At oh-six-hundred you find yourself sweating, splayed, on the floor of the exercise room that serves as an atrium to the sim wing. It’s a gray little box that smells like paint and body odor, and you find yourself staring hard at the rubbery ground in order to distract yourself from the anguish of holding this pose so long.

  (Your body remembers this shape, knee by your chest, hands behind your back, quivering on one leg, the other straight out behind you: from eleven years ago at Alcatraz, a snot-nosed twelve-year-old not yet big enough for dry or wet sims, let alone for training dives. Though it has been six long years since you last did them, the muscles of your inner thighs and hamstrings and ankles and glutes find the ways, settle into the forms; the pain is familiar, though that makes it no less bearable. You should have practiced more.)

  Enika, behind you, says in your ear, “Relax. Pull up.”

  You do your best to pull up. That strains the long stretch of muscle along the inside of your leg—your tensed abdomen struggles to make up the difference. And Enika’s got a pretty wicked manicure; you are reminded of this by the way her nails prickle the skin of your ribcage, right under the thin fabric of your shirt. It makes your skin crawl. Feels like you might split open if you breathe out.

  “Tighter,” Enika commands, “your upper form’s sloppy,” and you grit your teeth and force yourself to adjust, despite the pain.

  The others—Lau and Gutierrez—are constellated around the edges of the room, performing their own stretches; Carol’s lurking in the corner. In glimpses you have seen this. But look too long and Enika grabs your chin and forces it back toward the front of the room (“Focus—don’t lose form”). So you don’t know if they’re watching you, or smiling about it, or mocking you for how out of practice you clearly are. Does it matter? It’s humiliating either way. Barefoot, in only your crew neck and cargos, you feel like an animal in a zoo.

  Behind you the door bursts open. It takes every fiber of your will not to look. “Venkatesh—” That’s Tagouri, out of breath by the sounds of it. “Need you for a moment.”

  Enika lets you go and the pressure vanishes. “Yes sir,” she says, no longer Enika but Venkatesh, the pilot, soldier of a hundred flags. “Meng said—?”

  “Yes,” says Tagouri, clipped, and, “Let’s step outside.”

  “Chang,” says Venkatesh, “take over, please. Walk her through the usual. Thanks.”

  You command yourself to hold still and keep your pose and not to look—but it’s hard when in a moment Carol is crouching right next to you in the same place Venkatesh had moments before, and then her hand is on your ribcage instead, and you can’t help but gasp.

  “Easy,” she says.

  You struggle to relax. But Carol says, “Breathe out. Nobody’s watching,” and you do relax then, because even though you’re six years out of practice it’s a reminder that at the end of the day it’s training, for all of you. You’re all just here to get shit done. And nobody is looking, honestly, except for Carol. It’s not much, but it’s something.

  Her hand disappears. You can breathe again. Your leg’s starting to quiver. Good thing you can’t see how stupid you look.

  Carol straightens. “Try Heron,” she says, “form four, straight.”

  Oh good, another balancing act. This was one of your most hated poses—knee crooked by the ribs, arms behind the head; your instructors liked to pick at the flatness of the hips, the straightness of the spine. Why do they always make you do these horrible stretches anyway? So that you maintain freedom of movement in the cradle, sure—so that nothing holds you back but the umbilical cord of your helmet—so that you experience the full range of your body and therefore of your weapon, so that your endurance, your potential in battle, becomes nigh limitless, between that monkey brain of yours and your puny little meat-sack—whatever, fuck that, you hate it and think it’s absurd and pointless. (So do I.) Nevertheless, it comes effortlessly to you: What’s the phrase? Like riding a bike.

  Carol touches the small of your back, nudges your spine. You startle, but don’t fall.

  “Good,” she says. “Keep that tension when you’re in the harness.”

  Good? Good? Oh, but praise is a weakness of yours, isn’t it? Oh yes, I see it now in the way your heart rate leaps—the remembrance of this same feeling at the academy—you fucking teacher’s pet. Keep yourself together, you wretched puddle.

  “Elbows should be lower,” says Carol, and that brings you back to reality: good. You’re going to need that clarity. (I pattern it, the shape of your synapses here, and save it to my own databanks for later.)

  “Are we running sim wet or dry?” you say.

  Carol shrugs. “Whatever Venkatesh decides,” she says. “Sycamore, anytime you’re ready.”

  So you move on to the forms of the Sycamore: more balancing, more burning. You grit your teeth and clench your jaw and let Carol move around you, near wordless, and when she moves your arm or wrist or foot or chin you let her, and do your best to keep breathing. (You’re glad, at least, that she’s not a talker. There’s nothing you really want to talk to her about, anyway, except what you can’t ask her here, in front of all the rest of your sister’s fellow pilots.)

  After an eternity she says, “Alright,” and you come down from the form of Clouds Over West Lake or whatever the fuck the nerds at Shanghai came up with when they invented this shit, and the relief is so immense you nearly stumble from it. Your whole body feels like jelly, and you haven’t even stepped into the harness yet.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  “Haven’t run her through dynamics,” says Lau, who watches, crane-like, arms folded.

  “Oh, you’ll want to run her through those.” That’s Gutierrez—red-faced, upside down—from the floor. “Looked like a drunk on Skid Row when I was out there with her by Ma Wan, Carol—you don’t know the half of it.”

  Carol nods slowly, like she’s thinking about it. “Good point,” she says. “You were taught standard, right? Give me Ten Hands.” (Fuck! Thanks for nothing, Gutierrez.)

  Ten Hands is what they teach first-years on Alcatraz, fresh crops of eleven-year-olds with zero muscle or brains to pilot with: a basic dodge-parry-dodge form, unarmed—melee movement designed for an opponent with a size difference. Fundamentals. You can manage, can’t you? You settle into the opening stance, knees apart, and know instantly that something is wrong. Is it your hands? You’ve got them close to your face, where your cockpit would be in your proper body. That can’t be a mistake, surely.

  “Left foot back,” says Carol.

  Ah. Right. Your face heats. You’ve always had trouble remembering which foot goes forward for the way you face. They don’t make these stances for lefties like you. (Would’ve been easier if she’d asked you this six years ago.)

  “Good.” Behind Carol, Lau looks like she knows that’s a lie, but doesn’t say it. “Go ahead.”

  So you do—but it’s slow and you’re unsure of the steps: left here, right there—left or right, hand high or low? It would be easier in saltwater, without the confines of gravity and the ground under your feet. You close your eyes and sketch out a Meg in front of you:

  Hulking, mean, with a cluster of crablike legs and the chambered shell of a nautilus the size of the 49ers’ stadium. A cluster of tympanums at the heart of his mantle makes out the sound of your wake in the water. He strikes, and—

  You shift your weight forth onto your right foot. This is the first step; the second is to ride your momentum around, let it carry you into a kick with your left, knee up, turn into your right. (In the water, no ground to get in your way and shave energy from this move.) With your right arm you block. The force of that drives him back—

  “Slower,” says Carol. “Steady.”

  Right, because as a Titan you’re a hundred times bigger; you move with intention, not the twitchy speed human-you has now.

  Lau sighs. “Let me take her.”

  “No,” says Carol evenly, “let’s take it easy. Kanagawa—from the top.”

  Spring forward, kick, turn, kick, block; dip, sidestep, spring forward again, all over from the top. The more Lau scowls, the hotter you fume. It’s hard to keep steady and slow at the same time—here you have weight, and it is a struggle not to let it bear you down, doubly so under Carol’s laser gaze.

  “Slower,” Carol says again. Then, “Too far. Keep it in.” (“Last time was better”—fuck you too, Lau.) Forward, side, back, kick, lunge, block—“Don’t sweat the details, focus on your rhythm”—step, step, step, a slow waltz that leaves your calves aching and frustrates you the more you’re corrected.

  On Alcatraz, six years ago, you’d done this plenty—but it has been six years, and you are taller now, and slower, and you have forgotten the muscle memory. So, sure, it’s like riding a bike, except the bike has changed shape and doubled in height, and this time if you fall off you fall twice as far, and all your sister’s teammates will be laughing at you.

  It enrages you, actually. You never were a good sport about making a fool of yourself. Even at the academy your instructors had often had to discipline you when you’d lunged one too many times at your partner after a humiliating grab or leg sweep or stagger. Had you always been this way, before your sister had left? Surely not; a poor temperament is one of the worst qualities to find in a pilot, especially a shield like Tokyo Calling. At least you’d gotten it under control in time for your finals. Too bad you still couldn’t manage to pass.

  “Stop,” says Carol.

  You do. She steps in, puts her hands on your shoulders, causes you to miss a breath.

  “Relax for a moment,” she says. “This isn’t just about your steps. It’s body and mind. Breathe. Your head—” she points at her temple, then yours—“needs to be steady first.”

  Wow. For Carol that’s practically a whole speech, isn’t it? Lucky you.

  “Got it?”

  “Yeah,” you say. Breathe in, breathe out—reach steady state. “I can give that a try.”

  “Let me do it,” says Lau.

  “Yeah,” says Carol, “why not. Can you duo her, actually?”

  “Sure.” Lau settles into the starting stance opposite you and it’s beautiful: she’s a perfect balance of loose and firm, knees bent, feet planted, a little arched, a nod to the way she’ll move when she’s enveloped in water and her attitude thrusters will give her momentum instead of the ground itself. Over her you picture the nautilus chamber, the myriad legs.

  Carol says, “Go,” and you begin:

  Left foot forward and up and around; right leg up and out; right hand up. Lau mirrors you—but it is not in parts when she does it, not a foot and then a hand; it is all one long endless form, and when she matches your lunge you understand. Both of you are measuring it out in your head, you know this, timing yourselves to the precise limit speed of a Titan, just enough to prevent input lag when the actuators of your hundred-foot limbs hit the rails—but her work is better: not because it is faster, but because it is more certain, more efficient. And when you stumble she takes advantage: steps into the space your mistake has made, taps your neck, which is a death blow to the support structure of your cockpit if you do not get your shield up in time. Her eyes meet yours and you can’t look away. You think: It’s over so fast.

  “Okay,” says Carol. Lau steps back and drops her arm. “Yeah. Keep practicing that, please, both of you.”

  “Why not you?” says Lau peevishly.

  “Because Enika left me in charge,” says Carol, “so I say so. From the top. Kanagawa—remember what I told you.”

  She steps back, looks expectantly at Lau, who scowls harder and takes up the ready stance again.

  In your head you remember Carol saying, Don’t sweat the details, and you take a deep, deep breath.

  Easier said than done. Lau looks pissed; you’re six years out of shape; sweat seems to turn the air half to saltwater as it is, and you can’t remember which way your hand needs to turn when you fail to block for the tenth time. And you are, indeed, a poor sport. You're positively bridling at the embarrassment of it all; it is in the tautness of your body, the heat in your chest and face. And unhappiness makes you sloppy.

  But hey! It could be worse. Could be Venkatesh instead of Carol, and there’s no way she’d let you get away missing half your steps, of this you’re sure. Thank God for the little things—am I right?