The only thing Eniola could feel was a blurring pain that rocked through her whole body as the world went dark.

She collapsed onto the mat with a grunt because Hyejin had once again beat her ass. Hyejin sighed, as she should’ve because they had been here for hours and giving someone a beat down was boring.

“Why are you still on the ground?” Hyejin shouted. “Get up!”

Eniola scrambled up and pretended that her body or her ego weren’t bruised. Hyejin eyed her down, or up, in this case, because Hyejin was the select few people in the world who were shorter than Eniola. Despite being the youngest member of the PSEUDO at 14, Hyejin was snappy, tough, and agile. She almost moved like a dancer sometimes, despite her heavier limbs.

“You fight before you react,” Hyejin said. “That’s wrong. React before you fight.”

“How do I do that?” Eniola asked.

“I am a visual teacher,” Hyejin said. “Let’s do it again. People might come at you from all sides, so you need to react when they fight first.”

That made zero sense to Eniola. All this fighting terminology only made her head spin. Despite it all, Eniola’s muscles screamed. Hyejin enjoyed fighting rather than explaining. And she was so quick. How was Eniola supposed to react when limbs were flying at her?

Everyone else seemed to get it. Eniola’s eyes flit across the room where everyone else had been training in hand-to-hand combat. It was almost like Lucia was made for this. She had been the most excited to fight. That had kind of been her thing. Theo was big so he used his size to his advantage, and he was observational and quick. Iris, like Hyejin, seemed to be agile and bounced. Maybe it was because of her cyborg sixth sense or something. However, Jay, despite being a giant, was also kind of lanky and also got body-checked like Eniola. A small smile curled onto her lips, but only for a second.

“Can you meet me outside?” Kain’s voice came loud into her earpiece. She jumped. “I need to talk to you.”

Eniola raised her eyebrow, but only for a split second. Hyejin came for Eniola with her left fist she barely dodged in time before Hyejin dropped to the ground quickly with her leg out. Eniola tripped and fell face forward on her mat with a groan.

“You’re not quick enough and you get distracted easily,” Hyejin said as Eniola turned over with a grumble. Hyejin’s eyes were a swirl of colours until Eniola blinked back her vision. “Get up, Eniola. We still have work to do.”

Eniola sighed before she pulled herself up again. Kain’s voice came in her ear again, “I want to see you now, Eniola.”

“Uh,” Eniola stuttered. “Kain wants me for something. Can I leave?”

Hyejin raised her slit eyebrow, the one that made her look very badass. She then touched her earpiece and mumbled some words before she stopped. “Go,” she simply said.

“Okay,” Eniola said hastily before walking to the back of the training room. She wondered how they fit into this house.

Lucia turned over to her at the very front, right in the middle of a very eager fight. She turned to Eniola and mouthed to her, “What’s going on?”

Eniola shrugged. She mouthed back, “I don’t know. I’ll be back soon.” Lucia nodded back.

Eniola was kind of excited to leave this place. For 3 weeks or something, it had a mixture of fight simulations, then physical training sessions, and then learning about the very mechanics of hacking, which was just staring at people do some weird stuff on computers. It was all a complicated blur. They were supposedly putting together for some big mission to hand Paradox’s ass right to him.

Eniola pressed the sliding door open, and she jumped at the sight of Kain, who stood there stoically. His presence was so weird. He just stood there and time stopped for him to be ominous.

“Kain?” Eniola asked quietly. “What’s going on?”

“Good question,” he replied before he turned and walked away. Eniola got the inkling she should follow him. Of course. She walked and her muscles ached. “I need you for something.”

“Why?”

Kain stopped and turned around to look at her. “You ask a lot of questions, do you?”

“I asked two,” Eniola deadpanned. But she didn’t speak again. She only followed Kain down the hallway. Then did some other anticlimactic stuff like turning down a hallway. Eniola’s heartbeat was loud in her chest.

“How have you been enjoying your time here?” Kain asked.

Eniola opened her mouth to say something, then closed it to think about it. The PSEUDO had been the most adrenaline-packed time, yet confusing time of her life. She didn’t know if she and all of her friends belonged here with all these fighters.

“It’s interesting,” Eniola replied.

“How so?”

“I’ve never experienced anything like it,” Eniola said. “It feels surreal and daunting.”

“Could you elaborate on that?” Kain weirdly asked.

“I thought I was the one asking all the questions,” Eniola mumbled.

Kain suddenly stopped and turned back to her with raised eyes. Eniola stopped in response and gulped. Then he smirked and turned to walk forward again. Now Eniola was the one raising an eyebrow this time.

They walked some more, until Kain stopped again, not to give her an intimidating look but to open a door on the side. It slid open and Eniola expected yet another room with computers, but as she walked in, she found herself in another narrow corridor with one door at the end. She narrowed her eyes. The house looked so small on the outside. Where was Kain keeping all these rooms?

They got to the other door and Kain opened and Eniola expected another secret passage, but this time it was something like a computer lab. There were a few screens, but it was mostly a cluttered table. In the back, there was a desk with another screen, but below it, an empty plate and a cup were all amid more clutter. It looked too office-like.

“What is this place?” Eniola asked.

“The place I go to a lot,” Kain said. “It’s kind of like my office.”

“Hmm,” Eniola lingered. “So, what are we doing here? I’m allowed to ask questions now, right?”

Kain glared at her again and Eniola felt a wave of awkward fear come upon her. What was with her cracking jokes with dangerous people?

“I need your help to find Paradox,” Kain said.

“Is that the basis on which all of us are here?” Eniola asked.

“Yes,” Kain said. “But we’ve fallen into a slump in finding him. The computer Zaira gave us to use doesn’t make sense, and she’s not giving us a lot to work with?”

“So what does that have to do with me?” Eniola asked again. Kain sure loved to take years to get to the point.

“Come over here,” Kain said and Eniola moved next to him where he was already toggling around screens. Keone’s profile. He turned to Eniola. “What can you tell me about Paradox?”

“He’s,” Eniola began. “On the verge of potentially destroying the world”

“Okay, but be more specific,” Kain said. “Any facts we haven’t been told?”

“The world knows that he’s Matrix Man,” Eniola said. “The last we saw of him was in Los Angeles. Then we went to Portland, now he’s in Beijing with us. Isn’t it better we move in now than wait?”

“Sometimes it’s better to strike last,” Kain said. “Striking first is a bad idea when you don’t know.”

He said it with some sort of angry tone. Eniola asked, “How so?”

“There was an attack on our servers on the west coast in the US. It shut down all of our servers, and that sector of the PSEUDO took years to recover from the severe damage. We had to retreat,” Kain explained. “That was because we didn’t take our time. But what else? When you fought Paradox, how was it? What did you feel?”

“Hot,” Eniola instantly said. Then she raised an eyebrow. “Like, physically burning.”

“Of course,” Kain said. He leaned in closer. “What else?”

“Keone is human, but Paradox is Keone and AI,” Eniola explained. “Whenever we fought him, it was like he wasn’t real. He kept vanishing in and out of reality and has these lightning powers.”

“We know this,” Kain said. “What else?”

“Why don’t you ask Zaira?” Eniola suddenly asked. “She made the computers, and she knows them in and out and she’s an expert in physics. I’m not the girl for this.”

“She won’t talk,” Kain grumbled. To think of it, Zaira seemed unsure. It was like she wanted to say something but was holding back. “And when she does, it’s very vague. She has lots of control issues. I think she’s attached to the computer.”

“Give her time,” Eniola said.

“You’ve been here for almost a month,” Kain said. “You all have had some time to adjust.”

Eniola was about to say something, but Kain touched his earpiece.

“I’ll be there Josanne,” Kain said. “I have to go for a bit. Stay here.”

Eniola nodded, and Kain walked out of the room. She almost didn’t realize that Josanne wasn’t glued to Kain.

Once Kain left, his presence somehow became louder in Eniola’s head. She still didn’t know why Kain expected her to know the inner workings of the computer when the creator was in his midst. But it seemed like Kain didn’t even trust Zaira like that. It was like there was some weird tension between them.

Eniola’s gaze drifted over to the computer where Keone’s profile was still open. Then she glanced back at the door. Closed. Before Eniola could stop herself, she was already at the computer again and was typing in Zaira’s name into the search bar.

It was already there, of course, but this time they surrounded it in red and the words ‘CAUTION’ headlined it. Eniola raised an eyebrow. Zaira was flagged or somehow elevated. That meant that they knew about Zaira.

It wasn’t long before Eniola heard footsteps approach the room. Her breath hitched and quickly she typed back Keone’s name before she practically launched herself from the computer and back into her seat. Kain came in right at that moment.

“Let’s continue to talk,” Kain said.

This time, Eniola ignored the growing pit of anxiety in her gut.