One room is filled with dozens of wallscreen monitors, showing the street outside and other locations through the city. Others show long streams of code, blinking in the dim light. Empty chairs and desks line up in front of them.

“The rest of the team will mostly be watching us from the SFPD headquarters, but they can be based here occasionally, once we’re undercover.”

So many screens. There’s the outside of the TransAm Pyramid. There’s the outside of my apartment building, and Tila’s. The police station. Warehouses. Stark skyscrapers.

“Right,” I say, for lack of anything better.

He shows me the other rooms. Many of them are empty. There are a few bedrooms, stark as hotels. I throw my bag into one that has a good view of the park. He doesn’t show me his room.

The last area of the house is the training room. It’s large, with that gym smell of rubber, metal, old sweat and cleaning solution.

To the right is a practice mat, weights and staffs along one wall. My eyes are drawn instead to the brainloading Chair on the right.

He sees the hesitation, his brow drawing down in confusion. “You knew brainloading would be the main component of the training, correct?” he asks. “We don’t have time to do it another way. Your file says you used a Chair frequently when you came to San Francisco, to catch up on all you and your sister hadn’t learned while at the Hearth.”

At the mention of my sister, I suppress a flinch. I’m here because of her. This is all happening because of my twin, but I still miss her with a pain deeper than my scar. I stand unnaturally still, every muscle tense. I force myself to appear unconcerned. I’m annoyed my fear is so obvious. “It’s fine,” I say, keeping my voice smooth. “I just haven’t used one for years, is all.”

That machine was one of my first introductions to modern technology after the actual surgery. Upon realizing just how damn ignorant we were, Tila and I had jumped into Chairs willingly enough, brainloading information on history, politics, math, science and anything else that captured our interest. Tila had been more interested in art history and other cultures, whereas I’d been drawn to science.

People were surprised by how easily and quickly we integrated the information. Most people had a fifty percent retention rate. Good, obviously, for hours of information pooled into a brain, and people often finished degrees by age sixteen or seventeen, so we were grossly behind. It didn’t take long for us to catch up. From our training with Mana-ma, we had a ninety-five percent retention rate.