Aaliyah had been knocked out clean after those two blows. Her memory went hazy after she started to get angry at Ajax, frustration at losing so clearly. After that, only two things remained in her memory.

Two punches.

She remembered watching them travel towards her in slow motion, her brain being pushed into overdrive, stretching seconds into ten times their length. But even in that state, she felt the inevitability of those blows, the absolute power they held.

In her restless unconscious state, she had been having nightmares of those two simple punches. Repeating over and over in her head. She could have sworn that every blow of Willem’s fists carved a massive hole through her flesh and bone, unstoppable.

That was when she woke with a gasp, laying in an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar room, coated in a thin layer of sweat. Panting, she looked around the room covertly, trying to get the layout and a potential escape plan, something she could use.

“This is a med bay, Aaliyah.” A rough but quiet voice spoke, sending a spike of fear through her and making her jump. She scrambled to a sitting position to only see herself in a small curtained off area in a bed with disposable sheets and pillows.

Willem was sitting in a chair next to the bed at a respectable distance. The chair was tall enough that the man’s feet didn’t even reach the sterile linoleum floors. Leaving the man looking even shorter than he normally did. But Aaliyah didn’t let the almost comical sight humour her, seeing the man’s meaty arms being crossed, an unimpressed expression on his face.

“What?” Aaliyah scowled, trying to glare holes in her trainer. Willem sighed lightly, shaking his head.

“I had thought that you had more self-control than that, Aaliyah.” His voice deep and unshakable, Aaliyah suddenly had a small pang of worry. What is he going to do? She thought anxiously. Thousands of different possibilities ran through her mind.

She had tried to research the man that sat in front of her, as she had with everyone on the team, obviously. Willem and Mirah were the two glaring holes. Mirah’s story was explainable, there was no record keeping on the streets, census data for those on the streets was abandoned along with the regard for the humanity of the homeless in Melbourne.

But Willem was different. There should be something on him. He works for the AASAU for god sakes! But there was nothing, not a single record, or social media account, a mention on a school website. Nothing.

He was a black hole to Aaliyah’s eye, and that terrified her.

“I have self-control enough. To beat someone up requires the opposite of self-control.” She snarked and Willem looked suitably unimpressed.

“Wrong.” He grumbled, “It takes more, far more. Otherwise, you will end up losing all control and rip apart your teammates.” Aaliyah’s jaw clenched in anger, red blotches already appearing on her skin.

“Then maybe I should just be let go, so I can go back to my old life!” She yelled, anger growing rapidly. Willem hopped down from his chair and took a few steps towards her, leaning into her snarling face.

“If I let you walk out of here, one day I would be forced to come and kill you.” Like a bucket of freezing cold water, Aaliyah’s eyes widened, her breath leaving her chest in a rush, as if she had been punched in the stomach. At first she wanted to ask why, but her mind ticked over slowly in her shock, slowly putting together the pieces.

“You… do you think I’d become uncontrollable?” She asked, a whole new fear blooming in her chest. No, that was wrong. It was an old fear, as old as she could remember. Willem didn’t even bother to nod.

“How long will it be until something truly enrages you? How long until you fall into the greatest depression you’ve ever experienced? When that happens, how much damage will you do? Will you simply make people sad and lethargic in your vicinity when you fall into a depression, or will you send them into comas that they will never wake from?” His voice was filled with a terrifying coldness, an analytical edge that Aaliyah couldn’t help but shy away from.

“You think you are smart, manipulating your way through life as you have been. You might even be smart, Aaliyah. But you are a slave to your own emotions, and that makes you the dumbest person on the team, and it will get you and them killed if you don’t pull your act together and learn how to use them.” His eyes bored into hers, and at that moment, she could swear that she felt those horrible punches lancing themselves through her chest, ripping through her flesh like wet tissue paper.

Aaliyah nodded jerkily and Willem seemed to take it at face value, turning around and silently leaving the curtained area without so much as a word.

The breaths came hard and fast, the delayed anxiousness and fear slowly dissipating along with the bright highlighter yellow blotches that had appeared on her skin. She had only seen that colour a few times, and still had no idea what it did, but if it did anything, then it certainly didn’t effect Willem.

He… really thinks I could go berserk? She thought anxiously. A berserk Linked was rare, and generally extremely dangerous on most counts.

The vast majority of Linked that went berserk had a link that altered their personality, and the rest were those with severe mental illnesses. Aaliyah… well, she almost fit into both of those categories.

While you could say that her personality wasn’t necessarily altered by her link, it most definitely amplified, sometimes dangerously ramping up her emotions to a disproportionate degree.

Of course, Aaliyah was aware of this, and had been for years, but over the past week or so she had experienced more escalations than she had outside of this facility, ever.

But what would happen when I did fly off the rails at someone? What terrified her most was that even when she posed the question to herself, she already knew the answer.

She would go from anger to anger, snowballing into an absurd amount of strength and go on a rampage. Aaliyah laid back down on the bed with disposable sheets and curled in on herself, trying desperately to get comfort out of her own embrace.

“Halina…” She whimpered, remembering a warm smile and a gentle hug from a long, long time ago.

Willem returned about half an hour after he had knocked out Aaliyah with those two punches. The rest of the team was left to simply sit on any of the surfaces in the private training area and wait while he handled her personally. The team, however, was simply in awe of the man, and Aaliyah both.

Those two simple punches revolutionised how they thought about strength. Mirah could remember the fists blurring with the speed, ripping through the air and slamming into the other girl’s chest with a sound like a resonant drum, or maybe even a gong.

Ajax, was mystified by just how durable Aaliyah had been, and how well Willem had judged it. He was under no illusion that he would fare much better than Aaliyah against the stocky trainer, but with his axe, ramping his protective and defensive capabilities to the max, he wondered how many of those blows he could take until he went out for the count like Aaliyah had.

Walter, on the other hand, was worried. He had never seen someone get punched like that in his life, even the initial tests that Willem had put them through, and seeing the soft bouts on screen had been nothing in comparison to the raw, primal feeling of destruction that Willem’s punches had brought to Walter. Even though Aaliyah had been almost perfectly fine, according to his untrained eye, he couldn’t help but feel that it was excessive to knock her out using so much force.

Walter grimaced as Willem swung the door open to the training area and waltzed in.

“I had our heal Linked take a quick look at Aaliyah, it seems that even I underestimated her durability. She is already perfectly fine.” His dry voice made the rest of the team sight in relief, even Mirah. They had all been secretly worried that they had witnessed Aaliyah’s death at Willem’s hand.

“Now, I assume that no one else will be using their link during sparring?” He asked, a sly smile gradually warming his face. Though it only inspired a round of fervent nodding from the team.

“Good,” He said, turning to Walter and Mirah specifically, “Now, let’s get you two into a fight, shall we?”

Mirah was the first to step up to the dedicated padded area. She supposed that there was no point in delaying the inevitable, and neither her nor Walter—from what she could tell—had any real issue in stopping their links from activating, so there wasn’t much point in worrying about it.

Walter stumbled up to the matted area, worry still written on his face. He was glancing at Willem over and over, trying to gauge whether there was going to be a repeat display on what happened earlier to either Mirah or himself, though a pointed look from Ajax made him forcefully calm himself down. Though Willem seemed to ignore the nervous glances entirely.

“Alright. Same rules, no links, and no hits above the neck. I’ll stop the match whenever I feel like it.” Willem repeated simply, glancing at both of the trainees and took a few steps back, giving them some space and then called to begin sharply.

Then nothing happened.

Between Walter’s nervousness and Mirah’s quiet and patient disposition, the two fighters simply ended up looking at each other. Mirah’s eyes wandered over Walter’s body, looking for small tells that might give away what he planned to do, but came up with nothing.

It wasn’t until Walter took a nervous step forward that Mirah heard them.

Ethereal whispers from someplace beyond understanding hissed into her ear, telling her a thousand different ways that Walter could move or be moved. Mirah’s mind focused in on Walter so heavily that the whispers started to define themselves and slowly conglomerate into one voice.

He strikes. The voice spoke into her ear.

Just as it did so, Walter lunged forwards and struck out with his left fist, trying to go for punch to the stomach, but Mirah, with forewarning, simply stepped back and nervously raised her hand.

“Willem. I used my link.” Walter stopped dead in his tracks, before he tried to go for another follow up blow and Willem’s eyebrow rose questioningly.

“How so? To what effect?”

“I– I’m not sure.” Mirah’s response clearly wasn’t satisfactory so she continued, “I could hear what he was going to do.” Willem’s face scrunched in thought.

“You could hear what he was going to do? As in you could hear from his clothes and other tells that he was going to move a certain way?” Mirah shook her head and mumbled something.

“Speak up, girl.” Willem said, prompting patiently. Mirah bobbed her head and took a breath.

“I could hear a voice. It told me what he was going to do.” Willem’s eyes opened slightly, but his face retained its composure.

“I see. Are you able to control it?” Mirah thought for a moment, then shook her head in the negative, nervously wiping her gloved hands uselessly against the pants of the protective set she wore.

“No, I don’t think so. It just happened when I focused on him.” She shrugged and Willem nodded.

“Then it is of no fault of your own. You are free to use it in your fight. It will be good practice on honing that skill anyhow. If you feel anything dangerous will happen, or anything otherwise unexpected, raise your hand and I will intervene.” He turned to Walter as well, “That goes for the both of you, understood?”

Walter nodded, along with Mirah doing the same shortly after. Willem resumed the match and the two trainees stood and looked at each other once again.

Mirah didn’t know what to think of Walter, he held such an awe inspiring power, being able to quite literally conjure a seemingly infinite stream of fire from nowhere, enough to easily burn someone to ashes, but he was so timid and nervous.

Walter made the first move again, faster this time, but the voice in Mirah’s ear warned her all the same. Mirah sidestepped and quickly lashed out a blow with more speed than force, hitting Walter on the shoulder and making him stumble back before returning to a stance. Mirah took a step forward towards the shorter man but was stopped by the voice.

Stop. It whispered, and Mirah stopped dead in her tracks before she realised that Walter’s fist had swung through the exact spot she would be if she hadn’t stopped moving. She felt a small chill down her spine. The voice was noticing things she couldn’t possibly have noticed, Mirah was barely looking at Walter when he had thrown that punch.

She stepped forwards again, and she could see Walter backpedal a bit and wind up another punch.

Duck. The voice said, and so she did.

The blow went clean over her head and the voice whispered again, but she didn’t need the voice to tell her what to do here.

Mirah took a powerful step forward and planted a fist into Walter’s gut, making the man fall to the ground, clutching at his stomach, groaning.

Mirah looked up towards Willem, seeing if he would call the match.

“Mirah wins.” He said softly, but with a wide grin on his face and a twinkle in his eye that a young child got when they found a new toy to play with.

Mirah couldn’t help but suddenly feel a chill down her spine.