It had been about a month since ‘the incident’ as it had been dubbed. August had rolled around, meaning it at least wasn’t snowing for a bit, and training was about to start soon.

So, to celebrate my last free days, I decided to go out and explore as much of Berlin as I could by myself. Of course, I wasn’t completely alone. Henry had informed me that my father apparently cared for me enough to appoint a small military escort, although they were so good at hiding that I couldn’t see them.

Okay, I might not have liked the man, but I had to admit that this was cool. I thought things like this only happened in movies. Then again, I was also training to pilot a giant robot. Hell, I had actually piloted it once already.

Maybe I didn’t have any dreams beyond that. Why did that have to be a problem? I was going to be better than Mark Three, better than my dad. I was going to show them how wrong he was. I wasn’t just some random kid he could do what he wanted with.

I was his son. And I would become the greatest Progression Series pilot of all time!

I laughed to myself a little, looking around at the square I was in. Not a lot of people were there. And I was a twelve year old kid that was seemingly completely alone, so I had to carefully avoid a couple of strangers. I’d started learning German, apparently being very adept at it-probably because of ‘the incident’-but even then this square, known as Gendarmenmarkt, was intimidating for me to pronounce.

“Über dich selbst lachen?” said a voice from behind me.

Turning around, I saw that it was a blonde freckled boy my age, his green eyes glinting with mischief. He was dressed rather lightly considering how cold it was, wearing only a dark green sweater and grey pants. But then again, maybe I was also a bit overdressed, with my thick jacket, gloves and skull cap.

“Uh… My name is Jacob?” I said in probably awful German, extending a gloved hand outwards. It took me a while to properly understand what he’d said, asking me if I was ‘laughing at myself’ if I understood correctly. Still, I wasn’t sure how to respond properly.

“You’re not from here?” said the boy, looking at one of the three buildings that really stood out in this square.

“Not really.” I said, looking at the floor. “I have to move here because of my father.” I didn’t know how much I was allowed to say regarding the whole ‘piloting giant robots’ thing, so I decided to say as little as I could.

“Then you don’t really know anyone here? I’m Tom, by the way. Do you know what school you’ll be going to?” It was getting easier to understand the boy, Tom, and speak the language now that I was actually doing so with someone other than my teacher, although I still had to concentrate quite a lot.

“School?” I hadn’t thought about it actually. Would they homeschool me like they are now, or would I get to go to school. “No, I don’t. But there’s a friend they’ll probably force me with.” I said, looking back at Tom. This was the first person I’d talked to in Germany outside of Henry and Louisa, and both weren’t my favourite.

“Aw, scheiße! Hey, maybe we’ll end up in the same school. Ask your dad! I can give you my number either way!”

It was clear that Tom was a bit of an extrovert. And that the scheiße word he spoke was a swear. My friend George from back home was like that too. I had to hold in a sigh thinking about that. I hadn’t had the chance to talk to either him or Michael. But maybe living here didn’t have to be as bad as I thought.

“Sure.” I told him, pulling out my phone from my jacket’s left pocket. As if on cue, it started ringing, showing a number that was unfortunately too familiar to me.

“Excuse me.” I said to Tom as I answered the call. “What do you want?”

“We are supposed to have synch practice in a few minutes, dummkopf!” yelled the feminine voice on my phone in German. “Where are you?”

“At the, you know, Gendar-Gendarm-thing!” I responded still using the language.

“Gendarmenmarkt.” said Tom from his spot next to me.

“Did you catch that?” I asked, hoping to not have to repeat the awful word.

“Yeah, yeah. At least you’re making actual friends. I’m outside the French one. I’ll see you there.”

“Wait! What French one? Louisa!” I said to the phone. But I was too late. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but ‘scheiße’ seemed to fit here.

“I think she meant the church.” smiled Tom, pointing at the building furthest away from where we were standing. “Was that friend you talked about?”

“Yeah.” Suddenly my phone rang once more. “Is that you?” I asked Tom, who was still smiling.

“Yes!” he nodded enthusiastically. “Ask your friend if she’s going to the Cosmopolitan school! That’s where I’m at. Hope we can be friends!”

Saying goodbye to him, I watched Tom run up to a woman holding a baby. She looked almost the same as him, his mother probably.

This time I didn’t hold back my sigh.

I started walking back to the church in order to meet with my copilot. Louisa and I had spent the past month basically glued to each other, doing various things together so we might sync more with each other.

They made us do everything from dancing or talking in perfect sync, to just walking with matching steps and tapping our fingers. They also made us learn each other’s language and switch between the two and English whenever we spoke.

Looking around the church for a bit, I saw Louisa dressed even more heavily than me, looking in my opposite direction and waiting with a shopping bag in her hand. I couldn’t help but think about the memory of her in the hospital. With her parents. Did she see something from my past? We never really talked about what we saw back there, or even what we did.

Surprisingly enough, she threw the bag at me. Even more surprisingly, considering my lack of attention, I caught it perfectly. It was pretty light, and it didn’t feel like she had clothes in here.

“Maybe this whole synch thing isn’t a bad idea.” smirked Louisa, speaking in Greek.

Thank God. I could probably keep up with German, but I didn’t really want to. “What do you have here?” I asked, using my native tongue.

“Some drawing supplies, nothing special.” said Louisa absemindetly. Her Greek had gotten better in the past month, at least better than my German. “I called Henry, he’ll come pick us up and take us to your daddy.”

I had to struggle myself to not shout at her snarling face. “You know it’s not like that.” I told her quietly.

“Yeah, yeah, you’ve said that before.” she waved her hands around. “But am I to believe that-”

“-my father didn’t get me here as a gift, or favour, or whatever else you’ve said?” I almost shouted, looking at the smirking girl. It might have been the synch training, or it might have been the time we’ve spent together, but I knew I’d fallen into her trap.

“Has anyone told you that you’re fun to tease?”

“Has anyone told you that your Greek sucks?” I told her. It wasn’t the truth, she spoke much better than some of the tourists that were coming to the country every year. They were dreadful. Still, it wasn’t the worst I could say to her, I knew that, but I honestly didn’t want to say anything too bad. Yeah, I was too soft and, unlike her, I didn’t want to risk anything regarding our piloting.

“He also told me what we’re going to be doing today.” said Louisa, too cheerfully, in order to change the subject.

“And what is that?”

“We’re going back to Mark Nine.” she said, suddenly losing even her forced cheerfulness.

“Oh.”

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to enter the machine. I did. Piloting it was my dream after all. Although I had to say that to myself more often than I’d like to.

Become the best. Show him I wasn’t just some nobody. That he made a mistake leaving me behind. That was the plan. And I couldn’t do it without getting in the robot.

So why were my hands shaking?