The halls of the Underground were overwhelming to Mirah. She had never been in a place even remotely like it. Not even when she lived in the orphanage.

It was sterile, yet it had a homey feeling. It wasn’t cold, nor did it smell like a hospital either. It smelt pleasant and was relatively warm, maybe by virtue of being further underground. Mirah, however, was still anxious beyond belief.

Earlier the other girl in the group, she believed her name was Aaliyah, tried to speak with her. She hadn’t spoken with anyone all that much in her time on the streets, but one type of person she knew very well were snakes.

Snakes were just people who were in it for something. Constantly analysing the situation, asking themselves what they can gain, who can they gain it from, and when they can safely rid themselves of that person.

She had seen a little bit of it in everybody on the streets, aside from the rare person that mostly just kept to themselves, content to live their lives separate from the rest, as Mirah did.

But this girl, Aaliyah, was a snake. No doubt about it. One of the most dangerous ones she had ever encountered. If asked, Mirah wouldn’t be able to say why she knew. Just that it was a feeling that originated in her gut. The way she had smiled at her, the manufactured tilt of her head, the fake cheerfulness in her voice, the warmly extended hand. It was all too slick, too easy.

She had tried to be somewhat personable in her response, but she couldn’t drag it out of herself to do so. It was draining just being in the vicinity of her, worried what angle she was going to take, if she would try and stab her in the back.

All concerns that were perfectly reasonable in the streets, but in these halls, Mirah knew cognitively that there was little to no chance anything of that nature would happen. In the streets, if you got stabbed, you would be walked over by the other street dwellers, maybe even sneaking a hand into your pockets and bags as you bled out.

Mirah followed the distinct clacking of the heels Tracker wore through the relatively self-explanatory halls, taking in all the sights. The halls were extremely clean, but not overly sterile like she had first thought and the stark white had almost implied. She didn’t think that any chemical could make anything this clean, and the amount of time it’d take to clean this amount of surface area as immaculately as this, there was probably someone here with a link that did this. It was mighty impressive to Mirah. She’d suffered through infections multiple times in her life, one in her facial scar that as even mortally perilous. If she had that link, she maybe could have saved herself from those weeks of torture. If it even worked like that, of course

Mirah and the rest of the group made a final turn before they were led to the face of two large doors.

“This is the Gym.” She pushed open the doors wide, revealing a massive room, filled with fighting rings, a bunch of sport courts, grassed areas for other sports, exercise equipment. It was baffling to Mirah.

In this one, single room, there was enough in development costs to build hundreds of houses, restore entire neighbourhoods. She pushed down the dark thought and simply accepted the sight.

“You will, over the next few weeks and months, be spending much of your time in here. Mostly partaking in instructed exercise. Otherwise, you will be in here training together or in battle within the Arena, though that’ll be quite a ways into the future from now.” She breezed passed some people using exercise equipment, one particular man went from almost stick thin to extremely muscular in a moment, deadlifting near a tonne without flinching before his muscles deflated back to their wiry frame. Tracker walked for a few moments more before they all arrived at yet another door.

“In here is a private training area. You are sponsored to have access to AASUA’s best trainer.” Without preamble, Tracker opened the door and strode in, not waiting for the team to file in behind her. The room was much smaller than the large stadium-like outer area. In here, though, it was clearly more specialised. The equipment was far more heavy duty, some that were likely made specifically to test links, and the walls were even clearly made to withstand explosions from Linked that can do that sort of thing.

“Willem, I brought this team for you.” Tracker called out. It was a moment before Mirah saw any movement, but out from behind some equipment a small, middle-aged, portly man walked out, brushing himself of some unseen dust. Mirah’s first opinion was that the man looked bored, eyes barely half open with a dull look on his face. He was far shorter than Mirah herself, standing only at maybe 5’2, if he’s lucky. His gut was large, overhanging the band of his trackpants, but not large enough that you could call him obese. His clothing was relatively standard exercise equipment, simply a t-shirt tucked into trackpants, holding his form together with at least a little propriety.

He had a cleanly shaven, bald head which was clearly taken well care of, as well as a bushy brown beard that just added intensity to an already intensely featured face, his eyes like concentrated lasers despite the boredom his lids would have you assume.

“Ah, Tracker. Lovely to see you again.” He said, his eyes crinkling at the side a little as he greeted her. Tracker seemed to share the pleasant feeling, and they quickly shook hands before Tracker nodded towards the group in farewell and strode out of the room at her ever efficient pace.

Then followed a long wait. The short man gestured at an invisible line, which the team promptly aligned themselves too. He then stood a few metres away and examined each of the trainees one by one. First, his eyes were drawn to Ajax. The tall man standing straight, but wearing a soft smile on his lips, his unflappably happy mood not waning in the slightest even when under the portly man’s scrutiny.

Willem looked at the definition in Ajax’s muscles, his eyes scanning over the impressively built man. It was all practical muscle as well, much of the strength that he would be able to wield would be found in the smaller, more obscure muscled formed by lifting and moving objects at inconvenient angles. He looked at the man’s hands next. They had clearly seen thousands to tens of thousands of hours of physical labour. It was something that Willem seemed to find appeasing, nodding slightly then looking directly into the other man’s eyes.

“Name?” He said plainly, his voice deep and gravelly, but said gently. The group was almost startled by the man speaking.

“Ajax Nephus, sir.” Willem nodded, pulling out a pad of paper and a fountain pen that looked like it had been bought fifteen years ago and scribbled down some words. He then turned his attention to Aaliyah. His face an impassive mask, something that was weirdly disturbing to Aaliyah. She had the same feeling when it came to Mirah, never really knowing what it was that she was thinking.

Willem looked over the girl’s body, taking note that she had pretty good musculature, something clearly born from an exercise regime. It wasn’t anything all that special in his eyes, but it was a good starting point for true Linked fitness. Impressive for an non-Linked person, maybe. He nodded again, acknowledging however, that the way her eyes moved and nature of her expression, that her expertise was well and truly elsewhere.

“Name?” He called again.

“Aaliyah.” He nodded, unperturbed by the lack of a last name. Ajax and Walter looked quizzically at her, but she didn’t seem to notice. Willem moved over and began to examine Walter.

Atrocious. He was clearly upper class and had absolutely no muscle to speak of. The kid was overweight, albeit relatively slim given the sort of sedentary lifestyle his appearance and mannerisms implied. He nodded again, his opinions not showing on his face at all.

“Name?”

“Walter Suen, sir.” Notes were written and then Willem moved on to Mirah. He immediately nodded without even looking.

“Name?”

“Mirah.” Again, he didn’t ask about the lack of a last name.

“Alright,” his voice soft, but carrying surprisingly well in the large room, “My name is Willem Ross, you can just call me Willem, or Coach or Sir, I don’t care. Your physical, team, and link training has been put in my hands for the duration of your stay here. You will do what I say, when I say it, when it comes to physical training. There will be no argument.” His voice was hard, doing his best to impress upon the team that there will likely be consequences.

“Your physical wellbeing has been placed in my hands. If you feel that there is something wrong with the physical training that I have given you, or you feel like that the training may be hurting you unduly, then speak to me and we can figure out a solution. I will not, however, change your exercise regime because you do not think it is important, or dislike it. I do not care for that mentality. Understood?” He said, his voice still like stone, but there was absolutely no escalation or yelling. It was entirely coolly delivered. The entire team nodded. He seemed satisfied that his point had been transferred correctly.

“Excellent. However, there is a case in which this does not apply. Training your links is an incredibly personal journey. You will be expected to make progress in controlling, understanding, and using your links during your time here. But I will not be giving you standardised exercises to train your links. They will all be custom built to your link itself with any amount of tweaking you so desire.” Walter and Ajax looked somewhat perturbed, as if they were thrown off balance, but Aaliyah and Mirah simply nodded. Willem noted this in his mind.

“We will converse about your links, and what you feel is a potential way forwards with them, and we will work collaboratively to ensure that you make progress with your links. This process is especially important as you all have powers that are considered undefined.” There it was. Undefined. Mirah knew and cared very little for what seemed like disregard for those with undefined powers, but Walter, Aaliyah and Ajax cringed ever so slightly at the definition. Willem, however, didn’t seem to care.

“In these next coming weeks you will be trained extraordinarily quickly, at a pace that you yourself will not believe you could be trained at. Our links give us more than just the manifestation of our powers, but also to change our body rapidly into physical powerhouses. There are many non-combat Linked that are able to handle situations with fully powered combat Linked, just using their physical prowess. That is our goal, so that if you lose the ability to use your link, you will have a level of physical ability to take advantage of.” He stared into the eyes of the group for a long second, giving them each a taste of his seriousness before looking away.

“Alright. Now that all of you have been briefed on what it is you will be doing, I want you to start running. Give me twenty laps around the Gym track.” The man then turned back to the exercise machine that he had been behind and disappeared. The team stood there for a moment, baffled.

There was no yell to start, no supervision. Just ‘do it and come back’. Mirah shrugged and started to walk out the door into the main gymnasium and started to jog.

She hadn’t jogged ever, really. It had only ever been walking and sprinting for her life. The process started out strong, but it only took a few hundred metres before she started to deteriorate. Her breathing became laboured, unable to breathe in enough air to properly sustain herself. She started to slow, and then Ajax calmly jogged past her. The sudden appearance of the massive man at her side was shocking, but he breezed past effortlessly, only stopping to give her a quick smile before forging ahead.

As she slowly worked her way back up to a jog, Aaliyah whizzed past as well, almost running in comparison to Ajax, who seemed to almost be leisurely walking. though they were going the same speed. Walter, the sort-of pudgy Asian kid, always managed to keep up with Mirah.

Mirah tried her best to keep going, but realised quickly that she couldn’t go too hard on herself or she would start to feel sick and faint, nearly actually fainting one time. Walter behind her was struggling just as hard, puffing heavily, and groaning from the pain. She could feel the pain as well, her legs had virtually no muscle, and they cramped terribly at multiple times during the run.

It didn’t help that whenever they seemed to slow down to catch their breath, Ajax passed by them, going at the same speed the entire time, consistently plodding along, shorty followed by Aaliyah, who was going slower and, despite her obvious efforts, couldn’t ever quite keep up with the man.

It took almost three hours for Mirah and Walter to complete twenty laps. Mirah collapsed to the floor by the door to the private gym, the past three hours spent only thinking about the number of laps left in the run and how much every part of her hurt.

Although Mirah was too exhausted to hear it, Walter collapsed to the ground on his hands and knees shortly after, sweat dripping from every inch of his body. In these twenty laps, he had truly come to despise that little bit of pudge that he had gained on his stomach over the year. The force it created while jogging, just enough to annoy him over and over again, While Walter lamented never using the linktech gym that his parents had funded for their own physical means, both Aaliyah and Ajax stood above them.

Ajax had his arms crossed, a small, proud smile on his lips as he looked down at the two people with wildly different issues with their bodies, both succeeding in the first step forwards. He, of course, had done his best to get a good, diligent exercise in, but he was effectively recovered after the forty-five-minute wait for the others to finish.

Aaliyah, on the other hand hid a smug smile, all the while she helped Walter with some water. She hadn’t been able to catch Ajax in the end, her physical state simply not comparable to the muscled monster. She had well and truly downplayed the amount of exhaustion she was feeling from running the entire time. She was naturally competitive and seeing the man so blasé about the physically demanding run was almost infuriating.

It was then that the short coach burst out of the large private gym and looked at the physical states everyone was in and nodded.

“Time for lunch.” And begun walking, gesturing for the group to follow.