Wunderkind

1.06-Wrench

PHOENIX TRAINING ROOM

THEY'RE NOT JOKING WHEN THEY SAY BECOMING AN AGENT IS BLOOD, SWEAT, AND TEARS.

Jack slams his fist into the punching bag one more time, then shakes out his hand. Beside him, the kid's doing the same thing, but moving a lot more gingerly. Thankfully, the medical assessment when they got back from Germany revealed that his ribs weren't broken, just cracked and bruised. He's awfully lucky. And by Monday he was back at the Phoenix, despite Patty's insistence he could take a week off. At least she didn't send him back to R&D. Apparently that didn't go well for him. It's been a week and a half, and Jack swears he's never seen anyone bounce back this fast from such clearly painful injuries.

He hopes it's just that Carl's Jr.'s still young, and a quick healer to boot. Sadly, it's probably just that he got good at hiding how much pain he was in. Jack's pretty sure the kid's taken similar damage, maybe even worse, given some of the things he's said, as a vigilante. And then he had to go home and hide it from everyone but his best friend. From what Sam's picked up from her interviews with the kid, Bozer's mother was probably too drunk most of the time to notice when something was wrong with the kid, but Boze's sister would have gotten suspicious easily.

And for a while he was still going to high school, and after graduation he had a day job in a mechanics' shop and took a couple college classes from Western Tech on the side. How the hell did he do all that when he was going out and getting shot at and beaten up on a consistent basis? And none of the family, his professors, classmates, or co-workers ever noticed. From the way Carl's Jr. reacts to being injured, it's clear this is nowhere near his first time. He's lucky to still be alive. But that doesn't mean Jack wants to keep depending on that luck. Because one of these days it's going to run out.

Jack hadn't really thought about how much danger the kid was in out there with them on missions until he stumbled off that train covered in bruises with a boot print in his chest. Jack had sort of taken for granted that a former vigilante who'd spent two years in prison could handle himself in a fight. But that was against random street thugs, guys with no real training. Out in the field, they're going up against mercs with special ops level skills, and grabbing some dirt and throwing it in their face isn't always going to be enough.

The fact remains that Carl's Jr. is an amateur. And in this line of work that's liable to get him killed. He doesn't have Jack's years of CIA, Army, and Delta training that makes him react to any attack on instinct. He doesn't even have Riley's CIA Farm experience. And the next time they go up against hired guns like Wexler's, he might be outmatched.

He's barely had time to recover from Germany, to be honest, but they could be going back in the field any day, and Jack does not ever want to see the kid come home with that level of damage again. I thought I was going to be able to watch his back enough that this wouldn't be a concern. But the more we put him in the field, the more it seems like the right move is to split up sometimes, to let him do his thing while Riles and I do ours. Jack had fully expected to have to watch the kid like a hawk so he didn't run or do something to sabotage them. But now he knows that's not gonna happen. I can trust him to go off on his own and actually do the job. But not if he's gonna get killed first.

Jack figures they're warmed up enough. He and the kid are both sweating and Jack can feel the slight buzz of rising adrenaline. You don't get any warmup in the field. But we're starting slow.

"Since you've never even had entry training, like a normal operative, we're going to start with the basics." And so you don't kill yourself trying harder moves on damaged ribs. The kid's a tough one, Jack will give him that, but it's clear he's starting to hurt. But the thing about field training is that you learn to fight when you by all rights should be giving up and dying on the ground.