Four months later.

Ethan’s chest tightens and his lungs strain trying to gasp for air. He’d never been this far up in the mountains before. Despite the sub-zero temperature, his chest burned. He rested his hands on his kneecaps and bent over in exhaustion. Not only did he have to carry his weight up the steep incline, but he also had to pull the weight of his Exo’s metallic frame.

The rest of the Infiltrators were far ahead of him, almost out of sight. The only sign identifying them was the floodlights of their Exos. He dragged his feet up the mountainous terrain step-by-step. His muscles cramp. They radiate a searing pain from the lack of sufficient oxygen.

“What the hell are we doing this high up? I thought you said we were going to train! Shouldn’t we be at the base?” shouted Ethan into his communications device built into his Exo.

“You know you don’t have to scream, right?” muttered Amber under her breath.

“Oh…Yeah… my bad,” Ethan apologized.

Distracted by the brief exchange of words between them, Ethan misplaces his metal foot on a green rock. The rock was coated in moss. Ethan was swept off his feet. The Exo flung backward teetering off a cliff in the mountain. It fell onto the branch of a tree. For a moment the suit seemed stable. Ethan breathed a sigh of relief. The short-lived relief as the cracking sound of the branch instilled panic into his heart once more. Shit! What now?! That’s a long way down, Ethan thought as he frantically yelled for help.

John, who had reached the top of the mountain already, snapped his head over to the source of the sound. He stomped his foot firmly on the mountain. Without hesitation, he dived off the mountain. He turned on his back and grappled. The hook dug deep into the rock, anchoring him. He scaled the mountain at an astounding speed to reach the dangling Exo in danger.

“Activate grappling formation 61!” he yelled.

“W-w-what?” Ethan stammered in panic.

“Just like in the training course back at base… uhh...” John begins to lose his words. “L-l-like Batman scaling a mountain!”

Oh yeah… Grapple the mountain and pull yourself up.

John closed in on Ethan’s position. Almost a fraction of a second earlier and John would’ve made it. The branch gave way and Ethan fell. His Exo flailed helplessly in the air.

“Thruster, Ethan! Now!” screamed John, unable to reach Ethan in his position.

The Exo stabilized itself and Ethan activated his Air-thruster. The compressed air made a short, high-pitched, but barely audible whistle. Ethan catapulted upward up the mountain. He grappled onto two rocks. One cable shot out from each hand. The cables tightened as Ethan felt his entire body bounce violently. He lay dangling from the two cables like a puppet put on display.

Slowly, Ethan reeled his grapples in and pulls his Exo to a landing spot. A collective sigh of relief resounded through the quiet, deserted mountains as Ethan climbed over the last rock at the top of the mountain.

Collapsing to the ground Ethan whined, “Why the hell are these things so heavy. 4 months of practice and it still feels heavier than this mountain.”

Breach walked over and knocks on Ethan’s glass at the front of his suit, “It’s lined with lead. That’s exactly why you need grapples and air-thrusters. You can’t move quickly without them helping you. Besides, would you like a few extra weights on your back or radiation poisoning?”

“I’ve had it before… Wasn’t that bad, to be honest…” muttered Ethan in response.

“Oh no, no, no, no. I’m not pulling you from the brink of death twice. If you get radiation poisoning, say hi to God for me, would ya?” Amber interrupted sarcastically.

“Enough. We ain’t here to play games,” boomed John from within the mist as he vaulted over the edge of the mountain with his grapples. “Ethan, you’ve been adequately trained at the facility to use your Exo. But it still isn’t second nature to you. That’s why we’re throwing you off this cliff.”

Ethan's heart skipped a beat and then sank deeper than the titanic, “What?!”

“We’re going to throw you off the cliff,” reiterated John. “See those lifeless tree barks and collapsed debris? Make it through that and you’ve officially mastered your Exo movement. Don’t worry, most people pass on their first time here. It’s a lot easier than the course back home!”

“Most?” asked Ethan nervously.

Ethan gulped as he stared down the steep mountain decorated with blocks of cement, ash, and uprooted tree barks. This mountain was home to thousands of people. But the war touched their homes and ended up destroying them and their legacy. A price many communities, even countries, had to pay.

“Uhm… do you want a push or are you going to jump?” asked Amber. “Please say push…”

Ethan was hesitant before but now, just to spite her, he immediately flung himself off the cliff. Mid-air he activated his thruster and a burst of air boosted him forward. He quickly approached the leafless forest, a mix of both concrete and a natural jungle.

“Remember, your air-thruster can only activate once every few seconds! Plan accordingly!” reminded John.

The rocks on the ground looked like a blur to Ethan as he zipped past them in an instant. His Exo beeped blue signifying his thruster had cooled down. Ethan flipped his body around and boosted in the opposite direction to slow himself.

“Good! Now shift your body!”

The Exo-suit’s navigation system plotted a red path through the debris. All Ethan had to do was follow it. As for experts like John, Amber, and Breach who had been doing this for years, they used their body weight to shift themselves and boost in a different direction. This made their grapples useful for dispatching hostiles at range.

Ethan began to slip through the obstacles one by one. His mind was barely keeping up with the speed he was traveling at. His hips and upper body began to ache from twisting his body so violently.

At the last branch, Ethan lost focus and the thick branch knocked him from the air. He tumbled to the ground crashing into the remaining obstacles. Concrete and wood flew through the air as his Exo slid across the rocky ground being thrown from one obstacle to another like a game of ping-pong. The clanking sound echoed through the mountain as John winced.

Breach and Amber glanced at John, “What happened?!”

“He fell.”

“Don’t tell me I have to patch him up for the 6th time…” dreaded Amber, dropping her head in defeat.

“Might need to. I think I heard a shoulder pop out of its socket,” grinned John.

Breach holds his head in his hands, “Forget his shoulder, my beautiful Exo is going to get ruined the way he’s treating it. That’s like destroying the Mona Lisa in front of Leonardo Da Vinci.”

“It’s just a bloody suit. Get over it…” sighed Amber.

“It’s art!” retaliated Breach.

“Sometimes I wish I was deaf instead of blind,” John mumbled under his breath as Amber and Breach’s argument faded into the background.

John waited for an indication. Ethan groaned softly as he nursed his injured shoulder that took the brunt of the impact.

“He’s fine,” stated John plainly. “It’s fine, keep going. It’s a clear stretch from here,” he encouraged Ethan.

His legs quivering from exhaustion, Ethan pulled himself up. He used the two grapples on both his hands, slingshotting himself to restore his original momentum. Ethan barely made it to the finish line as he crashed inches before it and slid over the marked line at the base of the mountain. I am never doing that ever again, he thought.

Ethan panted like a dog, his breath making the glass screen covering his face become clouded with mist. He tried to rise to his feet but every muscle in his body refused to comply. His body remained limp as a corpse until the remaining three squad members made it down the mountain in half the time Ethan did. The fog lights on his Exo flickered. Some of his shoulder plates had come loose from his crash leaving the lead coating exposed.

Ethan’s shoulder lay limp in his suit. As John had suspected, his shoulder had been dislocated. He felt his heart pound in his chest, the adrenaline rushing through his veins. I’m going to go into cardiac arrest any time now, joked Ethan sarcastically, even though he wouldn’t be surprised if he did. His head felt dizzy as if his brain had bounced off the inside of his skull for his entire trip down the mountain.

Light-headedness overcame him as he saw John’s military boots step out of the teleporter at the base. I had to walk up this damn mountain when there was a teleporter right here? Questioned an enraged Ethan. I’m going to kill that man when I wake up, he thought before blacking out.