Never Again

Chapter 14

Katie's - POV

Training was intense. More intense than any other thing I've done in my life before.

I had a bit of experience with running and as I was able to choose my speed I didn't struggle too much. When it came to the other things, however, I struggled quite a lot. I was very lucky that some of the people that were training with me every session were very unfit and were struggling to do any of the training.

You might have wondered why I was so calm. I also wonder that. After I though I was going to die I hadn't really cared much for anything. I liked my chats with Drew but I didn't really get the same overall enjoyment out of life that I did before. I felt less emotional and didn't react anymore to the violence constantly going on around me.

Since the start of my time here I felt much more physically capable of many different things. I was able to run for longer, I was stronger, I was quicker and felt that my senses were more in tune with the rest of my body. I over all felt better, physically and mentally.

We hadn't trained in fighting yet but I was sure I could give someone a real fight because of my speed and ability to quickly analyse and adapt to situations, even in the most tense moments. This was something I didn't have before I was taken.

"So," Drew said, breaking me from my thoughts. "How is your training going?"

I had expected everyone at the higher levels to know how all of our training was proceeding but it seemed that information was something Ana wanted to keep private. She had her reasons and neither I or anyone else was willing to risk her wrath by asking.

"I'm much more toned," I said pulling up my shirt to show the starting definition of abs. "Although I am more mentally tired each day. It's much harder work that I thought."

"Yeah, it was like that for me when I first started," She said, in her own world. "Before..."

She trailed off and seemed to get lost in her own thoughts so I tapped her on the shoulder and she quickly snapped out of it and flashed me a smile.

"Sorry, I completely zoned out." she said with a small chuckle, scratching the back of her neck.

She seemed to not want to stay on this subject so I changed it and we just talked about life. I could see the relief on her face even though she tried to hide it.

"Well, I'd better get going." Drew said, standing up and turning to leave.

She quickly patted my shoulder as she walked past out of my room and into the dim hallway to her room, which was a small bit away from mine.

"Bye." I said, unconsciously smiling.

When Drew had told me she was my partner I had at first assumed she'd be my roommate too but once I healed and got to my room and only saw a small concrete box with one bed, I knew that it was me alone at night.

A lot of people had different theories that you'd hear as you walked into the food hall or when we were all going back to our rooms.

The most popular between the girls here was that they didn't want anyone forming real relationships but as they allowed people to go into each others rooms anytime in the day, it didn't look like that was the case at all to me.

What I thought was that they wanted you to get used to the lonely feeling of sleeping by yourself without anyone to talk to or just to have there as a comfort. It made sense to me, as being able to isolate yourself from your surroundings was a trait most people didn't have and so it was no surprise that they'd do this.

However, they didn't want us to feel helpless and completely alone. They wanted us to also bond with our partners so that whatever we did together, we'd have good chemistry and be able to spend days with each other without annoyance to the point of abandoning the other. I had heard rumours of that happening and the abandoner ended up dying, but that's just a rumour.

Figuring out a way out of here was something I didn't think about as the few who I had seen try were tourtured before they were killed. It was all put on display to make us docile and scare us into submission and it worked. No one had tried after the first few weeks as the final kid's execution was put on display in front of everybody.

Her brutal beheading was still embedded in my mind and nothing I did could remove it.

I'd told Drew some of what happened and she told me that what happened was normal and to be expected. By the tone of her voice I could tell there was more to it, but as I didn't trust her and didn't want to become a nuisance and annoy her I didn't bother. I never got around to expressing my feelings on how much the situation really effected me.

Right now, all I could do was train and hope that someday I would get a great opportunity to escape. In the meantime I had to fall in line and wait. I was no use to myself, my friends or family if I was dead.