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“God damn,” Liam muttered. “Didn’t take long to set someone up in Jeffery’s spot, did he?”
“Good afternoon, everyone,” Sam said over the speakers in the gym. “Today you will experience combat training.”
What the hell did that mean?
“In the center of the room, you will find boxing gloves. Elise and Dahlia will square off as will Drake and Liam,” Sam said. “You are done when one housemate from each group is unconscious. Please begin when you’re ready.”
Jesus Christ. We had to knock each other out? What was the point of all this? Knowing there would be no answer, I hung my head and walked out to grab the gloves. For once, I was the first to move, leaving the others behind me to scramble to catch up.
Elise snatched up the pair of gloves I was going to grab. “Sorry, chick. Seniority means I get first pick.”
I flicked my eyes up to her and remembered the sounds my father had made as he died. I grinned at her menacingly and grabbed the other pair of gloves.
“It’s fine. Can we do this and get it over with?” I said as I shoved my hands into the gloves.
Liam and Drake went first. Drake was broader and had a longer reach than Liam did. It was a slaughter. Less than a minute into the fight Drake clocked Liam with an uppercut to the jaw and the smaller man tumbled backward to the ground. He started snoring. I gaped at Liam thinking that was only something that happened in cartoons, but he lay there for several seconds sucking wind until his eyes blinked back to consciousness.
He stumbled to his hands and knees, blood dripping from his lips and nose. “Wah—wah happen?” he mumbled, his voice slurred and incoherent.
Drake stripped his gloves off and tossed them down. “Your turn I guess,” he said.
“Let’s go.” Elise smacked her gloves together. Both of her eyes were still black from where I’d broken her nose. “I need to get some aggression out.”
I didn’t say anything. I was tired of talking. Nothing I said was going to change the way Elise was going to treat me. Why even bother?
I took three steps toward her, and before she had time to even think, I snapped my fist out toward her face. I wanted to break her damned nose a second time, but I was a little off balance and my aim sucked, so instead of hitting her dead in the nose, I clipped her cheek.
Elise stumbled back, a gloved hand to her face. “Holy shit. We didn’t even say ‘go’ yet.”
“No one said go for us,” Drake said from his spot leaning against the wall.
Elise’s face went red with anger. She came at me quickly, throwing a roundhouse right at my face. Barely ducking out of the way, I punched at her stomach. To me, it’d been a hard punch, but Elise didn’t act as though she’d been hit at all. It was like all the agony and suffering they’d experienced in this place had inoculated all of them to pain. Drake and Liam had both been stabbed and had continued on like it was no big deal. We were changing in this house. Whether it was his intention or not, Sam was making us into something new.
Elise grinned at the blow I’d landed to her stomach. I thought she’d have some smartass bitchy comment for me. Instead she brought her glove down on top of my head like a sledgehammer and backed away.
Stars flashed across my vision, and I blinked rapidly to try and clear my head.
“Teach you to sucker punch me, bitch,” Elise muttered.
Once I’d gotten my head clear, I approached her again. We traded punches for several minutes; I was breathing heavier than I had in any of the other workouts, and my lip was split, but I’d done some damage to Elise. Her right eye was red and swollen, and a small trickle of blood was oozing down her lip from where I’d managed to finally hit her in the mouth.
Elise was heaving breaths too, and for once looked more winded than I did. Her hands were moving more sluggishly. When she lunged forward lazily and tried to punch me again, her left hand lowered, leaving her face unguarded. Not bothering to worry about the right-hand punch she was throwing, I slammed my own fist into her jaw. Her swing clipped me in the temple, but mine took her full in the chin. She tumbled to the floor, eyes rolled back in her head as I stumbled backward.
Her strike had shaken me, but mine had knocked her out cold. I gazed down at her unconscious body in equal parts shock, surprise, and pride. I’d done that. I had fought someone in a fair fight, and I’d won. My mind flashed back to the foster home and the way the other kids made my life a living hell, picking on me and beating me up. In my whole life, I’d never won a fight before. Between this and the other things I’d done here, I was starting to get a strange emotional surge. Everything here was awful and bloodthirsty, but I was getting mentally stronger. I was doing things I’d never believed possible even two weeks ago.
“Got her good,” Liam said, still holding his head.
Drake said nothing. Instead, he let his eyes linger on me, and if I wasn’t mistaken, I read pride on his face. Maybe he was happy I was finally standing up for myself and hadn’t let Elise walk all over me.
Regardless of my success, I was done with the workout. All I wanted was a shower. Stripping my gloves off, I tossed them down at Elise’s still unconscious body and walked toward the shower. I didn’t even glance at the others as I left, even though I could still feel Drake’s eyes on me. I welcomed the attention.
Once I was under the hot spray of the water, I checked over myself. I didn’t notice any new bruises popping up, which was good. One thing I did notice was that my body was starting to change. Strange as it was, the time I’d spent in this awful place had been good for one thing. I was eating better than I had in a decade. I’d already put on some weight, and that made me look less sickly and starved than I’d been before. All the exercises in the gym had begun to help me as well. It hadn’t been long, but I could already see some muscle starting to develop on my arms and legs.
It made me feel strange looking down at my body as the water ran in rivulets across my skin. The house, and the man running it, was breaking my mind but building my body. What, truly, was the point of all this? Why give us food and exercise, but then force us to abuse each other and torture and kill others? If it was a game, it was one I didn’t understand yet. More and more, I wanted to understand. The others acted like they were simply trying to survive one day at a time, but I wanted answers. Needed answers.
When I came back out from the showers, the others were already gone. They’d either showered and changed quicker than I had, or they’d gone back to their rooms already. With no instruction, I did the same. I spent a couple of hours in my room before I was instructed to go to the dining room for the next meal.
It was on the way that I remembered that I’d locked the new guy, Kaden, in his room earlier. He hadn’t been happy about that. He’d probably act like a dick about it when we ate. Joy.
