“This is my boost, right? I’m being implanted with all my super wooper fighting gadgets?”

“Wow, what are they giving you? I could do with some myself. We don’t start boosting until next week. That’s to give us time to recover from our test.”

He let out a long sigh, his head sinking deeper into the pillow as his muscles relaxed. “Are you testing me?”

“No. We never left, you know. Never got signed out of our training. The resort island, the fun we all had there, it was just the halftime break in another combat tactics game. That’s all. It’s never going to end, Dellian, not ever. Not for us.”

“All righty,” he mumbled as his eyes closed.

She gazed down fondly at the sleeping boy and kissed his forehead. “Get well. I need you.”

—

Principal Jenner’s office was at the top of the tallest building in the clan estate. Nothing as majestic as the skyscrapers in Afrata over the other side of the valley, but the view through the curving transparent walls was nonetheless impressive. The sight of the valley stretching away into hazy distance even roused Yirella from her mood as she stepped out of the portal door.

Alexandre was waiting for her and gave her a gentle embrace as soon as she entered. That was when she realized she was now a few centimeters taller than hir.

“How are you, my dear?” Alexandre asked, gesturing her to a couch.

“Absolutely fine,” Yirella replied stiffly. She gazed at Jenner, sitting behind hir desk. The principal was male cycling, dressed in a suit of some shiny ebony fabric with a slim white collar and scarlet piping, which made hir look more imposing than any head of a simple educational establishment should be.

“But then I was never in any real danger, was I?”

Jenner and Alexandre exchanged a glance.

“No,” Alexandre admitted with deep reluctance. “If you’ll indulge me: When did you work it out?”

“Why? So you can avoid making the same mistake with the next yeargroup?”

“That’s not quite as detrimental as you seem to think,” Jenner said. “We are all of us learning here. We simply wish to know if we should adapt our procedures and tell the girls in advance.”

“But not the boys?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“They are the point troops. You know this. They have to learn how to act together in a unit.”

“I think even the boys have got that by now,” Yirella growled. “Eighteen years of indoctrination tends to make that very clear.”

“We are not indoctrinating you,” Jenner said immediately. “This is a training facility, that’s all.”

“Training us to fight for you.”