Paulo and Henry arrived to a sorry scene. Men who looked fit to dish out and take bullets were busy putting weapons back in their respective crates. Splinters of wood littered the ground, drawing their eyes to the rivers of cuts and burns etched into the asphalt.

“Uhh… Paulo? This is Viktor,” Henry said.

Paulo was introduced to a man dressed in a jacket and jeans.

“Pleased to meet you,” Paulo said.

Viktor shook his hand, but addressed Henry.

“Who is this guy?”

“A friend I’ve been working with,” Henry said. “He can be trusted. If not by his motivations then by the fact that he has no friends here other than me.”

“You want to work for us?” Viktor asked, this time to Paulo.

“As an avenue for getting closer to the heart of this nation,” Paulo said.

“Theatrical,” Viktor remarked. “Do you hate America or something? Not an original premise nowadays. Real popular with the kids.”

“A group of faceless people ordered the deaths of my family,” Paulo said. “They are my only enemy. No one else.”

“You look young. Don’t suppose I could just convince you that revenge is not healthy for your future.”

Paulo glanced at his feet, smiling. His arms rose from rest to a crossed position. A few men nearby must have noticed, for they stopped their clean-up work to quietly brandish machine pistols.

“Those can’t hurt me,” Paulo said.

“Those don’t fire normal ammunition,” Viktor said. He turned his head and shouted at them to continue, then returned to the conversation. “I can tell you’re probably in our borders illegally. Not that there isn’t a path ahead for people like you. Plenty of ways to go legitimate from untoward origins.”

“My life cannot continue until the people responsible for the deaths of my father and my sisters end,” Paulo said calmly. “I was not trying to intimidate you a moment ago. I appreciate this talk. We respect our elders where I come from. But I have had time to think about what I need. This is what I need. I’m not begging for a tryout or some charity. I am gifted with what your system might rank as category 3 strength, useful, and not at all gaudy. There must be a place for me here.”

“I don’t think you even know what we do,” Viktor said. “But not a bad pitch. Help me clean this shit up and I’ll talk to the boss about it.”

Paulo walked over to assist the clean-up without another word. Viktor waved Henry closer.

“Where’d you find that well-spoken meathead?” He asked.

“At one of those pro-human rallies near downtown,” Henry said. “I was watching from a street camera for fun. Saw a deterrent spray canister bounce off his face and thought it was odd a gifted would be on the human side of one of those things. Looked up him and learned his origin story.”

“Which is?”

“Like he said,” Henry said with a shrug. “The boy is angry, he’s self-aware about it, and he knows what he wants.”

“Wait a minute. Boy? How old is he?”

“Like, fifteen?”

“Fooled me,” Viktor said as he took another look. Paulo was carrying whole crates by himself into the warehouses.

“That’s not going to be a problem, right?” Henry said. “I mean I was younger. What’s another child soldier?”

“Don’t use that sort of verbiage,” Viktor said. He retrieved a bulky phone from his jacket and extended the antenna.

--

“Are we boring you, Miss Unas?”

Lyssa’s head jerked upright. In that first groggy second she did not know whether to feel embarrassment at being caught nodding off or a chill at the way Professor Verruck spoke. Their biology teacher had an ostensibly quiet voice that had no difficulty reaching across the slanted lecture hall. In a way, all hundred or so students sat one on one with the professor in that open room.

“Sorry,” Lyssa muttered.

“No worries.”

The class continued, and the minutes made the slow crawl towards the lecture’s end. Lyssa spent it awake enough to note time’s slowness, but had forgotten its passage by the time the hall was filling with the ruffling sounds of students packing their things. She glanced tiredly around her. A comical moment of a student with issue controlling their gigantism struggling to leave their seat, made her smile. But there was no reason for her to wait; her roommates happened to have been placed in the other room that taught the same subject. She might be inclined to catch up if she cared to. The room was half-empty before she moved to pack up her books and stationery.

“Girl. Stay.”

Lyssa almost scowled. Instead of joining the line of students exiting the lecture hall, she walked down the stairs to meet Professor Verruck.

“Sorry, ma’am,” Lyssa said. “I didn’t mean-”

“I was just going ask if things are going alright,” Verruck said.

Lyssa perked up a hairsbreadth. The other students sometimes likened Verruck to a goth puppet doll; scary enough to be in a horror film. The professor certainly moved stiffly enough. But her voice put the ‘dead’ in deadpan, so much so that the barest hint of concern in it felt like a moment by a roaring fire.

“I’m just tired,” Lyssa said.

“You’re still participating in the games this next Monday, aren’t you,” Verruck said. “That’s the trouble with the Annual. Win or lose, there’s catching up to do. Tell you what. I’ll heal your fatigue.”

“You’ll what? You can do that?” Lyssa asked. “I thought your gift had nothing to do with healing.”

“It doesn’t. It’s just matter bending. But with meat. I can reroute your neural pathways, rearrange blood vessels, make you think with the parts of your brain that are less tired.”

“I don’t understand,” Lyssa said warily.

“Imagine one train and many tracks,” Verruck said simply. “One of your tracks is worn out. I’ll just reroute the train to a different track temporarily. Same train, same destination.”

“Well…” Even while in that conversation Lyssa almost nodded off again. “Sure,” she said. “I’ll try it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Why not?”

“It’s important to me that you want this,” Verruck said. The professor wrapped her fingers around Lyssa’s neck. Lyssa smiled; the cold felt nice on her spine.

“Yeah, do it,” Lyssa muttered.

“Thank you.” Verruck turned off the audio recorder that had been running in her front coat pocket. “You might feel a little pinch.”

At first, there was nothing. Then Lyssa was reminded of the first few moments of how it felt to twist an ankle. The feeling of tendon and ligament being stressed beyond their intention, right before it became painful. Except the feeling was in her head. She blinked. As her eyelids closed so did the real world. When they opened she was lying down, half of her face in sauna-hot water. She sputtered and sat upright. She was in a cave—the cave—alone before the steps of a familiar shrine. Its usual tenant, the Self that never left this place, was gone. Lyssa did not need to guess where she might have went.

“Oh no…”