Chapter 65: Any Time

Milo braced his hands on his knees, pulling in one breath after another.

Hilly, uneven terrain proved unpleasant to run through, especially with shoes full of gravel. He could only expect to start leaving trails of blood if he took them off.

An instructor with a blue sweatband clicked times in on his digital board. A camera had been lodged in the dirt to closely monitor which student had made it and when.

While he wasn’t sure of his time, it had to be between five and six minutes. His endurance had helped him greatly here. He’d shot forward and barely slowed down.

The state of his heart and his lungs likely wouldn’t have struck Cald as anything impressive now.

Layla’s pink coils emerged in the distance.

Of those left in the race, she was pulling ahead.

Mist gathered over her gasping mouth. Suddenly, her eyes narrowed at a structure behind Milo, and her pace faltered.

As another student overtook her, she jumped back into her run and finished the last stretch.

"Shit!" Layla stamped the ground. "I had it. I had it!"

She hadn’t managed to reclaim her lead and had lost one place.

"It’s just one person," Milo said. "Don’t worry."

"One person, and one fault. All mine. It was—I was dis-tra-cte..."

"Whoa there, calm down." He steered her to the side as others bolted toward them to finish the race. "First, breathe. At least that’s what I learned from you. If my words don’t work, blame yourself!"

"Ah-aha-haha."

Her wheezing only worsened as she struggled to laugh.

"Okay, really calm down, ’cause I’m getting worried!"

"I’m ok-ay..." Layla let out one long breath and steadied herself. "B-But what the hell is that!"

Following the girl’s eyes, Milo turned around to inspect what had distracted her. The bulb of steel towered over their heads.

Yeah. Being one of the first to climb over the main hill, he’d gotten to see that earlier than most.

He nodded at the contraption and concluded...

"A jet engine."

After the poor performers finished the race with embarrassing times of fifteen to twenty minutes, the instructors divided the crowd back into classes.

The clarity accompanied Milo as he made his way to the middle of the field, where the groups assembled on the Turning land were surrounded by eight jet engines. The machinery had been placed on geared platforms that looked built to rotate.

So they were really going through with the simulations.

Things were going to heat up. And this wasn’t even the Field exam.

SCREEEECH!

Mr. Cald seized the students’ attention once again.

"As the director of this exam, I have an announcement to make."

To his left, Henry stood with his shoulders high up, holding some panel.

The pair had been so close during the lockdown. What had gone wrong?

"You must listen to me very carefully before taking another step," the man continued. "Everyone?"

SCREEEECH!

Making sure he was being listened to, Cald shrieked the whistle a second time.

A girl next to Milo placed a palm on her hip.

"What could be so important?..."

At the side of the field, the instructor with the blue sweatband angled the camera toward the middle.

"All of you want to do your best," Mr. Cald said. "There’s something you need to know."

...Toward all of the students.

"Nothing!" Milo yelled his response out late. "Down, everyone, down!"

By the time he threw his palms onto the nearest classmates’ shoulders, the roar had already blasted.

The girl who’d placed a palm on her hip slipped past his grip and tumbled over in the jet engine’s gust.

"Aaahh!" "Ghhhh!" "Help me!!" "Ueeeh!"

Despite the panic of the weaker students, Milo and the majority of Survey students held strong.

The Field students, however, seemed more focused on brute-forcing their way through than on pressing themselves low or using the uneven terrain to their advantage.

While the space around him grew scarce, the next wave of flying bodies approached.

"....aaaAAAHHH!!"

At the last moment, he ducked to the side and dodged a helpless boy.

Shit! Is that even safe?! What if someone flies into the turbines and becomes salad?!

That shift cost him his position, and the pressure became too much.

The gust flung him into the air when—

"Man! I got you!"

Flat on the ground, Ollie caught Milo by the leg.

"O-Ollie!?"

Where the muscular Field trainees succumbed to the wind, the one boy who lacked physique stayed amongst the top performers.

"You’re doing quite well!"

"Can’t say the same about you, man. Get down!"

Getting down was not as easy as Ollie advertised. Damn it, if only Milo hadn’t bothered warning everyone and had thrown himself to the ground alone!

Sometimes, altruism was the right value to act by. Other times, selfishness might’ve been th—

WHAM!

A flying arm struck his back, and he did not get to finish the thought.

"Whoa, no, nonono—!" "Man, YO, GET DOWN!"

His feet losing contact with the ground settled it.

Before Ollie could release his grip, the wind dragged him alongside Milo and up into the tornado of bodies.

"There’s nun we can do now," the boy yelled over the roar. "Man, if I knew you’d do me like that, I wouldn’t have saved you!"

"Like it’s my fault?!" Milo gestured at the field from mid-air. "Who would’ve seen that—"

A collision with another body sent him huddling into a ball.

"Okay, oookay!! When will it stop, when the hell will it stop?!"

When he uncovered his face to look around, Ollie was gone. He’d probably collided with someone as well and surged off in another direction. They’d meet again only after this ended.

At last, the gust started to weaken. Gradually, so nobody would suddenly fall out of the sky and die.

SCREEEECH!

Once everyone had made it onto the ground, the whistle returned. Students straightened up, their clothes and heads full of dust.

"We do not seem to have any casualties," Mr. Cald announced. "I’m proud of you. I hope the first section of the Survey exam has taught you one thing: it can come at any time, whether you think it’s likely or not."

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⋆˚࿔ Coming right up: "Ready" ... ⤵︎ [!]