The shock leader was waiting at the training field dressed in the dark black and grey camo used by Hench Helpful Help as their field uniform and stood up when they arrived. The high ponytail she wore, although cute, seemed completely unnatural compared to the various versions of the bob cut that was universally worn by the rest of her kind. Had it not been for the pathologically snarling chihuahua darting between the buildings behind her, he might have been tempted to stare.

  “Hey,” Mac nodded politely even as his eyes tracked the small white dog trying unsuccessfully to push its way into building three. “Why are you here?” And what was a dog doing in the Cave Inn?

  The shock leader struck an artificial pose she had likely been practicing for hours in front of a mirror. “A battle suit pilot needs to stay in top physical condition,” She explained to the air as she flipped her dark hair. “I always do my best to… oh, hi there,” she blushed, partially giggled, and finally snorted obnoxiously as Grist put his hand on her shoulder from behind.

  “You look like you near fall on butt.” the troll stated bluntly as he courteously removed his giant hand. Grist stepped past her and thumbed back at her revealing bite marks on his forearm, “Mac, why dull girl here?”

  “I am not dull,” Tiera Sardonyx objected to herself quietly. Then, louder, “I’ll have you know I can be the queen of adventure.” She leapt forward to tap his back as his shoulder was out of reach.

  “Why be boss of go place,” Grist replied without even bothering to turn around. “Plan not fun. It dull… like girl.”

  Mac glanced back up at Grist from watching the chihuahua jumping up and down frantically beneath a window to the same building and noticed a faint twinkle in the troll’s eye. Wait… no… was he?... oh, he was… wasn’t he?

  The shock leader blushed so deeply that her entire face changed color. Was she angry or embarrassed? It was hard to tell. Now, the chihuahua seemed to have given up on whatever it was trying to do and was scratching behind its ear.

  Safety Ed chose that moment to announce his presence, “Joining our training today, Miss Sardonyx? You do realize everything involved with that, right? Like whatever it was you were doing, you would need to… stop doing.”

  The trollip recovered herself immediately and snapped to attention complete with a crisp salute, “Shock Leader Sardonyx requesting permission to join your training.” She carefully bit back any derogatory qualifiers Mac could almost taste hovering in the air around her. Where did that dog go, and how did Grist get bit?

  “That desperate, eh. Permission granted,” Safety Ed replied as he failed to completely suppress his evil grin. Mac couldn’t help but wonder what he was about to find himself in the middle of as he noted the faux normal exchange. “Did you all get a chance to put your pilot suits back in the lockers? They’re expensive company property and we wouldn’t want them to disappear from your rooms. The investigation would be… tedious.”

  “Got that done…” Mac replied intentionally leaving out, “on the way here.” Only then did Mac finally realize the shock leader had just saluted Safety Ed. Didn’t she outrank him? Oh, and Natalia was here. When did that happen? It felt odd to see the vampire in the dark camo pants and a grey tank-top. She seemed almost attractively normal… as opposed to the blood-drinking vampire she was. It was important to not lose sight of that key detail.

  “Good, good. Can’t be too careful,” Safety Ed replied as some movement temporarily caught his eye and caused him to turn his head. He seemed to ponder it a moment, then shook his head and launched into a prepared speech, “As a matter of explanation, we are going to begin your physical conditioning ahead of the others. You’ll need to be stronger to… thrive in our advanced safety course. Your teammates from before will join us later, maybe in a week, maybe more, after their basic safety course.”

  “What about us?” Natalia asked reasonably. “How are we supposed to learn the company safety standards? By accident?”

  “By experience,” Safety Ed corrected with an enthusiastic grin that had the frightening effect of convincing Mac that the instructor truly believed what he said.

  “He’s going to kill us,” Mac whispered under his breath.

  “Like my old mentor used to say, ‘Whatever doesn’t kill you… will make you wish it had.’ Did any of you…?” He turned his head again and pointed towards the buildings before trailing off. “Just my imagination.”

  “But first,” a maniacal smile returned to the safety instructor’s lips, “we need to ensure your bodies’ natural resilience. It’s important that you be able to survive a training… misstep. Let’s begin by safely spreading out an arm’s distance from each other, so we don’t have an unfortunate… experience while exercising. And if you all wouldn’t mind moving over that way,” he motioned for the four of them to stand between himself and building three on the opposite side of the open training area with the unnaturally placid subterranean lake now behind him. Tiera took the opportunity to saunter (it was a foul misuse of the word even if no other could apply. Mac could almost imagine a dictionary screaming in agony) to her new position.

  “Seriously, Shock Leader,” Safety Ed admonished even as he looked past her searching for movement.

  “What?”

  “I hope you’re taking notes,” Safety Ed cautioned her even as his eyes darted back to the buildings.

  “Of course.”

  “She would,” commented Grist to Mac.

  “It would make it difficult to continue,” Safety Ed motioned for them to look at him even as he sounded like he was talking about two different things, “if Grist maimed you with a stray appendage… while your attention was elsewhere. Touch each other’s fingertips. That’s it… good, good. Now we are going to do push-ups. Miss Pardova, please humor us. I know these exercises are pointless for a vampire, but please play along. I realize it might be a touch boring, but at least start with us to encourage the others.”

  “Now, let’s do a proper push up,” Safety Ed stated as he propped his upper body up with his arms and scanned the area behind them. Mac could have laid a board across Safety Ed’s back and legs, and it would have been in contact nearly the whole way. “It’s important to do things right the first few times to establish safe habits.” For someone who had previously enjoyed inflicting harm on others he seemed remarkably distant.

  “Just one?” Mac asked as he lowered himself to the artificial turf. When he looked up, the evil look had returned to Safety Ed’s grey eyes and sent a shiver down his spine.

  “You’re right. We should do two. Practice makes perfect.” it sounded so nonchalant coming from the wickedly grinning safety instructor, like a dictator planning the invasion of a second small country that was just next door anyways, and ‘what would it hurt?’ “This is called ‘front leaning rest’. Vampires from about two centuries ago gave it that name during the Middle Sea wars,” he explained as he maintained himself in the ramrod straight starting push-up position. “We’ll call it that going forward in their honor.” He gave a partial nod to Natalia, who nodded back.

  “Ready, and… one,” Safety Ed lowered himself to exactly one thumb’s width above the ground. Mac followed his example and then popped back up to the ‘front leaning rest’ position in order to be ready to complete the second push-up he knew was coming. Too easy. Maybe he should have one-handed it… for the extra work-out. Yeah… the extra workout might have been useful. It wasn’t like there were any cute girls around he wanted to impress.

  “I didn’t say ‘up’,” Safety Ed explained from his down but not quite touching the ground position. Only Miss Sardonyx still held it with him. “Come on. Join me back like this. That’s it. Grist, keep your chest off the ground, you too Mac.” The instructor sounded so friendly, like he was inviting them for a walk in the park. Only it was dark, and there were unsavory characters with names like Got-your-spleen-Boris, Big Mike, and Steve hiding in the tree line where it brushed the path at a tight corner.

  Safety Ed smiled at the small group in front of him briefly before going back to his scanning. “There, that’s better. Just relax here for a while. This is our “employee’s only” longue. Only the strong get to hang out here with us. Good. Good.”

  Mac’s arms were starting to tremble. He stole a glance over at Natalia who maintained a bored look on her face. So not fair. On his other side Grist had a look of immense concentration on his face. With upper body bulk like his, this couldn’t be easy.

  “So, while we’re here, I’d like to talk about guardrail safety,” the instructor’s arms were planted in the ground like mangroves in a swamp on a windless day. “Guard rails exist for a purpose, normally to keep us from falling to a lower level. Industry standard is for any height over one meter, but we at HeHeHe like to use them for anything that might be half that height differential provided it doesn’t add an additional hazard. The guard rail should reach up to about waist high or even above that if you are in an area that troll employees frequent. In those cases, rails should be at least two meters high to account for the higher center-of-gravity of a troll and have an additional rail at the one-meter height to account for any smaller species in the area. I should also specify that rails are required even if the drop off is less than the specified half meter should the lower level contain water, lava, or other dangerous floor conditions such as slimes, land mines, temporal distortions, or electrified conditions as are common in some of our facilities.”

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  Mac’s arms were on fire, but he held out. Just what did he mean by ‘common in some of our facilities’? He, again, mentally reminded himself to keep holding out.

  Safety Ed continued in his monotone instruction. “Guard rails are essential to the safety of our operations. A trained employee is a fairly difficult and expensive resource to replace, at least that’s what HR is always going on and on about, and it’s imperative to minimize risk where-ever we cost-effectively can. If you identify an area in one of our facilities lacking an appropriate railing, please notify your safety officer and publish a report. Do this either verbally to radio channel three or submit an email to the same regarding the nature and location of the requirement. If by chance you find yourself falling into a bottomless pit or are otherwise inconveniently encumbered by the situation, although a scream is helpful, we request a verbal report before radio range is lost or certain death overtakes you. You’ve always got to think about the people coming after you. After all, you’re probably in that situation because the last person failed to report it. Don’t be that guy.”

  Mac struggled to hold himself the mere three centimeters off the ground. Maybe if he adjusted his hands a bit. Nope, that didn’t seem to help. Fire flowed through his arms, shoulders and chest. He stole a glance over at Natalia, only to see her standing up and stifling a yawn.

  “Thank you for humoring us as long as you did, Miss Pardova,” Safety Ed stated sincerely. “Alright then… stay down team.”

  Wait, What?! Mac protested silently even as his muscles screamed at him for holding them hostage. That wasn’t how this was supposed to work. The sadistic instructor was supposed to take the sign that the vampire was bored and let them all get back to normal exercises. Like burpees, jogging in place, or trying to hit each other with large sticks as was tradition in this field of work.

  The everlasting pushup from depths of the earth’s lower reaches continued.

  “Did I ever tell you about the time Miss Sardonyx made a report from the Hanguk Peninsula?” Safety Ed interrupted the hopeless thoughts now parading through Mac’s mind.

  “I wish you wouldn’t,” Tiera stated rather impassively. When Mac risked a sideways glance at her, the threatening look on her face would have frozen a stampeding dragon in place… assuming one existed.

  “Right,” Safety Ed agreed, “That’s probably not quite so applicable, but I did save your life,” Safety Ed added at the end.

  “That’s debatable,” the shock leader countered. “I somehow remember it being the other way around.”

  “Well, of course you would see it that way,” the instructor countered.

  Mac’s arms were now sending constant reminders that all was not well. Things weren’t even middling. In fact, going poorly would be a welcome step up from their current condition.

  “I’m the one who got us into that facility,” the shock leader insisted.

  “And I’m the one who got us out when your plan failed,” the instructor replied.

  “It wouldn’t have failed, if you had just followed the plan,” Tiera kept the emotion out of her voice but left in the ice.

  “It was a super complex plan that no one could have followed,” Safety Ed countered flatly. “It was forty-two slides long with four appendixes... and a glossary.”

  “The last half was for contingencies. You didn’t even get past the first paragraph before you deviated from it,” Miss Sardonyx shot back surprisingly levelly.

  “Pain, my world is pain,” Mac thought to himself as he struggled to keep his chest off the ground and darkness crept in at the edges of his vision. Of course, the one time that he needed physics to get lost on his way, he had shown up early and set up a demonstration booth, likely somewhere off to his right. Was that snickering or his imagination?

  “The first paragraph was three slides long,” Safety Ed answered dismissively. He wasn’t even looking at her.

  “There were a lot of moving pieces,” the trollip protested. “Did you even read the plan?”

  “Of course, I did.”

  “Glancing at the slide without actually thinking about what you are seeing does not count as reading,” Tiera explained with impressively restrained rage. “I spent hours devising that plan and ensuring everyone was ready.”

  “I’m going to die while they argue,” Mac thought to himself as his whole body trembled. Goodbye, cruel world.

  “Boring,” Safety Ed drove his final nail. Then suddenly, “Up!” Safety Ed practically leapt to his feet and craned his neck to look around the beautiful trollip.

  Mac struggled to push his body back to the poorly named ‘front leaning rest’ position. He was sure his brain sent the command, but his arms seemed to have frozen and refused all future orders from above. He couldn’t blame them… the upper management wasn’t responding to feedback.

  “What are you looking at?!” Tiera challenged as she returned smooth as oil to ‘front leaning rest’. “Are you intentionally ignoring me? Seriously, what is going on behind me that is so interesting?!”

  “I keep thinking there’s something moving back there. A small dog or… or… something.”

  “Dog bite Grist,” the troll wheezed from where he lay on the ground unable to lift himself.

  “Yes, that was in your file,” the distracted instructor acknowledged even as he intently scanned the shadows. The large lights laid in a grid across the upper part of the cave left enough shadows that the monster under his childhood bed could probably have crossed comfortably from one side to the other if he stuck to the edges. Supposedly, Safety Ed’s parents had offered Elmer the low paying security position as a bit of charity, but with his father’s work, it probably made sense. He couldn’t help but wonder how the skinny guy was doing, now.

  “Dog bite Grist, today,” the troll clarified.

  “Details, now,” Safety Ed commanded as he returned to ‘front leaning rest’.

  “Small yap dog bite me, see,” Grist showed his arm.

  “They can’t bite you if you kick them first.”

  “It act lost. Grist try to help. No like Grist. Bad dog,” the troll returned to his knees so he could assume the correct ‘front leaning rest’ position.

  Tiera and Safety Ed shared a glance that passed more data than a poorly programmed Famcom multi-player game.

  “New personal best for you, Miss Tiera,” Safety Ed commented as if Grist hadn’t said anything. Then, he checked his watch while still supporting his body quite casually with one arm.

  “Really, did I pass four minutes?” the shock leader asked, surprisingly normal. Mac was totally confused now.

  “Just,” Safety Ed replied with a touch of acclimation in his voice. “Mac, I said, ‘up’,” he added belatedly.

  “Yeah, about that…” Mac grimaced as he strained to lift himself. No dice.

  “Miss Pardova, would you mind assisting the poor man?”

  “Sure, why not,” the vampire answered with a bored sigh before walking behind Mac and reaching down to help lift him up.

  The little extra pull she provided was enough to return Mac to ‘front leaning rest’, only it didn’t seem particularly restful. He was able to lock out his elbow which helped a little even if it wasn’t particularly wise. Didn’t Safety Ed say something earlier about there being two?

  On cue, the fiend smiled evilly, “Excellent, now, two…”

  Mac bent his arms and instantly collapsed to the ground. He could only assume the small shaking of the ground he felt was Grist failing in tandem.

  “Looks like it’s just you and me, Tiera,” the safety instructor noted as both Mac and Grist floundered helplessly on the ground like vampires in daylight to raise their chests.

  Natalia yawned loudly from somewhere behind Mac.

  “You don’t really think you can outlast me, do you?” Safety Ed challenged the shock leader.

  “No, but I can use this to weaken you for later,” her eyes glanced off to the side.

  “Up” Safety Ed commanded just enough heartbeats later that it wasn’t completely clear if it related to the trollip’s comment or not. Mac and Grist could only flop helplessly where they lay. At least it couldn’t get any worse.

  XXXXX

  The chisel-jawed and overly handsome Joe Campbell sat down beside Mac at the white-clad lunch table. Guys with looks like him almost made the already difficult challenge of finding and luring a kindred soul into a relationship nigh impossible.

  “Hey there, Champ,” Joe smiled at Mac then winked at the vampire across the table, “Miss.”

  Natalia at least had the good sense to roll her eyes. The vampire did have a few good points, which coming from Mac’s point of view was something of a rarity.

  “Hi,” Mac answered the annoying human as cordially as he could muster.

  “We’ve missed you three from class,” Joe Campbell pressed on. “What have you been up to, Champ?”

  “It’s Mac.”

  “What-ever, Champ. Please, do tell.”

  “Just kinetic learning,” he replied cryptically. “Do you mind if I eat? We’ve only got thirty minutes...”

  “Just curious,” Joe replied. “We’re stuck watching videos and listening to ghosts tell stories. Surely, as part of the ‘select’ group, you did more interesting stuff than that. Didn’t you?”

  Ghost stories for safety? That’s an odd approach, Mac reasoned silently before answering sarcastically, “Sure, we pilot battle suits around and do endless pushups while Safety Ed jumps at shadows and teaches guardrail safety. Seriously, were you raised by wolves? I’m trying to eat.”

  “No… of course not. Why would you say that?” Joe replied defensively.

  “You’re interrupting our meal,” Mac explained.

  “And you smell like dog,” Natalia added between bites.

  “I do not smell,” Joe Campbell objected even as he took two cautionary sniffs which he processed thoughtfully before adding almost angrily, “And who was that teaching you?”

  “Safety Ed.” Mac replied as the food cooled on his fork. “Tall guy, grey eyes, likes wearing a tattered cloak with more holes than a dime novel’s plot.” Sadistic cryptic, who searches through ladies’ underwear drawers while they sleep and probably spies on people through cameras, Mac continued the description in the privacy of his own mind. And just why did Safety Ed wear that tin foil cap under the atrocious hat? There lies madness. Never ask a question you don’t want the answer to.

  “Really?” Joe answered thoughtfully as he tilted his head. His eyes looked up a moment later to scan the room as he scratched behind an ear. “How has that been?”

  Mac finally took a bite and chewed. He even closed his eyes blissfully. The problem was that when he opened them again, Joe was still there gnawing on a roll with his untouched tray in the other hand.

  “Daddy,” Zach leaned over to whisper, “he took the roll right off your plate.”

  “I did no such…”

  Suddenly, the man was dangling in the air with a surprised look on his face, but his tray somehow remained level. “This man bug you?” said the troll on the other end of the massive arm. It was shaking a bit from the strain of Joe’s substantial muscle weight.

  “Yes, Grist,” Natalia answered. Janessa just nodded affirmatively. “But you should probably set him down… gently,” she added. “We wouldn’t want to cause trouble for our co-workers, would we?” Natalia looked straight into Joe’s eyes before he closed them and twisted his head against the potential hypnosis.

  “Fine, I’ll leave,” Joe shook himself then glanced back at the troll who had surprisingly gently set him down. The man’s eyes reminded Mac of his ex-wife. The naked hatred in them, and the shear spite lurking underneath was unmistakable. Then, Joe tossed his handsome mane with his free hand for good measure and stalked off to another table.

  “Thanks, Grist,” Mac smiled up at the reliable troll, then advised him as friendly as possible using small words he was sure the troll would understand, “Watch your back near him, got it?”

  “Grist be fine. You show care,” the troll gently patted Mac’s shoulder before heading off to the trolls’ designated lunchroom. A zombie stood just outside the oversized door in full hazmat gear.

  “Glad to see you have at least some taste,” Mac ventured foolishly to Natalia between bites.

  “He’s been a jerk since we got here,” Natalia vented, ignoring the accidental barb. Stared at me like I was some kind of freak for nearly an hour back at the airport before your plane landed. Mac let that pass. A vampire in loose leggings and sensible lace up boots was not exactly standard issue.

  “Any chance you know what Safety Ed has planned for us next?” Mac ventured between bites.

  “I think he mentioned some kind of beginner practice wall to get us used to climbing. He called it ‘The Chasm’ or some over-blown name like that. It can’t be that bad,” Natalia shrugged.