forward, bearing a deer emblem. “Is your family Amish?”

  “I come from a Mennonite family, but I’m not like them. It’s how I identify, but it's not really me.”

  “Show me what you do in your free time, Dylan.” He walked back to his room and grabbed his fishing pole, then climbed into his minivan and drove a little under two minutes down the gravel road. He pulled into a small home with a large barn and parked next to a dull gray truck. He climbed out and approached the large sliding glass doors. Inside sat Jacob, lounging on the couch and waving to him. Already, he had his fishing poles next to the door.

  “Alright, Gran. We’re taking off,” Jacob yelled into the back of the house. “Be back by 5!” she yelled back.

  “We're gonna be hitting your pond?” Dylan tossed Jacob his hat hanging by the door.

  “Yeah, that’s the plan,” Jacob caught it and pulled his hat down over his ears. “You got the ice pick?”

  "In the back of the van,” Dylan replied. “Is the pond really that frozen over?”

  “Well, yeah, it is. It's not like it's, I don't know, eighteen degrees or anything.” The rest of the motions became a blur. He knew everything he said and everything he was doing throughout the memory, and he felt himself out of breath by the time they walked all the way back to the pond. He could feel the gradual burning of his legs from walking up the hill, only it happened in a matter of seconds. Time wasn't moving in line with his eyes, but he felt it in his body. They picked away at the ice and tossed in a fishing rod. They wouldn’t catch anything; they knew that, but sitting there talking about their days was his favorite pastime.

  “You got school tomorrow?” Dylan reached into a bag of barbecue chips next to him. His cracked knuckles burned from the flavoring rubbing off from the side of the bag.

  “Yeah, man. Why, what’s up?” Jacob reached over, taking a few for himself.

  “I got some permission to hunt on the neighbor's land if you wanna set up again. You by the road, me on the other half of the property?” Jacob nodded, tapping his foot as he finished the handful he had taken.

  “Yeah, I'm down. Fuck school,” Dylan grinned, reeling the rod back up and plopping it back down into the water. Sometimes he wished he had gone to school like the rest of them, but he couldn’t do it without parental permission. Some things he was still strapped down on when it came to the rules of his lifestyle.

  “Dylan, who is this kid?”

  “Jacob. He’s my best friend," Dylan spoke out loud, but Jacob didn’t acknowledge his words. Jacob couldn’t hear anything that wasn’t directed towards him. That's because it wasn't a part of the memory they were living in.

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  “Show me more about him.” Dylan felt an aching in his head. He wasn’t sure what to do. His body started to hurt all of a sudden. It was hard to breathe. His chest was compressed by something. “Show me the day you met.” He felt instant relief. He couldn't have thoughts of his own. He needed a prompt to follow, or his body would shut down.

  Dylan walked down the road with his mom, passing by their large field of cows that backed up against their neighbor's property. His line of vision was many feet closer to the ground than normal. Not very many people lived out here, but a house was built fairly close to theirs. That's where they were heading: to see the house. They walked up to the front door and knocked on it. A little kid climbed up on the couch and stared out of the window, waving to Dylan. He was wearing jeans and cowboy boots with an olive green t-shirt. Dylan liked those clothes. He looked down at his own trousers and his face turned red. An older woman answered the door and welcomed them inside. As his mom talked to this woman, introducing herself in the process, Dylan and the kid stared at each other. The kid was holding a small, plastic gun. “I’m Jacob,” He held out the gun. “You want to place a hunter and a deer?” Dylan smiled. The memory came to a pause seconds later when Tabotha's voice interrupted it.

  “Show me some of the things you have done with Jacob.” Upon blinking, when Dylan opened his eyes a split second later, everything changed.

  Dylan revved up the four-wheeler while Jacob stood halfway across the field. He had built up a snow ramp that went above both of their heads if they were standing up straight. “Full send!” Jacob yelled. Dylan released the clutch and soared forward, his back tires struggling to catch a grip on the snow. Once they did, he was on a straight path ahead, speeding towards the snow ramp. The front tires stuck, moving halfway up the ramp until the snow gave out. They hadn’t packed it well enough. Jacob jumped back, the back tires missing him only by a few inches as Dylan crashed into the snow and the four-wheeler bogged, then died.

  “Dude, we were close, right?” He took off his helmet and crawled to his feet. He looked over, Jacob standing with his hands on his head and his eyes very wide. Ten-year-old Dylan had broken his arm. As the memory completed, the colors began to fade. The last transition between memories happened once more. He blinked, and his eyes opened in a new memory.

  It was Halloween night when Jacob wanted to go to the nearby town to trick-or-treat. He had been out most of the night and filled up his entire pillowcase with candy, and when he returned home, he went and knocked on Dylan’s window. Dylan got up and opened it, peering his head out. Jacob put the pillowcase on a stick and held it up to him. “I know you can’t celebrate Halloween," Jacob whispered, trying to keep quiet so his parents wouldn’t hear. “But I brought you some candy.” Again, the memory switched.

  Dylan sat in the living room at Jacob’s grandma’s house, an almost daily ritual that they followed. There was rarely a day they wouldn’t see eachother. That day, though, his cousins were coming down. Dylan had heard Jacob talk about his four cousins all of his life. They were all always doing something crazy, no matter how different their lives were, and their stories sounded fun. This time it was only two of them, though. Dylan had never met Jacob's distant family. His two cousins wanted to come down for a couple of days in the summer to finish building the cabin by the pond. As one of them pulled in, Dylan sat at the table on an old phone. Jacob had given it to him when his own phone was due for an upgrade. As a car door slammed shut, Dylan reached over to the weapon that was leaning against the door. He and Jacob were about to go sight in their bows. He kept his head down as one of Jacob's cousins walked in, her boots clicking on the ground.

  “Jacob, what’s up?” Jacob was walking back into the hallway and raised a hand to greet her in return. “Hey, Dylan,” She waved to him as she walked by, closing the sliding door behind her. “Conner’s about twenty minutes behind me,” She sat down on the couch. Dylan looked up, recognizing her face from the pictures and videos Jacob had shown him before. He didn’t respond to her as she spoke the first time. He felt a ping of regret. “What’re y’all up to?”

  “About to sight these in,” Dylan put the phone down and held up the bow. He couldn’t put a pin on what her name was. “Are you coming with us?”

  “Sure,” She got up from the living room and walked over to the table to sit next to him. She started to braid her long, brown hair as Jacob walked back into the room.

  “Make yourself at home,” He reached over to the table and grabbed a roll from the basket. He threw it to her. “Amelia, you’ve met Dylan,” He raised a hand to her again.

  “Yeah, yeah. The one who’s always on the game with us,” The three of them stood up and went out into the yard. Amelia stood there, her arms crossed and leaning over onto one leg, while she watched Jacob and Dylan pull the bows back.

  “See if you can pull this thing back,” He handed it over to her. She stepped up beside Dylan and grabbed it with her right hand, pulling it back with her left. “Dude, are you left-handed?”

  “Sometimes,” She swapped the bow to her other hand. She struggled to pull it back until she switched again. “Count us down. Whoever hits the target wins,” she looked over to Dylan. He took a breath and pulled it back. Both of them stood there, waiting for Jacob to give the green flag. They both released their arrows, and they clashed in the air. Hers knocked Dylan's out of the way and soared right into the center dot. “How did we manage that!”

  “That’s insane,” Dylan brought the bow down to his side, using his other hand to run it through his mullet. “Redo?”

  “Can’t let my cousin show you up, dude,” Jacob mocked him. He shook his head and reloaded the bow. The memory switched.

  Jacob pulled his black hood over his head. The water was soaking into it, dripping from the treetops, and hammering down on their heads as they sucked through the tall grass in the fields. Many yards ahead of them was a crane, and some wall was being built right through one of their friends' crop fields. They had driven around watching it being built for days, all around the surrounding towns. It was miles wide. “I hope they don’t have guards up,” Dylan whispered. Jacob slowed down, and they came to a stop in the grass.

  “Could you imagine? One wrong step, twig snaps, then boom,” They both laughed, and Jacob made a gun shape with his fingers. Dylan stood up a bit to get a better view of the wall when he heard a man yell.

  “Go!” Dylan yelled. Jacob cursed under his breath, and they started to run, Jacob pulling ahead of him and into the forest. Dylan was a few paces back. They could hear a large buggy driving towards them, but it wouldn’t be able to fit into the woods. That was their only chance. They kept on running until they found a ditch they had dug for hunting a few years back. They climbed inside and covered it with sticks, heaving until they could finally catch their breath, then they started to laugh. They could hear the men running through the woods, yelling to each other, but it wasn't long until they gave up their search. The memory froze in time. Dylan looked around and sat up, trying to get a hold on the events around him

  “You’re close with Jacob, aren’t you?” the voice cut through his thoughts.

  “As I said,” He could feel his body being physically taxed by the running. He hadn’t gotten a break between all of these memories. His arm was sore from pulling the bow back so many times, and his right arm still ached from breaking it. “He’s my best friend.” As he blinked, he felt the image starting to fade. He started to realize that he was still in the army base. He started to feel the straps holding him down, and the next blink he took felt like it glued his eyes shut. Again, he couldn’t see anything, but he could feel himself blinking. It wasn’t until he felt the need to cough that he could open his eyes to see again.

  “You did well,” Tabitha took the straps off of him, and he stood up, taking a moment to regain his balance. “Make sure to drink plenty of water, you are very active. You used a lot of the fluids. How’s that arm of yours feeling?” He looked down at his hands and moved them around. His body ached. It felt like he had just finished running a few miles. He could barely remember what had happened, though. It was like memories that were faint in his mind were a little more vivid, but he couldn’t put his finger on what had gone through his head. He looked at the clock across from him. 15:26. His eyebrows furrowed.

  “It’s okay. I don’t remember much,” He brought his hand up to run it through his hair.

  “That’s alright. It was all memories you’ve experienced before. There isn’t anything new for you to remember. You can go back to the bunks and get some rest. The rest of your group will be out shortly.” He nodded and stepped out of the room, closing the door behind him. Everyone turned their heads to look at him.

  “What did she do to you?” Hunter leaned forward. Dylan shrugged, stuttering as he spoke.

  “I don’t know. I can’t tell what just happened,” He rubbed his head again. It was hurting a bit. “It was really weird. She dug through my head, my memories,” He pinched his eyes shut. His head hurt more when he tried to recall those memories. “I can’t tell what she was looking for. She’d ask me questions,” He tried to think about his present thoughts. What was just on his mind? Everyone watched him, but that threw him off a little more. He couldn't hold on to his train of thought. “I don’t know. I’m supposed to be back at the bunks. I'll see you guys later,” He walked out of the room, the door latching behind him. It was silent again. Andrew leaned back and threw his hands over his face.

  "We're fucked!" He exclaimed. "They gave Dylan a lobotomy, and we're going to die in here!" The door handle slowly turned, and Andrew shot into an upright position again. The next person was about to be called.