District 42-Chapter 200: Approved
Casper opened his eyelids slowly, blinking sometimes until his vision got used to the lights of the Simulation room. He felt that his body was cold, and that was because his clothes were soaked in sweat. Tears were coming out in a nonstop flow from his eyes, and no matter how many times he tried to wipe them, they wouldn’t stop.
It didn’t last too long for the headache to come as well, the pain in all muscles of his body, and the sensation of being two times as heavy as before. He couldn’t remember well how he could pull through inside the simulation. Generally, it delayed several minutes, sometimes even hours, for him to remember what happened there, particularly when he was looking for details.
That day was the only one since he started to practice in the Simulation room in which Casper found himself not willing to bring to memory what happened inside that fake world again. Deep inside he knew that those events he lived were the same as he needed to go through in the past, and he had enough details of it to be haunted by.
He just needed to stay there for longer and just rest as he could. The feeling of his muscles losing tension was good. His mind was soothing and the bad feelings that his past brought with it disappear little by little.
"It’s pointless to have had to pull through all of that awful situation again... In the end, it’s just the same. I won’t forget about my past, or deal better with it, just because I went for the same agony and frustration for a second time..."
After some time, First, Second and Third appeared on the door of that white room. They didn’t dare to enter there, though. They just keep looking at Casper, quiet, and somewhat worried about him. Those three saw what happened in Casper’s life before, and although it wasn’t like they had any compassion for him since they didn’t know each other, they still had empathy. The triplets also were soldiers, and they needed to lose important people before as well and could bring themselves to do nothing but survive at the time.
Because of that empathy, after giving a check-up on Casper’s body to be sure that he wasn’t harmed, or would be at risk without going to the infirmary, they got out of that room, turned the lights off, just leaving a bit of illumination coming from the wide-open door, and left Casper alone.
"Nothing changed... Not even a slight thing changed... What I needed was... was that they all were still here with me... I needed that she would be here, as well. Or, at least, I wanted to come back to that time and just let myself give my life on that battlefield as well..."
As the time passed by and his sins kept rounding his mind, tormenting him, the soldier felt more and more tired, until he could finally close his eyes and sleep.
...
Casper woke up when it was 3 am, more or less. He had slept in that room very early and stayed asleep for almost 7 hours. He wasn’t feeling any better at all after sleeping on the floor, and it made his body get even achier, but in the end, he could vanish his fatigue and end with the headache he got.
Always when the collateral symptoms of the Simulations showed, it was just a matter of go to sleep. After some hours of resting, it passed very quickly. The worst thing after go to the Simulation room was the muscle ache that didn’t vanish so quickly, even with the treatment of those beds in the dormitory.
As far as he knew, the simulations used to last 2 hours or more, and throughout that experience, the real body of a person would keep contracting and relaxing the muscles nonstop. Depending on what you were passing for inside the simulation and how tired and harmed you were inside it, your muscles tensioned more and more, and lasted more time like this before they relaxed again.
After two consecutive hours of this "exercise", your whole body ended up in pain.
With certain difficulty, Casper could raise from the ground, and walk slowly towards the exit of that room.
"Damn, where is my walking stick? And why this tourniquet isn’t making pressure on my leg at all...?" For a moment, he paused, then his mind recalled the memory that Casper was mistaking with reality.
He sighed, after all, it was always like that. The only thing he could do in a situation like that was to keep quiet and sigh, continuing with his life and getting used to it.
Although he didn’t want, the memories would keep coming, and he would change things at times.
After he left the room, he walked briefly through the place, seeing that the lights were all off. No Sgail was walking through there, and he wasn’t hearing anything instead of his own steps. Just then he noticed how late it was.
"I saw the hour after I woke up. It’s three, still dawn. Why are you so dizzy? Wake up already!"
He kept giving uncertain and weak steps until he got into the cafeteria. He invaded the place, since there wouldn’t be anyone there anyway, and searched all over the place for a manner in which he could do that drink they called coffee but wasn’t coffee at all.
"There is no way that they can make a coffee plantation in District 42. They can’t cultivate everything, after all. There are some things they need to synthesize, which is the case of coffee and basically all the other grains they need to use here, even beans."
The taste of that synthetic coffee wasn’t the best, but at least fulfilled its role of giving energy to him. It was also a curious thing there since District 42 also had a lot of similarities to his world, which left Casper thinking if that really was another dimension, world, or whatever.
Just as he finished to do his coffee and make a sandwich, he was walking to one of the tables when he saw someone appearing in the cafeteria.
It had been a while since he didn’t meet that guy, he nearly forgot him.
"Hi, Leonel." Casper greeted, and the man answered by nodding with his head.
The Sgail had all his body bandaged and he had his left arm in a cast. He didn’t seem to have been slacking in the past week.
Casper looked quite concerned about his body, and Leonel just shrugged.
"That’s what it means to be a Sgail sometimes. Get used to it. Anyway, I will be better in some days. These injuries are nothing." He assured Casper.
"Well it’s not like I care about you, anyway, but you will be the one going on the mission with me, right? If you get incapacitated, it will delay us."
Leonel giggled with the sharpness in Casper’s words.
"I heard that you finally finished your preparation, huh?"
Casper nodded to him, starting to eat his sandwich after a few sips of his coffee.
"Yeah. But I don’t know if I passed." He shrugged.
Leonel shook his head, denying.
"Don’t worry about it, White warrior. The triplets are terrified, they couldn’t do anything but make you pass."
The soldier wasn’t surprised that they ended up approving him. He himself always got amazed when he remembered the struggle he did to get out of that place alive. It seemed even to be unreal, but he did.
No one could count how many soldiers Casper killed that day, but it wasn’t less than 100. Somehow, he could do it. He was against all odds there.
"... I see. I need to admit that I was expecting it."
"How is your body? Do you think you can act on your max potential? If not, you know what I will say..."
Casper got pensive for a while. He indeed could pass through all the other tests that the Sgails did with him. It wasn’t easy by any means, but he did it. However, he could not say that he was 100% yet. The problem there was to know how much more time the soldier would need to wait until he was completely fine and able to keep going with the mission.
He wasn’t a layman regarding activities involving tracking and capturing. He knew that every second they lost on that week of preparation was making them get more and more distant from their goal, which was to find the Rat.
"I am..." He tried his best to be convincing. "I passed for the tests, after all. It was hard as hell, but I did it. So I am ok."
The Sgail didn’t persist on the matter and just trusted in Casper. He couldn’t do anything there at all, seeing his results on the tests and performance during the trains.
"Well... What do I do for now, then?"
Leonel got up from the chair. heading to the exit of that place.
"Just go home for a while, White warrior." He waved, then left the cafeteria.
