The alarm woke Emily up early again. This time she did check the clock and shuddered to see it was two am. Then came the announcement “Attention in the barracks you have two minutes to muster outside in the uniform of the day with your swimsuit on your left arm and your shower shoes in your right hand.”

Emily slipped into her nasty and slightly damp uniform that she wore the day before and grabbed her swimsuit and flip flops on her way out of the barracks. The platoon mustered up in front of the barracks and marched double time to the pool. This time they marched right into the front door instead of climbing the fire escape. Once inside they were split into men and women and told to put their swimsuit on and wear their shower shoes out of the changing room.

Once outside of the changing rooms they were led to the pool area and to stairs in the back. There they were told to line their shower shoes neatly against the wall and start climbing the stair two by two. The stairs ended at the fourth floor where the Navy Senior Chief was waiting on them.

“Get yourselves into the red boxes.” Was all he said as Emily entered.

Emily ran to a red box and stood at attention waiting for the rest of her platoon to finish climbing the stairs. In her and all the other red boxes neatly folded was a black plastic square. Emily wondered with dread what the plastic was for.

“In your red box is a neatly folded body bag. Turn around and unfold your body bag. Place it on the ground neatly next to you on your left.” The Senior Chief told them pacing back and forth on the gray path.

Emily turned to the black plastic body bag and shook it out. She did as she was told and placed the bag on the ground beside her.

“This is not a real body bag. A real body bag has a single zipper from head to toe. The zipper is to keep body parts from falling out. I wanted to use a real body bag but I was told that I would have to wait until tomorrow. If you check out your body bag you will notice that it has snap buttons on it. You are to climb into your body bag with your head towards the gray walkway and snap all the buttons from head to toe.” The Senior Chief told them in his scary quiet voice.

When the platoon hesitated he said. “That was not a suggestion. Get into your body bags now and button them up!”

Emily quickly laid down inside the thick black plastic bag. Her hands shook as she buttoned the bag up. When she was done all she could see was blackness.

“Healers are the second most common Supers on the planet. eleven percent of all supers are healers. Healers are classified into three classes. Class Three healers use their patient's body natural healing factors to speed up the healing in his or her patient. This class of healers can heal mild to moderate injuries. Class Two Healers use their own power to heal a patient sometimes instantly. This class of Healers can heal mild and moderate injuries as well as some severe injuries. Class one Healers can heal almost all injuries and include bring their patients back from dead in some very isolated cases. The longest time a healer has brought someone back from the dead was 21 minutes after the patient had been declared dead. Class one Healers can also heal some minor diseases and in some very minor instances reverse age-related injury and diseases from their patients.” The Senior Chief said his voice muffled from the body bag.

“Mistakes in war means someone has died. If you're lucky it's just you. If your not then your buddy now lies in YOUR body bag. If you're really unlucky then there is some mother and child who because of you now lies in YOUR body bag! Did you think we would forget about what happened last night? Did you think we would overlook the way you people panicked and left one of your fellow soldiers behind to die? United States Armed Personnel do not leave their people behind to die and I will teach you that tonight. No one is allowed outside of pool until everyone is accounted for.”

With no warning and still inside the body bag Emily felt herself fall. She screamed as she fell feet first. She had just enough time to grab her elbows and cross her legs before she hit the water. The heavy black bag dragged Emily down faster than her uniform did the day before. She quickly found the edges of the body bag and ripped the bag open.

Getting out of the bag proved hard because she kept on getting tangled up in the bag and it moved around her. Finally, she pulled herself out of the body bag. There was light shining from above her and below. The light from above was bright but the lights below her were very dim.. She couldn’t see the bottom of the pool. Around her, she saw her fellow platoon mates. Some of her fellow Platoon mates were swimming upwards while some of them were swimming to help others out of their body bag. No one looked like they needed help so Emily headed up toward the surface. As she looked down she saw her body bag sink below the lights and disappear into the darkness.

They told to hold onto the pool while Sergeant Coleman counted them off. Once she was satisfied that everyone was alive and hanging on the edge of the pool the platoon was allowed out of the pool. Once everyone was changed back into their uniforms they headed out to the barracks. As Emily climbed back into her bunk she was shocked that the whole thing at the pool only took an hour. It seems like a lot longer than that.