Chapter 7
Readying herself, Ulayna takes a deep breath and slowly lets it out. She grounds herself in her breath and lets her muscles relax, one by one. Right now, she has a purpose. She’s motivated, and she won’t fail.
She lets go of everything she can’t control and focuses on what she can control—her mind and her reactions.
She stares at Bill from several paces away, waiting for him to make his move.
She’s patient. Eventually, he’ll come to her.
Over the past several weeks of training, she’s learned that patience is one of her strong suits.
Maybe it’s stubbornness. Or maybe it's because of everything she dealt with in the Program, but she can’t be goaded into action before she’s ready.
She’s also found that she has a natural talent for reading people. In her previous life, she’d used the skill to assess her Masters’ moods. She’d known, instinctively, when they were going to come for her and how to react to minimize their lustful advances.
She’s found that skill incredibly useful in sizing up opponents before a fight. When she lets the rest of the world fall away and focuses on the present moment, it’s almost as if she knows what they’re going to do before they even do.
Bill’s fingers twitch in a minute movement—his tell that he’s ready to attack.
Unmoving, she holds her posture, her Silat scarf grasped between her two hands. She’s ready but not tense.
With a roar, he charges.
He lunges forward, a knife materializing in his palm. Confident he’s about to win, he aims to plunge the knife into her midsection.
With movements that have now become instinctual, Ulayna blocks his knife strike with her forearm. She twists the scarf up around his striking hand and pivots to the side. As he steps in for another strike, the scarf slides down off his wrist, taking the knife with it.
Suddenly unarmed, Bill attacks with his fists.
Ulayna blocks again. With the scarf in her hand, she pushes his fist down and spins her hand around it. The quick, flowing movement creates a noose around his wrist before he realizes what’s happening.
She yanks hard, pulling him forward and down.
With his weight already outstretched toward her, he’s overbalanced and is yanked to his knees in front of her. His left hand slams into the ground to prevent face-planting while his right wrist is still bound in her scarf.
Not wasting the opportunity, Ulayna steps forward and knees him aggressively in the head.
She releases his wrist and bounces back, ready for his next attack.
Bill shakes his head like an enraged bear and springs to his feet.
Before he can attack, Ulayna flicks the end of the scarf out like a whip. The beads whistle through the air and snap millimeters from his face. He rears his head back to avoid losing an eye.
Unfazed, he comes at her again.
She holds the scarf taut between her two hands and uses it to block his blow. Knocking his hand to the side with one hand, she jabs at his gut with her other.
He strikes with his other hand, but she’s already spinning away, and his fist glances off her temple. That was close!
She flicks the scarf at him again, hoping to distract him and gain a few seconds to regroup. Unfortunately, he’s ready, and he catches the other end of the scarf.
Having trained for this possibility, she knows what to do.
She yanks hard on the scarf. Not to pull him over, but to rapidly launch herself toward him. Using her momentum, she comes in with a heel strike to his nose.
He blocks her strike but has to release the scarf to do so.
When he swings again, she turns, shoves his fist to the side, and steps into his space. Now, for the tricky part.
As he brings an elbow up to strike her chin, she intercepts it with her scarf, twists her hands around, and drops low.
Once again, he tumbles face-first to the ground, his wrist and elbow ensnared in her scarf. She stands quickly, now slightly behind him. She pulls up on the scarf while simultaneously pressing down on his elbow with her knee.
His elbow and shoulder bend backward at the wrong angle. She puts a little more pressure on him with her knee.
“Ah!” he yells and taps out frantically before she can break his elbow or dislocate his shoulder.
Instantly, she releases him.
She steps back, breathing hard and smiling in victory.
Phoenix rushes forward, whooping in delight, and hugs her. Ruger claps and smirks at Bill, who rubs his shoulder ruefully.
“I did it!” Ulayna says, not quite believing it.
Bill climbs to his feet, mumbling something about gremlins and little demons.
“Barely,” Shade says.
Ulayna turns to him and frowns.
“You did it, but just barely. Had you not dodged quickly enough, that strike to your temple would have been the end.”
“But I did,” Ulayna counters. “He didn’t get me.”
“And next time?”
Ulayna narrows her eyes at him. Determined, she says, “I’ll avoid his strike next time too. He’s bigger than me, and more powerful, but I can do it.”
“And me? Can you avoid my strikes too?”
Ulayna gulps at the obvious challenge. She hasn’t fought Shade yet, but she’s seen him sparring with the men when she’s spied on their training. He’s wickedly fast. Where Bill is raw power, Shade is a deadly sort of calm. He strikes like a cobra—without warning and with explosive power.
Refusing to back down, she takes a step back and plants her feet in her fighting stance.
Shade lifts an eyebrow at her. “Are you sure you want to do this, little one? I won’t pull my punches like Bill and Phoenix have been.”
Alarmed, she glances at Bill and Phoenix, who both shrug. She thought she’d been doing so well, only to learn that they’ve been taking it easy on her.
Fear lances through her, but she won’t back down. She can feel her heart rate skyrocket and her breath rush in and out, uncontrollably.
She lets it go. She lets all her fears and uncertainties wash away with her breath. For a brief second, she closes her eyes and focuses inward until she’s calm. When her eyes snap back open, she’s ready. She probably won’t win this fight, but she’s ready for whatever comes.
“One of these days, you’re going to teach me that trick,” Phoenix says from her side.
Ulayna furrows her brow in confusion, and she glances toward Phoenix. “What trick?”
“That trick where you go from freaked out or terrified to centered and calm with just a breath. Even after years of training, I still can’t control my responses like you do. That’s some seriously Zen shit.”
She glances back at Shade, but he’s dropped his fighting stance, and even he looks curious about her answer. “It’s not a trick, really.” She pauses, trying to figure out how to describe it. “It’s just something I taught myself while I was in the Program.”
“What do you mean?” Phoenix asks.
She struggles to put her thoughts into words that they’ll understand.
“Well, I never had much control over my life. Even as a child, living in the orphanage, I never had much agency. Someone was always telling me when to sleep, what to eat, and how to act. I guess, to some extent, that’s normal for kids.
But when the Program took me, it was so much worse.
I had no control over anything—not my mind and not my body.
They were brainwashing us, so even my thoughts seemed to be controlled by them.
“One day, completely by accident, I stumbled across a copy of the book, A Man’s Search for Meaning. Literally tripped over it. It was lying in the middle of the floor. I have no idea where it came from, but it saved my life.
“In the book, Viktor Frankl talks about his time in the Nazi concentration camps and how he learned to control his reactions. He describes that even in the face of true horror and suffering, when you have no control over anything, not even your life, there is still one thing you can control. He called it the last human freedom. He said that even when everything has been taken from you, you can still choose how you react. You can still choose to have a good attitude.”
Ulayna shrugs, uncomfortable trying to explain something so deeply personal.
“I guess the idea stuck. Even when I was being beaten, tortured, or raped, I learned to dissociate from it. I learned to ground myself in the knowledge that no matter what they did to me, I was still free to choose how to respond. They didn’t get to control my emotions or how I felt about something. I did.
“Now, anytime I feel like something is out of my control, I take a deep breath and remind myself that it’s my choice how I react. I can choose to panic and cry. Or I can choose to move forward with purpose and determination.”
Bill and Phoenix both stare at her, awestruck.
Shade nods his head once—a huge sign of approval coming from him. “You don’t need our training, little one,” he says. “You’re already the most powerful person in the world.”
Ulayna blushes at the compliment and gives him a small smile. “Thanks. But I’d still like to practice.” She glares at Phoenix and Bill. “Now that I know they’ve been taking it easy on me, I’m more determined than ever.”
Bill rubs the back of his neck, looking sheepish. “I may have started out pulling my punches, but I haven’t been for a few days now. You won that fight, fair and square, little one.”
A sense of elation courses through her at Bill’s admission. But she quickly controls her emotions when Shade drops into a fighting stance. She can do this. She knows she can.
—
Sitting on the couch in the bunkhouse, Ruger can feel the little naggle at the back of his neck, indicating that he’s being watched. Not the typical feeling of someone casually glancing your way, but the feeling of being studied and having your moves cataloged.
He keeps his eyes focused on the giant TV screen and the soccer game he’d been watching, but he lets his other senses spool out.
He listens for the telltale sound of footsteps to gauge the person's size.
He feels for air currents to indicate whether the person is coming in through an open doorway or window. Most of all, he relies on his gut.