A Tamed Bear Still Has Claws

“The only thing you can trust is your control of the knife. Remember, what you hold in your hands is your life.”

-from “What You Know”, traditional spacer song

Though they were close to Sandreas's private quarters, that wasn’t where Halen took her. They walked through Stonecourt until they came to his public office. In front of his office, in the outer room, his secretary, Ms. Rosario, smiled at Yan and Halen.

"Good morning, Halen, Ms. BarCarran," Rosario said. "I have something for you." She reached into one of her desk drawers and pulled out a memory stick. It was bright red and labeled "Top Secret" in large, black lettering. Yan took the offered stick.

"This is the book of secrets?" Yan asked with a smile.

"I don't know what you've been calling it, but it's the onboarding handbook for Fleet apprentices. Presumably you will find some of that information useful," Rosario explained.

"Well thank you," Yan said, tucking it into her pocket.

"Don't lose it," Rosario said. "And if you do, let someone know right away so that we can remotely wipe the drive. Don't access it on any non secure machines. We don't want any of this information ending up on the net or traveling over the ansible."

"Got it," Yan said. She supposed this would be the first thing that would get to live inside the safe room in her apartment, though the idea of a whole room dedicated to the security of one tiny memory stick was pretty funny to her.

Halen silently watched the whole exchange, then led Yan into Sandreas's office. Sandreas was sitting at his desk, typing something into a computer. He closed the computer when Halen and Yan came in.

"Good morning," Sandreas said brightly. "Have a nice walk?"

Yan sighed. "Apparently you know exactly how nice it was. Are Kino and Sid on the way?"

"They'll be here in about five minutes," Halen said, looking at his phone.

"So have you two reconciled your irreconcilable differences?" Sandreas asked Yan.

"No," Yan said. "But I'm not going to be rude about it."

"That's good to hear," Sandreas said.

Halen sat down on one of the couches, but Yan remained standing, feeling antsy and looking at some of the pictures on the walls.

"What are we doing today?" Yan asked.

"Are you asking me?" Halen asked her.

"I'm asking anybody who knows the answer," Yan said. That was maybe a little snippier than she intended, considering that she just said that she wasn't going to be rude.

"I have surprisingly little on the docket today," Sandreas said. "Tomorrow is the Governors Dinner, which will be big, and most of what I'm doing today is preparation for that. I have private meetings with several of the governors beforehand, but I don't think that you need to be there."

"So we'll be with you all day?" Yan asked Halen.

"You'll be with me in the morning, and then you'll have the afternoon off," Halen clarified.

"Halen will coming with me in the afternoon," Sandreas said.

"What will you be teaching us today?" Yan asked.

"Haven't decided yet," Halen said. “What do you want to learn?"

"I have no idea what I even need to know," Yan said, thinking about the memory stick tucked into her pocket. It felt like it was burning there, and she wanted to do nothing more than curl up on her couch in her apartment and read it. She had no idea what was waiting there for her.

"Sid and Kino are in the building and on their way up," Halen said.

"Right on time," Sandreas said. "I'm glad at least that you all are punctual."

"This one was an hour early," Halen said, pointing his thumb at Yan. "What were you even doing out, anyway?"

"I was feeling restless, I don't know," Yan said. Restless, lonely, unable to sleep through the night in her new fancy apartment, there were a bunch of reasons she hadn't wanted to stay cooped up that morning. "It was nice out, I wanted to enjoy the weather before the winter comes in."

"Have you ever spent summer on a planet before?" Halen asked.

"No," Yan said. "I always spent the summers on the Iron Dreams."

"How are you liking the weather?" Halen asked.

"It isn't really any different than what it's like in a couple weeks when the Academy's term starts," Yan shrugged. "I think I missed the biggest heat."

"Midsummer is always fun on the ground," Halen said. "That's one thing that's nicer about being groundbound, the high holidays actually have some meaning."

"I know," Yan said. "I've been to Midwinter at the Academy."

"You didn't spend Midwinter with your family?" Sandreas asked.

"Not really practical," Yan said. "The Academy only gets a week off, and the Iron Dreams never comes in system, so I wouldn't physically be able to get there and back."

"Hunh," Sandreas said, but didn't comment on it further. He returned to his typing.

"Are we," Yan started, referring to Kino and Sid, "Going to the Governors Dinner?"

"Yes," Aymon said. "It will be your first public appearance. There really isn't a better time to show that I've taken apprentices, and it can't just go completely unannounced."

"What's it like?" Yan asked. "The dinner, I mean."

"Big boring party. Only happens once every three years, so it's a big event," Halen said. "It's the one chance most governors get to leave their own planets, and it's a chance for major shifts in alliances between planets."

"Not officially," Sandreas said.

Yan nodded. There were tensions between planets and within the Empire that were not really acknowledged by the Imperial government. As a spacer, Yan had seen the fallout of those tensions, when trade routes were suddenly reorganized or removed altogether. Despite the physical and cultural distance planets in the Empire had from each other, and the commonalities of sharing the same government, there was apparently still a lot to squabble over.

"Personally, I think it's one of the highlights of the year," Sandreas said.

"The rest of your children are here," Halen said to Sandreas, walking over to open the door of Sandreas's office. Yan hadn't noticed how he knew this. Since she hadn't felt him use the power, she assumed he had looked at his phone and however he was tracking them there.

"Children?" Yan asked, affronted.

Halen merely laughed at her and let Sid and Kino in. They were both holding similar data sticks to the one that Yan had been given.

"Morning," Yan said, greeting the two of them. Sid waved at her.

"Good morning, Sandreas, Halen, Yan," Kino said, greeting the three of them in turn.

Aymon stood up from behind his desk. "Welcome to day two on the job," he said to Kino and Sid. "Thank you for being punctual." He gestured for the couch and for them all to take a seat.

Though Yan would have preferred to remain standing in the back of the room, still feeling weird, she sat down next to Sid.

"As I would hope you are aware, tomorrow night is the Governor's Dinner. You three will be in attendance, and it will be your first public appearance as my apprentices. I don't expect you to do anything, aside from make polite small talk with people, but I do need you to be at least slightly more prepared for it by the end of the day. Several of the governors have some rather unfortunate tensions on their home planets that I am hopeful have not followed them here, but we do have to be prepared for anything."

"We're going with Halen all day today?" Kino asked.

"Half the day. You'll have the afternoon off so I can accompany Aymon to some important meetings with governors."

"Any questions?" Aymon asked. "I don't have very much for you today, but tomorrow will be much more exciting."

Sid gave a thumbs up. Yan shook her head.

"Well, if that really was all we had to discuss, you three come with me, and I'll see you at lunch," Halen said. He smiled at Sandreas, who smiled back.

"See you all tomorrow morning," Sandreas said to the three.

Everyone stood up. Yan, Kino, and Sid followed Halen to the door. Yan stayed in the back of the line of the three apprentices, bouncing on the balls of her feet as they waited for Halen to open the door and let them out. Sid turned and gave her a look with one raised eyebrow.

"What's going on?" He signed, "You're as wiggly as Kino." He pointed his thumb rudely at the other girl, who sighed and ignored him.

"Just feel bad today. Don't know why," Yan signed back.

They had to suspend their conversation as Halen led them down the hallways. It was the same route they had walked the previous day, except at the very end, they went to a different training room that was down one more set of stairs than the shooting range that they had been in before.

Halen opened the door to the new training room and led the three inside.

The room that they were in was massive, and empty. Yan looked around in confusion. The only thing on one wall was a computer terminal.

"How do you like it?" Halen asked. His voice echoed around the huge space.

"It sure is big and empty," Sid said aloud, gesturing to the whole of the room.

"What are we doing here? Cartwheels?" Kino asked. She did look ready to spring into a cartwheel at that moment.

"If you can believe it, this place is state of the art. There's only a couple of these rooms in existence. There's only one Academy graduate who builds them, as far as I know," Halen said. "Look at this."

He walked over towards the computer terminal and fiddled around with some menus that Yan couldn't see clearly. When he was finished, Halen pointed towards the middle of the room. Yan turned around to look, and, where there had been nothing before, a long table stood in the center of the room.

All three of the apprentices walked over to it. Yan, with her long legs, arrived first. She knocked on it experimentally. It felt and behaved just as a table would, the sound of her knock echoing in the otherwise empty room.

"How did this get here?" Yan asked. "What is this place?"

Halen laughed. "It's pretty crazy, isn't it? I don't know the exact workings of it, but it's a very complicated system. It uses the same powers as stardrives or ansibles, but to harden and move the air and create illusions. That's at least how I believe it works. I'll admit that I didn't pay much attention to the briefing that explained how it was constructed, since I was more concerned with how to use it."

Yan could feel the familiar thrum in the power that she associated with being aboard the Iron Dreams. She had thought that feeling was the feeling of space, but she supposed it must be the feeling of one of these power structures. Machines that could themselves use the power could be made, but they required massive investments of space and energy. That was why their only practical uses seemed to be as things that absolutely could not be done without invoking the power: stardrives and ansibles, and this thing apparently.

Yan made up her mind, someday, to actually ask Halen how a stardrive was made. There had been a class on the theory behind it that everyone had to attend, but the meat of the course was a dire warning to never, ever, ever, ever try to actually make one. Especially not while standing on a populated planet, because it was more than possible to accidentally create a hole in space that swallowed everything within a good radius. That was what she remembered from the course, anyway. It was a long time ago that she had had it. It had apparently served its purpose, since she had been sufficiently scared away from attempting to build one. Halen, though, had managed to miss that memo by a mile, and, astoundingly, hadn't died.

"What are we going to do here?" Kino asked, hopping up to sit on the table. Halen raised his eyebrows at her, and she got the message and scooted off, just as he pressed a button to cancel the illusion. The table vanished.

"We're going to be playing through mock scenarios of things that could go wrong at the Governor's Dinner," Halen said. "So that you'll at least know what to do in the very worst case situation."

"I thought you said you didn't have a plan?" Yan asked, somewhat put out.

"I lied," Halen said. "I wanted to surprise you with the room. Isn't it fun?"

Sid gave another thumbs up. Yan had to admit that it was pretty impressive.

"Random question," Kino said. "Completely unrelated to everything else, but do you have a last name?"

Halen blinked in surprise. "That is an unrelated question. I have a last name, but I don't use it. It's my family name, obviously." He shrugged. "When I lived on my family's ship, we didn't use it, and when I left my family's ship I couldn't keep a pirate's name."

Him saying that made something stir in Yan's chest. She couldn't really imagine giving up her family name like that. Even if her whole ship was destroyed and her family cast from grace, would she be able to give up being a BarCarran? She wondered what Halen's name was. He didn't offer that information, and she didn't ask.

"Anyway, come over here and I'll show you how to set the room up," Halen gestured them over to the computer console and led them through the menus to select a scenario. The feature he eventually navigated to produced a simulation of the massive hall that the Governor's dinner would be held in.

"This is a bit smaller than the real thing," Halen said. "But we'll make the best of it."

Yan supposed the party would take place over two main segments, a dinner where food would be served and speeches would be given, and then a less structured time for mingling, where there would be music and maybe dancing. The room was certainly set up to accommodate that, with a stage up front, then many round and nicely set tables, and further behind that, a wide open floor space. Around the edges of the room were set up long tables with small refreshments on them.

Halen pointed out the emergency exits. "That's the main entrance, where all the guests will be coming in. The two staff entrances are over there, where all the food will be coming in and out. You can exit the building out of any of these doors, as long as you follow the signage. There is also one trap door under the stage. If you need to use it, don't hesitate to just blast it open with the power," Halen said. He walked them up onto the stage to demonstrate where it was.

"Do you expect us to need to use that?" Yan asked.

"I expect that it's better to know than to not know," Halen said. "If we aren't prepared for the worst, then we'll be royally screwed when it happens."

"What type of situation..." Kino stopped, seeming unsure of how to phrase her question. "What different things do you think could go wrong?"

"What a good question, let's brainstorm that," Halen said. "Sid, what is one avenue for attack at this party?"

"Poison in the food," Sid responded immediately.

"Excellent thought," Halen said. "Always be on the lookout for that."

"I don't know how," Yan said.

"Yes, that is an issue. Unfortunately, we won't have time to correct that today. I will check for you, on this occasion," Halen said.

"Thanks," Yan said.

"Kino, what's another way something could go wrong in this fine establishment?" Halen asked.

"The wait staff could have been infiltrated by attackers," Kino said.

"Quite possible," Halen said. "We do screen everyone, but there's no infallible system of hiring trusted staff. Yan?"

"Uh, someone could have set up some sort of delayed action event, like a bomb planted beforehand under the floor or something," Yan scrambled to answer.

"Plausible, if somewhat unlikely. Sneaking such a thing in in the first place would be quite difficult, and we do regular searches, especially before big events. But again, there's no perfect security, only the best we can do," Halen said.

"What do you think is the most likely thing to happen?" Kino asked.

"Unfortunately, we can't screen the governors' entourages as well as we might like to. I think the most likely attack would come from an invited guest and be aimed at another invited guest," Halen said. "No weapons are allowed, but that has never once stopped anyone with enough of a grudge."

Yan raised her eyebrows. "You really think governors are going to start shooting at each other?"

"They themselves? No," Halen said. "But some of them have less common sense than would be hoped, and have, in the past, invited some truly unpleasant people."

"Has there been trouble in the past?" Kino asked.

"For some definition of trouble. There have been attempted attacks that we've stopped, and last time, three years ago, two drunk men got into a fistfight in the bathroom, but other than that, it's been relatively peaceful," Halen said.

"What type of attacks are we talking about?" Sid asked.

"We've had several different parties attempt to sneak in weapons of various types. Twelve years ago the governor of Mikolon almost got stabbed, but that's all old news."

Sid reached around and mimed stabbing Yan's back, but Halen held up his hand. Yan felt him use the power quickly, and then Sid's arm was frozen still in the air.

"Yes, basically exactly like that," Halen said calmly.

"This hurts," Sid said, trying to yank his hand free from the hold Halen had on him in the power. Halen smiled at him and let him suffer for a moment. Yan felt a brief power struggle as Sid tried in vain to use his own power to free his arm. Halen eventually let him go, and he stumbled back, rubbing his arm.

"No fair," Sid said. "I need my arms."

"Don't stab people and you'll get to keep them," Halen said.

"How'd you do that?" Kino asked. She had been watching the whole thing with interest, hands in her pockets.

"If you're practiced enough, you can treat pieces of people just like you would any other object. If you can hold, for example," Halen fished in his pocket for a second and pulled out a rock. Why he carried rocks around in his pocket, Yan couldn't fathom. He held it up in the air and left it suspended there. "If you can keep a regular object held in place, no matter how much someone pulls on it, then you can do that with somebody's body."

"You're not..." Yan started to protest the use of the power to control another person's body, then stopped as Kino walked in front of her. Clearly Halen didn't care about what the power was supposed to be used for. Not only was it not allowed, it was also much more difficult to invade someone else’s body like that. The power simply didn’t want to be used that way.

Kino jumped up to grab the rock, since Halen's natural placement of it was above her head, and she held onto it with one hand. Lithely, she lifted up her knees and dangled off the rock. Yan laughed at her antics.

"What?" Kino asked. "It's steady as a rock."

Unlike the forewarning he had given her when he dissolved the table, Halen released his power holding up the rock, and Kino fell to the ground. She didn't end up completely fallen over; she was able to kick her legs out and only stumble a bit as she hit the ground.

"You're mean today," Sid said to Halen.

"No, I'm just in a good mood," Halen said.

"Would hate to see you in a bad one," Sid said.

"You will soon if you keep distracting me. We're going to practice a couple emergency situations now, so listen up." The three apprentices did obligingly turn their full attention to Halen, though Kino rocked back and forth on her heels as she listened.

"I'm going to fill this room with simulated people. You're going to be seated at that table there," Halen pointed to a table near the front of the room. “Obviously, something is going to happen. You need to try to respond to it."

"You're not going to tell us what actually is going to happen?" Yan asked.

"You think life is going to tell you want's about to happen? No, I'm not going to tell you. Go sit at the table," Halen said roughly.

Yan headed to the appointed spot, then sat down in between Kino and Sid. The chairs at the table were fairly comfortable. Certainly quite nice for being made of power manipulated air, or whatever the mysterious mechanism that controlled the room was.

While Halen had his back turned fiddling with the computer controls on the other end of the room, Sid turned to Yan.

"Ready?" Sid signed.

Yan shook her head no. "For this? Maybe. For real? No," she signed.

Sid grinned at her. "It's exciting."

"Didn't somebody say you were responsible for teaching me sign if you wanted to use it?" Kino complained.

"I'm trying to think of a way to avoid it," Sid said aloud. "I'm a bad teacher."

"You and some others," Yan muttered under her breath. As she said this, bodies flickered into appearance around the room, and the sound of music and lively chatter filled up the space.

"What are we supposed to be looking for?" Yan asked.

"Anything bad," Kino said. "I just don't know how long it's supposed to take."

"Should we get up?" Yan said, directing this question at Sid, who was standing up from the table.

Sid shrugged and walked away anyway.

Yan looked around at the group of computer generated people. Weirdly enough, there was a computer generated version of Sandreas talking to someone, with a computer generated version of Halen standing at his shoulder. The real Halen was still over by the door and the computer terminal, watching the proceedings. Yan watched as Sid meandered through the groups of people standing around and talking or dancing. For the most part they ignored him. He disappeared from view as he walked further into the crowd.

All of a sudden, though it wasn't completely unexpected, the sound of gunfire rang out. Yan couldn't tell exactly where it was coming from, but it sounded muffled, as though it was coming from the next room over. The people in the room stopped their conversation. Some of them turned towards the doors to exit, others seemed frozen in confusion.

"That's our cue," Yan said to Kino, and stood up. She started pushing through the people looking for Sid, but the lights went out. That was when the screaming and running started in earnest.

Yan looked behind her, but in the dark couldn't see Kino, who she had thought was behind her. "Kino?" Yan yelled out.

The gunfire sounded again, but much louder this time, as though it was in the room with them. Despite knowing that it was only a simulation, Yan was genuinely scared. A hand landed on Yan's arm. She jerked around but it was just Kino, holding up the flashlight on her phone to illuminate the area around them.

"We need to find Sid," Yan tried to push through the crowd of people pressing towards the exit, looking for Sid.

"Stop, Yan, you won't find him like that," Kino said. "If he's looking for us he'll come back to the table."

Yan pulled Kino over to the side, where the press of people was less intense. There was screaming and shouting all around them. "Look out for me for a second, I can't see anything in here," Yan said. Kino held her arm and Yan closed her eyes.

She needed to do something that would let her see what was going on. There was no way, right now, that she could use her regular trick of examining people with the power, since these weren't real people, but she could, at the very least, make it so she could see. Yan held out her hands, and in between them used the power to form a hot ball of light. It was blindingly bright: Yan could see it even through her closed eyes, and scorching her hands. Yan didn't know of a faster way to produce light other than heating up the air until it burned. She cast it up into the air, and it illuminated the room brightly, casting crazy moving shadows along the walls. At least now they could see what they were doing.

Through the crowd, Yan saw Sid's face, the light glinting off his glasses and sharp teeth. He came to them, pressing sideways through the crowd. By now it was obvious that the doors were not opening, and people were getting crushed in the mad pushing against them. Sid pointed at the stage at the front of the room.

Yan turned and looked. There was a man standing there, holding a large gun, aiming at the crowd of people. Several other armed men flanked him, wearing facemasks. The first man was yelling something unintelligible above the screams of the crowd. He fired several shots up in the air, but that only made people yell louder. Yan still couldn't hear him over the noise in the hall, but she realized one thing: by his standing on the stage, all the exits were blocked.

She had to only assume that no help was coming, and that there was no way out. Not just because this was a simulation that Halen must have chosen on purpose, but because the doors were blocked and there was no security force rushing in to take back control of the hall. Considering that they were within one of the most secure buildings on the planet, something must have gone very, very wrong in this situation.

Up on the stage, one of the armed men was pointing at the light sphere that Yan had cast up into the sky and then gesturing to the man standing next to him. Maybe, Yan thought, setting such a thing up had been a mistake, because as much visibility as it allowed her, it also allowed their attackers the same. And it let them know that there were more sensitives in the hall, making them high priority targets. Wearing their uniforms, Yan, Kino, and Sid were all quite recognizable as sensitives.

The man who had been pointing at the light scanned the room. Yan's heart leaped into her throat when his gaze settled on them, the only three people not frantically trying to pound down the doors, hide, or otherwise escape. They were also the only three people wearing the classic apprentice's uniform. He aimed his gun at them.

"Look out!" Yan yelled. She grabbed Kino's arm and hauled her down to the floor. The sound of gunfire came from the stage, but Yan didn't process it. She and Kino crawled under a nearby table. Sid ended up underneath a different one, with a better vantage point of the stage.

"Turn that light out, Yan!" Sid yelled across to her. "Why'd you do that?"

"So I could find you, you idiot!" Yan yelled back. Kino punched her arm.

"Don't argue, just do it," Kino hissed into her ear.

Yan focused her power for a second, then destroyed her light sphere in the air above them. The room was again plunged into darkness.

"Now what?" Yan said to Kino.

"We get out from under these tables before they send somebody to find us. Then we need to find a way to stop this," Kino said.

Sid's glasses glowed eerily underneath the adjacent table. "Should we split up?" He asked.

"No," Yan said emphatically. "We stick together." She crawled out slightly from underneath the table and tried to look at what was happening.

Several of the armed men had left the stage and were walking around the room. Some were separating out groups of the scared party goers by the door, forcing them to sit down. She watched as a woman tried to yank the gun out of one attacker's hands, but was shot down by another. Bile rose in her throat.

Yan reached into the pocket of her cassock, and pulled out the gun that was holstered there. She flicked the safety off and put her finger on the trigger. Kino saw what she was doing and put her hand on Yan's shoulder, then pointed to a different place in the room. One of the groups of armed men was knocking over tables, checking for people hiding underneath.

Yan changed where she was aiming. Set up the power structure, think about where the bullet should go, she commanded herself. Make it a straight line connecting the tip of the gun to his head. Yan breathed in, held up the gun, and fired. She felt it ring down the line of power, pushing and pulling as her original shot went far wide, but was guided into place. One of the men collapsed.

Kino, ready beside her, did the same a half second later. A second man fell down. The other three men in the group immediately took cover, as soon as they realized what was happening.

"Let's get out of these tables," Yan said. She crawled backwards towards the eastern wall of the room. Kino and Sid followed.

"Should we try to pick off more of them?" Kino asked.

"Yeah, but they know where we are, we have to find a different position," Yan said. She heard more gunfire somewhere else in the room, but she couldn't see what was going on from underneath the confusion of tables and chairs. "Let's get towards the snack tables."

"Are we trying to escape or are we trying to stop this?" Kino asked.

"I don't know," Yan said. They reached the edge of the dinner tables that had been covering them, and there was a wide gap between that and the snack tables at the edges of the room. Yan looked at what was going on. There were fewer people trying to escape, now that the attackers had gone down into the crowd and were sectioning people off. There was less screaming, too, but occasionally gunfire would sound and cause new panic to set in. Bodies, some with obvious gunshot wounds, some who looked as though they had been trampled, lay on the floor.

"In three seconds, let's make a run for those tables," Kino said.

She held up three fingers. Two fingers. One. Zero. The trio scrambled up and dashed towards the long tables near the wall.

The movement attracted the attention of some of the gunmen in the dim room, and they shouted and fired at them. Kino screamed, a horrible sound, and dove under one of the tables, clutching her arm. Yan slid under the table, and with Sid, knocked it forward to form at least a semblance of a shield. She ducked behind it.

"They shot me, they fucking shot me," Kino whispered.

She was clutching her arm. Yan couldn't see any blood, at first, since Kino's cassock was black, but then she noticed a trail of it running down over Kino's limp fingers.

Yan held her gun tightly in her hand. She peeked up above the edge of the table. A bullet whizzed over her head and several others slammed into the table. She ducked back behind and saw Sid, with his eyes closed, pressing his hands against the underside surface of the table. In all the confusion and in the weird thrum of the simulation room she hadn't noticed that he was using the power.

Kino was incapacitated, and Sid was using the power to reinforce the table and protect them, so it was up to Yan to take care of the rest. She peeked out from behind the table again, held up the gun, and fired on one of the masked attackers. He fell. More people started shooting at her, and she ducked back down.

She didn't want to get shot. Yan knew she could hold two power structures in place at once. She imagined a larger one. A big triangle of power, with one hole in the very tip. Just like the power structure that would redirect her own bullets if they were off course, she made this one to redirect incoming bullets along its sides, away from the group. Specifically, she made it to redirect anything moving within a certain range of speeds, since she figured the bullets the attackers were firing were made of air or, she didn't really know what. Either way, she knew they would hurt. Yan didn't have the time to think of how to make it allow bullets to pass through in one direction, hence the hole that she would just have to shoot through. Unfortunately, this would mean that Sid, who had no way of knowing where the hole was, couldn't help her. But it would free him up to help Kino.

Since his eyes were closed, she nudged him with her elbow. He opened his eyes and looked at her.

"I've got this," Yan said. "You help Kino." Sid nodded and turned to Kino, who was looking extremely pale and shaking.

Yan focused on holding the gun steady, keeping her power lines up, and getting this simulation over with. Now that Kino was wounded, there was an actual imperative to finish this. She was burning up with anger that Halen hadn't stopped the program as soon as Kino was hurt, or better yet, made it safer in the first place, but she tried to push all that aside.

Aim, power, shoot. Make sure the target went down. Find the next target. She felt sick watching the bullets hit their targets, but the two things that kept her going was knowing that it was a simulation, and knowing that she needed to get out to get Kino help.

As she fought back against the armed attackers, several of them started coming towards her. But her unerring aim, thanks to the power, and their inability to hit her made them easy targets. Even when a few tried using some of the hapless dinner guests as human shields, Yan just altered her power structure to curve the bullets around.

She was numb, methodical, and ruthless. When she ran out of bullets in her own gun, she traded out for Kino's, and then Sid's. When Sid's gun clicked emptily in her hand, Yan summoned a gun from one of the fallen attackers. It flew into her hands and she continued shooting, though she had to modify the way she was using the power to account for the not-quite-real bullets the attackers guns had.

One of the attackers, seeing that bullets weren't getting through to the group sheltering behind the table, pulled out what looked to Yan an awful lot like a grenade and threw it in her general direction. Yan used the power to redirect its path into one of the least populated parts of the room, and did her best to surround it with the same power that kept the bullets away from her group. She was only partly successful, and the grenade went off with a bang that scattered debris everywhere, but none of it went anywhere near her.

Though she had to be constantly mindful of that sort of intrusion, it got easier and easier as fewer and fewer assailants remained, and most of them concentrated at getting as protected from her as possible. If Yan saw where they went, she curved her shots in the best approximation she could, and sometimes saw them hit bodies.

After some amount of time, Yan lost track, a silence fell over the room. Everything seemed to freeze in place, and then dissolve into nothingness. The gun Yan was holding in her hand faded away. The lights came back on.

Yan was left kneeling in the center of the training room, Kino and Sid next to her. Kino was unconscious. Sid had taken off his cassock and was using it to staunch the blood coming out of Kino's arm. His white button down had a bloody handprint on it. The three empty handguns that Yan had used were laying discarded on the ground. The real bullets that Yan had shot were scattered around.

Across the room, Yan met Halen's eyes.