Cadence had received a text message that morning from Aaron, checking to see how she was doing and asking if she felt up to meeting him at 10:00 for training. Thoughts of how her night had ended had her feeling just fine, and she was out the door by 9:30. This morning was a little different than the day before, however. They were joined by another Hunter, Meagan, and her trainer, Shane, the guy Aaron had been talking to in the gym the day before. Meagan, a shorter brunette with wavy hair and an infectious smile, had been at LIGHTS for almost six weeks, and she was preparing for her first observation hunt the next night. Aaron explained that, if Meagan could successfully spar with Cadence, there was a possibility that she might be ready to go on an observation. This in spite of the fact that Cadence had never sparred with anyone before, and Meagan had been doing so almost daily for the last several weeks.

The type of sparring these ladies would be performing did not involve boxing gloves, however. It involved full-on hand-to-hand combat. Aaron reminded Cadence that he had already seen her in action and was aware that she knew how to trust her instincts. With Meagan, they weren’t quite sure. The opponents she had practiced against previously were all either newbies or Guardians sent back for remediation. Now, with Cadence, they would be able to tell if she was anywhere near ready for combat with an actual Vampire.

Aaron gave Cadence fairly general directions. “Pretend she’s a Vampire. Act as if you are trying kill her, but don’t really hurt her. Understand?”

She had understood. Meagan and Shane did have one small advantage, however. They were able to communicate via IAC whereas Cadence had not attempted to turn hers back on yet. Nevertheless, Aaron seemed confident in her ability to defeat Meagan with minimal coaching from him.

The first round was not even close. Meagan was nowhere near as fast as Cadence. The newbie had her opponent pinned in less than ten seconds. The second round, it took her a bit longer but only because Cadence decided to let Meagan move first. After that, the trainers tried various tactics to make it more even and to hinder Cadence, such as only allowing her to use one arm or blindfolding her. Despite all of these obstructions, Cadence was still successful every single time. She was shocked at her own abilities but remembered what Aaron had told her about her gene pool. These victories were likely due to her amazing grandparents.

Even though she was losing time and again, Aaron and Shane were also very impressed with what Meagan showed them in the ring. For an average Hunter, she was doing great against a formidable opponent. She consistently made moves that would have most like been effective if Cadence hadn’t been quite so fast or quite so agile.

After a few hours in the ring, Aaron left Cadence to work on the drills they had covered the day before. He let her know that he would be coming by that evening to work on her IAC. As always, he had an insurmountable amount of work to do, but he trusted her to do the exercises she was told to complete and do them to the best of her ability. She had had only one question. “When do I get to learn how to use the guns?”

“Tomorrow,” Aaron had replied, amused at her enthusiasm.

Cadence stayed at the gym most of the afternoon. She was able to get in several reps of the exercises Aaron had taught her, and since her endurance seemed to last a lot longer than it used to, she continued to work out. At one point, Jamie came in while she was on the treadmill and checked on her. He was relieved to see she had fully recovered from the incident with the IAC, and he gave her a few pointers for improving her endurance. Cadence was glad things were not as awkward as they had been the night before. She really cared about Jamie, even if she wasn’t interested in dating him, and hated to think he might have his feelings hurt because of something she did.

Overall, Cadence felt like it was an extremely productive day. By the time Aaron knocked on her door at 8:30, she had showered, eaten dinner, and taken a few minutes to relax with her copy of Cosmo.

“Hey there,” she said as she opened the door. He was dressed in his hunting attire, all black, so she knew he was on his way out.

“Hi, how was the rest of your day?” he asked as he entered the apartment.

“Great! How was yours?” She offered him a seat on the couch and sat down next to him.

“Busy,” he replied, honestly. “And not over yet. I’m about to catch a flight to Denver in just a bit, so I can’t stay too long,” he explained.

“What’s going on there?” she asked out of curiosity.

“It’s a long story,” he began, “but basically it’s a Rogue attempting to track down a specific Hunter and destroy him. Sort of like your situation, only this Rogue is angry because the Hunter killed his Vampirling, and he believes it was without cause.”

“Sounds interesting,” Cadence replied tucking one leg beneath her.

“Yeah, we think we have a location on him, but they called me in to help track him because he keeps slipping away. They think it’s poor coordination on the part of the Hunters. Anyway, we have got to get your IAC up and running so you know what the hell is going on.”

“Okay,” Cadence said hesitantly. As much as she wanted to be on the same wavelength as everyone else, she was frightened to try the implant again.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said though she wasn’t sure if that was truly the case.

“Good. All right, so the first thing we are going to do is activate just my feed through your IAC. Okay, so just like you did last night when you went to turn it off, you’re going to concentrate on giving the command that I tell you, and then that will activate the chip. Okay?” She closed her eyes, thinking that might help, and nodded her head. She was ready. “All right, so the first command is ‘IAC Aaron On.’”

Cadence took a deep breath and mentally repeated those words. “IAC Aaron On.”

There was a crackling noise and static at first, like when an older model television set has to warm up, but then suddenly, there he was--in her brain. When her eyes were closed, she could simply see a star in the corner of her right eye with a small “A” next to it.

“You did it!”

“Did you get that message I just sent you?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied. Next to the A, his message popped up, but it wasn’t as if she had to read it. The words were being read to her in his voice. It was like he had implanted his voice directly into her brain.

“Good. Now I’ll teach you the commands to respond. Any time you want to talk to anyone else, whether it’s me, Eliza, Meagan, whoever, you think their name first, the message, and then send. Any time you think the word send, you can be sure a message is going to that person unless you’re in Full Off or Full Pause mode, which we’ll talk about in a minute. All right? So, think of something you might want to tell me, and see if you can send it.”

“Will I get some sort of opportunity to check it before I hit send? Like, can I see it?”

“Yes, you can. We don’t usually have time to check every message we send since we send so many messages a day. It becomes second nature. But you can actually read it first if you want. The box where your messages appear is right above my line. Regardless of who else you have open, I’ll always be in the same place. My messages will always be louder and faster than anyone else’s because mine have top priority.”

“All right, here goes.” She wanted to think of something clever to say, but since she was also limited on time, she simply said:

“I beat your Hill record by 11 seconds.”

“I’m aware. Congratulations.”

“How does it feel to know you got beat by a girl?

“All right,” he said, “moving right along….”