As soon as the starting klaxon sounded, things went sideways. Korakis immediately freaked out as the simulation area sprung to life with multiple quintessence holograms. He immediately pecked Thorn down behind the first piece of cover.
What happened next was unexpected, but in hindsight, should have been obvious to Thorn. Korakis sent him a picture.
All of the Systems that Thorn knew of had a robust comms package that included visual and audio feeds. When Thorn had created a custom agent mimicking the basic functionalities of his System and implanted it in the command module inside the remains of Korakis’s beast core, he had hoped it would regulate the bound quintessence in the raven’s body. And it had. But it also interfaced with the bird’s brain, opening up simple comms between the two… and now this.
The image in his head was strange. He couldn’t tell if it was flat, or three-dimensional, or warped somehow, but it was recognizable. It reminded him of what he sensed when he entered Meditation.
There was a background flow of threads and fabrics, and bright, condensed spots within that fabric. The level of detail was far greater than when he used Meditate.
“Crrkkk! Tok, tok!”
The images from Korakis showed the faint outlines of bodies created out of the simulation’s quintessence. Thorn sent him a comm back.
Korakis did not relax, which made it more difficult to concentrate on the task at hand.
The first room that Thorn cleared still went okay. He utilized the techniques and drills that Gammon had been running him through to clear doors and rooms, and found that his superior reflexes from enhancements to his body let him pick off the enemies easily.
The second set of rooms was far more difficult, and Thorn was reminded of the first time he’d used Assess, shooting stone-tunneling snakes leaping out of walls at him and willing his body to keep up with the information that Assess was feeding it. The enemies were definitely faster and smarter.
Before he even stepped into the third and final section of hallways, Korakis jumped off his shoulder and flew to the ground a split second before a hail of simulated bullets swept through the door and stung his chest. He’d been taken out, and the simulation powered down.
Thankfully Korakis also stopped freaking out, and hopped back on Thorn’s shoulder as he trudged back to the observation platform in defeat.
“Huh,” Gammon said when Thorn rejoined them on the platform. There was an awkward silence.
“Anyways, it was your first time,” Gammon finally said and pointed at Kels. “Show him how it’s done, Private.”
“Yes, Chief.”
Kels destroyed the simulation. She moved through the space with grace and precision, each snap of her rifle a headshot, and the under-barrel grenade launcher even seeing action, not once, but twice as she bounced grenades around corners to take out enemies before they could even see her. Not one of the hostages even had so much as a hair out of place.
“Three minutes, twenty seconds,” Gammon said. “Not bad. Thorn, you’re up next.”
Thorn’s steps walking down the stairs were much slower and less confident than the first time.
“Hrzrk, grkk. Crrrkkk.”
As soon as the simulation began, Korakis had the exact same reaction as before. Thorn gritted his teeth and bore it.
This time he succeeded in completing the simulation, despite the fact that he and Korakis were clearly not on the same page.
“Seven minutes and I don’t remember how many seconds.” Gammon sighed. “Private.”
Kels took off at a trot, a smug look of superiority on her face.
“How did you survive down in that dead zone like this?” Gammon asked when they were alone.
“It was different,” he replied defensively.
“Obviously! If it hadn’t been different, you’d be dead. Whatever it was that let you survive, pull that out and let me see it.”
Thorn didn’t have much time to think. Kels was back with a disgusting time of just under three minutes. He wasn’t even sure he could run the full length of the course at that speed.
Thorn walked down the stairs a third time. His thoughts were starting to spiral, so he put a firm grip on his frustration. Competition? Motivation? He wasn’t interested in any of that.
“CRWWWWK.” Korakis’s screech echoed off the walls.
Thorn unslung his rifle, tightened the strap and held it tight against his shoulder. So far, he’d only been using his sidearm. That was a mistake; he was going to use all the weapons at his disposal.
The klaxon sounded, and Thorn quickly knelt on the ground before the start line and pulled out five flechettes from his tactical vest, pushing them into the ground in front of him in a line. He Concentrated thick threads of quintessence onto each of the flechettes, connecting them all in a ticking time-bomb of explosive potential.
Thorn felt the curious eyes of Gammon and Kels on him as sweat ran down his temples. He couldn’t use his custom Agent Boom, the one he had developed to assist him in using Concentrate to make explosions, because it was still archived. He went by feel, layering on the quintessence to a thickness that he judged appropriate.
The feed from Korakis hit Thorn’s head like a sledgehammer. It was too much information, even for Assess. He needed to limit the amount of information his brain was trying to process, and so he closed his eyes and trusted in Korakis’s.
Without looking he smoothly pulled the first flechette out of the ground, chambered and fired it into the wall of the first room. The second, third and fourth were pulled out of the ground and fired before the first flechette’s bundle of quintessence, cut off from its supply when Thorn had fired it, finally unraveled and exploded in a shower of blue sparks.
Korakis pecked him on the neck, and he dodged an incoming sniper shot from one of the enemies. Concentrate was broken, and he realized the fifth flechette was about to explode. He raced forward, keeping low, trying to dodge both the flechette going off behind him as well as the sniper still taking pot shots in their direction. He drew his sidearm and began firing. The sniper fell down behind cover. The flechettes he’d fired began to explode, the quintessence packed onto the bullets releasing in a shower of blue sparks. Each explosion opened a hole in the walls that provided him a direct line of fire to every single one of the enemies in the simulation. He poured fire into each new hole in turn, obliterating the enemy holographs within seconds.
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“Crwk. CRKK.” Korakis’s victory cry mocked the silence covering the simulation area. “Crwwk.”
Korakis squawked indignantly. “Crrkk, crrkk, crrkk!”
Thorn closed the feed from Korakis and opened his eyes. His head was splitting, but he massaged his temples and decided he wasn’t going to vomit. He wobbled to his feet and climbed back up the stairs to Gammon and Kels, the taste of failure bitter in his mouth.
That would have been a lot easier if he’d been able to use a custom agent, either to process the feed coming in from Korakis, or to automate his use of Concentrate on the ammunition. Given how he was feeling, there was no way he was in a condition to run the simulation again, either.
Gammon looked pensive and thoughtful, possibly a little annoyed, but Kels had an entirely different reaction.
“Hell yeah, brother! You almost had that! That was awesome,” She clapped him on the shoulder, almost knocking him to the floor. Just what were her bodily attributes at? His weren’t low, and she was knocking him around like a leaf in a thunderstorm.
“Thanks,” Thorn said, smiling weakly. “It was close.”
“Thirty-seven seconds, if you’d hit that last sniper!” Kels said enthusiastically. “That would have been some kind of record!”
“I believe you are supposed to clear the rooms, not make yourself new windows,” Gammon said.
Thorn shrugged, and felt very tired. “You said you wanted to see how I’d survived. And I didn’t survive by playing by the rules.”
Kels looked between him and Gammon with growing fascination.
“Yes, I did,” Gammon said. Her pensive look turned sardonic. “That was actually a good trick with the explosive rounds. If you want to continue down that path, then I would suggest you get qualified on more traditional means of explosive ordinance, after your current mission, of course. It will help round out the downsides of the Skill you’re using.”
Not much seemed to escape Gammon’s eye, if she could see the downsides of using Concentrate to form explosions from just that quick demonstration.
“That’s a great idea.” Thorn nodded.
“And if Korakis is going to be an integral part of your combat capabilities, you need to practice your teamwork. Whatever Skills you used together, it didn’t mesh perfectly, and clearly took a big toll on you.”
“That’s fair,” Thorn replied. Korakis’s feed was just too much for him at the moment, and he didn’t know how to tone it down. Plus he screwed up Concentrate, then let his guard down at the last moment. Ugh.
“I assume you're done here?” Gammon asked.
“Yeah, I can’t do that again for a while,” Thorn said. “What’s next?”
Gammon shook her head and sighed. “Moving on then. Let’s grab lunch. Leave your weapons here at the armory, unless you’re going out on a mission.”
Thorn’s stomach rumbled as he realized how hungry he was. He’d worked up a sweat and an appetite. They said their goodbyes to Kels, who was pumped up to continue practicing her skills on the simulation, and rode the elevator back up. The mess hall was on the other side of the courtyard, next to the warehouse.
They charged into the mess hall and grabbed a few trays. Thorn had to show his badge on entry, and learned that yes, he was indeed charged for the meals he ate, and that yes, Korakis cost extra as well.
Seeing as he was paying for the bird too, he made sure to grab an extra plate of the protein on offer for the day: beef. He wondered when the last time he’d had beef was, and realized it might have been before he’d left the Agrarian Guild.
Korakis pecked at his plate and Thorn kept his head down and continuously shoveled food into his mouth. He didn’t notice another woman walk up to their table until she sat down next to him, across from Gammon.
“This him?” the woman asked Gammon. She was short and deeply tanned. Black hair, black eyes, and a hard clench to her jaw. She cut off a precise piece of her eggplant dish and started chewing.
“Yup.”
“I’m Sergeant Meridian Lee,” Meridian said between bites.
Thorn almost choked as he swallowed what was in his mouth. “Thorn Farmer,” he managed.
“Nice to meet you.”
“Great to meet you too,” Thorn replied, nervous all of a sudden. He pointed at the raven currently choking down a piece of steak almost as large as he was. “This is Korakis.”
Sergeant Lee glanced at the bird and nodded in greeting. “Your file’s mighty thin, and no offense, but you’re even younger looking in person,” she said drily. “It doesn’t say anything about your pet raven, either. What can you tell me about yourself?”
She said “raven,” not “crow.” Ravens weren’t native to Agrotis, but she could tell. Thorn wasn’t sure what to make of that information, so he filed it away for later.
“Raised in the AG, got kicked out at eighteen,” Thorn said. “Been hustling since then, and recently—” he paused and looked at Gammon, trying to decide what exactly he could say, “—had some fortuitous circumstances, and I was finally able to join the Guild.”
“So it’s been a dream or goal to join the Crows since you were younger?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Thorn said.
“I prefer ‘Sergeant’ or ‘Sergeant Lee’,” Meridian said.
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“You should have seen him the first time he showed up outside my gate,” Gammon said, a nostalgic look on her face. “To be young and naive again.”
Thorn winced at the memory; it hadn’t been his best moment. He’d been desperate, and thinking back on it was embarrassing.
“I’ve been keeping an eye on him the past few years, so I can vouch for his character before his… recent fortuitous circumstances.”
“Not gonna lie,” Meridian said, slowly chewing. “But what the two of you are saying sounds suspicious as hell. Not even close to standard regs. What more can you tell me? I don’t need to know your life history, but I need a bit more than that.”
“He’s under orders not to divulge any details about his System,” Gammon said.
“Even to me?”
“It’s above your pay grade.”
Meridian sucked on her teeth. “How far above?”
Gammon didn’t say anything, and instead raised her hand as far above her own head as she could.
Meridian methodically worked her way through the rest of the vegetables on her plate. Thorn took the break in the conversation to swallow a few more bites of his own.
“It’s a good thing for you that I can’t afford to be picky. How much do you know about the Agrarian Guild? And what are your feelings towards them?” Meridian asked. “Apologies, that’s two questions.”
Thorn didn’t need to think about his answer. “My parents were a Farmer and Gardener, high-ranking members on a frontier settlement. I knew the elders and the local Patrician well; I knew everyone in the village well. I spent a lot of my childhood stealing farm tech for joy rides, wandering the local forest for game, or pestering the villagers about their jobs while I was skipping school. So while I don’t know a lot about the inner workings of the Agrarian Guild itself, I would say I know a lot of the day-to-day.
“If you want to know more about the AG’s internal politics, you should talk to my friend Lief.”
“I already have,” Meridian said. “He has an extremely high opinion of you.”
Thorn wasn’t sure how to respond to that comment, so he didn’t. Instead, he answered Meridian’s second question.
“You also asked how I felt about the AG.” Thorn paused. How did he feel? He’d grown up inside of it, but had never truly been a part of it. He certainly hated the elders who’d effectively sold him out, and despised his parents for not standing up for him when he’d needed them, but did that extend to the whole Agrarian Guild?
“If the head of my former village showed up in front of me, I’d knock him to the ground,” Thorn said. “Then pick him up and do it again. But as far as the broader guild goes? They screwed over my friend too, but beyond that, I don’t know enough to comment, really. I’m sure there’s good people there as well as bad.”
“If you had a client that was, for lack of a better word, an asshole, or you disagreed with their politics, what would you do?”
Thorn knew the answer to this question. He didn’t even have to think about it.
“I have no politics. They pay, we play,” he replied. “I won’t listen to the client if they want me to disobey orders from the Guild though, and if the mission is murdering kids or something evil like that, I’m not ashamed to say that you’ll see me running the other way.”
Meridian nodded along, scraping the last bits of sauce up off her plate.
“Thanks, that’ll do,” she said. “That’ll do just fine. I need to run, but let’s chat more tonight. Say around 19:00?”
“Sure thing. Thanks!”
Meridian stood up and walked off.
Thorn belatedly realized that he had just had a job interview. This whole morning had been one test after another.
“Did I pass?” Thorn asked Gammon.
“You did okay,” she said. “A little rough around the edges. Probably too informal. Also, you could have left out the part about punching the village elder. Threatening violence on the elderly, no matter how well deserved, doesn’t make you look good.”
Thorn shrugged. He could have said a lot worse as well, and meant it.
He focused on finishing his meal, and after they were both done, they bussed their trays and walked out of the mess hall.
“Next up is the Quartermaster. Let’s get you some gear!”
Thorn winced when she said “Quartermaster.” He knew the angry man; they had a bit of unfortunate history.
The Quartermaster’s office wasn’t far; it was in the back of the warehouse. It was cramped and smelled of old socks.
“New recruit?” The Quartermaster barely looked up at Gammon’s nod and motioned deeper into the warehouse. “I don’t have time for someone off-cycle. Get Jemison to help you out.”
Gammon wandered in the direction the Quartermaster had motioned, Thorn sticking close behind her, trying hard not to be noticed.
“Wait up,” the Quartermaster suddenly called out. He’d looked up and recognized Thorn. “What is that little System-glitch doing in my warehouse?”