There were more bouts after Mirah’s initial bout. They went as you’d expect. Mirah couldn’t win against Ajax no matter how hard she tried. Ajax was just faster and stronger than her, and no matter how much the voice whispered in her ears, she inevitably got hit hard enough that she went down. Even if she managed to get a few good hits in herself, Ajax just shrugged off like being hit with a pillow.

Walter… well, he didn’t fare that well, even. Mirah couldn’t be sure, but she suspected that Ajax had let the much smaller man get a few pity hits in. Not that it’d fool Willem.

The sparring went on for a few hours, and by the end Mirah was more wiped than she had been in the first few days of running around the stadium straining area. Especially when Willem was forcing them to fight their hardest every round, though Ajax was sent off to do some weight training in conjunction with it because he couldn’t really go all out and crush Walter and Mirah, someone would end up with something broken.

Mirah and Walter wandered off in their own directions, Walter towards the cafeteria for a snack and Mirah went straight to the bathroom. Upon leaving the Underground’s toilets, which were just as nice as personal bathrooms due to the floor to ceiling cubicle walls and warmed seats—though the warmed seats freaked Mirah out—she saw the small form of Willem leaning against the wall a fair distance away down the hallway.

The small man-made eye contact with Mirah and gestured for her to follow. She sighed but obliged as she followed the man down the maze of hallways, finally reaching a door that was rather out of the way. On the door was a small slide in plaque on the door that read ‘Willem Ross: Linked Coach’.

The man himself opened the door and walked in, leaving it open for Mirah to do so herself. As she walked into the small office, and closed the door behind her, she looked around the room.

There was a lot of stuff crammed into not much space. For one, the desk was pretty large for the room it was in, probably only got into the room in the first place by disassembling the wooden monster and reassembling it inside the room. One wall of the room was lined with shelves that were crammed full of trinkets and curiosities, artifacts of a world that was alien to Mirah, and possibly to many of those in her own team.

She sat in the chair opposite the stocky man, who had sat down in a large and comfortable chair which looked old and worn, but loved and appreciated. In fact, Mirah felt that for every inch of this room, from the wall of trinkets to the heavy wooden desk, even to the computer that had an old crème coloured mechanical keyboard that must have been from the mid nineteen-eighties, not that Mirah would recognise it as such.

Everything in the room, perhaps besides the framed awards and pictures that seemed like a staple of any office, was well used and well loved. Mirah couldn’t detect dust anywhere, even in the harder to reach parts of the trinket shelf.

“Hope you enjoyed training today, Mirah.” Willem said taciturnly, Mirah nodded as a response. “I’m sure you can have a guess about why I called you in here, but I’d like to talk to you about your link and what it is.” The short man rhythmically tapped the pristine wooden surface of his desk, his eyes trained on Mirah’s.

“Now,” he continued, “what do you truly think your link is, Mirah?” Willem asked, content to let the silence consume the contents of the room and let the question settle in the scarred girl’s mind.

In all honesty, Mirah had no idea. She had barely used the link before she was brought to be trained in the Underground by Tracker. Before that, there had only been one or two cases that she had used the link, both for tiny, ineffectual actions, like tripping someone and listening to the whispers that made it to her ear. Anything that she had learned over then last week or so had been entirely new news to her.

“I don’t know.” Willem raised an eyebrow.

“Put some more thought into it.” He said gently, but Mirah sat still, clearly not making any headway on the topic for a few minutes. Though, she wasn’t exactly trying. After a long while he nodded.

“Tracker told me a bit about you. How she found you.” Mirah’s eyes focused on the stocky man once again.

“How?” She said simply, prompting a grin from Willem.

“She was trying to find someone else and was keeping her radar on, just in case. For safety reasons.” Mirah nodded in agreement, where she had been living was a very dangerous area, even for Linked.

“Why did she choose me?” Willem’s smile grew, but more into something resembling a fatherly smile, or maybe an uncle’s smile. Mirah wouldn’t know.

“Because, and I quote, ‘She had the most complex marking I have ever seen’.” Mirah’s face scrunched up.

“What is that supposed to mean?” She said, almost frustrated at the bizarre answer, but Willem just waved it away.

“It would be poor form of me to let Tracker’s secrets out of the bag but suffice it to say that it means that your link is far more complex than just simply telekinesis, though the untrained eye will certainly believe it so.” Mirah just shrugged.

“What does it matter if someone believes it to be telekinesis? What I have discovered about my link doesn’t scream powerful.” Mirah said, in possibly one of her longest sentences she had spoken in years, not that Willem cared to show his surprise at how much he was getting the girl to talk.

“You’re right. But thinking of your link as telekinesis will only hamper your development. If your power is as complex as I’ve been told, then it has some of the greatest potential we’ve ever seen.” Mirah was almost surprised at the seriousness Willem brought to the discussion. Willem sighed, rubbing at his bald head before he made his way down to his cropped brown beard, which he smoothed passively.

“Mirah, I think it is prudent to make you understand how important this training is for you and your peers. It probably seems like the simplest thing you’ve ever done at the moment, and that’s fine. Training has been mostly getting you into shape and some light sparring today, but the consequences of what happens in training are far and wide and have a real, tangible impact on what happens in your future.” Willem looked to Mirah and saw her piercing gaze meet his.

“I overheard Aaliyah telling you of the world outside, the gangs and elaborating some. The girl is smart, cunning even, and you clearly understand that.” Willem paused and Mirah quickly nodded, “However she doesn’t have a true understanding of the higher up politics of Melbourne, or even Australia at the moment. She has a unique and limited understanding of the world from her own experiences that I have been made privy to as her trainer.”

“There is far more to all of this,” he waved his hand wildly around the room, insinuating the entire building or more, “than you all know right now. There is a reason that a team of undefineds were collected, despite the AASAU being against their usage for years. A sponsor.”

“Who?” Mirah asked immediately, but Willem shook his head.

“I don’t know. I wish I did.” He picked up a glass of water and sipped at it, thinking for a moment before continuing. “Sponsoring the formation of teams is common and is usually anonymous. I know that Walter and Aaliyah know of the practice. But they are anonymous for a reason. All I know, in your case, is that they are big fish. Really big fish.” Mirah scrunched her nose up at the man.

“How could you know? You specifically said that you didn’t know who sponsored us.” Willem just raised an unamused eyebrow at the now very frustrated girl.

“I know, Mirah, because not only was I hired to train you, Tracker was hired to find and then manage you.” He said darkly. “Most people couldn’t afford to hire me to train their little team of prospective employees, let alone have Tracker run around on errands. Most corporations couldn’t convince their board to pay my fees.” Mirah desperately wanted to ask more about what he meant, but the man waved the conversation away.

“Regardless, you need to find out more about your link. Think on it properly, test things, hypothesize. The way I see things going, you very well might need it. Understood?” Mirah wanted to ask more, to have all her questions answered, but the man didn’t seem open to those questions for some reason. She got the feeling that he had overstepped a boundary by saying what he already had. She could only nod, stand up from her chair, and exit the small, but cosy office.

The trip back to the team’s floor from the underground was always a rough one. Especially after being knocked out, Aaliyah was finding. Though she had to admit she brought that down on herself. As she was making her way towards her own room, however, she heard the elevator ding behind her.

Aaliyah turned, curious as to who had made it back to their floor after even her, when Mirah walked out of the elevator. Aaliyah scowled subconsciously.

Aaliyah was good at putting on masks, great at it even. She had been a social chameleon for years, accomplishing quite a few things through her manipulations and cunning, but Mirah was a different beast altogether.

Aaliyah had tried multiple different angles with the girl over the past week, playing a different ‘character’ the best she could. Sympathetic friend, excited colleague, and far more, but nothing seemed to work. One look from the horrifically scarred girl blew away the attempt before it even started.

She hadn’t found someone so blatantly unmanipulable ever. Aaliyah had manipulated and cheated people of almost exactly Mirah’s profile, but still she was seen through at every corner. It was so bad that the rest of the group noticed it. For the moment they, or at least Walter, had pinned it on Mirah being borderline antisocial, but Ajax was more of a wildcard. He was easily swayed by group as a whole, content to go with the flow of how the group felt as a rule, but alone he was more formidable, more prying.

Aaliyah huffed indignantly while she fumbled out the key card to her room, formulating plans inside her head on how to change her position in the group, when she felt a tap on the shoulder. The blonde girl whipped around to see Mirah, her ghoulishly scarred face staring at the other girl silently. Aaliyah quickly schooled her features into one of pleasant surprise.

“Uh, hi! How did training go?” She asked and innocuous question, hoping to get herself out of the presence of the keen-eyed girl as quick as possible. Mirah’s scarred visage didn’t even twitch at the sudden change in demeanour.

“We need to talk.” Mirah’s voice was low and quiet, conspiratorial even. Aaliyah’s ears perked up at the sound.

“Sure!” She said, willing to endure the frankly creepy girl’s presence for at least a while for some interesting gossip. The pair stood outside the door in silence before Mirah looked towards Aaliyah’s hand that held the key card to her room.

“Uh, come right in!” Aaliyah exclaimed, rather embarrassed she hadn’t picked up on that earlier. Though she supposed that it fit the character she was trying to play at the moment. Aaliyah lead Mirah into her room, and plopped herself down on the couch after turning the lights on and throwing her key card onto her kitchen bench. She didn’t know why there were kitchens in every room when you could order from the cafeteria and get some of the best food that Aaliyah had ever tasted, but to each their own.

“So! What did you want to talk about?” She said with a pleasant smile, betraying her eagerness to get any gossip out of the stony girl as she could. It was shaping up to practically being a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Mirah gently sat herself down in a chair opposite Aaliyah, surveying the room quickly before returning her gaze to the beautiful blonde headed manipulator in front of her.

“You knew we were sponsored.” She said. Aaliyah raised an eyebrow at Mirah.

“Yeah? Practically everyone in this building is, Mirah. Nothing special.” Mirah took this in. So, it really was common knowledge, she thought.

“I spoke to Willem. He warned me.” Concern flickered over Aaliyah’s face as it formed a confused mask.

“Warned you of what, Mirah?”

“He warned me to be worried about who sponsored us.” She responded. Aaliyah’s confusion only grew.

“Did he say who?” Mirah shook her head

“No, he said he has no idea who our sponsor is.”

“Then how does he know to be worried?”

“He said because they hired him and Tracker.” Mirah spoke, waiting for a moment before it seemed to slowly sink into Aaliyah’s expression, finally adding, “He told me whoever sponsored us is big fish.”