The middle of summer made its presence known by creating a record-breaking heat wave. Every day the temperature was above a hundred degrees. It made trying to train outside impossible. Everyone moved sluggishly as they drowned in perspiration.

There wasn’t much safety in the house, either. The sun cooked the walls until the inside was warm and toasty. Katherine couldn’t keep the thermostat low all of the time or the air conditioner would freeze over and then there would be no cold air at all. The team hid in any dark corner they could find. Curtains were drawn over the windows to keep the light out.

On top of the unbearable weather was the fact that we were in our last week of training. Katherine no longer instructed us at night or ran through fighting stances with us during the day. We were left to our own devices.

We fell apart under the stress. Long gone were the days where laughter echoed around the house. No one spoke unless it was to speculate about what would be on the test. Mostly everyone stayed locked up in their rooms buried in their notes. The pressure had even gotten to Castile, who I thought was immune to any emotion other than confidence. I caught him sitting in the gym breaking bricks on his forehead repeatedly.

I had never been good at trying to study for a test. For two days, I tried to make sense of the notes I had. I struggled to get through the flashcards Hot Stuff had given me. Whenever I tried to read more than one sentence, the words would blur, and I’d sit there thinking about anything else.

I moved on to trying to study with Lily. Her notes were easier to read, but trying to remember anything made my brain tired. Whenever she saw me zoning out, she’d slap the back of my head. I quickly gave up that option.

I knew I wouldn’t be prepared if I didn’t study, but I couldn’t focus. On top of being nervous, I didn’t get any quality rest the night before the test. In my dream, I’d overslept and had to run to school. I’d been in such a rush I didn’t realize I’d forgotten to get dressed. I ran into the gym naked. Ninja filled the bleachers. Katherine got out of the stands, tapped her watch, and said, “You’re too late, you failed.” Knock. Knock.

“Huh?!” I jolted awake. I’d fallen asleep at my desk. A page from my notebook stuck to my cheek. I peeled it off of me and rubbed my eyes. My back cracked as I sat up and stretched. Outside, the morning was in full swing. I found my mask and put it on just as the door cracked open.

Hot Stuff came in. “You up?”

I yawned. “Sort of.”

“Well, it’s time to get going.” She backed out of the room but stopped halfway. “Good luck, mate.”

“Thanks.”

The team gathered in the living room. A fish bowl filled with envelopes was sitting on the coffee table. I wondered what that had to do with our tests. Then Katherine held the bowl up to everyone so they could take an envelope. I dug around the inside for a minute to be sure I pulled something good.

“Inside your envelope, you’ll find a time and a task. Complete the task, and you pass your test,” Katherine said as she set the empty bowl down. “Even though I’ve arranged each of the situations, I want to be clear that the dangers you’ll face are real. I’ve set the tasks for different times so that I will be available during each test to make sure nothing goes wrong. Go ahead and see what you pulled.”

I tore the envelope. There was a small piece of paper inside that read: AIRPORT. TAKE THE 2:30 FLIGHT TO WASHINGTON. ENSURE EVERY PASSENGER SURVIVES.

I swallowed. I knew my task wasn’t going to be simple. It didn’t say make sure the passengers arrived; it said “survive” for a reason.

Kavi was the first to be tested. He left with Katherine. I watched from a window as her red car disappeared down the road. The rest of us had time to kill. I didn’t like going first, but it was better than waiting around.

The others struggled to stay occupied. Wolf peeled a carrot, but he’d gotten past the skin fifty slices ago. Lily buried her nose in a book about boats. I wondered if that’s where she was going to be tested. Spaz tried to play video games; only his character kept dying because he was zoning out.

I found a quiet spot on the balcony and tried to remember what Katherine taught us about airplanes. I thought about all of the things that could go wrong. Then I tried to work through each situation in my mind. Every scenario I imagined would be difficult to handle, and what if I hadn’t thought of everything? All of my mental preparation would be useless.

I went to my room, found a backpack, and filled it with clothes. I had to appear like I was going on a trip. I must of have looked up how to survive a plane crash a dozen times before I went and sat on the front steps. My foot tapped the ground repeatedly. I kept checking the time, hoping it would go by fast and yet slowly at the same time.

Finally, it was time to go. I had to run through the wilderness to get to the nearest town, but it felt good to speed through the woods at eighty miles an hour. Running pushed out all of my jitters. Although, a few times I tripped on a rock or a fallen branch and tumbled fifty feet before getting up.

When I got close to the town, I removed my mask, and my uniform disappeared. I was left wearing shorts and a T-shirt. I brushed off the pine needles and moss I’d collected on my falls. I wandered out of the trees and onto the town streets. I did my best to appear to have been a guy out hiking.

A bus took me into the city, and from the bus station, I called a taxi to take me to the airport. I wanted to be able to run the entire way, but I needed to save my energy. An hour later, I was able to spot my destination.

The airport was out in the middle of nowhere. Only fields and farms surrounded it. It was a massive structure of gleaming glass with a roof that looked like the tops of a dozen white tents. I could see planes coming and going.

The taxi pulled into the unloading zone. I grabbed my bag from the trunk and headed inside. I reached into my pocket to double check that my mask was with me.

I’d only flown once before, and it was to visit my grandma in Florida, but I didn’t remember security being so extensive when I was a kid. I had to remove my shoes, any metal items, and empty my pockets.

I wasn’t sure what to do about my mask, but I was running out of time to come up with an idea. The people behind me were getting agitated as they waited for me. I scrunched up my mask so no one would be able to see the symbol on it and stuck it in the plastic bin next to my shoes. I practically ran through the metal detector then waited on the other side for my bin.

The woman watching the x-ray machine shook her head and took my bin out of the line. Worry gripped my chest. She seized my mask, turned it about, but couldn’t make sense of it. She called someone else over to inspect it. They looked back and forth from the mask to me. This isn’t good, I thought.

“Sir, can you explain what this is?” the woman asked.

“Oh, it’s just a face warmer,” I said.

“Is there any metal in this? It keeps setting the detector off.”

The machine must’ve been sensing the billions of nanotech in the mask. “Yeah, it’s got some kind of heating device in it. Perfectly harmless, though.”

They looked unsure about giving the mask back, but I snatched it before they could change their minds. I stuffed it gratefully into my pocket. I looked around to see I had caused a scene. I took my things and walked away in a hurry.

As I waited to board the plane, I studied the other passengers. There were a lot of people traveling for business judging by their clothes, a couple of families, and tourists; no one shady or out of the ordinary, but looks could be deceiving. Katherine had been drilling that into our minds the past few weeks.

“Now boarding the flight to Washington.”

I made sure I had an aisle seat so whenever things went wrong, I wouldn’t have to crawl over the people next to me. I noted all of the exits on the plane. The closest one to me was the window exit, exactly five rows away. The second exit was the back door, ten rows away.

I shut my eyes and resisted the urge to tap my finger on the armrest. If I looked too fidgety, I would raise concern, but I didn’t fool the flight attendant.

“Is everything okay, sir?” she asked. The people nearby all looked at me. If they’d seen me at security, they were probably already concerned about my behavior.

“I’m afraid of flying, that’s all,” I said.

“Oh, well I assure you, we’ll be perfectly safe.” She walked away, and everyone stopped looking at me.

I took a deep breath as the plane taxied down the runway. Once the engines fired up, I could feel the plane getting lighter as we started to leave the ground. I scanned over the cabin. So far, everything was going smoothly. The plane climbed higher and higher into the sky. When we reached our cruising altitude, that’s when I noticed a faint ticking sound. It was much too quiet for any regular ear to pick up and was coming from the back. A cold chill went down my spine.

She put a bomb on the plane.

I unbuckled myself and walked to the back of the plane. Katherine taught us how to disable a bomb, but I’d be lucky if I remembered how to do it now. I guess I still had a long way to go until I reached the point where I had perfect recollection. As I got closer to the back, the ticking noise got louder and faster. It wasn’t coming from the overhead compartments. It must be taped to the underside of a seat. I followed the noise to the very last row on the plane. Only one person was sitting there.

Katherine was leaning against the window, casually watching the clouds outside. I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to react to her. She said she was there to make sure everything went okay, not that she was a part of the test. I decided that meant I should pretend as if she wasn’t there.

I crouched down to see if the bomb was under the seat beside her. Her foot kicked my hand aside. I hissed and moved back. I looked at her, wondering what on earth she was doing. She gave me an evil eye and pulled out a cheap replica of a Betrayal mask. That could only mean one thing.

My heart thudded with panic. Katherine jumped out of her seat and kicked me in the chest. I flew backward, slammed into the side of a seat, and crumpled to the floor. People started screaming and looked back to see what was going on. I took this chance to put my mask on.

“What’s going on back here?” a man asked as he came up the aisle slowly with his hands held out in front of him. I ripped the armrest off of a chair and swung at Katherine’s head, but she ducked. “There’s no need for violence!”

I swung for her again, but she snatched the man and used him as a shield. I ended up knocking him out instead. She dropped him onto the floor. “The plane is mine,” she said and ran towards the front. Before I could follow her, I noticed the ticking suddenly stopped.

“Oh, no.”

BOOM!!!

I spun around so quickly time seemed to stop. Everything around me appeared frozen in place. I could see the expressions of terror on every face, the air rippling as the bomb’s shockwave spread outward, and a cloud of fire was rising out of the back row. I ran towards the fire. I touched it and pulled the flames into me. The heat fused with my body, it felt like sinking into a hot tub.

When I returned to normal speed, it was like hitting the “play” button on the world. I was bombarded with the sound of screaming, the back of the plane tearing apart, and a fierce gust of wind. I grabbed onto a seat as the wind sucked everything out of the cabin.

Cookies and books flew past. I snatched the guy I’d knocked out and strapped him into a chair.

“Everybody buckle up!” I yelled.

The plane lurched, and threw me onto the aisle floor. The plane made an awful shrieking sound as it dived towards the ground. I hung on for dear life and waited for the pilots to level the plane, but nothing happened. We hadn’t lost the wings, so there was no reason for us to be plunging towards our deaths. Something must’ve happened to them.

I started crawling to the front of the plane. I could hear people fighting over the oxygen masks that had dropped down from the ceiling. One guy lost it so much; he was trying to escape out of a window. As I reached the cockpit, I saw the door was kicked open. The pilots were unconscious. I struggled to stand up.

Katherine suddenly stood in my way, greeting me with a punch to the face. I fell back onto the floor. My cheek throbbed, the inside had torn on my teeth. I didn’t have time to recover. She jumped on me and wrapped her fingers around my throat. I brought my knee into her back as hard as I could. She growled and tightened her grip on my throat.

With my air cut off, my lungs started to go berserk. They stung and screamed and demanded air. I could feel my mind slipping out of focus. I held her wrists and fought to overcome her strength, but it was useless. Desperate for air, I raised the temperature of my hands. She grunted as her skin sizzled underneath my grip. Unable to take the pain, she let go. I threw her off of me and dashed into the cockpit.

I pulled one of the pilots out of his seat and sat down. There were thousands of switches, buttons, and dials in front of me. All of the little words posted by the controls were blurry as a result of the adrenaline pulsing through my system. I shook my head and struggled to calm down. I searched for the autopilot control. I flipped the switch to disengage. I took the control yoke and pulled it back. Using the horizon, I did my best to level the plane.

Katherine came back with a vengeance. She jammed a pen into my chest. I cried out and ripped the pen free. Blood oozed into my shirt. Her fist struck the side of my head. The world almost disappeared, but I fought to stay conscious.

I pulled the yoke down with me as I fell over. The plane began to spiral down towards the ground. Both of us were tossed around the cockpit. I hit the ceiling, then the floor, and then the windows.

Katherine kicked off of the wall and crashed into me. The windows shattered and we went flying outside. We were tangled together, spinning end over end. I saw the dark smudge of the ground and then the bright blue of the sky. Light then dark. Light then dark. I cut myself on the many shards of glass falling all around us. At last, I wedged my foot in between our bodies and kicked us apart.

I spread my arms and legs to create as much drag as I could. The plane caught up to me. I tried to steer myself towards the nose but went sliding over the top instead. My fingers squeaked against the smooth surface, unable to gain purchase. I punched into the metal to create handholds and I crawled back to the cockpit to go in through the broken window.

I collapsed into the pilot’s chair and took the yoke again. The wind was so strong it was impossible to see, everything looked fuzzy. I yanked the yoke back, but the plane took a minute to comply. I watched in horror as it seemed like the plane was going to slam into the ground.

“Come on!” I shouted. I closed my eyes and waited for the hard impact. The plane turned enough in time; only the belly scraped over the ground.

The plane turned dangerously sideways. A wing broke off, causing an explosion, and the plane was thrown up. We slammed back into the ground, breaking the other wing. What remained of the body rolled out of control.

The force shoved me into the controls, then I hit the back of my seat, and finally the floor. I heard the ground ripping apart, and trees getting pulled up as the plane skidded across the ground. The cabin shuddered, and the metal frame whined with strain. I feared the whole thing would collapse, but at last, we came to a stop.

Beep, beep, beep the alarms chimed. My ears were ringing. I tested my fingers to see if I was capable of movement. They twitched. I clutched my stomach in pain. I hit it pretty hard on the control yoke. I coughed as a plume of black smoke filled the air. As quickly as I could, I got up. I had ninety seconds to get everyone out before the cabin became too clogged with smoke. I squinted to try to see and stumbled out of the cockpit.

The plane lay on its side. The left wall of the plane was now the floor. The passengers were dangling in their seats. I pressed my hands on what was once the ceiling. They glowed with heat and melted through the layers of material. I ripped a chunk out of the roof and created an exit.

A handful of people were able to unbuckle themselves. They plopped unpleasantly onto the “floor” and limped towards the hole I’d made. The rest were glued to their seats. Their fear had gotten the better of them. I had to climb to unbuckle the petrified passengers. Once I freed them, I lowered them down and nudged them towards the exit. It was enough to bring them back to their senses, and they found their way out.

I was wheezing from the smoke. My eyes were burning. I had to feel my way around. I checked every seat. Some people I found lying in random places and I dragged them outside not knowing whether they were alive or dead.

I looked around and saw we’d landed in a corn field. The wreckage was horrific. There was debris everywhere, suitcases were thrown open, and clothes littered the ground, along with pieces of the wings.

Survivors were crying, praying, and calling their loved ones. Some were looking around like they were lost while others yelled for help. One of the passengers appeared to be a doctor. She huddled over one of the unconscious people I’d pulled free. No one noticed how strange I looked in a ninja get-up.

I crouched down to feel for pulses on the other unconscious people. They were still alive. I used the clothes lying all over the place to wrap some of their wounds. It wasn’t long before I heard sirens in the distance. While I waited for the ambulances, I did a head count and sighed with relief. Everyone had made it.

Exhausted, I flopped onto the ground. I did it. I passed my last test.

But then I looked up and wondered where Katherine was. A twinge of fear struck me. The last time I’d seen her, she’d been falling from the sky with no parachute. Did I kill my commander? I was about to search for her when a hand grasped my shoulder.

Katherine smiled at me. She was covered in dirt with a few cuts on her forehead. “But…you were falling…how’re you alive?” I asked.

“Grabbed onto the plane,” she said. The emergency vehicles arrived. Police ran onto the scene. “Let’s get out of here.”

By the time we got back, it was late in the afternoon. I was eager to get inside the house. Lily was the last to go before me, so I didn’t know how she had done. I practically threw myself through the front door, but the living room was empty. I searched the kitchen and the basement, no one was there. Finally, I found everyone outside, sitting in the grass chatting. Lily and Hot Stuff perked up when they saw me.

“So, did you make it?!” Hot Stuff asked. I nodded. Both girls squealed with delight. They got to their feet and hugged me.

“Seems like everyone has made the cut,” Katherine said as she walked up to us. “Either I made the tests too easy, or I trained you all very well.” She crossed her arms and eyed something on the ground. “There’s only one more thing I want you all to do.”

Everyone exchanged weary glances. Katherine never asked us to do anything easy. I’m sure the others were just as worn out as I was. What more did she need us to do? She gestured for everyone to get to their feet. Weeks of training made us habitually form a line.

“The masters have instructed the ninja to not only hide our identities from the world and each other, but to forget ourselves completely. They believe that when you commit to this cause, you leave everything behind. They don’t care if your duty takes your life, or your friend’s life. They say we are all pawns to the greater good, but I don’t agree with that. You’re my squad and I want you to remove your masks,” Katherine said.

“What…?” someone whispered.

“Go on,” she said. Tentatively, everyone pulled their masks off. “Look at the faces beside you.”

I glanced at the others. It was strange to see their naked faces. I’d tried to imagine what was under each mask, but my imagination did a sorry job. I was surprised by how perfect and beautiful each face was.

“In my team we are not a bunch of drones. Each of us has a name, each of us has had different struggles to overcome. You are no longer a kid on the streets, you aren’t the girl who thought she wasn’t brave, and you aren’t the outcast at school. When you are in that uniform you are Wolf, the guy who can still the ocean. You’re Spaz, the kid who can outrun a bullet. Every one of you is unique, every one of you is a vital part of this team,” Katherine said. “Tomorrow you will be sworn into the ninja.”