---
"And Aaron—you had something to say about the main storyline. What was it?"
---
Aaron told them about Eve.
How she had appeared outside his training room without warning, how she had said nothing except "Follow me," how he had followed anyway. How the beatdown that followed had been the kind he had only received from Zeke and Anton. How she had returned the next day, and the day after, until the beatings became something he could almost call training.
"Torture," he called it. The kind that left bruises on the inside.
"Children always make out training to be torture," Zeke said, shaking his head.
"They don't understand the torture we went through to impart knowledge on them," Anton agreed, his voice heavy with theatrical wisdom.
The group rolled their eyes at the performance and kept listening.
