"This is the main node," Patel expined, turning a sphere over in his hands. "A local system with no external connections. Fully autonomous protective AI."

  I looked into the case.

  The sphere was the central object, but not the only one. There were plenty of other components inside.

  I picked up something that looked like a bck candle.

  "What's this?"

  "A temperature sensor," Patel replied.

  "And how does it work?"

  "It reads the temperature of objects," Patel said, frowning.

  "Independently? Separate from the main node?" I crified.

  "Ah, I see," he smiled. "I meant that the system has no external network connections, so it’s secure against hacking. As for the sensors, they operate automatically in a request-response mode from the central unit. They don’t have standalone connections either. Communication is maintained via ser link, and the sensors are duplicated. Each sensor transmits only a specific type of data — sensory input, nothing else. That also makes hacking impossible."

  "Anything made by humans can be hacked by humans," I said, shaking my head.

  "This is the best we’ve got," Patel shrugged. "The AI recognises your movements, biorhythms, responses, even the tone of your voice. Anything that doesn't match gets fgged and transmitted. And that doesn’t count as a connection, the signal is strictly one-way.

  "If the system detects an anomaly, say, an unauthorised entry attempt, poisoning, or even the intrusion of a foreign signal, it activates its defences. Passive or active. Passive means an alert. Active means an electric shock or paralytic gas. The choice is yours."

  Patel pulled a small box from the case and opened it. Inside were standard ampoules.

  "An antidote, in case you go with the gas."

  He retrieved another box containing a bracelet in a rather familiar configuration.

  "I’ve already got one of these," I said, rolling up my sleeve. "Can I use it?"

  "Up to you. Everything’s configured here," he touched the ring at the base of a tripod, and a local interface appeared in the air. "This system lives on its own. Even if the whole school is compromised, you’ll still be protected here. It can’t be hacked or shut down remotely. Unless it’s physically destroyed, but in that case, it’ll have time to respond."

  "And if I want to shut it down myself?"

  Patel frowned.

  "Why?"

  "There may be reasons..."

  "It can't be turned off. But it does have an intimacy mode. In that mode, the data is stored locally and not transmitted. However, the beacon’s data will still be sent."

  "Understood."

  The device's tripod turned out to be fairly tall. When extended, it raised the central node above my waist. Patel pced it in the most vacant corner of the room, offering a direct line of sight to the door. Still, there were no true blind spots in the system. Numerous sensors and ser-link mirrors were scattered and arranged throughout the room. Even if I stood in front of the central node's camera and blocked the guest from view, the AI would still see them through the sensors and mirrors.

  Moreover, the AI didn’t bind to the user via interface, it scanned them. During that scan, I felt Finger Qi, so it wasn’t purely technological. It was a blend of technology and formations.

  Of course, I didn’t believe the system was fwless, but it did look reliable. Getting around it would take considerable effort.

  Let’s just say we had a short talk with my new protector and I slept soundly, not worrying I’d be slit open in my sleep.

  Morning came to me twice. First, in the middle of the night, when the false window lit up with artificial sunlight and I woke from the bright light. I checked the time and disabled the window.

  The second time, I woke to the alert, made breakfast, and headed off to collect my armour. Then, once geared up, I made my way to the Fire Garden.

  This was the second and final garden of Yellow Pine that y under the open sky. It was also the furthest garden from the main compound, situated on the far side of the mountain, accessed via a tunnel.

  The garden resembled a volcanic crater, except I’d never heard of a crater forming on a mountain slope. I suspected this garden, like the others, was artificial. Still, there had to be something about this location that made it uniquely suited for fire, or else there’d have been no point in building it so far from everything.

  I had no idea what that something was. I saw nothing particurly special. Just scorched earth and ash, burned and ground so fine you wouldn’t even notice it, if not for how it settled onto the armour. There wasn’t even any vegetation. The ground was utterly dead.

  A gss dome hung above the crater. Not a solid one, of course, it was mostly celling made of countless transparent panels joined by reinforced segments and supported by struts.

  At the centre of the dome was a giant extractor, pulling up the ash that rose with the hot air.

  Ash — that was the main product of this garden. Like dust in the Air Garden.

  But the Air Garden had bushes and strange, twisted trees. The Fire Garden had nothing alive in it except the cultivators themselves.

  The cultivators worked over cone-shaped pits, with ash also collecting at the bottom. I saw several spider-like drones slowly scooping ash into baskets. Their movements were far too slow and careful. Much slower than the drones from the Fist Garden. The ash probably carried a more concentrated qi and was thus less stable.

  I watched the drones for a few minutes, but didn’t witness any qi detonation. I could have waited forever to confirm my theory, so I turned my attention to observing the cultivators.

  It was good to be a second-period! No one bothered you with questions about what you were doing or why you were wandering around aimlessly.

  I watched as some unleashed fire in the form of broad torches, while others struck with short, compressed bursts. One cadet was even hovering over the edge of a pit, held aloft by the reactive thrusts from his armour, maintaining a sphere of fme between his hands.

  It was an odd kind of training, though I’d seen stranger.

  Each person’s fire looked different. Some produced nearly white fmes, compressed into pinpoints. Others had blue jets, and a few wielded broad tongues of red-and-yellow fme, though those were rarer. Most seemed to focus on compressing and concentrating the fire.

  The range of most techniques hovered around fifteen to twenty metres. Roughly the same as Fist techniques, maybe a bit more. Of my own techniques, only upgraded Chain Punch could surpass them in distance, but that was only due to the air component. Ultimates didn’t count, they followed different rules altogether.

  It was time to move from simple observation to sensitivity.

  I already knew the taste of fire, it was unrelenting rage. Rage that recognised no limits or borders.

  Fire didn’t go around obstacles or assess them like the Finger. It tore straight through, burning and overwhelming them. It didn’t search for a weak point, it created one. Breaking through, gnawing through shields, formations, and armour alike.

  With its straightforward brutality, fire struck me as the perfect complement to the Fist.

  Fist — strength, determination, hardness.

  Fire — rage, drive, and exhaustion.

  Bringing them together, combining form and essence, I saw real potential in that.

  A fist projection that didn’t just explode, but seared through, weakening the enemy’s formation...

  My hands literally itched. I’ll take two, thanks!

  No, wait. That wasn’t my emotion. That wasn’t my thirst for action. I had to rein myself in.

  The idea of a Fire-Fist technique was an old fantasy of mine. And honestly, the Fire Garden hadn’t given me anything truly new.

  Hmm… That’s a lie. That craving for action... the itching in my fists, that was the Fire, and it was affecting me!

  No other qi had ever influenced me like that!

  What was this? Affinity or vulnerability?

  I didn’t have time to work it out.

  Heat licked across my back with the warning sting of danger, and I reacted the same way I had in the Lightning Garden — I leapt back, using Mad Monkey of East, turning mid-air to face the threat.

  As expected, the interface fshed a warning about rule viotions. I definitely wasn’t going to be allowed to loiter here again.

  A geyser of fme erupted from the bottom of one of the pits. It was a towering, spiralling column of fire that soared almost to the gss ceiling. A detonation of unstable qi, the very thing I’d wanted to witness at the start of my walk, happened without any warning. The heat bsted across the entire garden, I felt it even through my armour. The air beneath the dome shuddered.

  The drones working inside the pit hadn’t managed to react in time. When the fmes subsided, I looked down, there was no ash left at the bottom, only two glowing metal frames, most of their outer casing burnt away, still smoking with the stench of melted pstic. And a small pool of bck tar. At least, it looked like tar, though perhaps it wasn’t.

  Tar would burn.

  Right after the explosion, a pair of thinhorns appeared at the edge of the pit, wearing protective gear that loosely resembled the suits used in the Air Garden. One of them hooked a line to a drone’s frame and began hauling it up. The other tossed a tether into the pool of molten bck substance.

  No one panicked. This wasn’t the first explosion in this Garden.

  The second thinhorn, evidently, took a sample from the pool while the first finished pulling up the drone remains.

  I stared at what was left of it, thinking how different that bst had been from a Fist Qi detonation. Fist was pure force: simple, direct. Fire had something wilder in it. Something more drawn out, more emotional.

  And I wasn’t sure I was ready for that kind of emotion.

  I thought back to the dent in Mendoza’s wall. At the time, I’d dismissed it as unprofessional. But what if it wasn’t about professionalism?

  The craving for action, the itch in my fists, the restlessness. I was already familiar with all that. I could barely handle my own emotions. I didn’t need them amplified!

  What if Fire didn’t become my tool, what if I became its?

  A heavy thud of metal nded behind me.

  I turned sharply. This time without using any forbidden technique.

  A Garden worker had nded behind me. Thanks to his armour modifications and techniques, he didn’t need a board.

  "I'm waiting for an expnation, cadet!"

  "Familiarising myself with Fire Qi. It’s the first time I’ve experienced its detonation. I sensed danger and reflexively used a dodge technique."

  "I’m not waiving the penalty, you earned it. Fist and Air?" the worker muttered. "Bck Lotus?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Where's your guide?"

  "I'm alone, sir."

  "Alone? Are you a problem cadet?" he asked.

  "No, sir," I replied automatically.

  "Then I don’t want to see you here on your own again. Get yourself a guide. If you want, I can recommend a few cadets."

  "Thank you, sir. I believe I can manage on my own. Finding a guide, I mean. But I’d like to ask a question. May I?"

  "Ask," he said, shrugging his armoured shoulders. Clearly, I’d piqued his interest.

  "Does Fire affect emotions?"

  "We’re taught to recognise that and bring it under control," he nodded.

  "How does Fire manifest without atmosphere?"

  "Pure techniques weaken. But dual-component ones can retain their effectiveness. Especially if they’re martial roots based. Wind-Fire is rubbish. Fist-Fire will work properly."

  "Thank you, sir."

  "Don’t mention it. Now get going, and don’t come back without a responsible Fire cultivator!"

  "Understood, sir."

  Not wanting to provoke him further, I headed straight for the exit.

  So far, I had one plus and one minus. Both unexpected. I hadn’t anticipated the emotional dependency, nor the fact that Fire retained its properties in a vacuum.

  MaksymPachesiuk