(Daniel's PoV)

    I dug my elbows further into the dirt. This is so gross, I thought as I aimed my gun. We didn't even have a target. We were just supposed to shoot. Live fire training was mainly about making sure we knew how to use our guns. Still, lying in the dirt was not ideal.

    Will bit his lip as he fired. "I don't want to accidentally shoot someone."

    "There's a reason we're all on the same side," I pointed out, firing my own weapon.

    Trevor shot his after me and laughed. "I don't know, considering some of the guys in our platoon, I'm sure someone will find a way to mess that up." He glanced at Clayton, who popped his head up.

    "What?" he asked. "I'm not even doing anything. I'm perfectly fine lying down. I think I'll go to sleep."

    Here? I wondered. Before he could set his head down, I asked, "Clayton, how are you supposed to sleep with all these gunshots going off?"

    "I think a more important question would be how am I supposed to sleep if you keep nagging me?" he retorted.

    I looked over to Logan to see his response to all of this, but I noticed he wasn't really moving. Come to think of it, he hadn't said much of anything all morning.

    "You all right?"

    "Just sad," he replied monotone. "I turn sixteen in two days and I'll be here. I won't be able to spend my birthday with Alisha."

    "I'm sorry," I told him. I didn't turn sixteen until December, but I had a bad feeling that I wouldn't be home for my birthday either.

    "I mean, I'll probably get a letter from her, but it's just not the same," he explained. "Does Joy ever write to you?"

    "Sometimes," I replied. "Not as often as Alisha writes to you though. She's pretty busy with her," I muscled down the word, "boyfriend."

    Logan made a face. My friends here didn't like Bradley. As much as I wanted to despise him, I just couldn't if he made Joy that happy.

    "I can't believe he did it,' I heard Trevor exclaim.

    We turned to see Clayton fast asleep on the Live Fire Training Field.

    Trevor rolled his eyes. "Only he would use an M16 as a pillow."

(Gavin's PoV)

    "Oh Gavin," Trixie sighed, tossing her wavy blonde hair behind her shoulders. "I missed you so much. I don't know how I lived without you." She batted her eyelashes several times before throwing her arms around me and puckering her lips.

    "Get up!"

    My eyes shot open to see myself locking lips with my pillow. I quickly threw it to the edge of my bed, hoping no one saw. I folded my arms as I began to sit upright.

    "I'm tired," Tristan groaned, rubbing his eyes. "It seems earlier than usual."

    "It is earlier," Michael said, pointing to the clock.

    "Why do we need to be up at three?" Trevor asked.

    "You're about to go through the night infiltration course," Sgt. Blake explained. "Which is something you do at night."

    The idea of a night infiltration course didn't sound all that appealing to me, and judging by the expressions of the other guys, I believed they agreed with me.

    "Now stop asking questions and get dressed," he ordered.

    After getting ready, we walked to a different part of the forest, though none of us could tell where we were. Night vision goggles were thought of as an unnecessary expense, so we ended up running into each other a lot.

    When we arrived, we heard gunshots going off.

    I flinched at the first sound.

    "What was that?" Andrew's already quiet voice was shaking. He looked around like the rest of us, all trying to figure out where the shots were coming from.

    Sgt. Blake ignored his question. "The point of this course is to crawl under a field of barbed wire while M16's are fired over your heads."

    "What if we get shot?" Logan exclaimed.

    "You won't if you do it right," Sgt. Blake stated.

    We all immediately dropped to the ground.

    When Sgt. Blake started us, we began to crawl through the fields. The navigation in the dark wasn't as hard as it could have been since we only had to travel in a straight line. I would've been too distracted to turn with hearing all of the guns above me. I started to crawl faster, but I snagged my jacket a couple times. I ignored the tearing, I needed to get out as soon as possible. When I reached the end, I overheard Connor and Aaron talking.

    "Can you see anything?" Connor asked.

    "Nothing too clearly," Aaron replied. "But the towers they're shooting from look like they have to be at least twenty feet tall.

    Twenty feet. That was way too high to hit us if they were shooting straight, even if we were standing up. Then it occurred to me that of course they didn't want to shoot us. They were already scraping the bottom of the barrel for soldiers.

    But even despite all those reasons, I still couldn't keep my heart from racing, and I had already finished. It seemed like logic could never prevail when fear was present.

    The gun shots stopped once our whole group finished. At that point we could all breathe a little easier and think about other things.

    "Can we go back to sleep now?" Clayton pleaded.

    Sgt. Blake rolled his eyes. "No! Why would I do that? You're already awake. And there's only one week left of Basic Training. With this group, I have to cram as much work in as possible."

(Tristan's PoV)

    "Lt. Jason," Sgt. Blake snapped. "Stop swinging those around. They're not toys."

    Lt. Jason brought his arms down in disappointment.

    "What are those anyway?" Marcus asked, yawning in the middle of his sentence.

    During this past week, we had been getting up earlier, going to sleep later, and doing more intense workouts in between.

    "As you know, you have two days left of Basic Training," Sgt. Blake explained.

    Matteo opened his mouth, probably to make some snarky comment, but after a moment, he closed it, and kept his eyes on the ground.

    "You're done with workouts," Sgt. Blake told us.

    Clayton perked up enough to cheer. "Yes! Finally!"

    "Sit down." Sgt. Blake demanded. "You still have to take your final test. The physical portion is on Saturday and the weapons portion is on Sunday."

    Lt. Jason stepped forward swinging his chains again. "You know, you never did answer Marcus' question." Sgt. Blake scowled at him, but he just went on. "So I'll answer it. These are your dog tags. They're like manly necklaces." He began handing each of ours to us.

    Landon eyed his apprehensively. "Necklace...like jewelry?"

    Sgt. Blake sighed irritably, as he so often did. "It's not jewelry, it's military apparel. You won't notice them. In a few weeks, you'll probably forget they're even there."

    I studied mine as our drill instructors left. They managed to fit a lot of information on such a small card. It had my name, age, birthday, appearance, hometown, platoon, blood type--even my religion.

    "I didn't know you were Mormon," Gavin said, looking over my shoulder.

    "Yeah," I replied.

    "Well Elder Clark," he joked in a fake official voice. "I guess it would have been hard for me to figure it out. All these workouts are cutting into your door to door time."

    "Mine says Protestant cuz that's what my family is," Gavin explained. "But as for me, I'm not so sure what I believe."

    Despite his initial joking, Gavin was quite respectful about my religious beliefs. He took quite an interest in learning I would get to travel on a mission when I turned 19.

    "That is, if the war's not still going on," I added.

    He shrugged. "I guess we'll have to see in three years. But in the meantime, there's no more workouts."

    Logan overheard us. "No more workouts? This calls for a celebration!"

    "We should do that by sleeping," Trevor suggested.

    No one disagreed.

(Aaron's PoV)

    I was still going strong after my 46th push-up. Several of the other guys around me looked like they were nearing their limit, but no one was about to give up just yet. They were really worried about not passing, but Sgt. Blake had threatened to make anyone who couldn't reach the minimum score take the test alone in front of the entire platoon until they reached 100. We all knew he wasn't above that.

    Most of the guys' push-ups were weak and pathetic, but they were determined not to give up. Once we reached 80, over half the guys collapsed. Gavin Stauffer, who was next to me because of alphabetical order, was determined to actually beat the score, so he did one extra just to prove something to himself.

    Sgt. Blake had us stop at 100 for time purposes, but by that time, it was just Connor and I still going.

    I really liked that we were short on time. Swimming used to be part of the final test, but it was cut from the six week evaluation. It was probably good for everyone else too because Sgt. Blake would have easily been able to tell that we didn't do any work while he was punishing Sean.

    Instead of swimming, we did a bunch of other physical exercise challenges. We had to climb up a rope and a peg-board on the wall. We also tested upper body strength through chin-ups. Since we were tested two at a time, many of the guys took it as a contest, although neither Connor or I had very much competition. Landon Price wasn't very strong and Seth Tyler didn't really try.

"I don't want to prepare for survival," he said right before our challenge.

    Later we were timed for running one mile and five miles. I won the five mile "race", but Sean destroyed everyone in the one mile.

    The last thing we did was 150 sit-ups. It gave some of the guys such bad cramps that it made them sound like girls on their periods afterwards.

    Connor and I were grateful that we were used to all this stuff from sports workouts.

    Sean approached me when we were back in the barracks. "I can't believe it's our last day here tomorrow."

    "I know," I replied, still in shock of the whole situation. "Then we leave for China."

    "And we have to fight," he added while fidgeting with his hands. I tried to comfort him, but I wasn't feeling too steady myself either. We'd be real soldiers in just a matter of days.