“Huh. I didn’t know,” said Kira. She looked back at the weights. “So why are we here? What’s the plan?”

Sparrow scratched the side of her bladelike jaw. “Haven’t you figured it out? You’re going to lift weights.”

“I’m what?”

The short-haired woman chuckled. “Here’s the deal, Navárez. I don’t know you particularly well. But I do know that every time you screw up with the xeno, it seems to be when you’re stressed. Fear. Anger. Frustration. That sort of thing. Am I wrong?”

“No.”

“Right. So the name of the game is discomfort. We’re going to impose some carefully calibrated stress, and we’re going to see what that does to you and the Soft Blade. Okay?”

“… Okay,” said Kira, cautious.

Sparrow pointed at the exercise machine. “We’ll start simple-like, since that’s all I can count on from you.”

Kira wanted to argue … but the woman had a point. So Kira swallowed her pride and sat. One by one, Sparrow talked her through a series of lifts, testing her strength and the strength of the Soft Blade. First on the machine, and then with the free weights.

The results, Kira thought, were impressive. With the Soft Blade’s help, she was able to move nearly as much as a heavy exoskeleton. Her relative lack of mass was the greatest limiting factor; the slightest wobble of the weight threatened to unbalance her.

Sparrow didn’t seem much pleased. As Kira struggled to squat a bar loaded with an absurd number of plates, the woman tsked and said, “Shit, you really don’t know what you’re doing.” With a growl, Kira straightened her legs and dumped the bar onto the waiting rack and then glared at Sparrow. “The suit’s protecting you from your bad form.”

“So tell me what I’m doing wrong,” said Kira.

“Sorry, buttercup. Not what we’re here for today. Put another twenty kilos on, then try to use the suit to brace against the floor. Like a tripod.”

Kira tried. She really did, but the weight was more than her knees could withstand, and she wasn’t able to split her attention between the Soft Blade and the effort of balancing a bar that was more than heavy enough to kill her. She could stiffen the material around her legs—that much she could do—but extruding any sort of support at the same time was beyond her, and the xeno didn’t seem inclined to provide additional help on its own.

Quite the opposite, in fact. Beneath her jumpsuit, Kira felt the suit shifting and forming spikes in response to the strain. She tried to still herself (and by extension, the suit) but was only partially successful.

“Yeah,” said Sparrow as Kira racked the bar. “That’s what I thought. Okay, over here, on the mat.”

Kira obeyed, and the moment she was in place, Sparrow threw a small, hard object at her. Without thinking, Kira ducked, and at the same time, the Soft Blade lashed out with a pair of tendrils and smacked away whatever the object was.