(Boy's dorm, South Africa base, February 2133)
"F***, Clara's gonna pop a blood vessel, bro. She looked ready to kill you," said Eddie.
"She should," muttered Louis quietly.
"Aiya bro why liddat?" said Eddie. "I tell you. I also fumble before in NS. You know right, out of my first 15 simulations I "died" in 11 of them!"
"You're not helping, Eddie," said Albert under him, turned away, half-asleep.
"He's not helping himself either!" exclaimed Eddie.
"You're still here because you passed. Barely, yes. But passed," assured Sean, sleeping under Louis.
"That's the problem, you see how the rest sees me," said Louis sadly.
"Let them think what they want," smiled Sean.
"What if they're right?" asked Louis softly, voice trembling.
No one answered. That silence says more than words. Louis sits up, voice cracking.
"Do you think I'm cut out for this?"
"No," said Albert after a while.
"Bro…" muttered Eddie.
"I am not sugarcoating," said Albert. "You're not there yet. Your aim's inconsistent, and your decision-making lags under pressure," he said.
"But," he added, tone changing. "That's not a death sentence. It is however, a liability — for now."
"So, there is hope?" whispered Louis.
"It's a none zero probability," replied Albert.
"Now that's a pep talk," remarked Sean. All 4 snickered.
The lights went out at the same time. Albert gave Louis an assuring pat on the shoulder as he climbed to bed.
(The next day)
"What are you all?!" roared Franz with a loudspeaker.
"Morons!" yelled the cadets, answering in the self-demeaning answers they were forced to adopt. They are doing an intense physical course, running through the humid South African jungle at noon time carrying giant logs, exposed under the blazing Sun.
In a textbook display of being evil for the sake of evil, they were made to run in winter coats, and if a cadet tries to cool himself or herself down by generating ice before they reach the finishing line, it will be an instant disqualification.
While South Africa in February can get chilly at night, in the morning it can get up to 30 degrees Celsius.
A stark contrast to the cadets being cooked are the instructors, who are following them in a mobile command vehicle, enjoying air-conditioning and iced water.
"Why are you all Morons?!" asked Franz.
"Because we lack IQ when we chose to come here willingly to suffer!" yelled the cadets.
"Good! Then why are you all still so stupid? You can quit you know!" yelled Franz. "More than half of you all are eliminated by now. There's nothing embarrassing about it!"
"Sir, WE WILL RATHER DIE THAN QUIT!" yelled Clara proudly.
"WILL RATHER DIE THAN QUIT!" yelled the cadets in unison.
"WE ARE HERE TO BE THE BEST!" roared Carl, "Am I right guys?"
"YES!" yelled the cadets in unison, pumping each other on.
Franz laughed. "Best in what? IN FAILING?!"
"If this is the best you got, this planet is in deep sh*t! I suggest you save yourselves energy and save us our saliva," berated Herbert
"Kindly kick yourselves out of the door!" he yelled.
Carl dashed forward, leading the cadets, Sean followed after him closely, with Clara and Ariel tied at third place behind them, followed by the other cadets.
Sean caught up to Carl, his throat parched and sweat raining down his body.
Upon arriving at the finishing line, the 2 dropped and immediately pulled off their winter coats, panting heavily. Sean took off his boot, pouring out streams of sweat and forming puddles on the ground, throwing the rubber training prop meant to stand in for his gun one side. Carl's ghostly face is as red as a tomato now, looking like as if he had sunburn, he emptied the flask of water in his assault backpack, generating sheets of ice onto his body to cool himself down.
The other cadets steadily arrived, their actions similar to that of Sean and Carl, and very soon the entire area is filled with sheets of ice as cadets generated ice on themselves and each other to cool themselves down.
"Motherf******…" panted Albert in Cantonese, leaning against a tree, placing a giant block of ice on his forehead after throwing his assault backpack one side, his flask of water now empty. A dazed Vera stumbled beside him, almost collapsing face first onto the ground had Albert not grabbed the hand grip on the back of her body armour, guiding her to sit down on the ground.
"Thanks…" she muttered as Albert condensed water vapour around her while she thirstily drank from her water flask.
Seeing the cadets, Nanami's anxiety finally subsided. The instructors had repeatedly consulted with the medical team when designing this course, and fortunately all of the things ended up as they had intended, none of the cadets have signs of heatstroke.
"Otherwise Wang Sir is gonna kill me...not that he can...but still," she thought.
Ariel wrung sweat from her sleeves like a soaked-up towel. Clara did the same, she playfully poked her in the shoulder.
"Not too bad," praised Clara.
Ariel smiled, thanking her. The 2 then went to help Eddie and Erika who just stumbled over the finishing line, helping them to unload.
"Why…did…I…choose…to…be…a…a…machine…gunner…?" cursed Eddie, dropping his assault backpack. His specialisation has one of the heaviest loads among all of the cadet.
"Relatable…" muttered Erika, putting down her toolkit and explosive models on her assault backpack, issued to her for her role as an EOD specialist.
Albert chuckled, sitting down below the tree, with Vera holding on to him for some support.
"On the battlefield people like you are priority targets for us snipers," he joked at Eddie.
"And people like you are priority targets for loitering munitions," joked Sean, who had moved over.
"Just messing around," said Albert in Chinese.
Eddie looked around him. "Where's Louis?" he asked.
"Was Louis not with you guys?" asked Clara.
"Was he…" muttered Eddie, his brain not functioning from the fatigue and heat, only having a faint memory of Louis running with them.
Sean scanned through the rest of the cadets coming in, finally finding the cadet numbered 42 among the last group of cadets.
Louis is close to breaking, he stumbled along, momentarily losing his balance and fell, some of the cadets around him also falling.
He tried to get up, but he has no energy, struggling to even crawl forward.
"IF YOU CAN'T TAKE IT, I SUGGEST YOU QUIT!" yelled Herbert at the cadets on the ground.
"C'mon Louis, you are almost there!" yelled Ariel, encouraging him.
Louis tried to stand up, only to instantly fall back down, panting and crawling forward painfully.
"Go Louis go! Almost there!" yelled Eddie.
"Just a bit more! You can do it!" yelled Albert.
Painfully, Louis yelled, summoning all the energy into his legs, running over the finishing line. Sean and Giorgio immediately helped him to remove his assault backpack and winter coat, while Albert generated sheets of ice around Louis to cool him off.
"Breathe, breathe, you did good," instructed Giorgio, giving him a quick check.
The break time of the cadets was limited as soon Nanami blew the whistle, and the cadets all hurriedly gathered together.
"Push-ups ready!" she yelled. "100 each!"
All of the cadets got down and started doing push ups.
Franz got down from the command vehicle, holding sticks of barbecued meat in front of the cadets. Sean rolled his eyes internally at this ploy employed by the instructors to break them. They had woken up at 3am in the morning and did PT and drills all the way until now at 1pm, and had not eaten a bite since 3.30am. Hence, all of the cadets are hungry and worn out.
Franz dangled a barbecued sausage in front of Sean, waving it like as if it is a carrot at the end of a stick, and Sean is a donkey.
Sean simply closed his eyes shut and started mumbling Shakespeare lines he had memorised when he learned theatre acting, successfully distracting himself away from the hunger pangs.
"To be or not to be, that is the question: whether' tis nobler in the mind to suffer. The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them…" mumbled Sean.
A confused Franz stared at him. "Number 9, did you get heatstroke?!" he yelled.
"No sir," replied Sean firmly.
"Then?!" he asked. "What are you saying?"
"Shakespeare, sir!" replied Sean, not stopping his push-ups nor his mumbling. "From Hamlet!"
Franz chuckled, "are you mocking me for my lack of understanding on the more fanciful aspects of life? Like literature?"
"Won't dare to, sir!" replied Sean.
Finding no fun in "tormenting" Sean, Franz moved to another target.
To the back-left, Louis heard the line and didn't laugh.
To be or not to be…
For Sean, it was a quip. For Louis, it was a knife.
The days turned to weeks. As the training continues in intensity, more and more cadets are washed out at the end of each section, and many chose to quit too.
"I QUIT!" cried a cadet caked deep in mud after another gruelling day of PT and shooting drills, limping out to the flag pole to renounce his cadet number.
Shooting drills, tactical drills, magic utilisation, PT, sparring, wilderness survival, maritime operations. These torturous courses went on in cycles after cycles as the instructors worked their way through in weeding out those that they deemed undesirable.
To Sean, the entire selection course can be seen as an example of a complex chemistry process, the instructors are the scientists, the cadets are the reactants.
What is the end goal of the instructors? To create the perfect solution to solve the ever-evolving problem of special operations, and how will they achieve that? By subjecting the reactants to heinous processes that fundamentally alter them and meld them into something new and better- boiling, distilling, filtering and more.
As for Louis, he perceives himself as that impurity stubbornly staying on and latching with all of its might onto the desired atoms in the solution, trying to avoid the judgement that will be rained down on him eventually by the cold hand of purifying processes. All that kept him going is his dream and idealism, one that stubbornly latched on like glue.
But the glue is peeling.
To be?
Or not to be?
That is indeed the question for Louis. Whether his dream and idealism will let him to be.