Chapter 4
Gavin
That night, despite my jet lag, sleep relentlessly eluded me.
Nolar’s dying-engine snoring didn’t help the situation.
To be fair, ear plugs did wonders silencing his ruckus.
My mind simply refused to rest. I couldn’t even blame the narrow cots and their thin mattresses.
With my size and mass, I expected it to feel cramped and quite hard.
To my surprise, our beds turned out to be unexpectedly comfortable.
That still didn’t help me take a deep dive into dreamland.
Annoyed, I decided to go to the gym. Physical exertion always helped with insomnia. In this instance, it would also provide an outlet to vent the bottled-up frustration—not to say anger—that continued to rage inside me over the unfairness of this situation.
To my delight, the place was completely empty.
Considering the late hour, it was to be expected.
The Xelixian trainer sitting at the entrance desk lifted his head from the data pad he’d been browsing on to glance at me.
I nodded at him and shook my head in response to his unspoken question when he raised his eyebrow inquisitively.
I didn’t need assistance. Beyond the fact that Sohr and Yhan did a thorough job of explaining how to operate the systems, I worked with comparable simulators in the past, so they presented no challenge for me.
My footsteps echoed loudly in the vast space. It seemed to maliciously underline my loneliness. Another wave of anger surged within me. I should be with my Zhara right now instead of preparing to crack some virtual skulls.
And crack them I would.
I placed the pain nodules on the strategic locations on my body.
They looked like small, circular patches that would release an electric discharge at the spots where my opponents managed to inflict a wound.
The intensity of the discharge would be proportional to the severity of the virtual injury.
Naturally, safety mechanisms would kick in and end the simulation if the trainee got overwhelmed and was getting slaughtered. The goal wasn’t to electrocute us.
I chose a sword for the combat simulation I selected.
Blasters made killing too easy, and therefore not satisfying enough.
I wanted to inflict pain. I initiated the simulation.
Low-level enemies appeared on the field at various locations around the ten-meter radius of the instance.
Within the first couple of minutes, I quadrupled the difficulty, annoyed by the slow trickle before they rushed me.
My aggravation cranked up another notch at the sheer incompetence of their attacks.
I realized these were the first modules that would increase in difficulty over time, but I wanted a real challenge now.
For a split second, I considered overriding the program to force it to skip ahead to a worthy challenge.
The only thing that held me back was knowing that they would look at my records, even though the final difficulty setting for any given module would be the one considered for my final score.
I didn’t want to give them any excuse to label me as arrogant and overconfident.
They would have no grounds to find me at fault or lacking.
The next half hour felt like the most excruciating exercise in futility as I sliced through a little over one hundred enemies who kept throwing themselves at my sword.
Only once stage five kicked in did things finally get interesting.
Their artificial intelligence began making smarter decisions.
Instead of systematically impaling themselves on my sword, they dodged, swerved, lunged, and coordinated their attacks with the other virtual enemies.
It didn’t take long for me to realize the simulation was adapting to my combat style and attempting to anticipate my next moves.
When one of them successfully set off a nodule in my calf with a lucky graze of his sword, something snapped inside me.
The pain had been insignificant, scaled to the injury.
And yet, the accumulated anger, frustration, sense of betrayal and helplessness I’d been feeling since my arrival erupted in an all-consuming rage.
The sustained, growling sound that vibrated through my chest didn’t register in my brain until a surge of power blasted through me.
With a will of its own, my berserker joined the fray.
I embraced it.
I kicked the enemy charging me square in the chest, the blow so powerful his rib cage caved in.
As he flew back, I pivoted to the right, savagely swiping my sword, beheading two virtual warriors attempting to sneak up on me from behind.
I yanked another by the weapons strap hanging across his chest and flung him with all my strength like a rag doll, sending him crashing into a pair of his acolytes who were rushing towards me.
My neck tingled with the sense of imminent danger.
I lifted my sword just in time to block a brutal attack that would have inflicted a grievous injury.
With a powerful twist of my wrist, I tore the sword out of my opponent’s hand.
My fist immediately connected with the corner of his jaw, dislocating it.
He no sooner collapsed to the ground than I stomped my foot on his face.
The bones caved in with a crunching sound that whipped my blood into a frenzy.
Bloodlust often followed once a berserker entered into a battle to the death. I vaguely recalled throwing my sword like a dagger at an incoming enemy, a victorious roar emanating from me as it pierced through his throat.
I didn’t bother attempting to retrieve my sword or any other weapon.
Every cell in my body hungered for the raw savagery of hand-to-hand combat.
I wanted to feel their bones shattering beneath my fists and bathe in their blood.
I dodged into a roll when an enemy tried to spear me with his weapon.
Using the momentum, I jumped back onto my feet and rammed into another fiend directly in front of me.
I carried him a short distance, then raised him over my head before smashing him down headfirst onto the ground.
His head and neck caved into his body cavity.
I spun around just in time to catch another warrior by the neck.
A roundhouse kick to his back snapped his spine in two.
He crumpled on the floor, his body folded at an unnatural angle.
I barely had time to duck in order to avoid getting beheaded by a sharp blade rushing right where my neck had been but a second prior.
I slammed the base of my palm on his kneecap, busting his leg.
Before he could fully fall, I grabbed his hair on the nape and smashed his face onto the floor.
It was a massacre.
The bodies, screams, and opponents all blurred into one endless flow. I was breaking limbs, tearing off heads, shattering spines on my knees, and tossing bodies around like one would discard trash. I felt like the embodiment of the God of War himself.
And then the simulation abruptly ended.
The pile of corpses that surrounded me vanished, as did the swarm of warriors who had been attacking me. Shocked, I looked up at the holographic projector, teeth bared, and an almost feral growl tumbling out of my throat.
“Resume!” I snarled, my words barely understandable in my blood rage.
To my dismay, the artificial intelligence did not comply.
“AGAIN!” I shouted, furious.
“No!” a stern voice said behind me.
Startled, I spun around and found Khel Praghan and Lhor Kirnhan—Zhara’s two fathers—standing right outside the perimeter of my holographic area. I blinked, struggling to focus on them through the red haze of the berserker rage that still flooded my veins.
“General… Sehr Kirnhan,” I slurred in greeting, as they approached me.
As one, both males slightly recoiled and a look of shock mixed with outrage and disappointment settled on their faces as they stared at me.
“Are you drugged?” the General asked with an air of utter disbelief.
Although I heard his words, it took a few seconds for their meaning to sink in. I shook my head, feeling dizzy as I tried to rein myself in.
“No. I’m in berserker mode. Please, give me a moment,” I said, my words still jumbled as I fought to speak normally.
Not waiting for his response, I knelt, placed my palms on my knees, and closed my eyes to center myself. Normally, I would meditate for five to ten minutes after going into a violent berserker rampage. But this time, I attempted to expedite the process.
I hated that the first time they should have seen me battle would be like this. Their unease was palpable. From having seen prior recordings of me in battle, I knew all too well how insane I might come across to people unfamiliar with the side effects of entering berserker mode.
I opened my eyes and slowly got back up on my feet in a non-threatening fashion.
Khel’s troubled expression as he continued to examine me made me want to squirm.
His Geminate had done a wonderful job of hiding his thoughts and emotions after that first disappointed and distraught look when he thought me drugged.
The Geminate trait had been passed down from the Korletheans to the Veredians and Xelixians as a result of the experiments they performed on both species.
It was rare and usually only occurred with identical twins.
But Khel and Lhor had been the first recorded exception of it occurring between cousins.
And then it happened again with their sons, Vahl and Rhadames.
Geminates were essentially one soul divided between two individuals.
They could feel each other’s emotions and shared a series of unique abilities.
“Apologies,” I said, pleased that, although still a little slurred, my speech was now intelligible again. “Seeing one of us in berserker mode for the first time can be quite unsettling.”
“So we see,” Lhor said in a mysterious fashion.