The European Theater's main examination site was set amid ruins on the outskirts of Paris. It had once been an industrial park; now, only crumbling walls and rusted steel frames remained.
There was no track, no equipment—only an examiner and one command: run from here to that dead tree three kilometers away, then run back. Repeat five times. The last five hundred people to return would be eliminated.
Irene stood at the starting line, surrounded by more than a thousand applicants.
There were old and young, men and women, tall and short, fat and thin—every kind of person. To her left was a young man who looked under twenty, nervously bouncing his leg nonstop. To her right was an old man around her age, his hair completely white but his back ramrod straight.
"On your marks—run!"
There was no starting pistol, only the examiner's shout. More than a thousand people surged forward at once.
Irene did not sprint. She knew she was sixty-two, that her knees were artificial, and that she could not compete with the young in explosive power. So she kept to her own pace, neither fast nor slow, running forward step by step.
Three kilometers was no short distance for a sixty-two-year-old woman.
By the halfway point, she had begun to gasp.
At two-thirds of the way, her knees began to hurt. By the time she reached the dead tree, she had fallen into the back half of the pack.
But she did not stop.
She turned around and ran back.
By the time she returned, she could barely breathe. It felt as though her lungs had been stuffed with fire; every breath was like swallowing a handful of shattered glass.
On the second lap, her knees hurt even more. On the third, her vision began to