"This is the Room," the Instructor said.
"Yes, ser," Catlin said. She was nervous and anxious at the same time. She had heard about the Room from Olders. She heard about the things they did to you, like turning the lights on and off and sometimes water on the floor. But her Instructor always had the Real Word. Her Instructor told her she had to get through a tunnel and do it fast.
"Are you ready?"
"Yes, ser."
He opened the door. It was a tiny place with another door. The one behind her shut and the lights went out.
The one in front of her opened and cold wet air hit her in the face. The place had echoes.
She moved, not even sure where the tunnel was or whether she was in it.
"Stop!" a voice yelled. And a red dot lit the wall and popped.
It was a shot. She knew that. Her body knew what to do; she was tumbling and meaning to roll and find cover, but the whole floor dropped, and she kept rolling, down a tube and splash! into cold water.
She flailed and got up in knee-deep water. You never believed a Safe. Someone had shot. You ran and got to cover.
But: Get through, the Instructor had said. Fast as you can.
So she got, fast as she could, till she ran into a wall and followed it, up again, onto the dry. In a place that rang under her boots. Noise was bad. It was dark and she was easy to see in the dark because of her pale skin and hair. She did not know whether she ought to sneak or run, but fast was fast, that was what the Instructor said.
She ran easy and quick, fingers of one hand trailing on the wall to keep her sense of place in the dark and one hand out ahead of her so she wouldn't run into something.
The tunnel did turn. She headed up a climb and down again onto concrete, and it was still dark.
Something—! she thought, just before she got to it and the Ambush grabbed her.
She elbowed it and twisted and knew it was an Enemy when she felt it grab her, but it only got cloth and twisting got her away, fast, fast, hard as she could run, heart hammering.
She hit the wall where it turned, bang! and nearly knocked herself cold, but she scrambled up and kept going, kept going—
The door opened, white and blinding.
Something made her duck and roll through it, and she landed on the floor in the tiny room, with the taste of blood in her mouth and her lip cut and her nose bleeding.
One door shut and the other opened, and the man there was not the Instructor. He had the brown of the Enemy and he had a gun.
She tried to kick him, but he Got her, she heard the buzz.
The door shut again and opened and she was getting up, mad and ashamed.
But this time it was her Instructor. "The Enemy is never fair," he said. "Let's go find out what you did right and wrong."
Catlin wiped her nose. She hurt. She was still mad and ashamed. She had gotten through. She wished she had got the man at the end. But he was an Older. That was not fair either. And her nose would not stop bleeding.
The Instructor got a cold cloth and had her put it on her neck. He said the med would look at her nose and her mouth. Meanwhile he turned on the Scriber and had her tell what she did and he told her most Sixes got stopped in the tunnel.
"You're exceptionally good," he said.
At which she felt much, much better. But she was not going to forget the Enemy at the end. They Got you here even when the lesson was over. That was the Rule. She hated being Got. She hated it. She knew when you grew up you went where Got was dead. She knew what dead was. They took the Sixes down to the slaughterhouse and they saw them kill a pig. It was fast and it stopped being a pig right there. They hauled it up and cut it and they got to see what dead meant: you just stopped, and after that you were just meat. No next time when you were dead, and you had to Get the Enemy first and make the Enemy dead fast.
She was good. But the Enemy was not fair. That was a scary thing to learn. She started shaking. She tried to stop, but the Instructor saw anyhow and said the med had better have a look at her.
"Yes, ser," she said. Her nose still bubbled and the cloth was red. She blotted at it and felt her knees wobble as she walked, but she walked all right.
The med said her nose was not broken. A tooth was loose, but that was all right, it would fix itself.
The Instructor said she was going to start marksmanship. He said she would be good in that, because her genotype was rated that way. She was expected to do well in the Room. All her genotype did. He said genotypes could sometimes get better. He said that was who she had to beat. That was who every azi had to beat. Even if she had never seen any other AC-7892.
She got a good mark for the day. She could not tell anyone. You were never supposed to. She could not talk about the tunnel. The Instructor told her so. It was a Rule.
It was only the last Enemy that worried her. The Instructor said a gun would have helped and size would have helped, but otherwise there was not much she could have done. It had not been wrong to roll at the last. Even if it put her on the floor when the door opened.
"I could have run past him," she said.
"He would have shot you in the back," the Instructor said. "Even in the hall."
She thought and thought about that.