Chapter 43: Cue Training Montage
The swelling across my chest had dropped enough overnight that I could take a full breath without wincing.
The bruise still remained dark and present under the T-shirt, while the graze on my waist still pulled when I twisted. But the hurt had stepped back from active emergency into an ever-present annoyance, which counted as genuine progress given everything I had put the body through.
The Healing Stim had delivered exactly what it promised.
Tikki confirmed his own recovery by looking personally insulted by the cast.
I now kept two five-kilogram dumbbells floating beside the wheelchair, rising and falling without active correction needed from me.
Yesterday, keeping a coffee mug level required genuine attention. Today, the weights ran on their own while I was actively thinking about other things, which was either absurd progress or a signal to order heavier dumbbells. Almost certainly both.
Across the balcony, the firearm training preparations were unfolding at three very different speeds.
Leo had most of his plate carrier on already and was tightening the last of the straps.
Kara stood checking every pouch in her assault pack in sequence, reading labels, confirming placement before moving to the next. I knew she would do this until everything was correct, and then check it again.
Nora was attempting to close three separate buckles simultaneously.
"I can’t breathe," she announced.
"You are breathing to tell me that right now..."
"The situation is getting worse."
"You have said that four separate times."
"Because the deterioration has been continuous."
Leo stepped over without commentary, grabbed both shoulder straps on her plate carrier, and pulled them one firm notch down, and the carrier settled properly against her torso.
Nora blinked. Inhaled. Then inhaled again.
"I can breathe."
"You were wearing it wrong," Leo said.
"Oh."
Every pack I had assembled for them had the same layout.
A rolled-up sleeping bag strapped underneath. Tourniquet external where fingers could find it without vision. Trauma shears clipped outside. Canteen accessible immediately. Bolt cutters on the side panel. Bushcraft knife on the belt. MREs, spare batteries, rubbing alcohol, and a full first aid kit that Kara had already reorganized twice because that’s her jam and she wasn’t going to leave a first aid kit disorganized in her presence under any circumstances.
The point of wearing all of it was that nobody should discover gear problems on Day 15 when Days 1 through 14 were available for exactly this purpose.
Before them on a table, three AR-platform rifles sat beside three Glock 44s and a blue plastic barrel filled to the brim with .22 LR rounds.
Every rifle had an LPVO with a piggyback red dot at forty-five degrees. Functional, consistent, and identical to the optics configuration they would eventually run on real rifles, which meant they were learning one setup once rather than relearning it later under considerably less favorable conditions.
I rolled the wheelchair forward and clapped once.
"Alright, maggots!" I fully committed to being their drill instructor, which admittedly lost some authority coming from a wheelchair on a luxury penthouse balcony. "Welcome to Basic Marksmanship. By the end of this course, each of you will hopefully be capable of shooting something other than your own feet."
Three identical expressions of complete deadpan looked back at me.
Including Tikki.
While I grinned and pointed at the barrel.
"By the end of the week, that barrel needs to be empty."
Nora looked at it with wide eyes. "The whole thing?"
"Yes."
"How many rounds are in there?"
"Enough."
"Nikki..."
"I genuinely didn’t count..."
Kara performed mental arithmetic on the barrel contents and looked unhappy about the results.
Leo looked at the barrel, looked at me, and accepted reality without interrogating it.
Smart man.
"These are not your permanent rifles..." I said, lifting one telekinetically in the air. "These are chambered in .22 Long Rifle... Almost no recoil, cheap ammunition, and a reliable platform. The AR design is the most broadly available military-style action you will see in the field, so you are learning the platform on an easy round and building muscle memory before you touch anything with actual stopping power."
I then pointed at the optics. "The LPVO and the red dot are what you will eventually run on your real weapons... and as they say, practice makes perfect."
"Makes sense," Leo said.
"Congratulations," I gave him a firm nod, "You passed my intelligence assessment."
Dude even looked oddly pleased about it.
And with that, I walked them through magazine loading. Kara found the rhythm on the third round.
Leo found it almost immediately, farm hands and practiced grip being what they were.
Nora found it after six attempts, one of which involved a cartridge leaving her grip entirely and bouncing twice across the balcony floor before she retrieved it with roughly seventy percent of her dignity intact.
"I have genuinely never touched a bullet before this moment," she said. "That is simply a fact about my life."
From there, we covered magazine insertion, charging handle operation, bolt lock, safety selector, and what each meant, and the very important reason why nobody’s trigger finger moved until they had already committed to destroying whatever was in front of the muzzle.
Then we moved to muzzle awareness. Low ready, high ready. Malfunction clearing and why the goal was under three seconds, and why three seconds was already too long.
I used Telekinesis for all the form corrections rather than standing up.
Kara’s right elbow had dropped, and a small nudge raised it. She blinked and settled into the adjusted position without breaking her focus.
Leo’s cheek weld ran slightly high. One downward press and the optic aligned correctly. He made no reaction, just settled into the improved position and continued.
And Nora’s... was a list that went on disturbingly long.
All the while, the dumbbells kept their rhythm beside me, rising and falling while I was actively correcting three students and thinking about something else entirely.
When a correction needed full concentration, I paused the weights for three seconds and resumed after. Three objects running concurrently felt a little uncomfortable. Four was still out of reach.
The System had warned me the progression would feel absurdly fast and then plateau. The rational response to that information was to abuse the fast phase as aggressively as possible.
"Now..." I said, once all three had the fundamentals under their hands. "We are taking first shots. Take aim, exhale half a breath, and press the trigger, but do not haul on it... and whatever happens, do not broadcast your intentions to the target by freezing for thirty seconds beforehand."
Nora’s hand went up.
"Am I allowed to-"
"No."
The hand came down.
Leo went first. The rifle came up clean into his shoulder, cheek settled against the stock naturally, eye found the dot. He exhaled half a breath and pressed.
-Thack-!-Ping-!
Dead center on the steel plate, and he allowed himself exactly one small nod for that.
Kara’s first shot landed low, kicking up concrete beneath the plate.
"Higher."
She adjusted and pressed.
-Thack-!-Ping-!
"I hit it!" She turned around wearing the largest grin I had seen since the world ended.
"Yeah, you did." I softly smiled back.
"I hit it!"
"You already said that."
"It deserved saying twice."
Nora went last.
She shouldered the rifle, found the dot, her finger went toward the trigger, then her eyes drifted toward the street below, and her finger returned.
She readjusted her shoulder and found the dot again, her breathing changing in ways it should not before pressing a trigger.
"Nora..."
"I am aiming."
"That’s a lot of aiming..."
"I am aiming very carefully."
"Do it!"
-Thack-!
The round went somewhere into the general area of the apartment building beyond the target.
"I hit something...?" She innocently tilted her head.
"You absolutely did," I agreed.
"What?"
"The great unknown..."
A rhythm settled in after that. Small cracks of .22 LR rolling off the balcony into the open air, steel plates ringing when rounds connected, Nora celebrating each hit with enthusiasm calibrated well beyond the actual difficulty of the achievement, Leo quietly shooting consistent three-round groups, Kara getting visibly frustrated about a persistent low-left pattern and correcting it by the end of her second magazine through sheer stubbornness.
The Telekinesis corrections continued throughout. An elbow, a grip, a cheek weld, a support hand position while the dumbbells paused for three seconds during each precise adjustment and resumed after.
Then the migraine arrived with a dull pulse behind both eyes, the signal I had learned to recognize as the point where continuing meant extended downtime rather than progress.
Rubbing the bridge of my nose, I settled the dumbbells onto the balcony floor.
And I was just about to suggest a break when-
-THARD-!
A thunderous echo of a gunshot rippled from the direction of the city ahead.
Every rifle came down at once.
".300 Win Mag...."
Below the balcony, the infected erupted toward the direction of the shot, shrieking and pushing through the street in a wave that swept away most of what had been sitting beneath the building.
I sighed. "I needed those infected."
Building the group’s resistance to the first-strain’s concentration required a horde density directly below us. And that horde had just discovered new interests.
[It’s fine... once we get back to shooting, those bastards will come back running...]
The thought had barely settled when-
-THARD-!
Another came. Then, another few seconds later, another.
"Inside. Now"
Nora bolted straight inside, damn near tripping twice, followed by Kara, and then Leo and me, while the shooter fired another round at who knows what.
"Could be cracking shots at infected from a safe position," Nora said, eyes wide, and breathing fast, not lowering her rifle yet.
"Waste of ammo..." I replied, eyes still on the direction the sound was coming from. "Every round pulls more infected into the position. That’s a net negative... Either way, let’s wait it out in the master bedroom. The shooter won’t have a line of sight at us if he ever turns this way."
"Unless killing them is the point," Kara said quietly, eyes still on the street.
I looked at her while another gunshot resounded.
"Shooting at them from a safe point like ours only makes rational sense if you receive something for the effort." Kara’s eyes locked into mine, "The way you do."
And the whole room went still.
-THARD-!
The rifle roared again. Same direction, same distance, deliberate intervals, and that measured cadence which was the opposite of panic fire.
But that didn’t mean the other party had a System. That’d be just stupid.
But a shooter running .300 Winchester Magnum at measured intervals from a possible fortified position was not exactly demonstrating stupidity.
The shooter probably had a group of survivors pinned somewhere.
But then again, the city overflowed with untouched supplies. Every apartment, every pantry, and every refrigerator had been sitting full since the whole shit-show began with no warning and no time for even the thought of bugging out.
Nobody should have a rational reason to fight over resources this early.
-THARD-!
"L-let’s not get ahead of ourselves," I said, and the laugh that came out with it landed several degrees short of convincing, "Dude could just be out for revenge..."
Nobody replied.
The rifle across the city spoke again, and for the first time since coming back to the past, I was genuinely uncertain about what was out there.
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