“Most of our trainees do not survive their first ten missions. The reason for this is as difficult to accept as it is simple: our training is not preparing them for battle. We are failing them.”

–Master Bansuri, Senior Trainer in the Superhero Corps, in his final address to the Corps Inner Council.

“Most of our powers are based on pure instinct. Instinct can’t be taught, and it’s a waste of time to try. Our training should focus on surviving.”

–Extract from Dark Fire’s journal read at his trial.

I wake up with no idea of where I am, but at least this time I’m on a soft bed. My head hurts, and my body is stiff and painful when I try to move. My tat-a-gotchi buzzes on my arm impatiently, so I smash the feeding button until it quietens down. It takes me a few minutes before I realize that I was in a superhero battle.

“I’m alive,” I say, and I can hear the surprise in my own voice.

I like being alive.

I’m in a small, windowless room I’ve never seen before, and I’m wearing my tracksuit again. I notice two words carved into the wall beside the bed, over and over again.

“Simon Smith,” I read aloud.

The wall is hard plastic, and I have no idea why anyone would bother to carve their name into it. This must have been Simon’s room, and I wonder why he doesn’t need it anymore. I shrug and look around the room for clues. My room is sparse: just a bed, a chair, and a desk with Simon Smith carved all over them. That guy really liked seeing his own name.

“I wonder if we are underground?” I say aloud, because the room has no windows and everything around me is built of metal rather than brick or concrete.

I sit down at the desk and find a stack of thin books lying in a folder. I pick one and read the cover: ‘Tactics and Weapons Use’.

“I’m… really in superhero school?” I ask.

There are two doors to the room. One leads to a tiny bathroom, and the other is locked. Apparently I’m not free to wander, so I sit back down at the desk.

“Computer on,” I say. There is no sound.

I sigh. How can it be possible that this room doesn’t have a computer? Maybe the voice recognition is disabled. I touch the metal chip behind my ear. It beeps once, then twice. One beep for on, two beeps for a wireless connection. Win. A display flickers across my tat-a-gotchi. Most people don’t know that the tats can also work as computer screens, which is a useful trick. I open up the settings and find that voice control had been turned off months ago and that the computer had not been used since then. I turn the voice and hand controls on, because using the chip gives me a headache. That’s the problem with untested technology, but I suppose I can’t really complain.

The computer is connected to a network with a lot of security and firewalls, but I have a lot of skills from my misspent youth. Most of the security is designed to prevent people from accessing the network from outside, not from within. It takes me about an hour before I get onto the Internet and log onto my email.

“Eight video mails,” the computer says.

The first is from Tenchi. His worried face appears in miniature on my arm.

“Dude where are you? The hospital said you were taken away to a special facility, WTF. CALL ME.”

“Reply,” I say.

“No upload possible.”

Okay, I guess replying is out. The next video is from my dad.

“Where are you? I was on the way to the Superhero Corps Office to see you but they said you were already gone. Then I was caught up in the attack. They said you were taken to hospital. Call me!”

Typical Dad: the best intentions but always late to the party. I’m just glad that he is safe. I can’t reply to that email, either. The next five videos are from Dad again, Tenchi again, Dad and Tenchi together, a spam company offering me millions to work from home, and Dad a last time. He looks a lot more cheerful than before.

“We were told you are healthy and in training, but that you can’t communicate with us. Good luck, son, I know you’ll be great!”

The last video mail is from a sender I don’t recognize. I open it up and see Stace looking right back at me. She smiles, and my heart misses a beat.

Wait, what?

“Stace?” I say in surprise.

“Hey, I got this email from a friend who says you were taken to a training camp. I just wanted to say thank you for saving me! I hope training is going okay, I heard it’s pretty tough! Hang in there and you’ll be fine. I know you will be a great superhero!”

Someone bangs on my door and startles me. I initiate the power down and memory wipe programs I had loaded to remove any trace of my messing with the computer and then answer the door.

A steward in a white shirt is standing with a plate of fresh fruit and pastries. He offers them to me and I pick a few. There is a glass of fresh orange juice that I down far too quickly, and a set of multi-colored tablets. I eat quickly while the steward waits for me.

“Past Prime wants you in the training room. Please follow me.”

He leads me to the training hall where Past Prime and a handful of technicians in green are waiting. The technicians hand me a set of padded gloves and a helmet. The gloves are comfortable enough, but the helmet is heavy and cuts off my peripheral vision in much the same way as my suit helmet had. Past Prime dons similar gear and pulls two batons from his belt. The batons start glowing brightly; I have a bad feeling about this.

“Pain sticks,” he says, and holds a glowing blade against his skin. He removes it a second later, and the skin is already red and blistered.

“Two sticks for you, two sticks for me. We fight until you submit or you hit me. Now, show me what you can do!”

The sticks are heavy but well weighted. Tenchi has shown me a few moves for sword fighting, but I’m not great at it. Past Prime hits out at me and I parry clumsily. He hits again, a blow aimed at my neck that I step back from. Suddenly his blows are coming at me with startling speed. I feel a burn across my neck and a second on my arm. Past Prime retreats a little.

“You are too slow, too cautious, too easy to read.”

I attack with a lunge that he parries with ease. I feel his pain stick on my back and strike out desperately, hitting nothing. Past Prime closes in on me and my arms erupt in pain. I drop one of my sticks and do a terrible job of parrying with the other. I try to protect my face with my arm, but Past Prime beats me until I drop backwards onto the ground. I’ve never hurt this bad in my life, but I still manage to get to my feet.

“We stop when you submit,” he reminds me.

We spin, and I get a blow under my chin. I fall backwards but roll to my feet. He hits me in the chest, and I scream. I try to roll to my feet, but he knocks me over and I fall again. I get up slowly and grip my swords. I know this isn’t going well, but I won’t back out now.

We fight for another thirty minutes before Past Prime sighs and sheaths his sword. I’m covered in blisters and sweat, but I haven’t even managed to touch Past Prime, and he looks as relaxed as ever.

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“You don’t know when to quit, kid. Sit down.”

A steward brings over two chairs and sets them up for us. I sit down.

“I’ve trained every superhero on this planet, did you know that?”

I nod.

“Not everyone is born for this life.”

He doesn’t think I can cut it.

“I can do this,” I say.

“I can tell a lot about a person’s style by how they spar with the pain sticks… and the news isn’t good for you. You aren’t very strategic or fast, but you are too aggressive. You are also as stubborn as a dead mule and have no idea of when to retreat. That’s the kind of combination that gets people killed very, very quickly. You’ve also made some dangerous enemies, son, and that won’t help.”

“Okay,” I say, trying not to show how I feel.

“This is not the life for you. We can offer you a way out, a non-combat position with Team Mercy. The work they do is not glamorous, but it holds the world together. We haven’t made this offer to anyone else, because they would take it in a second.”

He stands up and the steward appears to take our chairs.

“Think about it,” he says.

I do, and it doesn’t make sense.

“Why would you only make that offer to me?”

“You’re young and slow,” he says, but one of the things I learnt from my dad is how to spot a liar.

“You’re lying,” I say, “why only me?”

“We know you’re innocent. You don’t belong here with the misfits.”

“Neither do you. I bet most of the team don’t really belong here. What’s the real reason, Bansuri?”

He doesn’t notice that I called him by his old name. He sighs and stands up.

“I knew your mother. We owe her.”

“If you knew my mother, you know why I want to fight.”

Past Prime shakes his head and stands up.

“It’s because I knew your mother that I don’t want you to fight. But you have her stubborn streak. Do you want to meet one of her most useful inventions?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer but walks to an empty part of the training hall. The floor here is made of worn padded mats. A cube robot raises itself out of the ground in front of us. It has a dozen arms, and each ends in the glowing point of a pain sword. It folds away all but one arm, which it points directly at me in a challenge.

Past Prime hands me two pain sticks.

“This is one of your mother’s training ‘bots. Get past the body and hit it in center mass.”

The cube starts spinning its arm slowly. It takes a swing at me, but I block. I dart past the arm and slam my sword right into the cube’s center.

“Easy,” I say.

The cube unfolds two more arms.

“Again,” says Past Prime, “faster.”

This time the arms are fast, and one lands a blow on my shoulder as I lunge at the cube. I hit it dead center.

“Messy, boy, messy. You need to block more, move better. Again, faster.”

The cube unfolds more arms and we start again. This time the robot lands a hit right in my ribs and another in my head as I fall. I hit the ground and roll, but the robot pins me. It digs its swords into my body and holds me for a second before letting me go. The robot releases me and I gasp in relief. I’m seeing a whole new side to my mother that I had never thought possible.

“Up,” says Past Prime.

We start again; this time I get the robot before it gets me.

“Faster.”

Every time I win the robot gets another arm or starts moving faster. The arms start hitting me harder and more often. It hurts, but I always manage to hit the machine with my pain stick at least half the time. I’m feeling pretty good about myself, but Past Prime isn’t impressed.

“You have grit, but you are too slow.”

“Show me how it’s done them,” I challenge him.

He puts out a hand and I pass him a sword, handle first.

“Maximum speed,” he says, “maximum arms.”

The sparring robot complies; its arms move so fast that they blur. Past Prime steps right inside their reach, knocking them aside with ease. The spinning arms can’t touch him; one glowing tip gets close, but he deflects it with ease and lands a blow right on the cube’s body.

“That’s how.”

“Whatever,” I say in annoyance.

I’ll never move that fast or that smoothly, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be a superhero. Rhino Rampage is a huge man famous for his clumsy ways when he’s out of his suit, but he is still a reasonably powerful superhero as long as he doesn’t need to dodge or fly too fast. I could be like that; I would settle for being a second-rate superhero at this point.

“Let’s take this up a level,” Past Prime says.

The cube stands on six short legs and takes a few steps back from me. It bangs its arms together as if showing me how dangerous it. It’s only a robot, but I could swear it’s looking forward to this.

Saucer, this thing is going to kill me.

“Scared?” Past Prime asks.

“Bite me, old man. And give me back my sword.”

I’m eating my lunch in the infirmary when Never Lies walks in. The doc has bandaged my arms and legs until I look like a mummy, and he gave me enough painkillers to take the worst of the burn away.

“Ready for the next session?” asks Never Lies without preamble.

I nod. Hopefully it doesn’t kill me.

“You took a beating today,” she says.

“Did I?” I ask innocently, although there’s no point trying to hide the fact that I’m bruised and battered.

“Yes. I’m surprised you can still walk, but Past Prime said your injuries were self-inflicted and that I was to have no sympathy, so get up.”

“How…”

I want to ask her how I’m doing in the training program, but I’m scared she’ll tell me a depressing truth. She looks at me and raises an eyebrow. I have to ask her something now, or she’ll think I’m an irredeemable idiot.

“How… um, how long do I have to keep training?”

Even I think I sound stupid, and Never Lies just grunts in amusement. Mission failed: she thinks I’m an idiot.

“The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in battle… and you aren’t sweating at all. Past Prime was just testing your reactions; I’m here to test your brain.”

I spend the rest of the afternoon with her. Half my time is spent in a training helmet, and half in a combat simulator. The simulator is a whole suit of armor that feels just like the real thing, except with electric shocks instead of death. It’s unpleasant, but I learn fast. I fight in cities and swamps, alone and in teams of six or twenty, in the sky and on the ground and in every place you can think of. I recognize every alien I see from my time in the training helmet, and I know where to hit them.

It’s not a test of physical speed or agility, but rather of how to react and move in combat, incorporating my knowledge of how to kill some enemies and when to avoid others.

“I’m ramping up the difficulty,” says Never Lies, and aliens start appearing faster.

I’m exhausted by the time we finish. A steward brings us orange juice and muffins, but I don’t even have time to eat mine before Never Lies turns towards a big man waiting at the other end of the gym. He’s dressed in a black shirt similar to the ones worn by Past Prime and Never Lies. It seems to be a mark of rank around here.

“His name is Small Talk. Do what he says, and don’t whine about it,” she advises me.

Small Talk is standing by a rock climbing wall. Heavy mattresses are set below the wall, and they look well used. Small Talk doesn’t say anything, so I start looking around for a safety harness.

“Wait,” Small Talk says.

He pushes a button on his data pad and the whole rock wall starts to move slowly downwards as if it were some enormous vertical conveyor belt. I’ve seen this before– it’s an infinity climbing wall. The idea is to climb two meters off the ground, and then the wall starts moving downwards and you do your best not to be brought back to Earth. The little outcrops and marks are constantly changed so that a person can climb the same few meters of wall all day and never see the same pattern of rocks. A line emerges across the wall, with ‘Level One’ written above it.

This wall is far higher than any I’ve seen before.

“Climb,” Small Talk says.

“Shouldn’t I–”

“CLIMB!” he shouts.

I climb.

It’s easy enough, with lots of wide and well-spaced outcrops. I climb to three-quarters up the wall and look down over my shoulder; I’m high enough now that a fall will really hurt. The wall starts moving, and I keep climbing.

Small Talk is looking up at me, but he isn’t impressed.

“Higher. Faster.”

I climb higher; I climb faster. The wall starts moving faster, and I struggle to keep up. The words ‘Level Two’ form at the top of the wall and start descending towards me. I climb over them and keep going. I’m beginning to sweat, and my hands are slippery, but I can do this, I can climb. I climb over levels three and four before my arms really start to tire. The handles are getting smaller and harder to reach, and my arms are burning. The wall is moving downwards faster than I can climb it, and it carries me down to halfway. I feel a burning in my neck and the handles disappear, leaving me with no holds. I land heavily on my back with a thud that knocks all the air out of my body.

Small Talk is already standing over me. He stares down at me with his grey, soulless eyes as if I were a cockroach he found in his kitchen sink.

“Up,” he says again, “you need to hit the bell at the top of the wall.”

The bell is high above me, but I can make it. I start climbing again, but I only make it past level two when my hand betrays me and I fall, hitting my head hard enough to knock my thoughts out.

I feel a burning in my neck again, and I tear so hard at the collar that I rip a fingernail off. Every part of my body is in agony, my neck and finger doubly so.

“Up!”

I climb and fall, climb and fall, climb and fall for what feels like hours. I make some progress, but that saucerhat of a bell is always out of my reach. Eventually I get so tired that I don’t even make level two before I fall. I hit one of the mattresses hard. Small Talk shakes his head in annoyance.

“Your will is letting you down, not your body. You need to hit that bell.”

Saucers take that bell! I’m exhausted.

Small Talk walks off, and I’m left wondering if I have what it takes to be a superhero. I’m not fast enough, and I doubt I’m smart enough.

I might just be stubborn enough, though.

I get up and start climbing that stupid wall all over again, because I want to prove that I have what it takes, that I can do this, that I should be allowed to hunt saucers.

I’ll get that bell if it kills me.