Rise of a Valkyrie

Part 39

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The week it took to recover basic motor functionality was the longest of Kayla's life. Her body was nothing but a cage for the restless animal within. Worse, the doctors were unsupportive of her determination to push beyond the point of exhaustion until she was thrashing around in fury. Wasn't this what boot camp had trained her to do?

Eventually, she managed to get out of bed and stumble around, and someone took her to a treadmill to try walking. As soon as she could hobble, she tried to jog, and fell flat on her face. The doctors gave her a stern talking to after that. She ignored them, and her rehab session ended with them pulling her away from the machine.

Progress came slowly; treadmills became elliptical machines, became bikes and pushups, until eventually she was doing a full bodyweight routine. By the end of the week, Kayla could easily manage a hundred pushups, and her strength kept growing. She often stopped herself to make sure her form was correct; that she wasn't cheating herself. But her muscles were becoming powerful enough to do anything she asked of them.

Thandi and Christie had only started learning to walk, but Rose wasn't far behind her. After a fast workout in a rowing machine, Kayla wiped it off with a towel. She went over to the squat rack, and, as she slid forty-five-pound plates onto the bar, she looked up and saw that Rose had taken her place.

"Trying to beat my speed?" Kayla taunted her.

"You know it," Rose gasped, as her arms snapped back and forth. She got close to Kayla's record but failed by a few reps per minute. Panting hard, Rose sat back and fixed Kayla with a stern look. "You take one too many breaks... then you'll see."

Kayla laughed. She liked the challenge, but she also detected an edge to Rose's voice that she didn't like. It wasn't even that she was intimidating; Rose sounded angry with herself.

They met a new specialist, a physical fitness coach, who talked with them about how their nanite enhanced bodies would be developed over time.

"It will actually take at least a couple of decades for you to develop your maximum potential," the coach explained. "In that time, you're going to find that you are genetically gifted in certain areas, and lacking in others, just like any other athlete. For example, Kayla, I noticed you're an excellent sprinter, but you're a little weaker with your cardio. For now, I'm going to help you develop a basic beginner program that's going to target everything, because you have a lot of room for improvement. As time passes, you'll want to customize your training based on what's important to you and your role in the Ranger Battalion."

"Are we going to be... you know...butch?" asked Rose.

Kayla tried not to laugh at her concerned expression. None of the women they had met up to that point had been excessively muscular. Even after all they had been through, Rose was still absurdly vain.

The coach smiled. "The timeless principles of infantry warfare require us to limit size and weight wherever possible, and in the case of these nanite modifications, size isn't a factor. They do more with less."

Rose seemed happy with that response.

In another short class, Collective researchers taught the Rangers about the stress–recovery cycle, and the effective weight to rep ratios that had been discovered throughout the organization's history. In the end, they concluded, everyone was different, but some things worked for everyone. They explained the difference between type one and type two muscle fibers, and how bad form or posture could lead to poor growth, or even injury.