Wicked Ones {bxb}

{Chapter 21 : Welcome to the Club}

"Three more, O'Connor."

He watched from the ground as the outsoles of Jahni's boots crossed his path. They stopped between his eyes, clicking at the heels as they aligned. Jahni was surely a mountain in front of him, but Vincent didn't dare look up.

"How in the hell am I supposed to do this?" he scorned against the metal plates, his arms trembling under his weight. It wasn't any ordinary push up. No, he didn't have the luxury of an ordinary push up. The additional gravity pressing on his spine made these pushups in particular excruciatingly difficult.

"Do it or I add ten pounds."

With a crackling growl, Vincent pushed. He rose only a foot from the ground, lowering back down to repeat the painful process. Again, and then again. After the last one, he collapsed on a shoulder and rolled onto his back, his muscles pulled like taffy.

"If twenty was such a challenge for you...." Jahni trailed off with the discouraging shake of his head. The same bulbous skull that eclipsed the only light source in the room—a single lonely bulb, hung from the rafters above.

"Are we done?" April whimpered, folding herself onto her knees and slapping the dust and dirt from her palms. "My arms feel like spaghetti."

"Expect to do this every day," Jahni said—or perhaps it was more of an order, "Since these two are still too incompetent with their powers, I expect you'll teach them all you know about physical combat."

"Me?" April frowned, pushing back her sweaty ringlets. "Why me?"

"Because,"—Jahni looked to Kailan, and spoke the words through the gaps in his teeth—"I may crush them."

Kailan glanced up from his phone, collected in comparison to the other two. It wasn't easy, but he was used to the physical torture of military-style training. It was even more fun, when you add the overseer corruption and the heat-stroke of the barren Arizona deserts. In light of it all, this wasn't so bad. Jahni's relentless glaring was his only setback.

"Why do you gotta look at me when you say that?" he asked, resting his arms on his knees.

Jahni replied bluntly: "Because you I like least."

Kailan looked offended, April filling the background with carbonated giggles. Then he twirled his phone between his fingers, shrugging his shoulders with a melodramatic sigh. "Well, at least we'll be getting fit."

April let out a celebratory shout, though tired as it sounded, "Yeah! Holy shit, I want abs!" She slapped at her stomach, suddenly revived of energy.

"Abs are not important." Jahni made his way up the stairs to the second-floor railing. He gathered objects as he went—dusty old mangled books, and precious artifacts to return to his shelf. There was no telling just what it was Jahni was constantly studying up on. He seemed to be a natural scholar—never satisfied unless he had a book in his lap or a pen in his hands.

"Dexterity and agility are what you should be disciplining." He set things away with delicacy and leaned forward leisurely over the railing. "That will come in time with physical combat."

His eyes roamed the floor below him and shifted from Kailan to Vincent and back again. "It is dire that you two fools overcome this weakness of yours. But it is not something that we can help you with. Because of that, we cannot focus your abilities. So by all means, congratulations." Sarcasm rotted his tone. "Had the Syndicate found us today, you both would make excellent dead-weight. Perhaps if we were at sea and in need of anchors, you might finally be of some use."