“Didn’t you hear a word I said, trainee? These are dangerous. I didn’t give you permission to move. You could have killed someone! Now hold still.” He seized Tom’s wrists and slammed them to his sides with a mighty clang that traveled all the way up the exosuit. Blackburn leaned in close so his gray eyes bore right into Tom’s and whispered, “This is not a game.”

Then Blackburn hoisted him up by the collar plate of the exosuit and carried him step by careful step across the arena. Tom hung there, arms at his sides, the eyes of the other trainees fixed on them every clanking step of the way. He got a mental image of a cat carrying a kitten by the scruff of its neck, and the giggles and sniggers of the other trainees stung his ears and confirmed that he looked as ridiculous as he thought.

Blackburn set him down carefully, then led them through exercise after exercise, working on finely tuned control, giving specific heights to jump to, specific stride lengths to walk. By the end of the lesson, Blackburn had progressed them at that same snail’s pace to the point where they could perform some basic marches. Some made less progress than others. Wyatt was reluctant to move at all, even though when she did move, she was much smoother than people like Vik, who seemed unable to walk without flailing jerks of his limbs.

Tom tried to do the precision thing, but it made him feel awkward, the way thinking about breathing too much could make it difficult to breathe. The truth was, he found exosuiting easy. Very easy, actually—as natural as walking but a hundred times more thrilling. Since the very sound of Blackburn’s voice made him want to do something violent, Tom decided to tune him out altogether and go with his instincts whenever Blackburn was turned away. At one point, Tom glanced behind him and felt a surge of certainty he could do something awesome here. He crouched down then shoved off into a backflip.

He wasn’t sure he could’ve landed one in real life, but now he clanked back to the ground on his feet with perfect ease. Kelcy Demos and Jennifer Nguyen were both staring at him, wide-eyed.

He shrugged his shoulders. “I’m awesome at this.”

They rolled their eyes.

Tom was disappointed. He’d hoped they’d be more impressed. He noticed Vik struggling with his own exosuit, so Tom made sure to saunter over to him and rub in his face how good he was with it by doing a jig right in front of him.

“I get it. You’re good,” Vik grumbled.

“Good? I’m like the Einstein of exosuiting. This is so easy. I even did a flip a minute ago. Seriously, I’ll take any challenge you wanna throw down, buddy.”