In a presto, a dozen grown-ups appear in front of us, all wearing the same uniform as the doctor who attended me a while ago. They hold some suitcases with exactly their right hand, which is quite disturbing to see, and as the supervisor gives a nod, they start to unlatch the little metallic belts that keep them together. Two of them are holding a treadmill that is placed a little to the right of the small podium.
I couldn't help but notice that the supervisor stepped out of the little podium and made his way out of the tent. Now the attention is no longer on him but on the strange team that is unfolding a mixture of medical equipment and some tools.
I notice the familiar face of Doctor Venera, who had accompanied me some time before coming to the camp. As if sensing me, she moves her eyes in my direction and gives me a big smile, and it worries me that I don't see her gaze drop on any of the other kids. I could think that I am her favorite, but that is not the case. This means she has only attended to me, which means they have quite a large personnel. My heart makes a thump in disappointment.
The doctor is holding in her hand some syringes and little glass bottles like the ones used in hospitals and seems to be enjoying unpacking the rather larger syringes from her case.
A voice is heard saying loudly, "We will call everyone's number. When you hear your code, come forward and we will take some records."
He then grabs a list from the suitcase in his right hand and starts reading.
"23601," he squeals.
A few seconds pass, and a boy starts making his way toward the front of the tent. He has dark blonde hair, walks shyly, and looks very frightened. He looks really young, with a face clean of any lines, and if you were to see only his face, he would seem like an 11-year-old boy, but his tall build makes you wonder.
One of the men immediately comes up to him with one of those measuring tapes that P.E. teachers use to measure our waist and thighs. The man in uniform is not only measuring his waist and thighs but every part of his body, starting from the length of his arms, the length of his torso, legs, his waist, his chest, and even the distance from his chin to his brows. Every inch of his body is measured, and nothing is left forgotten. There are two men next to each other: one measures him, and one writes down the numbers on a paper. The one with the measuring tape gestures for him to move to the next little group on the right. There are, in total, four little groups with a distance of five meters from each other. This next one is led by a woman.
The first man, the one calling the numbers, speaks again: "45290," and now another boy steps forward, looking rather skeptical. Before he can pass the man who called his name and go to the one with the measuring tape, the man stops him and asks, "Why are we being measured?"
An answer comes quickly: "To keep track of progress and also for medical records."
The boy says no more, but he moves past the man with a look in his eyes that clearly indicates he has a lot more questions to ask. My eyes don't follow him, though; they follow the first boy, who is now seated on a chair and is looking nervously at the woman who is fixing a syringe, clearly not in a hurry. She places a band near the boy's wrist and aims the syringe clearly at one of his veins. The syringe is completely filled, and then she takes the syringe's barrel out and places it into a different case to her left that is rather large. The boy's look seems panicked, but they have not finished with him yet.
He goes up from the chair and onto the mysterious treadmill that looks rather random, but as soon as I see the oxygen mask that is connected to a tube being put on his face forcefully, I immediately know what it is for. They are calculating his VO₂ max. I know that because one of my cousins is a long-distance runner and had told me and my family during a family gathering that before he got accepted somewhere, I can't even remember where, he needed to calculate his maximum oxygen intake. I got curious and looked a little into it just to grasp the basics.
This time, a woman instructs the boy with some words I can't read, even by reading her lips. She speaks in a rather strange manner and barely opens her lips. As humans, when we speak, we open our mouths and move our lips a lot, but she seems to be moving them the bare minimum, which makes me wonder how the words she speaks actually sound.
The boy steps onto the treadmill and starts running at a fast pace. After some time, the treadmill stops, and the boy gets off. His small face has gotten a little red, and I can tell he is trying to steady his breathing.
Then, at last, he goes to the ponytailed Doctor Venera, who from afar looks rather youthful. The dark circles on her face seem to disappear from a distance, and her face takes on a completely different appearance in my eyes.
As I had imagined, as soon as the boy starts to walk toward her, she immediately lifts the corners of her mouth into a big simper that instantly ruins her appearance. All of the warders seem to have at least a non-human-like characteristic, from the way they walk, smile, speak, and stand. I know that people who go through specific training can also develop these characteristics and carry them with pride, like soldiers who walk in a synchronized rhythm and in a straight line, which in itself is beautiful. But when I look at them, I feel the same way I do when I watch soldiers in documentaries. It gives me a terrifying sensation in my throat, and my heart beats just a little faster at the realization of every pattern I discover.
As I shrug off my own thoughts, I notice that the boy has already finished his last requirement, and from the looks of it, I assume he had his heart rate measured, considering that a small watch-like device is removed from his wrist.
All of these are measurements professional athletes take to track their progress or to decide whether or not they can go pro. Whatever training they intend to put us through seems to be no joke to them, but to me, it seems that no one here knows how to joke at this point.
I notice that now two people are already being tested at the groups before Doctor Venera, both boys with the same average build- one of them being the courageous boy who asked a question- and then a code is called again.
"87230."
The girl who tried to spark a conversation with me on my left starts to make her way through the crowd. She is walking at a snail-paced speed, as if waiting for everyone to make way for her. Considering we are at the end of the crowd, they do. Everyone takes a few steps back, forming a small path for her to walk while staring at the new subject. The pressure would have crushed me, but it seems like that is exactly what she wants.
Her pace doesn't change, though, and she walks at the same speed she started, even when the man who called the names repeats her code once more, clearly knowing that she heard it while looking at her with a frown. I hope that annoying him is her intention and not that she is scared. If we slow down our steps, that doesn't mean the monsters will too—they will follow us at the same speed and mock us for our ignorance.
She arrives at warder number two, who takes the measurements, and clearly greets him with a wave of the hand. He nods and starts his job, which to me is strange. If this were a normal situation, I would say that only nodding to someone who greeted you is rude, but maybe my expectations are so low that his unfriendly response seems like the warmest greeting we will get here.
The people who finish go to the right corner of the tent and stay there. The two boys who have finished are talking to each other in low whispers about something I can't hear from this far.
I am scared. I don't want my turn to come, now or ever. Despite knowing it is inevitable, I want to be the last person examined. I know that what they are doing doesn't seem harmful, but even so, I fear the fact that this place will know everything about me, starting with my heart rate. Maybe it would be better if I got it over with at once so this feeling in my chest would disappear, but I would rather it stay than give any information about myself to them.
Three boys have already finished testing, which means it will be a girl next. There are not many girls, which increases the odds of me being picked.
"41, 42, 43, 44… 39860." Phew—another round safe. That means I get four more rounds of nearly 44 seconds before testing and can now stop holding my breath. The number of people on the tested side of the tent is increasing and is now larger than those who haven't been tested yet.
Two more codes are called, and time passes painfully slowly. It feels uncomfortable standing there, and I can almost hear the ticking of a clock without having one nearby.
"98910," calls the warder.
The hair on my body stands up because there are only two girls left on this side of the tent, and I could be chosen. As I start counting the seconds, I hear the warder call the number once more, but I don't pay much attention since I am too focused on my heartbeat.
The sharp voice of the warder cuts my anxiety in half: "If no one discloses who the number belongs to, we will search everyone's clothes."
No one speaks, so he sends one of the men waiting in the back to check our tags. The man passes by each of us, looking at our clothes. He stops in front of the boy to my left, and for a second I think he is speaking to me.
"Where is your name tag?" he asks the boy.
"I don't have it," the boy says simply.
"Was it not given to you in your room?" the man asks, this time in a harsher tone.
The boy doesn't speak, he just looks at him without answering or even moving a muscle.
A few seconds pass. "Answer me," he snaps.
"You aren't answering our questions either, so why should we?" the boy says in a high-pitched voice that sounds a little scared but mostly amused.
An unfamiliar voice comes from the group of doctors: "I was the one in charge of giving it to him, and I fulfilled my duties. Before I left his room, he had a tag attached to his blouse," he says, trying not to be held responsible.
The warder steps closer to the boy, so close their brows would collide if they lowered their heads.
He looks him in the eye and says, "Where is your tag, boy?"
"I must have lost it," he replies, putting on a light, mischievous smile, like a child who just stole candy from a hidden drawer.
The warder looks at him with a blank expression, gives nothing away, and steps back. He walks to one of the officers standing at the very back, whose face I can't quite make out, and says something in a low voice.
The man nods once, walks to a suitcase a few steps away, opens it, and pulls out some papers. He flips through them, scanning the contents. After a few pages, he stops, finds what he's looking for, and returns.
The warder takes the paper, looks at it for a few seconds, then at the boy, then back at the paper.
"Number 98910, code name Zion. Does that ring a bell?" he asks firmly.
"Not really. I am not a machine, so I can't have a number. My name is Eutimio Loris—is that written there? That way I can know if it's me," the boy replies with another smile that I have begun to hate.
His name sounds Italian, I can tell immediately from the soft accent. His nationality is no secret now, and I finally understand what Doctor Venera meant when she praised my accent. I don't know what they want to use us for, but not being able to identify your native language might be useful. In my case, though, it feels like a curse.
"You will not speak that name again," the warder says.
Then he raises his voice slightly: "If anyone uses their names in front of us, you will be ignored and not recognized as part of this facility." He turns back to the boy. "As it says here, you are number 98910. I don't care what your name is, and I will not try to remember it. Remember your code, because mistakes like this are not tolerated. If the supervisor were here, your behavior would not end this lightly."
He gestures toward the back, and immediately someone approaches with a name tag and attaches it to the boy's shirt. Then the warder picks up the white sheets he had placed on the ground and resumes reading the numbers as if nothing had happened.