Breathing Citadel air again, after days in Limbo City, is like returning to satin bedsheets after a few nights of sleeping on sandpaper. For that reason more than anything else, I’m glad to be back.


    Another plus is that I can relax a little, stop looking over my shoulder quite so much, now that I’m back in Sander’s care. He doesn’t say a word to greet me, just nods and resumes his position two steps behind me, like I’d never left.


    Sofie’s kind enough to cover for Niko and I for the remainder of the day, while we take some time to recuperate. The two of us reintegrate with our copyclans, gaining memories of a fairly uneventful past few days. He hides the Hurricane Howl in his closet, a temporary measure to keep it safe before we figure out something more permanent. Obviously, nobody can know we have it, since that would expose the illegal means we used to acquire it- and despite what I said to Salzwedel before we left his home with our loot, I’m not exactly a hundred percent certain that wouldn’t end with the both of us getting sent to early retirement.


    Before the days is done, we ring up Saffi on a holo-call to verify that she got home safe. And, of course, to make sure everything went smoothly with the handoff to Mother. She confirms that it did, and that any of the excess profits that go beyond what we spent preparing for the heist will be divided between the three of us,once it’s all been fenced.


    Before we get off the line, she makes the two of us reaffirm the promise we made before parting ways- that as soon as we’ve graduated the Citadel, we’ll go visit her. Repeating our little extracurricular excursion would be unwise to say the least, so it’ll most likely be a year and a half at minimum before we get a chance to see her again.


    With that final piece of business complete, we both head to bed- separately, this time. Although, sharing a bed with Nico for a few nights, including one where Saffi joined us, did give me something of a taste for it.


    That night is yet another where I’m grateful for the ability to induce sleep in myself at will. Without that, I’m quite certain I’d have spent most of the night trying and failing to keep my thoughts quiet, as my internal critic ruthlessly tore me apart for my myriad failures during the heist- not least of which is agreeing to participate at all.


    It’s easy to say that hindsight is 20/20, but no aphorism is going to make me feel any less stupid for failing to see that the entire thing was a giant honeypot we fell right into. If it weren’t for Salzwedel being an arrogant, miserly bastard, we’d probably all be dead. Except for Niko, who would be experiencing a fate far worse than simple oblivion.


    Worse still, even my tactical acumen failed me, in the moment I needed it most. I don’t regret ceding command to Saffi, but it still shames me that doing so became necessary. Even my combat performance was lackluster compared to how I usually do in training. The obvious explanation is that my confidence was shaken, causing a cascade effect of failure, but that’s hardly satisfying. If that was enough to break me, what hope do I have leading an entire armada?


    There’s only one thought in my mind before I hit the switch to put myself to sleep: I need to get stronger.


    <hr>


    Over breakfast the next morning, Grant offers another compelling reason to redouble my efforts for self-improvement: midterms are approaching fast. They seemed barely a speck on the horizon when I agreed to accompany Niko on his quest to regain a lost Regalia, but now they’re suddenly my top priority.


    Thankfully, my copyclan was hard at work preparing, while I was off gallivanting about Limbo City. But out of my four Citadel classes, they were only able to prepare for three, because only three of them could be prepped for without a body. And the fourth, my Combat 101 exam, is easily the one I’m most concerned about.


    A good deal of Professor Almstedt’s class consists of fighting my fellow students, so it’s little surprise that the midterm is built around more or less the same theme. Except instead of taking place in a controlled environment, these fights will be happening in the wolds of Akademos, the moon upon which the Citadel resides. We’re to be dropped in without equipment, and left to fend for ourselves for several days, with the highest marks awarded to the student who survives the longest. Strictly speaking, it’s possible for the entire exam to go by without anybody murdering anybody else, but apparently it’s never once happened.


    Given my poor performance under real-world conditions, I’m still concerned about Professor Brennan’s midterm, but that’s something my copyclan, now freshly updated with memories of what I did over the past several days, can prepare for. My main concern right now is going to be getting stronger in the most literal sense. If I want to survive the Combat 101 exam, I’m gonna need more muscles.


    “Actually,” Grant says, bringing me back to reality, “there is one more thing I’d like to discuss.”


    “Yeah?” I ask, still only half paying attention to him.


    “Our unit’s financial situation is… deteriorating.”


    Those words are enough to snap me back completely. On seeing my expression immediately turn deadly serious, he raises his hands placatingly, and I take it down a notch, my initial concern swiftly drowned out by another wave of self-loathing, this time for having allowed things with the budget to get bad before my very eyes.


    “It’s not dire, not yet,” he assures me calmly. “The payout from our victory in the War Games was a boon, and Nikolai’s illicit gambling enterprise has helped keep us afloat. However, we were forced to cut back on that during his absence, due to problems posed by his copyclan’s incorporeality.”


    Makes sense. It’s hard to deal cards when you’re a hologram. I really should have known relying on that would come back to bite me in the ass eventually.


    “Your copyclan already deputized me to make some minor spending cuts, but there’s a deficit we need to make up, mainly relating to costs incurred preparing for our engagement with the Oxen. Money well spent, of course, and much of it was recouped by our winnings, but that didn’t account for everything.”


    Now I’m getting flashbacks to planning the heist, and plotting out how I’d repay every cent I borrowed from the Syndicate with something stolen from Salzwedel’s collection. The stakes are obviously a bit lower here, and we do get a small monthly stipend from the Citadel no matter what, but it’s not sufficient to cover costs for what we’re doing.


    “Also,” he continues, “while you were gone, your copyclan authorized something called… Project Barbicane, I believe. Only Ada and her engineering team are privy to the details, though I suppose it’s in your memory now as well. But a not-insignificant part of our budget is now earmarked for research and development. All that is to say—”


    “We need to make some money,” I interject. “I get it. You got any ideas, or is that gonna fall on me?”


    “Well,” Grant says, a self-satisfied smile spreading across his lips, “there is one thing.”


    <hr>


    “Okay, I’m confused. Is your plan to put on a talent show? And, what, pass around a hat for donations afterward? Because I don’t think that’s gonna pan out the way you think it will.”


    If there’s another explanation for what Grant brought me to see, I’m not seeing it. A good half of my Gazelles have gathered in one of the gymnasium’s training rooms, with various stations set up all around the place for different people to practice a wide variety of athletic endeavors. Colleen has set aside her katana for a rapier, and she’s using it to fence against a mechanical arm that, for all its superior speed, can’t seem to land a blow on her. Mars is facing off against a training ‘bot in pankration, apparently attempting to assert the dominance of warm flesh over cold steel. Even Sofie’s gotten in on the action, propelling herself through a series of hoops suspended in the air with an acrobatic flourish I didn’t know she possessed, despite the fact that she introduced herself as a gymnastics champion. Idly, I wonder how she was able to excel in that field given her decidedly non-aerodynamic body type. Maybe she gave herself a few extra curves as a sort of handicap?


    “Commander,” Grant says, his tone only slightly patronizing. “The Citadel Championship is starting in just a few days.”


    Oh. Right.


    The Citadel Championship- a week of nominally nonviolent competition between the various units at the eponymous Citadel, celebrating athletic achievement in all its forms. Also the second major factor in determining how the units are ranked at the end of every year, after the War Games but before academics. Those aren’t weighted equally- if you win every single round of the War Games but do poorly in the Championship and get terrible grades, you might still end up ranked highest. But on the other hand, if you do poorly in the War Games but win big in the Championship and have flawless grades across your entire unit, you’ll probably escape being ranked last.


    Not unlike midterms, the Championship was somehow far off on the horizon right up until it was imminent. And all the time I was off in Limbo City, preparing for a heist that turned out to be a trap, I could have been here, preparing. Setting my unit up for a victory that won’t just improve our standing, but also earn us some significant money. Not exactly a consistent revenue stream, but a few medals will bring in enough cash to balance our budget and keep us solvent well into preparations for the next round of War Games.


    Except… clearly my lack of presence here hasn’t stopped them from preparing, judging by how everybody inside of the training room is performing. Yet I have no memories from my copyclan of approving any of this, much less getting involved. They were just as ignorant of the situation as I was, despite having been deputized in my place while I was absent.


    “You’ve been working on this for a while, haven’t you?”


    “We started almost immediately after you left,” Grant confirms, assessing the performance of our various athletes coolly as he speaks.


    “How come I don’t remember you discussing any of it with me, then?”


    The look he gives me is mostly sympathetic. Mostly.


    “Absorbing several days’ worth of memories all at once must have been difficult. You’re clearly still processing some of them. We did discuss the financial situation, albeit briefly. I told you that I had an idea about how to fix it, and you replied…” He pauses, summoning his memory of my exact words from the brainband. “‘Great, get on it.’ And then you left.”


    “Ah,” I reply sympathetically.


    “Yeah. I also tried to bring up the Championship separately, but your copies seemed content to leave it in my hands. They had other priorities.”


    This is why the Imperium has laws about not maintaining a simulated instance of yourself for more than a day. Personality drift can occur with frightening speed. It’s fortunate no members of my copyclan were at the point of being unwilling to reintegrate by the time I returned.


    “Right. Sorry about that.”


    He’s not wrong about it taking some time to fully process all of those extra memories, but with what I’ve already sifted through, I have some sense of what their ‘other priorities’ were. Some interesting stuff there, but much of it theoretical. Not what I’d consider a productive use of their time. I guess without an ‘Iza Prime’ to shoulder most of the responsibility, everybody was just assuming someone else was doing the hard work of actually running the unit. Classic bystander effect, except all of the bystanders are just different instances of the same person.


    “It’s no trouble,” Grant says smoothly, with a hint of that slick politician-speak in his voice that made me dislike him when we first met. “You’d likely have delegated the task to me regardless, perhaps simply with a little more oversight.”


    “Well, you’re not entirely wrong about that, but I still feel bad. So- walk me through the plan, in detail. How many events are we gonna be competing in?”


    Accepting my apology with a single nod, Grant leads me into the center of the room, hands folded behind his back. The air around us is thick with the scent of sweat, and filled with the sound of effortful grunting. Frankly, it’s not my ideal environment. Not that I’m sensitive, of course- a large part of my brain is quite literally hardwired for combat. But something about being in a place that’s almost like a war zone, only without the smell of blood or the sound of gunfire, feels wrong to me.


    “The scoring system is designed to disincentivize participating in as many events as possible,” my chief of staff explains, as we walk past Tai maintaining a marathon pace on a treadmill. “You’re familiar with the phrase ‘better to have tried and failed than never tried at all?’ Apparently the Citadel disagrees. If you participate in a dozen events and do badly in most of them, it’ll be worse for your score than if you don’t participate at all.”


    “So for the best expected returns, you only put someone up if you think they have a solid shot at winning.”


    “Or at least earning a medal, yes.”


    Before I can start to formulate a response to that, we top in front of a station where Kat is sitting, arms wrapped ‘round her knees, beside a mechanical facsimile of a horse, which stands eerily still.


    “No luck?” Grant asks, his tone shifting from businesslike to warm and compassionate without so much as a hitch. The way he can do that is actually kind of scary.


    “No,” she replies, voice small.


    “That’s fine. How about you take a break, go get some water, and decide if you want to give it another shot? It’s alright if you want to call it quits- there are other ways you can help out.”


    Looking up at him, she nods, then catches sight of me and looks away, scurrying off to do as Grant suggested. Hopefully my copyclan didn’t do something to make her more afraid of me while I was gone, but most likely she’s just upset that I’ll think she’s failed me somehow.


    “She volunteered when I asked if anybody was willing to participate,” Grant explains, his voice switching back to business effortlessly. “Apparently she rode horses with some skill when she was younger. Evidently not at the competitive level, however. And now she feels she’ll be letting everybody down if she doesn’t master it.”


    Despite the situation, I can’t help but let out a soft chuckle. Of course, it was foolish of me to believe that all of Kat’s problems would be solved by helping her to overcome her unwillingness to participate. Now she’s pushing herself too hard, and beating herself up when she falls short of her own unrealistic expectations. Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.


    “I’ll talk with her,” I offer.


    “Good. She seems to be more comfortable around you than me.”


    “Clearly you just lack my animal magnetism,” I joke, waggling my tail a bit for effect. Grant’s businesslike demeanor cracks for a second, and he laughs.


    “Are you suggesting my rapport with her would improve if I procured myself a pair of cat ears?”


    “Who knows? Can’t hurt to try.”


    Once he’s done chuckling, Grant returns to business, and resumes our impromptu tour of the training room. There’s no way this specific equipment was set up in this specific arrangement before now- presumably Grant had the room reserved and requested the particular equipment that we’d need for everybody to practice their particular athletic pursuit of choice.


    “As I was saying. We’ll be participating in eight events- ah, best make that seven,” he corrects, glancing at the jockeyless mechanical horse. “Unless Katrina’s scores drastically improve in the next few days.”


    “Hey, it could happen. Most of this is mental anyways, right?”


    “Right,” Grant replies, a little skeptical. Since nobody in the Imperium is born unfit or infirm unless they choose to be, almost everybody is on a roughly even playing field when it comes to athletics. Far from making competitive sports obsolete, however, it’s simply turned them into a contest of will, where mental fortitude is the most important element. Given that, I suppose it’s little surprise Kat is struggling.


    “So. Seven events.”


    “Yes. Though as you can see, we only have five participants. Colleen and Tai will be doubling up.”


    It’s a bit surprising to me that Tai is participating at all, given his generally reclusive nature. But maybe he’s been a runner this whole time, and I just ever bothered to find out. Not that he’s made getting to know him better very easy.


    “Well, you can make that seven,” I tell him, surprising myself slightly with the words. “I know there’s a sharpshooting event, and I want in.”


    Grant raises an eyebrow.


    “Are you sure? I don’t think any of the other commanders are participating…”


    “Sounds like all the more reason to buck the trend. Plus, I could use the practice.”


    Winking, I cock a finger-gun at him and fire. Grant cracks a smile. There’s another reason I want to participate, though- to prove to myself that I’m still good at something.


    “Very well. You’ll be competing alongside Amalia. I trust you’ll have no issue practicing at the firing range? We don’t exactly have the space to set up another practice station here.”


    “Yeah, sure. I just have one other question. We’re rigging this shit, right?”


    A familiar, self-satisfied grin spreads across Grant’s lips.


    “Well, obviously.”


    <hr>


    A few hours later, when practice is done for the day, Sofie, Grant and I sit down to discuss the finer points of the plan to rig the Citadel Championship in our favor.


    The venue for this meeting, much the same as most of our War Council gatherings, is my apartment. Sofie’s fresh from the shower, a liquid sheen making her metallic hair glisten in the light of the afternoon sun. It’s not until she flashes me a warm, easy smile that I realize exactly how much I missed being around her.


    All three of us are eating, spread out around the recessed area of my living room with our meals in our laps. I’m having a tuna melt, savoring the taste as much as I can without letting it get cold, while Grant’s having a salad and Sofie a pasta bowl. Sander, elsewhere in the apartment, is drinking a protein shake- a brief reminder that I need to speak with him about my physical fitness regimen.


    “So, there’s basically two obvious tacks to take with this,” Sofie says between mouthfuls. “First is fucking with the other teams. We’ve got a decent idea of who’s gonna be participating, so we can spike their food, or fuck with their implants, or cut their hamstrings if we have to.”


    “It should go without saying that the other units are most assuredly intending to do the same, if they have not already begun,” Grant adds.


    “Right, of course. And since almost my entire team is also gonna be on the field, running counterintel is gonna be tricky. I already briefed everybody who’s signed up to test all their food before they eat it, and not to move around the Citadel alone. Not a perfect system, but...” she shrugs. “We just don’t have the numbers for anything better.”


    In many ways, running a small unit like this one is a simpler logistical task than managing an entire armada, but it’s got problems of its own. You’re pretty much perpetually stretched thin, for one thing.


    Dropping the crust of my sandwich into its wrapper, I ball the thing up and chuck it in the general direction of my trash can. Based on the sound it makes, I can tell it didn’t go in, and I sigh heavily. Before I can get up to rectify my mistake, however, I hear Sander walk behind me to handle it, and I sent him a wordless pulse of gratitude.


    “So, do we have anybody working that right now?”


    “Indeed we do,” Sofie replies, eyes lighting up. “Nikitha’s cooking up some delayed-release poisons, and Valent’s shadowing a couple of the other participants to figure out when the best opportunity to dose them will be.”


    Cheating like this is against the official rules of the Championship, but in practice, it’s quite commonplace. That doesn’t mean nobody’s on the lookout for it, of course- part of the challenge is seeing if we can manage to cheat without getting caught.


    “Naturally, incapacitating all of them isn’t going to be possible, so we narrowed our list of targets down to the biggest threats in each unit. I can share it, if you’d like.”


    “Sure, hit me.”


    With a double-blink, Grant transfers the file to me over the brainband, and I scan through it quickly. What strikes me first is how few people the Komodos have participating- probably because they’re confident they can secure the highest ranking by winning the War Games alone. However, among those who are likely to participate, they have one serious threat. Hector Casales, their combat officer, seen practicing his pankration against a training ‘bot, same as Mars. And though I respect Mars’ martial abilities, I know which one of the two I think would win in a fair fight, and it’s not him.


    Anand, the Ox Unit assassination specialist who stabbed me during the War Games, is slated to participate in the gymnastics event opposite Sofie. Part of me wonders if my Intelligence Officer included her on this list specifically to take revenge for the earlier attempt on my life, though of course I’m sure Sofie wouldn’t do something like that purely based on a grudge she’s holding.


    Apparently Tellis will be taking part in the fencing event, and Heinonen will be running track, though how she intends to do that while wearing her mechanical ‘exo-dermis’ I have little idea. How we could possibly poison her while she’s wearing it is a question worth asking as well, though I’m sure Valent is hard at work figuring out an answer as we speak.


    From the Peregrines, there’s a bunch of names I don’t really recognize, including a fencer, a gymnast, and a runner, among others.


    “We’re probably not even going to get to everybody on that list,” Sofie explains. “Valent’s going to see how many he can deal with, then it’ll be up to us to figure out what to do about the others. Which brings us to option two- fucking with the events themselves.”


    “So, sabotaging equipment, manipulating the scoring system, that sort of thing?”


    “Precisely,” Grant confirms. “The tech team may be of some assistance, but they seem largely preoccupied with your ‘Project Barbicane’ at the moment.”


    “Right, yeah. That’s gotta take priority, sorry.”


    “Understood. We’ve still got some resources at our disposal. My recommendation from the beginning has been to focus on rigging events where our participant’s ability is more of a concern than that of the other competitors.”


    “Such as?” I ask, eyebrow raised. Clearly, grant’s trying to be diplomatic, but this isn’t the place to be beating around the bush. If he things some of our people aren’t up to snuff, I need to know who.


    “Colleen will be competing in the speed-skating event as well as fencing, and while none of the other participants vastly outstrip her in terms of skill, the same can be said of her relative to them. Finding a way to tilt things in her favor would be to our advantage.”


    Leaning back into the couch, I contemplate the conundrum. Any kind of ice-skating event is difficult to rig, short of bashing in the kneecaps of your opponents, or otherwise incapacitating them. And if we’re reserving that for the more serious threats, we need to find another way to give Colleen the leg up she needs.


    Another complicating factor is that Colleen, being rather prideful, would likely refuse outright if we offered her performance-enhancers, or implants, to help ensure she wins. So whatever we come up with has to be something she won’t know about, any more than her opponents.


    “Okay, thought.” Sofie says, raising a hand to speak. “We embed some high-powered magnets under the ice, deep enough that nobody will see ‘em. Then during the event, we have somebody watching who can activate them remotely to throw the others off balance.”


    Grant clears his throat.


    “I can see... a few logistical issues,” he says delicately.


    “Just a few?” I ask with a laugh. “Okay, first- how do we get the magnets under the ice in the first place? If we melt the entire thing and drop ‘em in, they’ll just sink to the bottom and be useless, plus there’s no way we can re-freeze the entire thing before anybody notices. And if we carve out a hole or something, that’ll be even more obvious. Plus, there’s no guarantee they wouldn’t end up throwing Colleen off too, same as all the others.”


    “Sheesh,” Sofie replies, raising her hands in surrender, though with an amused expression. “Just spitballing here. I’m the spy, anyway. Wacky schemes are supposed to be your area of expertise.”


    “Being an unparalleled strategic genius is my area of expertise,” I shoot back, with more than a little irony in my voice. But I do appreciate the idea, even if it’s... completely unworkable.”


    “Well, I’m happy to hear your brilliant plan any time now.”


    “Hey, who said anything about that?”


    Sofie rolls her eyes with a laugh. Rather than continuing the banter, we both fall silent, contemplating the problem before us. The magnet plan was a bit outlandish, but I have to admit, I’m struggling to come up with anything better.


    “We could always just blunt the blades of their skates, no?” Grant asks idly. “Or perhaps it would be more practical to replace the blades with pre-blunted ones…”


    The simple elegance of the idea cuts through the fog of my confusion like- well, like an ice skate. I clap my hands together, satisfied.


    “That’s perfect. See if you can source some blunt blades, I’ll figure out when the best opportunity to make the swap will be.”


    Or more accurately, my copyclan will. There’s more important stuff I need to be doing with my body.


    “Excellent,” Grant says, betraying not a hint of smugness at having been the one to crack the conundrum. “Now, there is one more event we ought to discuss.”


    Putting his fork down in the empty salad bowl, he glances at Sofie, as though trying to read her expression before he goes any further.


    “I don’t mean to impugn your abilities, but by your own admission, it’s been some time since you competed at this level. Moreover, your chief competitor, Anand of the Oxen, will likely be impossible to incapacitate, thanks to the efforts of her unit’s counterintelligence specialist, Gardinier. If we wish to secure an uncontested victory in the gymnastics event—”


    “We should see about tipping the scales in my favor,” Sofie finishes. “Sure, fine by me. I don’t think I’ll need it to win, but I know I’m biased on the subject, so I’ll defer to you.”


    Almost imperceptibly, Grant breathes a sigh of relief.


    “Glad to hear it. There are, of course, far more ways to manipulate an event like that- perhaps marginally widening the aperture of those hoops you’re jumping through.”


    What he’s suggesting would be impossible, if it was physical rings and hoops she was jumping through, but the Citadel uses holographics for many of its events, including gymnastics. Meaning that if we can hack the holoprojector, we can replace the rings with ones that are just a bit more generous for when Sofie’s doing her routine, and then switch them back- or even make them more punishing -when her competitors are going.


    “Sure, sounds good to me.”


    Even being more familiar than the average person with Sofie’s face, I’m having a hard time reading her right now. I don’t think she’s prideful enough to really be bothered by all this, but at the same time, I’d probably feel a little weird if I knew the sharpshooting event was gonna be rigged in my favor somehow.


    “No plans to mess with my event?” I ask mildly, trying not to sound like I’m suspicious of anything.


    “Not especially,” Grant replies, cautious. “Do you think we ought to?”


    “Well, like Sofie said, I’m not exactly impartial. And there’s no reason for me to be treated any different from the others. So I’ll leave it to you two.”


    The two of them share a look, neither looking like they want to speak first. It’s almost disappointing- I thought I’d cultivated more of a relaxed atmosphere, where nobody would be unwilling to speak their mind. Maybe it’s just that I’ve been away for too long.


    “Honestly, I don’t think I can judge that,” Sofie says eventually. “Shooting stuff’s not my specialty.”


    “How about we ask Niko, then? Or his copyclan, if he’s not around.”


    “That makes sense. As Combat Officer, he’s more likely to have paid attention to your shooting than either of us.”


    The two of them seem glad to have found an answer that doesn’t require either of them to express an opinion. Hopefully, this weird reluctance to be honest with me will pass soon. If not, I’m going to have to confront them about it directly, which is sure to be an uncomfortable conversation. They’re not giving me much choice right now, though, I need advisors who I can rely on to tell me when I’m being stupid, not ones who’ll agree with me sycophantically no matter what I say.


    Closing my eyes, I broadcast a brainband shout in the general direction of Niko’s room, one floor down. It doesn’t really matter whether the ‘real’ him or his copyclan responds, since they’re the same people, plus or minus a body.


    Hey! I need your opinion on something real quick.


    What’s up? he replies casually. This isn’t actually a completely uncommon question for me to shoot his way, though usually I ask in the middle of the night, and the subject is typically a little more inane.


    How’s my shooting? Like, in general. I’m gonna be doing it at the Championship- uh, as part of an event, not just sniping random people in the crowd -and we’re trying to decide if it needs to be rigged to make sure I win.


    Apparently I’m a little more nervous to hear his answer than I thought, judging by that word salad.


    Your shooting is excellent, he informs me calmly, making it clear in his tone that he’s not just telling me what he thinks I want to hear. Almost certainly in the top percentile among our class, because you spent years practicing on your homeworld, while most others rely on skillsoft downloads.


    Niko’s rational answer makes most of my worries evaporate immediately. Put that way, it makes perfect sense. Most Nobles are from relatively high-population areas, be it densely-packed urban hellscapes like Limbo City, or whatever nightmarish suburb Sofie hails from. Places, in other words, where firing ranges aren’t abundant and doing target practice in your backyard is frowned upon. I, however, grew up on a farm-world, where nobody was around to complain about me honing my skills with a rifle.


    Oh. Uh, thanks—


    What you should be concerned about, he continues, is the other units attempting to sabotage you. Your faculty with a rifle isn’t exactly a secret, and preventing you from taking home a medal in that event is to everybody else’s benefit.


    As soon as he says it, that, too, fits perfectly into place like a puzzle piece I hadn’t known was missing.


    You’re totally right. And I mean that completely sincerely, even though it probably didn’t sound that way.


    I understand, he replies, and terminates the connection, though not before sending me the phantom image of a fond smile.


    “My shooting is fine,” I tell Sofie and Grant confidently, opening my eyes. They both turn back to look at me, having gotten bored about six seconds into my silent conversation with Niko and started looking at their palm-screens. “What we need to worry about is the other units trying to rig the event against me. So figure out what the best way to rig the event would be, and then figure out how to un-rig it.”


    It takes several long seconds for them to process what, exactly, I’m asking them to do. Eventually, when it clicks, Sofie grins at me.


    “You got it, boss. Good to have you back.”