Down to Abyss

Welcome to Fort Grim, Texas. Wonderful mixture of extremely dry wind and scorching sun. As instructors joke wonderful place for The Biggest Looser show of the past. Here you will not only get rid of fat on your bones, here even your soul will get slimmer. Especially with the help of instructors which will skin you alive but will do their best to make clients into real warriors. While clients just need to do only one thing - survive.

Here you will find only two types of people, except instructors. First, soldiers from every country or corporation that can afford services of Fort Grim. Roughly speaking toy soldiers. Company or government doesn't really care whether or not "volunteers" want to go through harsh and dangerous training. They just pick the fitting soldier send him here and hope that end result will be better than standard cannon fodder. Poor bastards, highest drop-out numbers are amongst them.

Second type are people like me. Solos, mercs and edgerunners that want to reach new heights. They come here without having corpo's or government's motivational gun pointing at their heads. Self-motivated and with clear goal. The only issue with them is that they have quite an ego which makes training difficult. However, if they can overcome that flaw, then they can really reach major league and be considered elites.

Now you must have some understanding into what kind of "rookie" paradise I got myself into. Since my first day here I have been forced to re-train my body reflexes and combat habits. Cut out everything useless or inefficient. Train how to aim, shoot, reload faster with different weapons. Another big thing was food. To be more specific lack or very limited supply of standard food. Most of a time we have been fed using special gels, pills or liquids via IV. This diet-torture had two aims. First, such diet allowed our body to get all the necessary nutrients, vitamins and etc without wasting time. Second, it was to train us to get used to having to survive without standard food or MRE supply. In long raids or having to operate in harsh and barren conditions this is quite useful thing.

Why? Well, your body already experienced and adapted to such diet. This means that your body will minimise lose of nutrients. Which in long raids and with limited supplies increases your chances to survive. Another benefit is psychological tempering. Having to survive in very difficult and dangerous environment takes a toll on your mental wellbeing. Lack of simple things like tins and chocolate as well as having to eat tasteless gel or survive on IV nutrient for long period of time can cause mental break down. It may just be too much to handle and then morale starts to drop rapidly which in the end leads to failure and very likely KIA or MIA.

When you complete with basic training instructors start going through different combat situations and tactics. Quite similar to training I have received back in days at Trauma Team.....at least I though so. I had to learn how to fight with paralysed hand, leg or injured eyesight and other organs. No braindance just hardcore real life experience. Then you will be asked to go through your own training session in braindance, highlighting every mistake or what can be done better. If you fail to find them all you will be forced to go through that over and over again until you get approval from instructor to proceed.

That shit was really painful. I had to even learn how to jump or land properly while firing using left hand and/or reloading using partially functional right hand. Damn, I had few bone fractures and some ribs broken until I learned how to "glide" on stairs and keeping an eye on enemies. But the most annoying and angering training was betrayal/ambush training. According to scenario one or two of us get randomly appointed as traitors while the rest of group are loyalists. Quite similar to Among Us. The only difference is that there is no clear deadlines. It may be few days or even weeks until you get suddenly beaten up to death at night breaks or shot in toilets. Until you succeed surviving as both traitor or loyalist you are not allowed to proceed to next training session. Good training session to develop paranoia as well as losing trust in people.

I am not joking, before I have officially passed this training session I had to plan my every visit to toilet or taking shower not to end up with garrotte around my neck while taking a shit or feel getting hit in a head with soap in a sock while showering. We even had few cases of "rough manly love" sessions in showers as some thought about hiding their traitor status under the guise of rape. Yeah, keep your ass tight and beware of someone panting at your neck. For a moment it felt like a improvised prison.

Next stage involves having para drop into one of Columbian cartel's turf. Objectives are quite simple and clear. Find one of labs-caches. Destroy and loot it. Survive the hunt and make it to rendezvous point or in the worst case make it to the border. That was quite an experience which taught me few things about Latin America. First, fucking mosquitos can get you even in fully closed combat suit. Second, Columbian coffee taste better at night bonfire. Third, stay away from water or may end up with parasite getting inside of you while peeing. And final but the most important thing, never fight in Amazon Forest at night.

A.N - Hey guys. Hello after long break. I hope you still enjoy reading my story. I have more chaps available on pat. If you want to read them or just support me visit it.

This is mini arc involving training and maturity-ish of Markus.