Sam sat on the floor beside Joe and rubbed his neck and head as he trembled under the mother of all headaches.

There was a cleared throat from Mike. "I'm not sure that's appropriate."

"Get real, Mike. It's not sexual." She glared at him for a moment, but was too tired to maintain any heat. "He's going through hell right now."

Whatever Mike thought, he chose not voice it and instead started walking rounds of the hall. When he was out of hearing range, Sam spoke to Joe. "When I was in the fleet, I attuned in a sleeping berth about the size of a coffin. I thought I would die. I remember hoping I would die so that it would end." Joe never made any sign that he even noticed she was there, but the groaning seemed to be less frequent when she rubbed the back of his neck. Triggered by the experience, her mind flashed back to the last day of her childhood dog's life. She had petted Thor, the family Great Dane, as he wilted away from cancer that her parents had refused to have treated. Based on the way he had placed his head onto her lap, Thor had appreciated the gentle sendoff. Hopefully I don't send Joe off, she thought.

She managed to stay conscious until Mike's phone alarm alerted them that it was time for wakeup. In short order, Spencer was running everyone not involved in the overnight activities through physical training. Mike levitated Joe to the men's room and Sam crawled onto her cot to pass out.

Ever so briefly, she slept.

The return of Cassandane at eight in the morning required her presence. Sam dragged herself out to say hello beside an equally out of it Mike. Cassandane accepted their report with a studied placidity. They had gained two teleotics, a kinetic, a siren, and whatever Joe would be revealed as.

"Have you made any progress in training the synergies?"

Sam closed her eyes. "I didn't have a lot of time to work on them."

"That is not an acceptable excuse. Did you train corona wrestling with Mike?"

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"Unfortunately, we did a lot of that."

Cassandane stared at her. "Unfortunately?"

"She got frustrated," Mike explained.

"You kept pulling cheap tricks on me," Sam said.

"I cannot wait until you train corona wrestling with Cassandane. If you think I am a sneaky bastard, your head is going to explode."

"Whatever. I don't care. Can we get some sleep now?"

"No," Cassandane said. "Today is Saturday. The first wave of students arrive Monday. We are going to spend the next two days finalizing the curriculum and the structure of the course."

Sam blinked a few times. "Okay . . . ."

"The first order of business is I want you to assign you three assistant teachers, one specializing in each of the basic talents. Thoughts?"

Mike rushed in. "I think we should stack the assistant teacher positions with people who have prior service. I could see placing Sean McGreary as the teleotic co-instructor, Fred Whittaker as the kinetic co-instructor, and . . . well, I don't know who should do noetic. I want to keep Erica Spencer on the operations side. I could give you Srinivas."

Two sets of eyes turned to Sam. "Maybe we could swap Jess for one of the guys?"

"I'm not sure Jess would present the right image," Mike said.

"What are you talking about?"

Cassandane ended the exchange with a sideways swipe of her hand. "Jess will not be working as a trainer."

"Fine. Let's just go with the people Mike picked then."

"I have decided to make it a ten day course. Day one will be standard exercises in the three basic talents. Day two will be forced attunement and sorting into training groups. Day three through nine will be more intensive training in the talents they have access to. The final day we will provide a very basic combatives introduction." Cassandane paused. "I have insisted we be granted the right to reject any student for any reason on the first day -- a complete refund will be offered. If we discontinue their training after they attune, their full tuition will be retained. You will have full authority to expel disruptive students, Sam."

Sam nodded, not sure why there had been such an emphasis on the last words.

"She doesn't want you to be a passive teacher," Mike translated. "Lord it over your students like my second grade teacher did."

"I can handle my classroom," she said.

"Good. Get your assistant teachers into the large group instruction room so we can practice."