Mendoza thoughtfully turned the cup in her hands, as if watching the light ripple across the surface of the tea, then id out the technical side of the matter.

  No, she didn’t talk about how the demon had been tortured, or even what kind of body he'd been pced into…

  I already had an example — I’d spoken to the bastard who ran the network at Bck Lotus. Clearly, it was an underdeveloped thinhorn, straight from the test tube. If you disregarded the soul’s age and experience, Novak had tortured a child.

  I was grateful to have been spared those details.

  The details Mendoza did share concerned Soro’s death and the information she’d uncovered.

  Technically, we had talked about it before, but my detachment from the world, so-called amnesia and orphanhood, had stopped me from putting two and two together. In my defence, no one but Soro managed it either. All the more reason to mourn the loss of such a talent.

  Soro had compared the number of direct connection requests between cadets on Verdis and their families back on Earth. This wasn’t just letters, she’d looked into direct video calls. Then she checked the number of replies.

  For a normal, real cadet, the ratio should’ve been more or less banced. Students call home, retives call back. Some people reach out more, others less, but traffic is always two-way.

  She checked everyone she could and found a cadet who ignored his family completely. He hadn’t even responded to incoming video call requests, and those weren’t free.

  Yes, it was our demon. He’d nded a talented body, but came from a poor family. He couldn’t afford to squeeze a few extra credits from his parents, so he just gave up on them entirely.

  Technically, he hadn’t committed a crime, and honestly, no one else in first year gave a damn about his retionship with his parents. But he’d even ignored his parents’ and friends’ birthdays. That’s what gave him away.

  I sat and listened, but part of my mind was unfolding the problem in a different direction, the part that never forgot the real Jake Sullivan was dead. Killed by demons. And that there was a whole yer of life I had no access to, one completely absent from my reactions.

  I don’t know how to care about family. This body never had one.

  Officially an orphan, no living retives. Two friends, judging by the photos in the archives. But not a single call. Not a single message. No attempt to reach out in all these months.

  I don’t know what that means.

  Were we never close? Were we, but they’ve vanished? Was I supposed to do something first?

  I kept forgetting that the vast majority of humanity didn’t have an interface. Back on Earth, they still used portable gadgets to communicate.

  Mendoza said she had access to the logs of information Soro had been browsing, but even she hadn’t managed to connect the dots.

  I get it, she was younger than Novak, looked like a teenager even, but she was already 196. That’s two or three, maybe even four full human lifetimes. A good chance she no longer had any close family left, unless one of them became a cultivator. So her perspective on things was closer to mine than Soro’s.

  Strangely enough, it was the demons who were first to notice the unusual activity and figure out what was going on. They might not think like ordinary people, but apparently they understood us better than we did!

  Two suicides meant the demons had realised where their weak spot was and repced the ones drawing attention to it. It was a time-limited opportunity, and we completely missed it.

  On that point, I couldn’t agree with her.

  We got a prisoner and information about the wormholes. I don’t know what game is being pyed behind the scenes, but better to know than to stumble around in the dark.

  Mendoza didn’t appreciate my input. I’m not great at reading people, but it felt like, to her, losing a student outweighed all the gains. When you’re 196 and pnning to live at least that much again, letting people into your life probably comes with the hope they’ll stay in it for a good while.

  Unless, of course, you’re a maniputive, selfish bastard who only cares about their own benefit.

  I gnced at the wall where, on the day of Soro’s death, there had been a dent and chipped pster.

  Mendoza wasn’t one of them.

  Still, banking on centuries ahead when life on Earth could be over in forty years…

  Mendoza, Novak, and even me, we’d all have to bury friends, if we survived the invasion at all.

  I hadn’t had déjà vu in a long time, but this hit me hard. It hit so suddenly I couldn’t breathe. My eyes welled with tears.

  A low, cloudy sky. A cold drizzle. A muddy road in the suburbs. Flowers scattered across the road, and on both sides, ordinary people knelt on one knee, paying final respects to someone being driven away in an old minivan with a crimson cross on the rear window.

  “Are you alright?” Mendoza asked.

  “I’m fine. Don’t mind me,” I said. “What’s the point of all this, anyway? Does this conversation carry some hidden meaning?” I asked.

  Mendoza clearly picked up on the fact I was changing the subject, but didn’t press.

  "Your master wanted me to bring you up to speed," she said.

  "And you don’t have any... special instructions?"

  "Don’t put yourself in unnecessary danger, keep your ear to the ground, and signal me if anything, anything at all, seems out of pce."

  That officially brought our little tea session to an end, just as my tea had finally cooled enough for me to drink it. Since the brew was fairly valuable, Mendoza let me finish it before leaving.

  Remembering that she was, officially, a master diplomat, Mendoza diplomatically smoothed over the silence with empty talk. She spoke of wormholes, of grand matters and high stakes. Lofty words against the backdrop of an increasingly full bdder.

  That was the paradox. I felt far more grounded.

  The war waged by masters, politicians, and strategists had little in common with the muddy trenches where a drone buzzed in the branches above. Two different worlds.

  Cultivation, of course, changed the rules — status came with firepower. But in both worlds, the moment you lost focus, the moment you stopped understanding what was going on, you became a resource. A piece on someone else’s board.

  And let’s be honest, right now, I am Novak’s piece.

  He’s a decent pyer and hasn’t shown any tendency toward reckless trades, but I had no doubt that, if needed, he’d sacrifice me.

  He struck me as someone who never experienced that kind of groundedness. The simple discomfort of a full bdder, for example. He seemed like he’d always been above the grey masses.

  I needed to climb, too. I didn’t think I’d become a pyer before the invasion came, but I hoped I’d become a piece valuable enough not to be tossed aside.

  With those lowly thoughts in mind, I stood, said my goodbyes, and didn’t ask to use the toilet again, didn’t want to drag my authority down any further.

  On the way back to the dorms, my mind kept spinning on its own.

  Just a minute ago, I’d been thinking about the demon who had discarded his body’s parents. His cold, utilitarian logic: if they were of no use, they weren’t needed. And yet, humanity had evolved and survived precisely because of kindness and cooperation.

  At least, that’s how it seems to me.

  I think Novak would’ve liked that theory.

  That evening, I didn’t train. After the medbay, it seemed unwise to push myself. So I spent another session clicking through the channels on my window. Wild nature scenes and city streets repced the usual shows.

  I didn’t want to dive into that swamp. I was afraid it would pull me under.

  Given my amnesia, it might’ve given me a false impression of Earth.

  After my hundredth trip to the toilet, sleep still wouldn’t come. Thoughts buzzed through my head, restless and swarming, so persistently that I began to suspect I was unintentionally performing Thousand Sparks or engaging in Mind Parallelisation.

  But a conscious check confirmed it wasn’t any technique at work.

  I only fell asleep at dawn, and woke up with a jolt, as if someone had thrown a bucket of cold water on me. It felt like I’d overslept, missed everything, though the interface told me I’d woken up two minutes before the arm.

  I rubbed my face and noticed my hands.

  They didn’t hurt, but they were stiff, as if some invisible gloves were restricting my movements. My bdder was full again, and my throat was dry, like I hadn’t drunk water in a month.

  A gss of water before breakfast, a gss of juice after, and constant finger stretches during the walk to the Armour Hall and after it.

  I only hoped I wouldn’t need the toilet mid-session, because this armour didn’t come with a waste extractor.

  Bloody hell, I’m already at the Second Stage. Time to start thinking like it.

  The training hall was half-empty. Most were heading in; no one seemed in a hurry to leave. Eriksson was chatting with a girl by the front desk, but the moment I appeared, he locked eyes with me — either he’d been waiting for that exact moment, or there was some kind of alert system in pce.

  There was a basket on the floor beside him. He picked it up immediately, said goodbye to the girl, and motioned for me to head to the part of the hall we’d used before. He walked ahead and took his spot.

  The mannequin wasn’t the same one as st time, but it was identical in design. Eriksen pulled ropes from the basket and secured them in the maniputors while I approached.

  There were more ropes in the basket, oddly optimistic of him, and the rest of the load consisted of grey paper knives. Dozens of them.

  "Considering yesterday’s injuries, even if you perform better today, there’s more than enough here."

  I nodded and picked up the first knife.

  "No demonstration required?" he asked. "As a reminder?"

  Wordlessly, I handed the knife to him.

  "Focus," he told me. "Ready?"

  I opened all my senses and nodded again.

  Eriksen slowly brought the knife to the rope. Today he was using a different technique, or rather, no technique at all, just a movement.

  I felt the Bde. I felt the sharpness, the intent to cut, the will to move, but the physical motion was clumsy, like something a schoolboy might attempt. Instead of slicing through the rope in one clean ssh, he sawed at it, cutting deeper into the blue pstic fibres with each pass until, eventually, the rope split in two.

  "I thought it might give you more sensation," he said, holding up the completely intact knife. "But you’d best do it like st time. Stance," he began narrating his own actions, "swing, ssh."

  That rope split instantly. It was only the second one, and yet his paper knife remained whole.

  Now for the easy part: just repeat it.

  Eriksen repced the cut ropes with the spares from the basket.

  Seemed I’d misunderstood him. He hadn’t been optimistic. He’d just pnned a demonstration. Apart from the knives, nothing else remained in the basket.

  MaksymPachesiuk