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  Alistair snapped his head up.

  “What’s that?” he snarled, his lip quivering. “You’ve got to be kidding me, Gaul. All that big talk and then you’re going to send me out with Mitzi to take care of it? Be reasonable, Gaul.”

  “I am being reasonable.” Gaul took his glasses off and began polishing the lenses with a rag. “I need Rebecca here, and the other two will be off making enough trouble to keep everyone from noticing that you’re not out there, Alistair. Get your head on right, Chief Auditor. You know full well what would happen if the cartels found out that all the Auditors were occupied.”

  “You ask the impossible,” Alistair complained. “And then you say you need Rebecca to babysit the new kid? This is bullshit, Gaul.”

  “I will explain myself once more, Alistair,” Gaul said, putting his glasses down on the desk and rubbing the bridge of his nose. “I am not repeating the mistakes we made with Mitsuru. If Rebecca has to hold this kid’s hand and wipe his nose in order for this to work, then that’s what she’ll do. She understands that. For the life of me, given that you pretend to be Mitsuru’s best friend, I can’t see how you don’t understand.”

  “Enough,” Alistair snapped.

  “Listen to me,” Gaul said patiently. “You are right, I am asking the impossible. And I’m going to make it more impossible. Because I need this done properly, Alistair. It has to be perfect. Everything needs to be airtight on this Audit, to justify the outcome. If it takes time, then it takes time, Alistair. But you cannot be wrong.”

  Alistair nodded slowly.

  “And the consequences?” Alistair asked softly.

  Gaul slid a red folder across his desk.

  “That’s a signed sanction on the entirety of the Terrie Cartel and any allies that they might have, Alistair. They are transferred to your jurisdiction, effective immediately. Invoke it at your discretion.”

  Alistair’s eyes widened. Gaul felt a small pleasure in having surprised his normally unflappable Chief Auditor so many times in one conversation. He handed him one final red folder.

  “This is signed documentation from me, absolving you of all responsibility for any action you may take in the course of pursuing this matter.” Gaul straightened the remaining papers on his desk compulsively. “I take full responsibility. Do whatever you see fit, Alistair. Just make it perfect.”

  “You’re putting a lot on the line, here,” Alistair said, touched. “I didn’t know you had this kind of faith in me.”

  “If you mistake reasonable oversight for lack of faith, then that’s your problem,” Gaul objected. “I can’t have my Operators looking over their shoulders all the time, not if they’re going to do the kind of job I need them to. They need to know that they are protected. They need to see it.”

  Gaul looked moodily out the window for a moment, and then continued in a quieter voice.

  “And despite all expectations,” he continued, “it appears that there are still people out there who need to be reminded there is no profit in taking us on. So use Mitsuru, and whoever else you need from Operations. Go camp out at Analytics, run the forensic boys into the ground, requisition labs and materials, shake down informants, call in favors. And in the meantime, I will have the remaining Auditors try and cause enough trouble to keep anyone from realizing that you aren’t minding the shop.”

  “And that Rebecca is busy babysitting,” Alistair reminded him, standing up to leave.

  “She’s not babysitting, you fool,” Gaul said tiredly, motioning toward the door. “She’s making Alexander Warner into a weapon. Do a good job on this Audit and I might let you pull the trigger when the time comes.”

  Thirteen

  Michael appeared to be upside down, because Alex was standing on his hands. This was a newly acquired skill. His whole body shook as he attempted to straighten his legs and abdomen, trying to force himself into one firm vertical line. This was a skill he was still attempting to acquire, and as his arms trembled and his stomach cramped, Alex wondered how Yoga could possibly be so difficult.

  He had spent the last three weeks almost solely in Michael’s care. Though his schedule listed four courses aside from homeroom, Alex couldn’t tell the difference between ‘Unarmed Combat’ and ‘Physical Conditioning’ and ‘Fundamentals of Self-Defense’. Michael was the instructor for all three of them, and they blended into a seamless flow of exhaustion, struggle and pain. The first day, when Michael had explained that he would be allowed to skip the first few weeks of homeroom, to give him time to get oriented and also to allow for his private tutoring, Alex had been happy. The less school, he figured, the better, and it wasn’t like he was in horrible shape. How bad could it possibly be?

  When Michael arrived at six a.m. the next morning, dressed in running clothes and carrying a bag of the same in Alex’s size, and cheerfully battered his door until he was forced to acknowledge it, Alex had begun to reassess the situation. Four miles later, when Alex got his first leg cramp, he was bitter. After another three miles, Alex contemplated murdering Michael in between bouts of vomiting into a ditch on the side of the road. Michael appeared to be unshakable; he smiled throughout the run, and never appeared to be out of breath or tired. He wore a tight nylon top that made it very obvious that Michael was ridiculously built, with thick limbs wrapped in corded muscle and a barrel chest.

  Their route that morning took them around the back of the Academy grounds, past some buildings Alex had never seen before (but he was too out of breath to ask about), and then through a series of low, grassy hills that eventually gave way to steeper elevations and evergreens. It was sunny but Alex suspected that if he hadn’t been running he would have found it cold. The path they ran along started out as sidewalk, but petered out gradually into an asphalt track, then loose gravel, and finally nothing more than a dirt rut running through the surrounding countryside. It was beautiful, in a late-fall way, but Alex had no eyes for it.

  He was too busy trying to breathe.

  Alex had been surprised to find himself still standing at the end of that first eight-mile run. He’d even felt pretty good, a bit proud of himself, and when he glanced over at Michael and saw the grin on his face, figured that he was too. Later, he would realize that the man was simply a sadist.

  They ran two or three times a week, never less than five miles. At least twice a week, they visited the indoor pool at the fitness complex not far from Alex’s dorm, and swam for an hour or two. Michael set the pace and Alex struggled to keep up; more than once, Michael had to stop to teach Alex the stroke that he wanted him to use. Alex liked the way the sound of the water echoed in the tiled expanse of the gym, but he always found the water to be too cold. He’d enjoyed his occasional opportunities to swim when he’d been younger, but with Michael calling the shots, he came to hate the sight of his school-issued swimsuit much more than the sight of his school-issued running shoes.

  After the first week, they didn’t start with cardio anymore; instead, Michael had begun to teach him yoga. Alex had always thought of it as something hippies did, some kind of pseudo spiritual meditative practice or something, but what he learned was profoundly different. If there were philosophical components to it, then Michael ignored them, instead focusing on body awareness, strengthening, flexibility, and breathe control. Michael was a patient teacher who never raised his voice, and seemed capable of all the various positions with a casual flair that made them look easy, though Alex rarely found them to be so. Nonetheless, after two weeks of daily practice, Alex found that he could support the weight of his body on his hands and bend over far enough to put his head flat on the ground while touching his toes.

  That was his morning, for three weeks, six days a week. Five days a week, Alex came back to the fitness center in the afternoons. They never did the same thing two days in a row, except for the yoga, and he never had a day where he didn’t do either morning or afternoon training.

  When it came to combat training, Michael never bothered to explain what discipline a
technique came from. He never taught Alex any katas or forms, they did not wear a gi or a belt, and none of the techniques Alex learned seemed to have names or formal designations. But Alex found Michael to be a genuinely remarkable teacher, and himself to be a more receptive student than he had ever imagined possible.

  He learned a variety of things in those few weeks; a dozen different ways to put his opponent on the ground without winding up there himself, a variety of techniques for controlling wrists and arms up close, how to strike with the elbow and forearm. But it went deeper than techniques, as the education Alex received from Michael was more a process of refinement than revelation.

  Alex learned that the looping punches he favored he threw because they were powerful – but as Michael demonstrated by cheerfully jabbing Alex in the face until his nose bled, were also inaccurate, slow and left him wide open to anyone with a little bit of boxing ability. Along with a straightened punch, he learned that a few simple changes in his footwork could provide him with the same power that the looping punches had, without any of the disadvantages.

  Michael taught Alex enough of the fundamentals of ju-jitsu that he could defend himself on the ground, but he also explained that weight and inexperience would work against him there, and spent much more time teaching him to sprawl, to drop his chest and splay his legs back to avoid being taken down in the first place. He learned a handful of trips and throws for dealing with running tackles and rushes, and a number of other ways to keep fights where Michael judged Alex to be most capable – standing and striking.

  The first few afternoons were largely spent with Alex punching a heavy bag filled with water to mimic a human body, his hands taped and in lightweight half-gloves, while Michael watched and made adjustments. He seemed more concerned at first with Alex’s feet than anything he was doing with his hands, and after scolding Alex for making a less-than-tight fist and teaching him to square his shoulder and tuck his jaw, he turned his attention almost totally to stance and footwork. After a few days, he convinced Alex to stop punching off his back foot, and Alex noticed the bag reacting more dramatically to his strikes.

  The second week was more freeform; much of it spent sparring with Michael in a boxing ring, with a mouthpiece and head guard. Some of the time he spent working a pair of pads that Michael held, shouting instructions, occasionally batting him about the head and body to remind him to guard. It started to feel more natural to use his forearms and elbows when he was close, and it got easier to use his long arms to jab and keep Michael at a somewhat more comfortable distance.

  He learned not to throw kicks higher than the knee, because they were too risky to be effective. His own knees, he learned, were capable of delivering truly powerful blows, more than he could ever manage with his hands; like kicks, however, knees had drawbacks, namely that they tended to leave him off-balance and exposed. After Michael dumped him on his head a dozen times, Alex was effectively cured of the Hollywood-implanted urge to throw kicks to the head.

  His wrists, shoulders and back all hurt constantly, and he spent a considerable amount of time every day in the fitness center’s gigantic spa, hoping that in the hot water eventually some of his cramped muscles might unknot. Three afternoons a week, they ended with weight training, done in rapid and exhausting cycles that left Alex broken down and shaking. He got so used to vomiting in the plastic bucket that he kept nearby that he didn’t even feel self-conscious about it.

  All of which, at the moment, wasn’t helping him match Michael’s handstand. With a tremendous effort, Alex straightened out the length of his body, his abdomen shaking with the strain, his legs wobbling but fundamentally straight. Then it all fell apart, his balance shifted forward, putting the strain on his fingers, his legs bent, and he allowed himself to crumple to the ground, which turned out to be much more comfortable than he had anticipated. He decided to stay there.

  “I don’t get it,” he said, lying on his back while Michael unfolded himself neatly.

  “You don’t get what?” Michael asked, sitting down beside him.

  “What the point of all this is. I mean, am I going to go punch a werewolf? Is that the idea, I’m going to go beat these things up?”

  Michael looked at him oddly for a moment, and then laughed. Alex had a sneaking suspicion that the laugh might have come at his expense, but he smiled anyway.

  “That would be cool, but I doubt you’d survive it,” Michael said, grinning and producing two bottles of Gatorade from the kit bag he brought everywhere. It was impossible, Alex found, to keep himself hydrated, though he drank constantly. “Your body is your most fundamental tool, Alex, the only one you always have at your disposal. Everything starts from there. If you don’t know how to use your body, then you’re never going to understand how to use any other kind of weapon. The idea is this – we will teach you to use anything at hand to fight, and yes, we’re going to spend a lot of time teaching you to use guns and bombs and protocols because that’s what we expect you’ll be using. But just because that’s what we expect,” Michael said, shrugging, “doesn’t mean that’s what it is going to be like. The field has this tendency to surprise you.”

  Michael paused for a moment, kneading out a cramp in his calf, and looked almost sad.

  “Anyway, we start with what we know you’ll have with you. Once I’m confident you can use that, then we move on to the more likely suspects.” Michael grinned at Alex. “That okay with you, Mr. Warner?”

  “You ask me like you care,” Alex said, finishing his bottle and putting it aside.

  The pace of the workouts was exhausting, but somehow never quite past what Alex was capable of. Michael offered constant instruction, critiquing his form and movement at all times, tweaking and refining, patient and infuriatingly calm. Alex’s own frustration was muted by sheer exhaustion, and by a growing suspicion that something was not quite right. In the course of a few weeks, Alex gained a few pounds of muscle and a much more prodigious strength. He was somehow, faster, stronger and more capable than he had any right to be.

  One day, after a particularly grueling set of wind sprints, Alex asked Michael about it.

  “It’s the machines, son,” Michael said with his trademark toothy grin, panting beside Alex on the grass next to the track. “All those little machines inside you, they’re latched on to your nervous system, and they take instruction from your brain, as if they were part of you. So they know what you’re doing, and they’re facilitating the process, helping your body manufacture new tissue, augmenting your reflexes, repairing all the damage that gets done to that sad little body of yours, my friend.”

  Michael lay down near where Alex had collapsed, hands behind his head, looking up at the sky and seeming, to Alex, to be genuinely happy.

  “For me, it’s the best part of the deal. I played football, you understand, and I wrestled and ran track. I always liked this stuff,” Michael said, sounding almost bashful. “And then when I came here, they taught me how to fight, and it all came together for me. I can push myself so much harder now, and those little machines clean it all up for me. Our ligaments don’t tear, Alex, our tendons don’t snap, and if they did, why, you’d be better in a couple of weeks. As long as you remember to give your body raw materials, you won’t ever overheat or have glucose problems. Plus, those machines enhance performance – they can carry oxygen, or remove dead cells, or form seals around injuries and subcutaneous bleeding. They can tailor nutrients and deliver them. They can even process lactic acid and reduce muscle cramping.”

  “Wow,” Alex said, looking dreamily at the hand he held up between his eyes and the weak afternoon sun.

  “Yes,” Michael agreed, standing up. “But they can’t do the work for you, Alex. Up and at them. We aren’t done here.”

  “I start class tomorrow,” Alex said.

  Michael looked surprised, then nodded.

  “Was it like this, for you?” Alex asked, looking stricken, his fingers knotting with anxiety. “Were you this nervous when you
started, Michael? Did it all feel this weird?”

  “Yes,” Michael said seriously. “I think everyone feels that way.”

  --

  It took so much effort to get up off the bed, to walk across the room on his aching legs, that Alex gave serious consideration to the idea of ignoring the soft, insistent knock. He only didn’t because he was fairly sure that Vivik would stand there, knocking gently in patient intervals, until the door fell down. Because Michael had told him to keep an eye on Alex, no doubt.

  Alex opened the door and then limped back to the bed, leaving the door behind him open and Vivik to make his own way in. He barely had the energy to keep his eyes open.

  “You look terrible,” Vivik said, taking the chair at Alex’s writing desk. “They must be pushing you real hard.”

  Alex nodded wearily.

  “I’m almost happy that class is starting,” Alex said, “because that means only three days a week with Michael, instead of six. I think any more of this might actually kill me.”

  “I doubt it,” Vivik said, grinning, “if you’re important enough for them to pull a Board member and department head away from his classes for three weeks so he can personally tutor you, I doubt very much that they would kill you and waste the investment. Or allow you to die at all, for that matter.”

  “Well, that’s a comfort. Not to be a dick or anything, but,” Alex nodded painfully at his sprawled body, “since I’m in a lot of pain here, and was thinking pretty hard about bed, did you have anything you needed, Vivik?”

  “What? Oh, no, nothing big,” Vivik hedged, toying nervously with a pen from Alex’s desk. “Are you worried at all, about tomorrow? I was pretty scared, my first day. And nobody knew who I was, or anything.”

  “Wait a minute,” Alex said, attempting to sit up, and then abandoning the effort partway, when he realized that inclining his head was the most he was currently capable of. “Why would that be any different for me?”