Everything in the lounge was in the air.
Priscilla floated in the middle of the room in her 3rd form — silver and serene, the focused expression of someone managing a complicated problem and doing it well. The sofa orbited her in a wide slow arc. The reading chairs moved in tighter loops. The smaller objects circled at varying heights, forming something that was, if you looked at it a certain way, genuinely beautiful.
Melissa's vase rotated slowly above the fireplace.
The glass sculpture of Sylvia's father traced a precise ellipse by the window.
Sylvia stood in the doorway for two full seconds without speaking.
"Priscilla."
"I have everything under control," Priscilla said, without looking away from whatever internal geometry she was maintaining.
"The sculpture of my father is orbiting the window."
"Constant speed and distance. Completely safe."
"Put it down."
"In a moment. I'm building to the full room. The cognitive load is actually quite manageable—"
"PRISCILLA."
"How long have you been in here?" Levi asked, from behind Sylvia.
"About six min—"
The silver faded all at once.
Physics reasserted itself with considerable enthusiasm.
Sylvia moved before she'd made a conscious decision — enhancement pushing her speed into the range where thought and action collapse into the same thing. She scanned the room in the fraction of a second before everything hit the floor simultaneously.
Priority one: the glass sculpture of her father, heading for the bookshelf edge. She crossed the room and caught it with both hands — solid, whole — and had exactly enough time to register relief before she heard the vase.
High arc. Coming down fast. Wrong angle for the sideboard. She pushed off the bookshelf with one hand still holding the sculpture, got under the vase, caught it with her free hand.
She stood in the middle of the room holding one irreplaceable thing in each hand while the rest of the lounge settled around her in impacts of varying drama.
The tablet hit the floor on the other side of the coffee table.
She heard it. Both hands were full.
The room went quiet.
Priscilla was flat on the floor. Sylvia stood holding her father's sculpture and her mother's vase, furniture redistributed at various angles around her, looking at the tablet face-down on the carpet.
She breathed in. Out. Set both objects down carefully.
Picked up the tablet.
Cracked screen. Corner to corner.
"Levi," she said, without turning. "Why didn't you telestride and catch it?"
A pause. "I was watching the sculpture."
"The sculpture was fine."
"I didn't know that yet."
Sylvia set the tablet down. "Priscilla. You owe me a tablet."
From the floor: "If you'd caught me instead of the vase, I'd buy you two."
"I was holding the sculpture."
"You have two hands."
"One of them had the sculpture."
"And the other had the vase, yes, I was watching." Priscilla, still flat on the floor, managed to project a certain amount of dignity. "I'm saying slot three on your priority list could have been me."
"My mother's vase and my father's sculpture are not debatable."
"Reasonably prioritised, I agree. I'm critiquing slot three."
Sylvia looked at her. Looked at the broken tablet. Looked at Levi in the doorway, who had the expression of someone who had correctly identified that saying nothing was the wisest available action.
"Can you get to the couch," she said.
"Probably not on my own."
Sylvia picked her up — with more force than strictly necessary — and deposited her on the sofa. Then she went to the kitchen and came back with two kebabs, one of which she held out.
"Peace offering?" Priscilla asked.
"Payment for emotional damage." Sylvia sat at the other end. "Why did you come in here? We have a training area."
"No heavy objects."
"There are dumbbells."
Priscilla stared at her. "There are no dumbbells in the training area."
"Storage room. Left side, behind the equipment rack."
"Sylvia. That is a secret room."
"It's not a secret room, it's just not signposted."
"It is behind a rack of equipment. It is functionally a secret room."
Sylvia took a bite of her kebab. "Well. Now you know."
Levi came in and sat in one of the reading chairs, which had ended up at the wrong angle but was otherwise fine. He looked at the broken tablet. The sculpture and vase, already returned to their rightful positions. Priscilla with her kebab and the very specific expression of someone who had learned something useful at a reasonable cost.
"Twelve minutes," he said. "That's genuinely impressive."
"I know," said Priscilla.
"You're still buying her a tablet."
"Obviously. I was making a philosophical point about priorities."
"From the floor," said Sylvia.
"Points made from the floor are still valid."
✦ ✦ ✦
They trained again in the late afternoon — the dumbbells Priscilla now knew about, proper circuits, Levi and Sylvia both clearing five minutes in their 3rd forms. Small progress. Real progress.
Afterwards they sat on the patio, exhausted in the comfortable way of people who had done something difficult and were now entitled to do nothing. Chef Jeff sent out cold drinks without being asked.
"Charlotte's coming next week," Sylvia said.
Priscilla looked at her. "How do you know?"
"My mother always asks my uncle before she leaves. She thinks we need to see more of each other."
"You do," said Levi.
Sylvia looked at him with the expression she reserved for accurate statements she hadn't decided how to respond to yet.
"She's more interesting than you give her credit for," he said. "And the arguing — she's doing it on purpose and you're doing it by instinct. Eventually those two things meeting in the middle will be good for both of you."
A long pause.
"Fine," Sylvia said. "She can come."
"I liked her," said Priscilla. "She's sharp."
"She's exhausting," said Sylvia.
"Those aren't mutually exclusive," said Levi.
Sylvia gave him the look. He received it without concern.
The garden went dark. The city hummed in the distance. Levi thought about the three weeks ahead — the training, the trial, everything he was slowly becoming — and felt the familiar mixture of impatience and direction that had settled into him like weather.
Two weeks and six days.
Close enough to count.
—
Three hundred kilometres away, in the temporary MK headquarters of Olympicõ, Melissa sat on a bench in a courtyard and looked at a tree that had survived everything the city had been through.
Leroy sat beside her. "You're doing the thinking face."
"I'm always doing the thinking face."
"The specific one. The one where you're working a problem that doesn't have an obvious solution yet."
Melissa looked at the tree. "The wall reconstruction takes two more weeks minimum. The trial is in two weeks and six days."
Leroy was quiet for a moment. "You'll miss it."
"I won't miss it."
"Lisa—"
"I won't." She said it with the calm certainty of someone who hadn't figured out how yet but had already decided on the outcome. "Those three kids have been training every day since I left. Levi Baron has been carrying more than any seventeen-year-old should be carrying and he's still showing up. I am not missing their trial."
Leroy looked at her sideways. "So what's the plan?"
"I don't have one yet."
"But you will."
"I always do." She stood, brushing dust from her gear. "But first — the mayor told me the attacks have been too coordinated. No legendary class, not once, despite knowing I'm here." She looked at him. "What does that tell you?"
Leroy chewed on this — slowly, the way he chewed on everything. "Either they're running low on legends after Horus. Or—"
"Or Olympicõ isn't the point," Melissa said. "They're keeping me here. Away from somewhere else."
The courtyard was very quiet.
"Away from where?" Leroy asked.
Melissa thought about a training field at the Blaze estate. Three students, three weeks, one trial.
"That," she said, "is what I need to figure out."