“Mr. Donner, describe a situation when you had to explain something complex to someone without a technical background.”

  “My mom used to struggle to use a computer mouse, so I helped her.”

  “I see. How did you go about teaching her?”

  “Well, I gave her detailed step-by-step instructions, followed by a demonstration.”

  “Of how to use a mouse?”

  “No, of how to order a touchscreen.”

  Wally drummed his fingers on the picnic table. It was one of a few, set in a corner of the roof out of the way of the training area, for observation or resting. To me it felt like the best place for the next step of my focus class. Also, I really didn’t feel like talking to many other people at the moment.

  “It just never ends, does it?” Wally asked.

  “Apparently not. Tomorrow I might find out I’m part alien or something at the rate things are escalating.”

  “So, your older brother Hawk was actually your half brother. Your dad was a widower, so your mom was actually his second marriage. And Hawk didn’t know?”

  I shook my head. “Apparently his first wife died when Hawk was still an infant. No one knows much about his real mother or the rest of my dad’s family. All the extended family I knew growing up were on my mom’s side. And that’s still not even counting the weirdest part.”

  Wally smirked. “Yeah, seriously. He married your mom knowing she might give birth to you? That’s just irresponsible.”

  I laughed, long and full. It was exactly what I needed to shake me out of this funk. As far as what really counted I knew nothing. Neither did Marin or anyone else. Speculating on the “breeding experiment” thing would only drive me crazy.

  Once I had caught my breath I said, “So. Rockets.”

  “Right. How does this work again? This is for an aether skill?”

  “Yeah.” I showed Wally a sheet of paper, slightly sheepishly, where I’d roughly sketched the shape of the Torch Thruster construction. I also allowed Habby to prompt me so I could step him through other aspects of how the skill worked.

  “It’s like a programming function,” Wally said thoughtfully.

  “Huh?”

  “You’ve got this aetherframe—that’s what it’s called, right? It’s got all of these conduits and channels. It takes a certain shape, moves the aether in a certain way, and lets that aether manifest in different ways limited by its type. This thing creates a shell of air, pumps even more air into the shell, then superheats it with fire aether so it expands and gets blasted out the back. The pressure release pushes the whole aetherframe in the opposite direction. Crappily. Frankly this is like one of those soda bottle rockets in aether form, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

  “It also accepts parameters. Arguments. The basic ones are the location the torch originates from, the direction it points, and the power it gets fed. It sounds like your lecti has already helped work out some presets for specific applications. He uses very different parameters to create lift in your shoes than he does in Bullet Train’s k-drive chamber. Well, what was formerly its k-drive chamber, since it isn’t using kinetics anymore.

  “But it sounds like there are a lot of others. The size of the construction. The shape, width, and taper of the chamber and nozzle. Also, is that air shell optional? It’s wasted energy if you use it inside an existing rocket chamber, like your skidstick.”

  “Yes,” I confirmed after a quick prompt from Habby.

  “So to turn this into a real rocket you need to completely reshape this. It’s like the whole thing is a nozzle right now, and most of your pressure isn’t going in the right direction. You need to squeeze the chamber down to a throat–right about here–and form a real, curved nozzle.”

  Wally sketched and wrote notes on his tablet as he went. He showed me where I would need to wire up new parameters and gave me best guesses about where they would need to be set for my stick, shoes, and even hands. Finally, when I thought my brain would burst, Habby decided I had more than enough to start manipulating the skill construction.

  “Okay,” I said. “Time for me to enter my zen state or whatever and start playing with this. Do you need to get back below?”

  Wally yawned. “I worked late last night. I’m supposed to be taking the afternoon off, but I bet this counts as working.”

  “What were you doing last night?”

  “Making heavy metal.”

  I raised an eyebrow, but he just gave me a smug look. Then he continued, “Fu and I are getting close. To… to finishing the weapon, I mean.”

  “That’s cool. I guess I’d better get my part done quick so we can combine them, eh? You can do whatever. It’s going to look a lot like I’m sitting here with my eyes closed for a while.”

  I dove into my menus.

  [All right. You’ll first want to pull some of the aether strands loose and move them to a new position. Get the hang of that first before you start doing anything specific.]

  I did, mentally pulling some of the aether lines out of their original alignment until they floated free. But the only “new position” I could think of was the new rocket shape I was targeting, so I skipped ahead. I started trying to guide the aether strands into their new configuration.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  It was insanely frustrating, like trying to style wet noodles.

  Eventually, however, something clicked.

  Snapped is more like it. One moment I was mentally manipulating a cluster of flailing wind aether strands, my mind rapidly dissociating, and the next the aether locked into a new shape.

  [Nice! I think you’ve found a bit of the aetherframe of the new skill!]

  Focus Class: Rocketeer has reached Tier 1 Level 6.

  “Help her!” yelled Captain Tetsumi. Several of her Elites rushed forward.

  “I’m fine!” barked Fu. They were in an alleyway on an upper sublevel of level 9. Fu was trapped inside her mechsuit by several large chunks of ice. “Shones damn bitch! I’ll kill her myself! Second suit they’ve ruined! Shones damn bitch!”

  “Is she okay?” asked Kidane, Team Snowcrest’s healer.

  “Hold on, Fu!” said Jessie. “We’re going to get you out of there!” She stepped back and concentrated, preparing one of her spotty wind skills to try to break one of the ice chunks.

  “I’m fine, Bee-Ho!” Fu repeated. “Mom, chill! Life support is holding! Get those bastards before—”

  “Sorcerer down!” yelled Tala from nearby, and her pet wolf howled in the near distance as if in confirmation. “It’s Tessa!”

  Fu cursed, and Jessie and the elites charged around the corner.

  “Hello, Brick. Your objective has changed.”

  That was what the voice of Double M had said that morning. With little explanation he’d gathered his team, piled into a van stolen by Blackout and Whisper, and prepared four of their precious crewcase beacons so they could summon four soldiers at a critical point. Then they had done something so audacious, so insane, Brick thought his teeth would crack from grinding them.

  They’d executed a robbery only one cell over from G-Tech Headquarters.

  “We’re going to set a trap, Brick,” the voice had said.

  Brick had dared to whisper into his secret phone, “For Fulgen?”

  “Oh, no. Well, not directly. Not yet. We’ve decided to take a slightly different approach. First, we need to get their attention.”

  They’d heard sirens almost immediately. Before long that familiar pink-haired cop liaison had screeched in on her hovercycle, along with the speed demon lieutenant from Snowcrest. The cop momentarily snagged Brick with her k-rifle, but he activated his shield ring. Brick’s gang pulled away in their getaway van just as G-Tech’s van, carrying the rest of Team Snowcrest, pulled into the bank parking lot.

  They led Snowcrest on a chase several streets over, picking up several more tails that Brick grimly recognized as GPD Elite squad cars, then abandoned their vehicle and dashed down an alley, part of their planned route.

  Brick dropped the four beacons. A few seconds later four grunts appeared and laid down covering fire. One quickly fell to a shot from the mechsuit pilot. Mantis countered with an ice beam, crippling the mechsuit after encasing half of it in ice.

  The gang of sorcerers exited the alley at the other side, crossed a city street on foot, turned right, turned left at an intersection. Brick pulled out his walkie-talkie and confirmed that Blackout and Whisper were in position.

  As predicted, the Snowcrest speedster pulled far ahead of her group, and she was joined by the beast tamer’s wolf familiar. Brick kept seeing them both whenever he glanced back. They wouldn’t try to engage Mantis by themselves, he knew, but they would keep a visual on his team. G-Tech and the GPD would move to encircle them. But they would lose their tails soon. Hopefully. As long as this next part worked.

  He and Mantis turned down one more alley, and the speedster followed. She moved cautiously, but still more quickly than the fastest unenhanced runner. She didn’t notice Whisper crouching behind a dumpster until he activated his dampener skill. Her speed and reflexes faltered, causing her to stumble. Then she hit the tripwire Whisper had set.

  “Get their attention, Brick. And then… then draw blood.”

  “Why?” he’d asked.

  “It’s time to make this personal for them. Angry people make mistakes. They fall into traps much more easily. I suggest the fast one, as she’ll be easiest to isolate anyway. Oh, but try not to kill her. Not if you don’t have to. Instead, show her you can do what every sorcerer fears more than death: take away their power.”

  Mantis pounced. The woman tried to roll out of the way, but Mantis snagged her thigh and ran it right through with a claw, pinning her to the ground. She gasped in pain and tried to punch Mantis ineffectually. Unfortunately for her, the psychotic woman could make her claws much larger now, nearly as long as she was tall if she chose. She stood smugly out of the woman’s reach while keeping her painfully pinned. The wolf bit into Mantis’s own leg, but she kicked viciously and he crunched into the wall. He stood unsteadily and limped back the way he had come, whimpering, probably to regroup with his master and report on the position of Brick’s gang.

  “It’s a shame,” Mantis hissed at the woman. Spittle sprayed, and her breath came in gasps from her recent flight. “You won’t get the full ‘Mantis treatment’ today.”

  She raised her other claw.

  It came down.

  The speedster screamed.

  “No!” said Chris as he charged into the alley, “Tessa! Tessa, no!”

  The rest of Team Snowcrest came in behind him, followed by Jessie, Captain Tetsumi, and the Elites. Fu, now on foot, had a frostbitten hand tucked under her other arm.

  “Shones damn bitch!”

  They found Tessa Vale, lieutenant of Team Snowcrest, lying in an alley next to a dumpster, unconscious from shock, her breathing ragged.

  They found her legs inside the dumpster.

  Two weeks had passed since I’d given both G-Tech and myself an ultimatum. I’d mastered the Rocketeer class, and I could finally say I’d reached my previous pinnacle of skidding speed. I’d been forced to bind a helmet with a faceshield lest the wind shear force my eyes shut, and I could hover for several seconds by using either a combination of hand and skidshoe jets or—slightly less dignified but impressive in its own way—mounting Bullet Train like a pogo stick.

  One down, two to go.

  And I was nearly done with my second secondary class, but I was starting to feel the press of time.

  Branch Class: Feverflame Adept has reached Tier 1 Level 7.

  This was a cool one. If I mastered it, Feverflame Immolate would be transformed into, quite simply, Feverflame. This skill could be combined with any of my other offensive fire skills, present and future, to give them the same effect. I’d be able to serve my whole menu “stun style,” possibly with a side of vomit. Evil beware.

  If I could just figure out this damn trigger parameter.

  I sat cross legged in one of the practice rooms, studying the aetherframe. I didn’t have to reconfigure it completely. I just needed to understand it deeply enough to weave it into other skills in place of the usual, burning variant of the stuff.

  I couldn’t study much real-world engineering to figure this one out. A few lessons on thermoconductivity had only helped because they showed me the laws of physics I needed to break the hell out of.

  The fire aether couldn’t deliver a payload of scorching heat to the surface of a solid object to act as Feverflame. Instead it had to transition into a form that could penetrate the object, where it would bounce around, gradually warming the interior until it dissipated. Getting this trigger right was the tough part. Activate it too soon and the aether would fizzle out before it reached the object. Activate it too late and it would scorch the victim anyway. If I could just…

  “Fulgen!” came Valery’s voice over the speaker, shattering my concentration.

  “What the hell?” I muttered. Damn. It would take me at least ten minutes to lock back in. This had better be—

  “There has been an incident! Tessa Vale of Team Snowcrest! Mantis got her!”

  I shot to my feet. “What do you mean ‘got?’”