Proving Ground - Kira Burke

Kira’s well on her way to being top of her class in academics, and she’s also showing up half the other field-track cadets in training. The problem is, the senior field training instructor has it in for her.   She fought to get assigned to a dual-track role. It took playing every card she had to get them to put a Deaf student in the physical combat training, and she still won’t get an active assignment anyway, but it’s the principle of the thing.
But from Day 1, Senior Instructor Patrick Lane has made it abundantly clear that he not only expects, but wants her to wash out.
It’s not that hunters can’t be both smart and strong, Kira’s classmates in both tracks are expected to pass their required training on the other fundamentals. R&D kids take basic self-defense classes, and Field kids flood the mandatory seminars on Vampire Biology and Coven Law. But very few excel in both.
It’s not so much, she’s decided, that Lane hates her for being extremely good at what she does. He hates her for the fact that he’s been required to accommodate her. To have an interpreter up front when he lectures before their physical exercises. To make sure she can see his mouth when he’s speaking. He wanted her to wash out because it would have proved his idea that she shouldn’t be here in the first place. Instead, she’s proving, repeatedly, that when it comes to the nuts and bolts of hunting, she’s just as capable as anyone else. She just does things differently.
And Lane is determined to use that to bring her down. Her adapted fighting style, the techniques she spent hours developing to work around an inability to hear, he’s thrown all of them out. Insisted she follow the book or walk out the doors. He’s tried every trick in the book to intimidate her.
Good luck. I spent my last two years in residential school with a dorm monitor whose previous job was with the state’s biggest women’s prison. I transferred to a mainstream high school as a gawky 15 year old who was constantly followed by an interpreter. I’ve fought real vampires on the streets, without backup, with nothing more than some oversized chopsticks. I’ve seen it all.
If Lane thinks mocking her behind her back, purposely setting her up to fail the class exercises, or repeatedly refusing to let her wear her hearing aids in the hands-on classes is going to push her over the edge, he’s got another thing coming.
Still, that doesn’t make it easy. Nothing has ever made it easy. Kira learned fast and the hard way that sticks and stones and words hurt. At least, when you realize someone’s saying them. It would be fine if I never found out about the things people said behind my back. But one way or the other, I always found out.
Melee skirmishes are the hardest. She’s best at one-on-one fights, and while she knows she needs to learn to work with a team, she can’t do that if she can’t hear what they’re telling her to do, and she can’t if she’s not allowed to wear her hearing aids in physical combat training. It’s a vicious cycle.
Lane is asking for something unrealistic. In a real combat scenario, she’d have comms in. She’s built a set for her technology lab that function just like her hearing aids. This isn’t even an exercise in teaching her to survive the field and work with other hunters. It’s a pointed jab aimed at making her fail. In making her tap out or snap. Either way, he wins. And she’s just stubborn enough not to let that happen. Patrick Lane is no different than any other bully, human or vampire.
Today she’s been paired off against one of the tallest girls in the class, which means she can’t see over the cadet’s shoulder to where her interpreter is standing on the sidelines. She’s straining to see if they’re being given the ok when she feels one of the cadets beside her move, taking off past her, his sleeve brushing her arm.
She didn’t hear him say ‘go’. And the split second delay in her reaction time is a split second too much. She’s on the ground, bruises forming before she realizes what hit her.
Everything stops. The girl who knocked her down starts toward her, face apologetic. But Lane beats her to Kira’s side.
“Congratulations, cadet. You’re dead.” His whole expression drips sarcasm, as does the exaggerated way his mouth is moving. He always talks to her like this. Like speaking louder, slower, and with more movement of his mouth will help. She told him, when the class started, that it wouldn’t. She physically can’t hear him without her hearing aids in. He proceeded to ignore her. Just another way of singling her out as the different one, and bullying her into feeling isolated and inferior.
She picks herself up off the floor, wiping blood from where her teeth bit through her cheek when she hit the ground.
“Listen. Vamps won’t show you any mercy. So get used to it. If you can’t take it, then you don’t belong here in the first place.”
He says 'listen' like a curse. Like he knows how it pushes her out, raises her hackles. She doesn’t mind when most people say it. It’s just an expression. But in his voice, it’s as weaponized as the throwing stars and silver-bladed knives ranged in the armory cases.
She pushes herself back to her feet, grimacing at the pain of bruises and pulled muscles. The fight repeats three more times before they’re let go for the day, and as she walks out, Kira looks for her score on the electronic monitor next to the door. Her last name is near the top of the column, and when she sees the red outline around the box, she doesn’t even have to look at the numbers. One more red was going to knock her grade down below passing. And now it has.
She allows herself the three-minute shower to feel sorry for herself. It’s better than breaking down in the dorms or in her next class. When the water shuts off, she dries away the tears with it and sweeps her wet curls into a tight ponytail before slipping her hearing aids back in.
She can wear herself out playing Lane’s game, or she can start playing her own.
He can screw her over in the unit finals as much as he wants, but the real test that determines if she passes this class will be the comprehensive simulations every cadet goes into the week before graduation.
If she gets anything less than a perfect score, as her grade stands now, she will wash out. But once she’s in that simulation, his class rules don’t count. The only thing that matters is completing the objectives.
Which is what finds her in the Academy director’s office the next morning, holding the school policy in one hand and a cluster of forms in the other. She sets both on the desk and begins to explain.
“For my final project I’d like to test the effectiveness of my new communications unit design in the field simulation exercises.”
She read the rulebook cover to cover to make sure this was allowed. Hunters-in-training are encouraged to design their own improvements to tactical gear and then test them in the simulations. It’s not often used, since the understanding is that if the equipment fails, you are just as liable for your grade. Most students prefer to stake their chances on the assortment of tried and true equipment they’re allowed to choose from, rather than testing their own projects and running the risk of failing. But she has nothing to lose.
The director’s face is equal parts intrigued and cautionary. “You understand that if you fail the course because of faulty equipment that you will not be allowed to test again for a year, and the Academy is not liable for anything that occurs as a direct result of testing un-sanctioned armaments or gear.”
“I’ll sign the waivers.” Kira knows she stands a very good chance of getting what she wants. The Academy likes to show that it’s turning out confident, intelligent students. A cadet testing a new and improved communication device is going to look like just that. If she succeeds, she’ll be the talk of the academy for the next year, probably get her picture on the STEM wing honor wall with other students who’ve achieved science and technology breakthroughs.
It’s a little underhanded, playing off the Academy’s desire to show off the best and brightest and prove their students are impressive, but Lane’s been playing dirty for weeks.
“Very well. I’ll accept your application and clear it with your instructors.”
Kira lets a small smile escape. But that’s the easy part.
She’s doing all the physical training twice over. Following the book in class, going through the motions so she gets a check mark on her sheet at the end of each class period. And then, in the morning, when everyone else on the campus is dragging themselves to their bunks, she slips out of her dorm and away to the gym and does it all again, her way.
She can’t afford to lose her edge, because everything in that simulation is going to be played by her rules. As long as she doesn’t break any rules of engagement based on the Treaty of Blood and its amendments, she’s free to use her own personal fighting style. It’s in the fine print, but she’s very good at reading all of that.
The simulation day she’s scheduled for has the gym more packed by half than any other testing day. Clearly, word spread fast about the cadet who’s so confident in her tech design that she’s the only one in her graduating class willing to stake her placement on it. She can see the head of Chimera’s science division in the crowd.
I’m definitely being scouted for that division. She’s well aware that as good as she can prove herself to be at field work today, she’s going to end up in R&D. It’s just logical. She’s top of her class in development of new or improved tech, and she’s approached her instructors with plans to overhaul the prediction modeling software agencies currently use. She’s a shoe-in for that position. Her deafness automatically disqualifies her from active combat.
But she’s not here to try and change everyone’s minds and get a field assignment. She’s just here to pass her field track and prove to Lane he can try, but he can’t break her.
Her testing proctor is far more willing to accommodate her. Instead of sounding a bell for the beginning of the round, she flashes the lights twice, before the room goes black.
Kira’s not fighting alone. She’s been paired with two veteran Chimera hunters, to simulate a team hunt. With her comms on, she can hear the voices. A woman and a man.
The simulation is intense, but as someone who’s fought real vampires before, Kira is more than ready for it. It’s clear the other hunters have picked that up as well, they’re hanging back far more than they usually do for anyone but kids who’ve grown up steeped in the hunter world. Even then, that’s no guarantee they’re good. There’s no substitute for real-world experience. And she has that in spades.
She finishes with two and a half minutes on the clock. The fastest run of the graduating class so far, third fastest in the school. She turns around to the cheers of the observers, immediately switching off her comms as the feedback grows overwhelming. Her partners clap her on the shoulders and congratulate her. But she has eyes for only one man as her perfect score flashes up on the large overhead display.
Patrick Lane looks a bit like the undead himself. Pale as death warmed over, gaping and staring. Clearly furious, but as powerless to do anything about it as a vampire in sunlight.
When he steps up and hands her the black leather jacket that every first generation hunter who passes their field training is issued, she takes it with a vindicated grin, slipping it over her shoulders. The Chimera head of R&D is already approaching with a pen and clipboard, ready to have her sign on to that division of the hunter agency. This time tomorrow Kira knows she’ll be doing lab orientation, probably never to see the inside of tactical gear again. But it was worth it. It was absolutely worth it.