CHAPTER 16

Constantine stepped out the door and fell. He felt nervous.

It was not the plummet through space which made him nervous. He opened his parachute almost immediately, and the most frightening thing about a high-altitude, high-opening jump was its tedium, its discomfort. The world was far, far below them, so far that he could see the curve of it. The air was cold, so cold that ice crystals began to form of their own accord on the surface of his garments. His harness was already uncomfortable, and he still had the better part of half an hour to hang under this canopy. This would be his fourth live HAHO jump but his first for an actual mission, the other three having been conducted for training and proof-of-capability. Even at that, he had been one of the most experienced in his Battalion with this particular mode of infiltration. This was one of the sexy capabilities which they advertised but rarely practiced, one of the many skills that they just did not have the time or resources to train to mastery. He wondered how often the tier-one units practiced it, and how often the Agency’s clandestine units practiced it. The Task Force Royal operators seemed comfortable with it, but they would never have shown him any hesitation, just as he had refused to show them any. Constantine worked his risers to drive himself into position behind the man who was next below him in altitude, finding his place in the middle of the stack, the middle of a train of parachutes led by the lowest down through the cold, empty night sky.

He watched his GPS, but only out of curiosity. In his position, he could only follow in formation, and he had no doubts about the navigational abilities of these people. In due time he was able to make out details of the terrain, and its contours matched the studies and simulations they had run prior to the mission. He was able to pick out the primary landing zone visually from miles away, and like clockwork the stack turned downwind, base, and final, and then filed into the grassy field almost forty miles inside the borders of a country whose airspace their transport had never touched.

That was what made Constantine nervous. He was now deep inside a country which was for all intents and purposes the sovereign property of a much larger neighbor with a first world military—a military which had occupied this land almost overnight and would not take kindly to TF Royal’s presence here. Nor had Royal come for afternoon tea. This was true peer-on-peer special operations, the sort of thing of which a young man dreamed as he threw himself into the selection process for Special Forces. They were now behind enemy lines, with hostile intent and no safety net. Should they be caught, they would be disavowed. They would succeed or die by a combination of luck and their own capabilities.

When the stakes are high, play by the book. That was Constantine’s philosophy. It did not make for much drama, but in real life drama meant tragedy, and the book had been written for a reason by men far smarter than him. The book had served him well over the years, had kept him alive. Royal had their own, very different book, but they had a book, nonetheless. That was perhaps the main reason no one said a word; no one had to. Once they had buried their parachutes and disguised the burial site with vegetation, they circled up, checked their maps and compasses, and then the point man led out, the navigator close behind, all with not spoken syllable.

This was something his guys needed to work on, admitted Constantine, this working without speaking. He would take some of this home as a lesson-learned for his team.

They rucked. Through the night they rucked, using night vision devices when the moon did not provide sufficient light for their unaided eyes, passing along single file with long spaces between them, each just able to see the man ahead. By day they bedded down, hidden in the wilderness, each man crafting a blind or tucking himself under the leaf-litter, silent and still. The miles passed by them as they made their way around and well clear of the enemy’s strongholds.

Melody, meanwhile, engaged in nothing so rugged. Her physical pursuits were still somewhat limited by her injuries and her doctor’s orders for recovery. She was permitted to bike, and even to run, and she could practice the forms of the various martial arts on offer at the school she and Doran had selected. She could even begin some calisthenics and resistance exercise, he told her. Several months had passed, and x-rays showed that her broken rib had healed itself properly. There were still risks, and she was still to avoid contact and high intensity upper body exercise.

The idea of contact fighting frightened her. Indeed, the idea of fighting at all frightened her. The reasons she had identified were manifold, piled up in a disorderly way inside her deepest self, but as far as she could tell they boiled down to: fear of failure—in various forms, fear of pain—in various forms, fear of injury—in various forms… and perhaps more than a touch of laziness. Why was it that girls did not fight, did not want to learn to fight the way boys did? Was it biological, or was it societal? Melody felt no doubt that there was some biology to it. The tendency of men—especially athletic men—toward dominance and physicality was undeniably built into them. Even Doran, who was not historically given to contact sports or fighting, and who was not a particularly big man, nonetheless had that streak in him. She could see it in his reaction when a stranger did something rude on the highway or in a restaurant or shopping mall. The animal in him wanted to confront and… squash. Crush. Defeat. She could see it even in the little things, such as when he bumped his head or stubbed his toe and became angry with whatever inanimate object had done him the affront. He never let it go; perhaps he only closed the offending cupboard door a little hard, or moved the offending chair back into place with a bit more force than was necessary, but the reaction was there: his instinctive inner animal wanted the world to move aside for him.

Nothing like that animal was inside Melody. She was pretty sure she would have noticed such a beast. When she bumped her head, she felt pain, and anger at the situation—at being in pain, more than anything—but she did not feel a sudden urge to tear the cupboard down from the wall with her bare hands for the crime of having been where her head was going.

That said, cupboards did not mean one any harm. They were just cupboards. People, on the other hand, could be evil, and vicious, and when a vicious person attacked, there was every possibility that (unlike the cupboard door) he would keep attacking until he had done irreparable damage. Melody had experienced the very edge of the ultimate irreparable damage, and she knew with absolute certainty that only another, greater aggression had saved her life. She could not envision herself laying gorilla-hands on a kitchen cabinet, but she could envision herself fighting to save her own life. Better that—perhaps better anything—than ever to feel Death Himself kneeling on her chest again. Better even, she had thought more than once, to go down fighting, quick and ugly, than to die the way she had almost died, helpless, unable even to scream or cry.

Melody had always possessed a vivid imagination. What did it mean to be a “nerd” but that one’s mental activity, one’s inner mental world, was satisfying?—for her, and for most like her, as satisfying as or more satisfying than the real world, and certainly more satisfying than most interactions with real people. It could be so satisfying because it was so vivid. In her mind there were characters, stories, and adventures. Wild creatures, wild places, wild feats. She could imagine with great clarity what it would feel like to be a superhero, to have this superpower or that superpower. She could imagine what it would feel like to be an extremely talented martial artist—a ninja, even, dancing through a crowd of enemies, slicing them up. She could imagine having a beastly companion, too, perhaps a great cat, and in her mind’s eye she could summon with the finest gory detail a film-reel of what it would do to the enemy at her behest. Fantasies of page and screen, science fiction, adventure stories, all were fodder for her, as they were for others like her, each one she consumed adding elements to the palette of her imagination with which she could paint her daydreams. Furthermore, it was not for nothing that Melody played shooters—rather than non-confrontational single-player or cooperative games—and played them well. Making carnage on the virtual battlefield was the closest she would ever come to exercising in the real world the violent aspect of her fantasies.

Was that kind of violence of mind unhealthy? A lot of people said so. A lot of her peers said so, and then went right back to their violent videogames or equally gruesome table-top fantasy role-playing adventures. The theater of the mind was a theater of at best PG-13 action, and usually far bloodier. Why? Melody could not say, but she could see the hypocrisy in most of those who condemned it. Actors who decried media violence after they had made millions from action movies with tremendous bodycounts. Politicians who decried it while accepting donations from the same. And everyone wanted a piece of violent video-games—“murder simulators,” to quote the worst demagogues. Were they? Some, indeed, were, and most others were battle simulators to one degree or another. Her peers struggled to defend their hobby, especially when on occasion a gamer committed an act of terrible violence in the real world. They pointed to all of the gamers who played violent games but had never and would never translate that into a real crime, and in the process they found themselves in the uncomfortable position of having to defend a pastime of violent fantasies with no better argument than that “Everyone does it (and only a few have committed mass murder).” It was a struggle for them because most of them purported to be peaceful people, who just wanted a world of unity and kindness. They seemed to believe that they could bring about a world of sweet, gentle good-feeling, populated by people whose favorite pastimes were fantasies of bloodshed and war. What their taste for violence and war in simulation said about their own condition seemed to escape them. They wanted to have their cake and eat it too.

Melody found her peers’ convictions on the subject of violence dubious, at best, and all the more so since she had been shot. People were violent creatures, and ninety percent of their fantasies were violent, and one could either declare that violence was wrong and wage a book-burning campaign to exorcise it from entertainment, or one could indulge in the human appetite for violence and admit that it had, and would ever have, a place in the world. Melody was prepared to admit that there was a place for violence in the world and in herself. The question was, what form did it take? How could one accept violence and still be a Good Person? Her peers would say, “We only condone violence against Bad People,” but everyone always thought he or she was the Good People.

Melody was not confident that she could lay out any comprehensive cosmic law as to when and where violence was “okay,” but she had a starting point: violence against the man who had pointed a pistol at her and discharged it into her chest for no more reason than that she had found his virus on the Internet. Violence against him, in that moment, was okay. She knew that to be true, even if she was still working on why it was true, or how she knew it to be true.

So, violence? Check. Aggression? Check. Perhaps she did not have in her the male gorilla that wanted to lay hands on a kitchen cabinet for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but she could summon plenty of ill will toward a true enemy, someone who was trying to kill her, and she could translate that ill will into precise visions of her intent upon his corpus. The trick was getting from A to C.

The old joke went, “Step 1, have goal. Step 2, ??? Step 3, profit.” Profit, in this case, was being able to do for herself what the black apparition, Frell’s mysterious associate, had done for her. That also did for any societal precepts she might previously have entertained about it not being a woman’s place or a woman’s responsibility to fight. “But you shouldn’t have to,” they would say. “You shouldn’t have to defend yourself.” “Sure,” Melody thought. They could talk all day long about building a future where attacks like hers no longer occurred. They had their own “Step 2, ???” problem with that, though. None of them had a plan for it beyond making laws about stuff and hoping that years later a safe society would somehow result. Melody had no objections to pursuing utopia, but she was not worried about being shot fifty years from now; she had already been shot. Evil was a present reality in her world, and however much she “shouldn’t have to,” she did have to. She did have to defend herself, because there was no one else. And asking for someone else was the worst sort of selfishness; it was asking Doran to put himself in front of the bullet so that she did not have to dirty herself with a fight.

Doran, or the cops. But the cops barely got there in time to load her into an ambulance. And besides, was it really right to wish all the violence onto the police? Sure, that was their job, but… it still felt weak. It still felt cowardly, to ask someone else to take a bullet for her. This too, she decided, would take some thinking.

So she had the aggression, and she had disabused herself of societal prejudices and cowardly thinking. All that remained was the fear, because when she thought about the reality of fighting, she could not escape the reality that it meant fighting a man, and fighting a man was a terrifying idea. Not quite as terrifying as dying, she judged, but, when she was in the MMA gym, learning how to move her arm and body and hips and legs to throw a punch, and she looked across the mat to the men sparring—when that reality was close, and death and its threat were far away—it was a very scary prospect. Men were big, strong, and when they got in the right mood terribly destructive. They easily embodied, in the real world, all the aggression and violence that for her had always been restricted to fantasy and media. Fantasizing about being a super bad-ass warrior chick was pleasant; facing a man who looked like he really did want to hit her, and hit her hard, blew all of those fantasies clean out of her mind.

There was only one other girl that she had seen at the school, and that girl had obviously been doing it a while. She was fit—ripped was more like it—and she oozed aggression and confidence. She looked like she had been born wearing a sports bra and hand wraps. Her name was Rianna, and Melody had not spoken more than a few words to her; she was too intimidating. Everything about her made Melody feel the pitifulness of her own state and the hopelessness of her ambition. It did not escape Melody’s notice that Rianna was proof simultaneously of the possibility and impossibility of Melody’s own goals. Rianna had greeted Melody once, early on, introduced herself, shaken hands—she had been wearing her sparring gloves, and Melody could still remember with great clarity the feeling of her gloved hand and its iron grip. Melody was pretty sure she had said hello, and then she had immediately retreated. She hated herself for doing so, for being that shy, cowardly person, but at the time all she could think about was how she must have looked to this fit, tough girl, the real thing.

So much for all her bluster, all that tall posture and go-get-‘em attitude with which she had set forth on this adventure. Attitude shrank before reality. And that was the whole trouble, was it not? Fear. Cowardice. The constant inner voice assessing what everyone else must think of her—not because she unjustly underestimated herself, but because she accurately estimated herself, accurately assessed her own condition. She was weak, soft, a bit heavy, and afraid. If they saw her and judged her harshly, then they judged her correctly. And if she could not face that, how could she ever face a man on the mat, much less a man in the street?

If she could not face talking to someone, how could she ever face fighting someone?

How could she?

It would never happen.

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Melody stood. She was shaking. This, of all things, had her shaking with adrenaline and fear.

Don’t think about it, she willed of herself. Don’t think about it. She started herself across the room, around the edge of the mat. With every step, she repeated that act of will: don’t think about it. “Exc—excuse me,” she said, her anxiety such that she actually choked a little.

“Hey,” said Rianna. “What’s up?”

“I was, uh, kinda wondering if I could ask you some things? I mean, if you’re—if you have a minute. I don’t want to—"

“No, it’s cool. I’m done for now. How’s training going? You likin’ it?”

“Uh,” said Melody, caught off guard by the question. Was she? Was she liking it? “Yeah, I guess. I mean, I haven’t done much, yet.”

“Sorry, tell me your name again, please?” said Rianna. “I’m so not good with the names.”

“Melody.”

“That’s right. I’m Rianna, still. So what’s up?”

Melody looked over at the men on the mat. Doran was there, sparring with another man she didn’t know. She took a breath. “I, uh…” She laughed, because her nervousness struck her as ridiculous. Was that what people meant by a nervous laugh? “…I’m kind of terrified.”

Rianna furrowed her brow. “Of what?”

“Well, this. I’m…” This was going terribly. What a terrible mistake. How predictable. Melody found herself staring at the ground, and she forced herself to lift her eyes again.

“Lemme guess. Never done martial arts before?”

“No.”

Rianna nodded. “Yeah, I get it. It’s definitely scary at first. Like, I always did sports growing up, and, like, hockey and stuff. But it was still scary the first time I was learning to fight.”

“How did you get over it?”

“Eh, you just can’t be a pussy.”

Melody blinked.

Rianna flashed her grin again. “I know, right? It sounds harsh, but that’s really all there is to it. It’s scary, but you do it anyway, and then it turns out it’s totally awesome.”

“You like it?”

“Uh, yeah,” she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “It’s great. Like, don’t get me wrong, it’s not cool getting punched, but you know, you live. And it’s great because you can punch back. I love it. I think all women should do it. Most women are just too scared, or too lazy, you know? Like, they’re looking for an excuse. I’ve done other martial arts and there were girls, but they wouldn’t spar, or they would spar, but if you even barely touched them they’d start crying.” She shook her head in disgust. “You don’t have to be that sensitive. Girls can be tough. They just choose not to be, as far as I can tell. So… here I am. Only girl in the school. But it’s totally worth it.”

“And you’re not afraid to fight the guys?”

Rianna pursed her lips and rocked her head slightly side-to-side as she considered the question.

“Meh?” she said. “I mean, not so much anymore. Sure, they’re bigger, but I mean, you look at these guys? These guys aren’t average. Most of ‘em are pretty ripped, and most guys—like, just, in general— are not. So, it’s like, I fight the guys here, and I hold my own—and I win more than you’d probably think. And then you go out around town and it’s like, wow. Everyone else is just paper people. Which is awesome. So… I guess I’m not really answering your question. What I mean to say is, yeah, I still get nervous when a fight starts, but I’m pretty used to it now, and what I’m saying is that it’s totally worth it, because if you’re not really afraid of these guys, then you feel like a superhero around most people. It’s great.”

“Huh,” said Melody. “But you still get nervous when you fight.”

“Some people, yeah. It’s like, uh… So, the new guys? Like, no offense, your beau there? I don’t think he’d make me nervous. And the really experienced guys don’t make me nervous because they’re here to teach, and they have good control. You know, if a fighter is just way better than you, then he can hit you just as hard as you want to be hit, sorta. Those are the people you want to train with anyway. I guess the ones who make me nervous still are the ones in the middle, about the same skill as me and not so much control. Men are strong, and if they’re even any kind of in shape, they hit harder than they realize. But you know, the truth is? Most guys are just as nervous. Like, guys are just as nervous fighting me as I am fighting them, most of the time.”

“Because they don’t want to get beat by a girl.”

Rianna shrugged. “Because they don’t want to get beat. It’s like… guys have just as much insecurity about fighting as we do. Maybe more, because they think they’re supposed to be good at it. I’ve seen more guys crying—or trying not to cry—than girls, at least here.”

“Seriously?”

“Oh, yeah. They take it soooo personal.”

“Really…” This idea boggled Melody’s mind just a little.

“For sure. Has your beau done any martial arts before?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Yeah, it shows.”

Really? wondered Melody. One of her nagging frustrations had been his natural athletic gifts and experience, which allowed him to pick up the fundamentals so much more quickly than she could.

“Really?” she said aloud.

“Oh, no, sorry—seriously, I’m not trying to insult your boy, there. Obviously he’s done some things as an athlete. What is he, a track guy? I’m just saying, fighting doesn’t just come automatically to guys any more than it comes automatically to us. He’s new, and you can tell. I can tell, anyway. You’ll be able to tell soon enough. You’d be surprised how quickly you can get good if you’re serious about it. And then you’ll be like, what was I even scared of? Most guys are pushovers, like I said. Paper people.”

“That would be… nice.”

“Yeah it is. So you thinkin’ you’re gonna stick with it?”

“Yeah. It’s… I guess it’s just hard to imagine me getting to that level. But I’ll do what I can.”

Rianna nodded. “Girl, you can. I promise. You just gotta do the work. And I’ll be honest: it’d be nice to have another girl around who isn’t a pussy.”

Melody started to reply, got as far as opening her mouth, and then realized she had no response to that. She closed her mouth again.

Rianna giggled. It was a surprisingly girly giggle. She took Melody’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “You’re gonna be great. Any time you want to train, let me know.”

“Thanks, Rianna. Really. Thank you.”

“Call me Ri.”

“Okay. My friends mostly call me Mel.”

“Mel! Cool. So, you done for the day?”

“Yeah, just waiting on Doran to get done.”

“Doran? His name is Doran?”

“Yeah,” said Melody, feeling suddenly defensive and looking askance at Rianna. Why did everyone have to make fun of his name? But Rianna was looking at Doran.

“Mm,” said Rianna. “Yeah, that’s nice. You got good taste, Mel.”

And what did one say to that? “Thanks?” she tried.

Rianna looked to Melody and grinned again. “Come on. Let’s you show me what you’re working on while we wait.”

They did, and there was something reassuring to Melody about having a female eye reinforcing what she had learned. Rianna said mostly the same things Melody’s male instructors had said, but hearing it from her made Melody believe it was real, in a way she perhaps had not quite until then.

“You gotta ground it, right? You gotta drive off that back foot, and that drives the hip, and the hip drives the shoulder, and then the arm is the last thing to go, once everything else is already going. That’s where you get your power.”

Melody was skeptical regarding how much power she would ever be able to “get,” and it probably showed on her face, but by God she would try.

“You do pushups?”

“I, uh, can do knee pushups.”

“That’s fine. Do those. You do ‘em on your knuckles?”

“What?”

“Here, come over here to the mat.” Rianna stepped onto the mat and put herself into a push-up plank position, except instead of placing her hands flat on the mat, she formed them into fists and aligned them so that her two primary knuckles, the index and middle, dug into the mat. “See if you can do that.”

Melody imitated, albeit on her knees rather than her toes. It was fine until she lowered herself down, and then her right wrist simply gave out like a noodle.

“Yeah, you can work on it,” said Rianna, which did not exactly make Melody feel better in the moment. “If you wanna be real hard-core, you can do it on a hard surface, but the main thing is to build up that wrist strength at the same time you build upper body strength. Do knuckle pushups, on your knees until you can do a lot, and planks. You’ll get there.”

“It doesn’t seem like it, sometimes.”

“Yeah, I know it. But you will. Just do something every day.”

“Is that safe? I heard you’re not supposed to do some exercises, like, all the time.”

“Oh, for sure. I would say don’t do more than two hundred pushups per day, ‘kay?”

Melody, still trying to make her wrists obey her throughout one knee-and-fist pushup, took a moment to laugh. “Yeah, that’s not a problem.”

“Seriously, though, you can work out every day if you want to. If you want to, you totally should. Work out every day, twice a day if you want. Spread the love, of course. Try to do different things. I don’t swim enough. Swimming is great, makes a great second workout. Don’t do hit every day—”

“Hit?” At least, that was what it sounded like she had said.

“HIIT. High Intensity Interval Training. Don’t do HIIT every day, or heavy lifting every day. Mix it up. And take one day a week to do, like, mostly yoga and stretching and stuff. Your recovery day. But your recovery day can still be active. Like, you can do pushups every day, and then just do planks on your recovery day. See what I’m saying?”

“Sure,” said Melody, sitting up. She saw. She understood. She comprehended. It was not that she could not imagine a life of daily working out; she just could not imagine her life as one of daily working out. At least, she had never imagined it before that moment. “Do you lift weights?”

“Oh, yeah. Lifting is great.”

“How did I know you were going to say that?” Melody thought. She kept the thought to herself. “Like, body-builder weight-lifting? Like, with a… um…” she asked aloud.

“I do power-lifting. Bar-bell workouts. Squats, bench, overhead press, dead lift—that stuff. You should totally do that too. That’s another thing all women should do. Makes your bones strong.”

“I think that would literally kill me.”

“If you do it wrong. If you do it right, it’s safe, and it’s super good for you. We wouldn’t start you with a hundred pounds. We’d start with an empty bar, make sure your form is right. Good form is the most important thing for lifting—any exercise, really, but especially lifting heavy.”

“Can I ask… how much you can lift?”

“I squat two-twenty, right now.”

“Wow.”

“That’s not even that much. Not compared to some girls. There’s plenty of competitive females squatting three hundred plus. You could totally get into the two-hundreds in a few months if you wanted.”

“You keep saying that. I could totally do this. I could totally do that.”

“You could!”

Melody took a deep breath. “My conscious brain believes you, but I don’t think my subconscious believes it.”

“Well, do it, and then see what your subconscious has to say.”

Melody chuckled. That was one way to go about it.

Perhaps that was the only way to go about it. Like coming to this school, like approaching Rianna to start this conversation, like stepping into the ring. Perhaps there was no way not to be scared, or even to believe in oneself—That was it. There was no way to believe in oneself, and then do the thing.

You had to just do the thing, even though you didn’t believe in yourself. She shook her head in wonder at the insanity of it.

“No, you can totally do this, Mel,” said Rianna, mistaking her head-shake.

“No, I believe you,” said Melody, standing up. “I was thinking about something else.”

“If you want to try lifting weights, there’s a pretty good gym… it’s not real close. Like, on the other side of town. But they have good equipment, and they’re not super expensive. You could come try it out sometime.”

“Okay.”

“Here, let me give you my number.”

“Okay.”

They traded phone numbers and texted one another to establish contact.

“Hope you give it a try sometime.”

“I will,” said Melody, realizing a moment too late that in so doing she had somewhat obligated herself. Most people would have said it as a throw-away response, meaning something more like, “I might if I get around to it and I feel like it.” In other words, most people would have said it as a lie. Melody tried not to lie about such things.

“Cool. I’m gonna go get changed. Looks like your beau is about done. I’ll catch you next time, okay?”

“Yeah, definitely. Thanks, Ri. Really really. Thank you.”

“You got it, sweetie. Any time.”

Rianna went off to the locker room, and Doran joined Melody, looking sweaty and flushed.

“Hey, babe, you waiting on me?”

“Yeah.”

“Sorry. We can head out. Just let me grab my things.”

Melody waited for him to grab his things. It occurred to her, as she stood by the door, reflecting on all she had just discussed with Rianna, that she might have just made a friend, despite herself. Doran returned, and they headed out.

As he drove her back toward the campus and her apartment, she sat quietly in thought, as so often she was wont. He was very accustomed to this by now, and he did not intrude, though occasionally he glanced over at her. She caught him looking at one point and said, “I’m fine. Just thinking.” He nodded and drove on.

“Um, can I ask you something?” she ventured, a few minutes later.

“Sure.”

“Do you… get nervous, at all, with the fighting stuff? I mean, you’re already doing the sparring, and way ahead of me, and you have experience with athletic stuff. Do you get nervous when you have to fight someone?”

“Oh, for sure. Totally. It’s all new to me. I told you I’ve never done any martial arts or boxing or anything before. I didn’t even do wrestling in high school. So, yeah, I get nervous.”

“Do you think it’s more, uh, fear of getting hit, or, like, being a guy, you feel like this is something you’re supposed to be able to do?”

Doran turned his head to stare at her perhaps a few seconds longer than he should have while at the wheel of a moving vehicle on a highway, and then he said, “Huh,” and addressed the road again while he thought about it. “Well… I guess both. There’s definitely some pressure, like, from society or whatever, that a man should be able to fight. But I think it’s mostly just I don’t look forward to getting clobbered. And, I guess, for me it’s a little weird being the new guy again, in a new sport, and having to learn from scratch. I have to just know I’m going to get clobbered, a lot, until I start figuring things out. That’s tough.”

Melody nodded her head. She was still mostly lost in her own thoughts, and his answer filtered in amongst them.

“I saw you talking to that girl… what’s her name?”

“Rianna.”

“Yeah. I would not want to fight that chick.”

“No, me either,” said Melody. “She is super scary.”

They rode on, and Melody said nothing more, so Doran let her be. Eventually he dropped her off and went his own way. She showered, made herself a little supper, and then settled in at her computer, that one place in the world where she was most comfortable. Comfort, she thought. Everything she was doing out there in the world was outside her comfort zone. It was uncomfortable. She was not accustomed to being uncomfortable. It begged another question of her: What was comfort worth? Was it good to be comfortable? Should one try to be comfortable? Could anything worth doing be done while comfortable? If not, then what was the proper place for comfort in life? And why could one get through a quarter century of life and the better part of a master’s degree and yet not have answers to these most fundamental questions? She pictured Rianna’s smile and rock-hard abs. Rianna was the living embodiment of everything outside Melody’s comfort zone—indeed, everything Melody was not. Here before her, this computer, and under her, this chair, these were Melody’s comfort zone, and everything Melody was—or at least, everything Melody was to date. Comfort was being what you were. Becoming something new was uncomfortable. But, if one succeeded, then the new self would be comfortable, presumably. Rianna was probably quite comfortable being a hard-fightin’ hard-body. The question was, could Melody endure the discomfort long enough to become comfortable as someone new?

She sat forward and began her work, opening her Tor browser and navigating to a site that offered anonymous email service. Several weeks ago she had created a dummy email account for herself. Melody clicked the button to create a new message, and she pasted into it the content she had drafted and saved for this purpose. She had already sent several of these to news outlets around the country who had reported on the demon-like entity in the police body-cam video. Her email consisted of a link to a local news article about a certain shooting in a certain grocery store parking lot, plus a copy of the now viral image of the demon, and a simple message: “It was here, too.”

After double-checking the address, she fired it off and then closed her browser. This was the least she could do, she had decided. Something big was happening in the world, just below the surface, and no one knew, and the news media were reporting exactly what the enemy wanted them to report and then moving on. Perhaps she could not, thanks to her NDAs, speak openly of everything she knew, but she could sow the seeds of curiosity, anonymously. She could lead them to see the other side of the story, and perhaps to begin asking the right questions.

That done, she loaded Guardians and logged into the team’s voice server. If there was one good use for the comfort zone, it was as a place to rest after a long day of being uncomfortable. Melody had put more time into videogames—especially this one—in the months since her near death experience than she had in perhaps the two years prior, while working on her thesis project, but for good reason. She had undertaken more work and more challenge outside her comfort zone in that time, and the comfort zone was a welcome respite at the end of each day. After doing a lot that she was not good at and had never done before, it was of great value to her to be able to log in and kill a whole lot of virtual people—or rather, real people’s virtual avatars. It helped her shed the day. It helped her sleep.