Chapter 135: Training With Vexa...

Leo didn’t sleep much that night.

He lay on the big white bed in his suite with Chloe curled up against his side, breathing slow and soft against his arm, and he stared at the ceiling while the sound of the sea drifted in through the open glass.

Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the hooded figure standing still in the middle of the moving crowd and the small pale emblem on its shoulder.

’Three points... pale white,’ he thought. ’Same as the comm-link that lizard captain had on Driftmark... Same as the frigate I cut in half.’

He rubbed his face with one hand.

’Maybe it was nothing. Maybe it was just some guy in a jacket... There have to be a hundred symbols that look like that in a city of sixty million people.’

The cold twinge in his spine had said otherwise.

Beside him, Chloe stirred and lifted her head a little, blinking at him sleepily in the dark.

"You smell worried..." she mumbled.

"I’m fine, Chloe."

"You smell worried," she repeated, more firmly, and sniffed at his neck as if to double-check. "Like when the frost came."

Leo hesitated, then put his hand on her head and stroked her hair until her eyes started to close again.

"Just thinking about tomorrow," he said softly. "Go back to sleep."

Chloe looked at him for a long moment through half-closed eyes, clearly unconvinced, and then she tucked her face back into his shoulder and wrapped one arm tightly around his chest, like she was holding him in place.

He thought about telling the girls, and then he thought about Camila crying over her ID card, and Elena holding hers like it was made of glass, and Harper laughing at her possum photo.

’Not yet,’ he decided. ’Not until I know for sure... Let them have this. They’ve earned a few good days.’

But he made himself a promise, too, lying there in the dark.

’If they come for us... I’m not freezing myself solid with Starfall every single time. I’m not getting knocked out by a single punch again. I need to get stronger... actually stronger.’

The next morning, he found Vexa in the training room before breakfast.

She was hanging upside down from a bar near the ceiling by her knees, with her arms crossed over her chest and her tail dangling down toward the mat, swaying gently, and she grinned at him when he walked in.

"Good morning, Captain Handsome! You’re up early!"

"Vexa," Leo said. "I need you to train me..."

"I already said I would!"

"I mean for real." He walked into the middle of the mats and stood there. "Every day. As hard as you can... No going easy on me because I’m human, and no holding back because you feel bad when I fall over... I need to be able to fight, properly."

Vexa looked at him upside down for a long moment then she unhooked her knees, flipped over in midair and landed on the mat on her feet without a sound.

TAP!

Her grin was still there, but her eyes had changed, and they were sharper now, it was the same way they’d been in orbit when she’d said no more holding back.

"Okay," she said. "But Leo... if I don’t hold back, it’s going to hurt. A lot."

"I know."

"Like... a LOT a lot."

"I know, Vexa... I mean it."

She studied him a moment longer, and then her tail gave one slow, approving swish.

"Okay," she said again. "Then let’s start."

She stepped back into her loose, easy stance, and Leo raised his guard, remembering to keep his left shoulder up this time.

They circled.

Vexa moved first, a quick jab at his face, and he blocked it.

SMACK!

She swung a kick at his ribs, and he blocked that too, wincing at the impact.

THUD!

’Okay,’ he thought. ’Okay, I can do this... I just need to watch her hands and watch her feet and...’

Vexa’s eyes flashed.

FLASH!

One second, there was one Vexa in front of him, and the next second, there were three.

Three pink girls stood in a loose triangle around him, glowing faintly violet, and every single one of them looked completely real.

"Violet Afterimage," all three of them said at once, in perfect stereo. "Works on foot too, Leo..."

And the guide in his back twitched.

It was a quick warm tug toward the one on the left, exactly like in the clouds.

’Left,’ Leo thought instantly. ’She’s on the left!’

He turned left.

THWACK!

The real Vexa’s fist landed on his cheek before he was even halfway around, and he went sideways onto the mat.

THUD!

"One!" Vexa said cheerfully, and the two copies flickered out of existence.

’I knew,’ he thought, stunned. ’I knew it was her... The guide told me. I turned the right way... I was just too slow.’

He pushed himself back up.

"Again..."

FLASH!

This time the guide tugged toward the middle one, and he turned and got his arms up, still half a second late.

THWACK! THUD!

"Two!"

"I knew it was you," Leo said, staring up at the ceiling with his chest heaving. "I knew it was the middle one... so why can’t I move?"

Vexa crouched beside him.

"Wait... you knew which one was me?"

"Every time," Leo said. "The feeling in my back points right at you but my body just doesn’t get there in time."

By the tenth fall, Vexa had stopped counting out loud and started watching him very carefully.

"You’re right," she said slowly, standing over him with her arms folded. "You turn toward the real me every single time... Your instincts are faster than mine, Leo, but your body’s still a normal body... It’s like a champion’s brain bolted onto a cargo hauler’s engine."

’So that’s it,’ he thought, flexing his aching fingers against the mat. ’The guide’s working fine... I’m the problem. My body can’t keep up, and getting punched over and over isn’t going to fix that.’

Around the fourteenth fall, Vexa finally called a water break, and the door opened before Leo had even managed to sit up.

Camila came hurrying in with a tray of cold packs, a bowl of something steaming and a cloth over her arm, and her eyes went wide when she saw the bruises already darkening along his jaw and ribs.

"?Ay, no! Leo, look at you!" She dropped to her knees beside him and pressed a cold pack against his cheek, much harder than necessary. "Vexa! What did you do to him?!"

"I trained him!" Vexa protested. "He asked me to...!"

"He asked you to train him, not to turn him into a... a... purple vegetable!"

Chloe had drifted in behind Camila without anyone noticing, and she sat down cross-legged at the edge of the mat and stared at Vexa without blinking, the whole time, while Vexa slowly edged further and further away from her.

"Is she going to bite me...?" Vexa whispered to Leo.

"Probably not... I’m not really sure what she’s thinking." Leo said.

"Probably?!"

Camila finished pressing cold packs onto every bruise she could find, fed him three spoonfuls of hot soup whether he wanted them or not, and then stood up and pointed a stern finger at Vexa.

"Not his face," she said firmly. "He has a nice face... Hit him somewhere else."

Then she turned bright red at what she’d just said, grabbed her tray and fled, and Chloe followed her out after one last long stare at Vexa.

He lay on the mat, breathing hard and staring up at the ceiling, and this time, he didn’t get up right away.

Vexa’s face appeared above him.

Her grin had faded, and she knelt down beside him on the mat and sat back on her heels, looking at him with her head tilted and her ears tipped forward.

"Leo," she said quietly. "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure..."

"Why do you want this so badly?" Her tail curled around her ankle. "Yesterday, you were happy. You won the race, you got your IDs... everybody was laughing and then this morning, you come in here looking like... like somebody’s chasing you."

She paused. "Is somebody chasing you?"

Leo stared up at her and for a second, the words were right there on his tongue.

’There was a man in the plaza with a pale emblem on his shoulder,’ he almost said. ’The Federation might be here... They might be watching us right now.’

He thought about Vexa’s face when she’d found out about the slaves on Driftmark, how sick and white she’d gone, and he thought about her charter lying on the registry desk with seven names under it.

’If they’re here... they’re here for us,’ he thought. ’Not her. I’m not dragging her into this until I’m sure.’

"I just..." he said slowly, and looked back up at the ceiling. "Every time something big comes at us, the only real weapon I’ve got is Starfall and every time I use it, I freeze. I almost died the only time I used it, the girls had to drag me off the throne and warm me up for hours."

He let out a breath.

"I want to be able to protect them without turning into an ice cube every single time... That’s all."

Vexa was quiet for a long moment then she reached out and gently brushed his sweaty hair off his forehead with her fingers.

"Okay," she said softly. "I get it... I really do."

Then she stood up and walked over to a panel set into the wall beside the door.

"Racers train against crushing G-forces," she said, tapping it. "This room has a gravity plate under the floor..."

[Training room gravity: 1.0 G]

"If your body can’t keep up with your instincts," she said, and the playfulness was gone from her voice, "then we make your body keep up."

She turned the dial.

[Training room gravity: 2.0 G]

WHUMMMM!

The weight hit Leo all at once and crushed him flat against the mat, squeezing the air out of his lungs.

THUD!

"Get up," Vexa said.

It took him almost a full minute of shaking and gritting his teeth to get back to his feet, with sweat dripping off his chin.

’You stood up in front of a frigate,’ he told himself. ’You can stand up in front of a dial...’

Next came the weights, and ninety kilos on the bar felt like a hundred and eighty, and she made him lift it until his arms gave out and the bar crashed down onto the safety rails.

CLANG!

Then she made him lift it again, and after that, she switched on the reaction wall.

Circles lit up at random across the far wall for half a second each, and he had to slap every one before it went dark.

PING!

The guide tugged him toward the circle a heartbeat before it lit, and his arm dragged after it through the heavy air like wet concrete.

SLAP!

He hit that one, and missed the next three.

"Again," Vexa said.

For the next hour, he kept swinging, and slowly, one circle at a time, he started catching more of them.

PING! SLAP!

’Faster,’ he thought, vision swimming. ’Come on... faster.’

When Vexa finally turned the dial back down, he stumbled.

[Training room gravity: 1.0 G]

WHUMMMM!

He lifted his arm, and it rose so fast and light that it startled him.

’It’s working,’ he thought, staring at his hand. ’It’s actually working.’

Then his legs gave out, and he collapsed flat on the mat.

THUD! HISS!

The training room door slid open.

Harper wandered in with a cup of coffee in one hand and a half-eaten pastry in the other, clearly on her way somewhere else, and she stopped in the doorway and looked down at Leo collapsed flat across the mat, red-faced and gasping and soaked in sweat, with Vexa standing over him.

She took a long slow sip of her coffee.

"Tsk tsk..." she said.

Then she turned around and walked back out again, chewing her pastry.

HISS... CLICK!

"She’s never going to let me live that down, is she...?" Leo groaned at the ceiling.

"Nope," Vexa said brightly. "Never ever."

Leo lay there with his chest heaving, aching in every single part of his body, and somehow, under all the pain, he was grinning.

Vexa leaned over him, upside down, so that her ponytail dangled right above his nose, and her violet eyes sparkled with mischief.

"Good job today, Leo," she said. "Really... you lasted way longer than any of my old trainees."

"I couldn’t even stand up in that gravity..."

"My old trainees quit after five minutes!" she said, and then added proudly, "One of them cried. A big one, too, with horns... He cried so much."

"That’s not making me feel better, Vexa..."

"It should! You didn’t cry!"

Then a small, cold voice came from the doorway.

"My turn."

Chloe was standing just inside the door with her hands lost in her sleeves, and from the look on her face, she’d watched every single one of those falls.

She walked onto the mat and stopped right in front of Vexa.

"You hit him a lot today," she said.

"I... I was training him!" Vexa said, and her ears went flat. "He asked me to!"

"I know." Chloe pushed her sleeves up past her elbows, very calmly, and her green eyes slowly bled into a deep, glowing red. "Now train me, cat..."

The nervous look on Vexa’s face slowly turned into a wide dangerous grin.

"Oh," she breathed. "Oh, you want to fight me? Really?"

"Yes" Chloe said. ’Though I want to kill you...’