An emotionally overwhelmed Mirah turned her brain on autopilot and let her feet carry her towards the elevator, following the rest of the team that was, in turn, following Tracker. It took the short, silent and inertia-less elevator trip downwards to the Underground, and then a short trip through the sterile and nice smelling hallways to a room labelled ‘L006’.

“This will be where we have classes every second day, or when instructed.” Tracker commented before pulling aside the sliding door, revealing a small lecture hall built to fit somewhere between twenty and thirty people. Thought it looked like it was mostly going to go unused today.

“The groups that have small sponsors are put in a larger conglomeration group. You guys have a bigtime budget, which means private lessons with a skilled tutor, personalized training with a skilled trainer and, of course, the nice rooms.” Tracker grinned at the group as she motioned for them to sit in the front row.

Well, that certainly explained the extremely nice rooms the team was assigned to. Mirah wondered what the lesser rooms were like.

Tracker waited for everyone to make their way into their own seats, Mirah being the first to sit down, the exhaustion from last night still taking a toll on her. The others in the team had been giving her looks, somewhere mixed between curiosity and concern. At least from Ajax and Walter, Aaliyah seemed to lack concern entirely.

Mirah was embarrassed, to say the least. She had never been in such a state, not since she was a very small child, and she couldn’t help but cringe inside every time she looked at Tracker, a part of her just wishing that she could walk out of this lecture room and go back to bed and just forget it all.

But this was important, she needed to be here.

“Good. Now, you’ve all been here for a week or two and you are probably wondering what you’re supposed to be learning here exactly.” Tracker began hopping up onto the table and sitting one leg over the other, seeming to not even notice Mirah’s anguished embarrassment. The team collectively nodded their heads.

They had effectively been plonked into a team together and started training with no idea what they were training for, or what it was they were supposed to do after all of this ended. Tracker quietly surveyed the team and nodded.

“Well, that’s simple. You are here to learn how to not kill people with your link and find at least some use for it.” Mirah saw Ajax raise an eyebrow and she agreed. That didn’t seem at all consistent with how they were being trained. They were being trained properly, increasing physical fitness, being taught how to fight rudimentarily, basic link exploration.

“That’s the basis of what you are being taught. If you were to have a sponsor that was only putting forwards a small sum of money to do so, you would be put together with a class and taught basic principles. Most of these people are either sponsored because of interest from corporations, or are paying their own way through training.” Tracker tapped on her knee idly as she thought, “Can anyone tell me why a person would go through training with AASAU?” Mirah looked towards the other teammates. Aaliyah already knew the answer, Ajax was about as out of the loop as Mirah was and Walter’s face was grimacing, trying to think of a reason.

“Walter.” She commanded, pointing at him and expecting an answer.

“Uh…” he mumbled, “So you can get life insurance?” Tracker opened her mouth, clearly going to disagree before she tilted her head in thought and slowly nodded in agreement.

“Never thought about it that way before, but yes, you do need AASAU certification to be eligible for certain insurances, an assurance to insurance companies that you aren’t at significantly higher risk of dying and all that. Though they still charge a premium. Close, but not what I was looking for.” She pointed towards Aaliyah wordlessly, clearly seeing that she already had the answer.

“Jobs.” She answered plainly and Tracker looked at her unamused. With a heavy sigh she continued, “You need AASAU certification to get a job in corporations, especially if you are a hypercognitive.”

Tracker accepted that answer with a smile, “Good. Now, what sort of jobs do you think Linked go into as they get out of training here at the AASAU?”

“Linktech?” Walter called out immediately. Tracker nodded.

“Linktech or the sciences is certainly one of the fields that hypercognitives make their way into. Though, understand that there are many different types of hypercognitives, many of which are entirely useless to a corporate or lab setting. For example, a hypercognitive that I have had the pleasure of working with on multiple occasions is Account. He is the Linked equivalent to computerized spreadsheets. In moments he can easily calculate and model extremely complex financial and statistical data, or any data really. Now,” She paused, looking around the room thoughtfully, “what would happen if you put him with a team to create linktech?”

Mirah and Ajax were simply along for the ride at this point, totally out of their depth. Both had been separated from society long enough and significantly divorced from the Linked scene that they simply had nothing to offer, even if Ajax had completed high school, it was just a means to an end.

“You get a lot of data from testing? He’d be able to analyse that really easily, point out areas they are failing in.” Walter offered and Tracker nodded, conceding the point.

“Of course, but why might that still be a bad idea?”

“It’s overkill.” Aaliyah said, bored. Tracker clapped loudly, as if she was the one to come to the revelation, her pale brown features lifting into a wide grin.

“Exactly! It’s way overkill. The other hypercognitives are just as capable of putting together a spreadsheet and manipulating the data to make salient information. Account would only become significantly helpful if there was an immensely small failure that happened over a largescale manufacturing process. You’d be paying the man hundreds of thousands to make spreadsheets that a non-Linked could easily make.” She hopped down from her place on the table and begun to pace in front of her students.

“Where he is useful is compiling and making sense of insanely large datasets. He has been hired on multiple occasions to make sense of massive scientific datasets, millions of dollars to spend a few hours of analysing the data and spitting out answers that would take linktech supercomputers even longer to spit out. This is where he specifically shines.” She stopped before Ajax and looked him square in the face, “What other jobs do you think Linked go into after AASAU training?”

Ajax’s face creased, though he showed no anxiety about being put on the spot like Walter or Mirah might have. He leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms in thought for a moment, before an idea popped into his head.

“Manual labour?” He asked, and she grinned happily.

“Good!” She began to pace again hands clasped behind her back and posture prohibitively exact. “Many Linked with physical enhancements do indeed end up in a physical job, however strange they those types of links do get. Though simple enhanced strength is an easy enough to place within a workforce, but what about Linked who can create earthquakes nigh on demand, or a telekinetic that can lift weights of thousands of tonnes?” Tracker enunciated. Ajax just shrugged.

“Well, I’m sure that mining companies would love those last two. To have a guy make a localized earthquake, cracking the stone and rock that would take tens of thousands of manhours to do manually and then having the telekinetic pull up massive parts of earth and move it around as easy as anything. A two-man crew that’d take hundreds of men and millions of dollars in equipment.” Mirah could see Ajax actually tally it all up in his head. She had heard Ajax talk about working on a farm with his grandparents, so she could only guess that he had a frame of reference.

“Perfect! Those two people exist, and they buy up land to mine all over Australia. Instead of months of work it takes them a few weeks at most, tearing up the land and using linktech equipment to process the earth. They are competitive with massive corporate organisations that have been mining since before Linked even existed. Their names are Shatter and Lift, uncreatively.

“Now, that’s an extremely simplistic look at things and there is almost always an application of a link somewhere. However, as you may know, Undefined are considered the exception to that rule.” The mood of the group lowered considerably, Walter and Aaliyah’s expressions soured, becoming almost scowls. It was the most negative emotion Mirah had seen on Walter’s face.

“Can anyone tell me why that is?” Tracker asked speculatively, ignoring the mood. Surprisingly to Mirah, Ajax was the one to answer.

“Control.” Tracker’s fingers snapped excitedly as she looked towards Ajax with a ‘go on’ look upon her face, “Well, they don’t know what we can do, or what they’d do with us, so they forbid us from training in the first place to deny us legitimacy, so they can control our unpredictability.” Tracker nodded.

“Good enough. There are many political reasons for why Undefineds are generally barred from training and strictly disallowed from using their power without licence, but most simply come down to the fact that those up top don’t like something they can’t control. In some countries they disallow non-government Linked from using their powers at all, which isn’t the case here, but you aren’t going to get hired anywhere nice if you don’t have certification. Point is,” she took a breath and looked at us, “the suits are scared of you.”

No-one was surprised, it was obvious, really. Even Mirah had put two and two together in this case.

“You say that like you aren’t a suit.” Aaliyah said testily, looking the suited woman up and down. Tracker just grinned.

“Guilty,” she acquiesced, “but to a point. I work independently from any given corporation, like many do; Account, Shatter and Lift included. We are just labelled as independents, and we have our own set of rights, and informal union of sorts. If you have a highly specific skillset, you’re likely to end up with one of us. There is one candidate currently in the most senior group here that is slated to enter with us soon enough.” Ajax immediately thought of Dean, the logic jumping info Linked.

“W-what about heroes?” Mirah heard a voice squeak. She turned to see Walter, who almost folded in on himself as everyone in the small lecture hall turned to look at him. Aaliyah with undisguised mirth, Ajax and Mirah with inscrutable expressions. Tracker, though, just looked a little sad.

“There are many that wish to use their links to better the world around them, and some do so in more or less direct ways. However, ‘heroes’ as you know them from comic books and media are long gone, dead the moment that Blast became Suicide.” The mood soured even further, though Mirah was just confused. She hadn’t ever heard about Blast or Suicide, and it didn’t seem like it would be explained.

“So, if you wish to try to contribute directly to fighting crime as a Linked, I suggest that you join the police. Though you will have to keep in mind that you would then be a Linked policeman, and would be following those orders specifically, to all their legalities.”

To Mirah, that sounded as close to a ‘you can do it, but that’s not what you want’ as you could get without outright saying as much. Walter’s face dropped, disappointed. There was something there, and Aaliyah had guessed it to. There was a reason that Walter had even asked at all.

“So,” Tracker started, her voice now suddenly far more serious, almost deadly so, “I will warn you now. As many Linked end up in corporate work, or some job or another, just as many end up running with the gangs.”

“W-why? How could the AASAU allow that?” Walter put forward timidly.

“They don’t, but the AASAU are just a non-government regulatory body. Like a university or trade school. What you use their teachings for is outside of their preview. Though the government and the AASAU can technically rescind your certification, it rarely happens outside of serious incarceration for extremely serious crimes, most of which the Linked walk from.”

Mirah saw Walter’s fists clench underneath his table and even the normally unflappable Ajax showed a modicum of anger, his powerful jaw clenching.

“You need to be aware that independents that do not run in corporate spheres are either extremely dangerous or in extreme danger.” Mirah’s brow furrowed.

“Why would someone run outside of corporate spheres?” She asked quietly.

“No AASAU assurance, no legitimacy, lots of untraceable money and perfect for… combat focused links.” Tracker responded carefully. Mirah opened her mouth, understanding dawning.

“How long do you think those independents stick around?” Tracker asked the group, receiving a round of shrugs.

“Non-corporate independent Linked last around three to six months.” Tracker looked each one of the team members straight in the eye, impressing the importance of her words on them with each second of silence.

“Dead or alive.”