Chapter 2:
The Sacred Doctrine of Cardio
-
Collin had expected more guns. He really had. Or maybe some improvised explosive devices, or other types of urban survival combat. But his classes didn't consist of any of these.
He didn’t know what, exactly, the Clarke Academy classes would look like but he definitely didn’t expect it to start with a door. Just a door, bolted shut with no power. Nor keypad. Nor clear instructions.
The instructor was a woman named Keiko a half-burnt engineering suit patched with duct tape and hope. She crossed her arms and stared at the group of fifteen new recruits as she explained the class.
“Welcome to the most important class you’ll ever take: Unpowered Access Solutions. Subtitled: ‘How Not To Die Because A Door Won’t Open.’”
Someone raised their hand. Keiko stared at it for three seconds, then said, “Put that down. The door’s not going to care about your questions.”
She paced in front of the sealed bulkhead for a whole minute. Collin didn't know if it was to up the tension or if she was listening to a call in her earpiece that they were not privy to.
“Now. Here’s the situation. There’s a necromorph behind you. Screaming. Sprinting. You’ve got three seconds before it turns your face into soup. The door has no power. What do you do?” She asked.
A recruit in the back mumbled, “Pray?”
“Incorrect. Clarke doesn’t pray. Clarke rewires the circuit with a bent spoon and a trauma pack.” She all but snarled.
She kicked open a side crate full of scrap and random tools, most of which looked like they’d been stolen from a kitchen drawer.
“You’ve got five minutes. Anyone who gets the door open earns lunch.”
Collin learned two things that day:
Opening unpowered doors was not as easy as Isaac made it look.
Clarke Academy did not technically require students to be fed. Or at least, it didn't legally owe them three squares a day like a military camp might.
-
They were given an hour break after their miserable failure. Twenty minutes in, they were told their hour was now over, because “a necromorph swarm doesn’t schedule around your feelings.”
Their next class was Applied Improvisation: Turning Junk Into Justice, held in a workshop that smelled like burnt copper and synthetic oil. Their instructor was a man named Garvey, who introduced himself as:
“The last guy dumb enough to dual-wield modified rivet guns and live to brag about it.”
His class was much more relaxed. I nfact they didn'tdo anything save watch as he showed off his miscreations. These included:
A short-range piercing weapon made from a handheld drill and a gas pipe.
A medpack injector that had been made into a freeze-stick that locked up necromorph joints.
A ceiling fan that was turned into a very, very illegal boomerang.
They didn't get around to building any of these that day, and Collin was left bemused at the prospect of using such rinky dink weapons instead of investing into proper firearms.
“By the end of your time in my class you will be able to make any of these and more. If you don’t leave this institution with at least three OSHA violations, you’re doing it wrong,” he said cheerfully.
Collin raised his hand. “Wait. So are we... ever going to be trained with actual weapons?”
Garvey looked him dead in the eyes.
“Son. Everything is a weapon. It’s just a question of how willing you are to go to jail after saving your own life.”
-
Their next class was Calming Hysterical Survivors: A Real Class
Collin thought it was a joke when he saw the name on the syllabus: “Verbal Triage for Screaming Cowards.”
It wasn’t.
They practiced lines like:
“I understand you’re scared, but if you don’t move, you’ll become a spine puppet.”
“Yes, that’s Dave. No, Dave is not Dave anymore. Yes, you do have to shoot him.”
“Stop crying. Save it for the therapy you won’t live to attend.”
Instructor Morgan, who had the thousand-yard stare of someone who once had to chainsaw their entire apartment complex, didn’t tolerate theatrics.
“The moment you start screaming, everyone around you dies faster. You want to survive? You shut the hell up and calm them down first.”
By the end of class, Collin could deliver bad news in a tone so reassuring it bordered on sociopathic. He took a little pride in that.
That night they were shown to their sleeping quarters. There they were treated to a cold meal and even colder shower waiting for them. At least the beds were warm.
-
The first class of his second day was Weaponization of Improvised Tools, which sounded badass, until he realized it was just a continuation of the prior days class and was fancy name for “Engineering Shop: Disaster Edition.”
The instructor was a burly man named Kurt who looked like someone had tried to 3D print Isaac Clarke using concrete and pure spite. He held up a toaster and a pair of hedge clippers.
“What’s the most important thing to remember about combat engineering?” he asked.
Collin raised his hand. Kurt ignored him and pointed to a girl soldering a kitchen knife to a power drill.
“Correct. The answer is: If it spins, it kills.”
He handed Collin a wrench, a broken flashlight, and a roll of duct tape.
“Build a gun.”
Collin stared.
“A what?”
“A gun. I don’t care how. If it fires, spins, slices, launches, or maims—it's a gun. Welcome to Clarke Academy. You have thirty minutes.”
By the end of the session, Collin had created something the instructor called a “Kinetic Improvised Bludgeon Device,” or K.I.B.D. for short. It looked suspiciously like a wrench with a flashlight glued to it.
Next up was Emotional Stability in Crisis, a course nobody was prepared for, especially the instructor.
Her name was Marcy. She wore a spotless uniform and carried herself like a woman who had seen at least two outbreaks and zero therapy.
“When the screaming starts, you’ll find that plasma cutters don’t work on anxiety,” she said. “Unfortunately.”
She handed everyone cue cards. On them were emotional states like Panic, Denial, Wailing While Bleeding, and Sobbing With Sudden Cannibalistic Urges.
Collin got Screaming About the Government.
So this too was a continuation of hte previous days class. This time applied. Hence the different isntructors.
His partner, a guy named Dex, got Asking Existential Questions While Holding a Severed Arm.
The exercise was supposed to involve grounding techniques, calm assertiveness, and using your “survivor voice.” Collin just slapped Dex across the face with a trauma pack and shouted, “PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER, MAN!”
Dex blinked twice, nodded, and gave him a thumbs up. The instructor clapped once and said, “Best response all day.”
After that, there was Cardio.
God help him.
The gym smelled like fear and industrial lubricant. On the wall, painted in huge letters above the treadmills, were the words:
“YOU CAN’T OUTGUN WHAT YOU CAN OUTRUN.”
Ellie Langford herself ran the session. She wore mirrored glasses and a shirt that said "NO ONE ESCAPES LEG DAY—ESPECIALLY NOT FROM NECROMORPHS."
“Welcome to Cardio I: The Beginner's Doctrine,” she said, holding a whistle and a clipboard. “You will run. You will run a lot. You will not stop. If you stop, you will die. Not metaphorically. We will throw a necromorph dummy at you.”
One of the recruits snorted. Ellie nodded and Collin saw a foam-covered necromorph prop was hurled from the upper level, screaming as it fell. The poor guy didn't see it coming and it landed square on his head. He collapsed from the shock but, it being foam, he was unharmed and scarmbled back to his feet.
“Next time,” she said, “we use two.”
After ten minutes of running, Collin was already wheezing. After fifteen, his vision was blurring. They weren't jogging. They were sprinting nonstop. After twenty minutes of it, he was beginning to understand the meaning of life: faster legs.
That night, he collapsed into his bunk with sore legs, grease-stained hands, a bruised shoulder, and a faint but terrifying respect for everything this place stood for.
There was no ceremony. No titles. No ranks. Only one phrase posted above every doorway in the dormitories:
“CUT OFF THEIR LIMBS.”
It was going to be a long year.
And he couldn’t wait.
-
It was one month into classes when they had their orientation.
Collin didn't understand how he survived the entire month. Mostly in a blur. Their classes rotated ona two day basis, day one being theoretical with Instructors Keiko, Garvey and Morgan. Learning breaking and entering techniques, improvised weapon schematics and psychological techniques. Day two was practical, building death machines with Kurt, roleplaying insane people with Marcy and sprinting until they passed out with Ellie.
They got Sundays off. On those days they were locked in dark rooms by themselves as recordings from necromorph attacks played in the walls.
Half of his class had bailed by the end of the first week, and by the end of the month all but four had taken their free ticket home. Dex was one of the only people besides Collin to have made it through. They must either both be insane or broken. He wasn't sure what the difference was.
And only now were they getting an orientation. Something was weird about that.
All the students, what few remained, were brought into a spacious auditorium cobbled together from a hydroponics dome and a broken cargo hauler. The ceiling gave a perfect view of Titan station in all of its' glory. Isaac was nowhere to be seen.
Ellie stood at the front, tapping a piece of rebar like a baton.
“Welcome to the Clarke Academy. You may be wondering why we waited so long for the orientation.” She said.
Jessica, that psycho who excelled at making demonic contraptions in Kurt's class, raised her hand.
"To weed out the weak?" She said.
"Right you are!" Ellie said. "The first month is, intentionally, the hardest. A trial by fire. The rest is... well not easier, but more relaxed. In some ways."
Dex and Collin shared a look. He was sure that his friend had similar thoughts of trepidation.
"Now, onto the orientaiton. To start, what do we stand for?" Ellie said.
She clicked a button on a small controller. A hologram flickered to life behind her: Isaac Clarke, holding a plasma cutter, drenched in blood, flipping off a Marker.
“This is what we stand for.”
She clicked again. The slide changed to a chart titled:
“Things That Have Saved Isaac Clarke’s Life”
Cardio – 46%
Duct Tape – 22%
Improvised Engineering – 18%
The Will to Live Out of Spite – 13%
Gun – 1%
Ellie gestured proudly.
“This is our gospel. You may have heard rumors about cardio being the most important thing. I’m here to tell you: those rumors are not exaggerated. Cardio is law. Cardio is life. So far you've only been doing it three days out of the week due to physical conditioning requiring rest days. You'll be doing it every day soon. And then multiple times per day.”
Their fourth misfit groaned in the back.
“Yes, even you, Jenkins. You run or you die.” Ellie said. "You're doing great at everything else."
She clicked again. A new title appeared on the hologram: “Clarke University of Necromorph Termination.”
“I originally wanted to name it that,” Ellie said with a smirk. "But the registration board found the name C.U.N.T to be inappropriate for a business setting. So we instead went with C.A.N.E. The Clark Academy of Necromorph Elimination. His first choice in name."
There was no laughter coming from the surviving students, despite her attempt at levity. Mrs Clarke seemed put off by the failed landing of her joke but coughed and went on,
"You are finished with the academic portion of your schooling and hte rest will be practical. You will be running through recreations of the real life scenarios that both Isaac and I encountered while on Titan Station." She continued. "Similar to the entrance and exit exam on the ishumura, except now you are trained for it. As trained as can be."
Dex raised his hand.
Ellie motioned for him to ask.
"I can't help but think that maybe some of the other recruits would have lasted longer and maybe succeeded if we mixed the practical and that academic sessions?" He suggested.
"Maybe. But we want failures out there in the wild." Ellie said. "Even if they did not graduate they learned enough to be dangerous should they be involved in a necromorph outbreak. And they serve as good advertisement."
Collins almost smacked himself. Of course! Even as they were now, they were far and above more prepared for a necromorph outbreak than anybody out there. Hell, the people who made it through the first week would do a load of good in such an emergency.
"So the washouts are the E1s to our E6s?" Jenkins summarized.
"Ehhh, more like first aid certified to your EMTs and our Mds." Ellie corrected. "All three are needed. And with what little training they have they can become prepared for an outbreak and have everything they need to survive and save others when the time comes. You guys will be training for a higher purpose."
Collins recalled his discussion with the Clarkean in front of the Unitology church. He recalled his words. How he so casually admitted to not caring about saving anyone.
"The markers." Collin concluded.
The back door hissed open.
"Correct, Mister Collin." Clarke said.
His voice was muffled through his visor, as the man was draped in his full engineering regalia. He looked like a knight from King Arthur's own court, and somethign about how he carried himself was inexplicably intimidating to Collin.
He'd seen plenty of engineers before. Plenty in their suits. They always looked lame, like the nerds they were. How did this man look like something out of myth while wearing it?
"Those with the temperament to save others are intentionally washed out. Those that remain are selected for not having such a disability." Isaac said. "You will be trained to be mosnters. You will be trained to hunt down and destroy the markers, ending outbreaks as quickly as possible. You are the broken and insane, like us. You are what we want. You are what the galaxy needs."
He stood before them and stood at ease with his hands behind his back. Only then did Collin realize that all four of them instinctively stood at attention upon his entrance. They hadn't even been taught to do that.
"Or at least you will be, when I'm done with you. The other teachers were in charge of you for the last month. Now you're my full time problem." Clarke told them.
It sounded like a threat.