Elina flew backwards, frowning at the pain in her shoulder. She twisted in the air and landed nimbly on her legs. The impact of the blow still carried her almost to the edge of the training mats, but the girl just smiled, gestured to the trainer that all was well, and charged at her towering opponent. The other girl stayed in the middle of the sparring ring, never moving to block, even when Elina faked a punch and jumped, making a roundhouse kick aimed at the Malformed elbow.
How do you fight against someone you can’t reach? Imagine a situation where your opponent is standing on a tall tower whose walls are perfectly smooth. No matter how high you jump, there is no way to reach your opponent. No matter what you throw, nothing reaches the target. This was exactly what Elina was experiencing. Her leg was still moving; she could have sworn that the kick was still going, but the girl was suspended in midair, unable to close the distance to her target. But the other girl...
A three-fingered hand grasped Elina by the ankle and lifted the girl high, slamming her into the mats with enough force to beat the air out of her. Got you! The thought flashed through Elina’s head. Her fingers snapped, sending a moderate shockwave into the other girl’s face—nothing too serious, but enough to make her bleed. And she reached for the hand holding her leg, hoping that the other girl had a blind spot in this area at least.
Her hands grasped the air, stopping a few centimeters away from the bone-covered arm, unable to cover the last distance that suddenly felt as if countless kilometers separated the two. The shockwave was also suspended in the air; and the air still trembled, but the force refused to bulge. The Malformed dragged Elina across the mats, turning the girl face-down and taking her arm in a hold. A leg weighting at least a hundred kilos pressed the trainee against the leather surface, and she laughed.
“I give up!” The pressure disappeared and Elina rolled onto her back, taking a hand and struggling to fight back the scowl. Losing was the worst! But this time, there was more than her pride on the line.
Yura, the Malformed, who had joined the Akebia Group a month ago, was a sight to behold. Standing over three meters tall, this fifteen-year-old girl had a goat's head with horns large enough to make a ram choke with envy. One horn encircled the trainee’s head; it had to be constantly trimmed or the sharp end would have gone into the girl’s head. Yura’s eyes were rectangular purple stars, and the fur covering her body ended at her neck. Everything down below got covered with a thick layer of bone growths, only slightly less durable than Jumail’s chitin. Her left hand had five normal fingers with rather nice colored nails, but the fingers on the left hand merged into three appendages, fat slabs of flesh, each capable of leaving a bruise with a tap.
The deformity didn’t stop there; a third limb emerged from under the girl’s left armpit, a large bone sword covered by a sheath of a special alloy. Even though it was locked in a maglock, Yura had wrapped a chain around the lock for some reason. Her legs weren’t normal either. The left leg was made almost entirely of exoskeleton and muscle fibers; a single inverted joint on it gave Yura a sort of chicken leg. Her other leg was completely missing a knee and had the shape of a round column with five sharp claws at the end.
A being of horror. Elina didn’t really blame any of the citizens who were startled by the girl’s appearance in the alley or in the shop. What she blamed them for was calling the police and calling Yura a wild animal. The Malformed in the Academy had enough troubles already, and each time someone asked a police officer to check on the suspicious person, the thirty minutes of free time outside of the Academy’s walls were over for that Malformed student.
Elina herself wasn’t a shining example of tolerance; she knew it and worked on it. She was afraid of spiders, so every meeting with Jumail was like a horror show for her. But she would never call a police officer on a kid who was just minding his own business. Nor did she support the insane, overbearing rules the government had imposed on the Malformed who joined the Academy.
It had to end badly, and end badly it did. In the past month, Yura had left the Academy eighteen times, and each time her PO or the instructor had to be called because of some minor misunderstanding. The last time Yura snapped, she called her PO, then smashed her terminal and somehow showed up a second later at the cemetery fifteen kilometers away. There she dug a grave and did what the Malformed do in the wild with corpses.
There was an uproar, but Torosian had refused to expel the girl, and the Academy leadership had supported him. The story broke on the news, fueling the locals’ fear of the Malformed. While the lawyers worked things out, the headmaster had given his orders for other students to have spars with Yura to loosen her up. His specific orders were so the students would let themselves get thrashed, but Elina sort of sabotaged it and went all out.
“Thanks for not holding back,” Yura said after the trainer checked them and gave Elina some medical gel for the bruises.
A bleacher gave out a screech when Yura slammed her butt against it, sitting next to Elina. The Malformed put her hands on the wooden surface and looked at the lights above, breathing lightly as if she hadn’t just trounced Elina.
“You’re joking, right? There’s no way I am throwing a fight. Want some water?” Elina offered a bottle to the trainee.
“Nah, I have my own in my bag.” Yura lifted her hand, and a bottle of cold soda appeared in it. With a snap, she uncorked the bottle before the eyes of the amazed Elina. She looked around and saw the open bag lying on the other side of the room, near the lockers.
“How did you do this?”
“The space,” the Malformed started explaining. “I can expand and contract it at will. When you tried to reach me, I stretched the space between us. To grab the bottle, I created a channel of shortened space leading to my bag. I can also use it to close the distance to the target, crossing kilometers in a step.” She bared her teeth, looking aside, and Elina saw a mixture of square teeth and fangs in the girl’s mouth. “It’s how I got to the cemetery. Sorry for making you stuck with me.”
“It’s no bother,” Elina said.
“Is it?” Yura turned to her. “Don’t lie. No one ever came to talk to me before the incident. My grades are shit; Chief Akebia has to take time out of her schedule to sit in my room and help me with my homework.” Her fists closed. “And I made this mess for her while she’s injured and in the hospital. I’m not smart, I’m ugly, I’m not interesting, and if you had your way, you’d never have come over to chat or ask for a spar on your own.”
“You want honest? Fine, let’s talk honest.” Elina placed a hand on the bone-covered shoulder, feeling the heat from the flesh pulsing between the cracks. “Yeah, I wouldn’t come. But I should have come over earlier. I am a member of the student council; it is our damn job to come over and help smooth things over, but I screwed up, and for that I’m sorry. I will try to be better. Truth for truth. Why did you eat that corpse?”
“Because I screwed up.” Yura looked down. “Most people treat me like a walking time bomb! At least Jumail has his friends; every time I try to talk to Olaf, he starts stuttering. When I go to a shop or take a train, people scream in fear or give me a wide berth. It is annoying. Iterna is my herd now, but most of its members are afraid of me. So when that woman called the police, I snapped.” She bit her lips. “All I wanted was to buy some stupid fish.”
“The Academy has fish dishes,” Elina said.
“Yeah, but I wanted a real deal. Still living, to feel its life joining mine as my jaws crush its body… I am grossing you out.”
“A little, yes, but so do many other things,” Elina admitted with a laugh. Eliza and her constant backstabbing was one of them. Elina was sure that the other trainee was deliberately giving her poor grades to set her up. She had half expected the girl to undermine her after she had offered her help, but so far, everything ended up normal. “But you know what? Screw me and my biases. You wanted a fresh fish? You have a right to it. I guess someone called the police again?”
“Yeah.” Yura furiously scratched behind her ear. “And I said, fuck it. I bust my ass trying to become one of you; I have learned your language better than Jumail, and yet he has friends and I don’t. It all seems so stupid afterwards…”
“It doesn’t,” Elina said. “You have nothing to blame yourself for.”
“You sound like therapists,” Yura said. “Thanks. Not even my pals lie to me so blatantly. At least they agreed that I have some responsibility.”
“They’re not your pals, Yur,” Elina pointed out. “These are men and women who help us get through problems.”
“Oh, I know, it’s just a figure of speech. But with them, I can always say anything, use any words I like, and no one will berate me for foul language.” The Malformed pointed at herself. “One of them even used virtual reality to replicate me and then ‘wore’ that image to create a series of physical exercises to help me cool my nerves. Now that’s dedication. He also asked the medics to check my hearts afterwards, but hey, it’s my natural state.”
“Wait, are you into yoga?” Elina asked quickly. Perhaps it could be a way to start building a rapport between the students in the Akebia Group. “Care to show me these exercises? I was pretty good at stretching a few years ago…”
“Sorry, but no,” Yura laughed, and a hint of bleating appeared in her voice. The girl shut her mouth and continued in her regular voice. “I am quite elastic…”
“Bullshit, you are!” Elina fired against her will, and the other girl chuckled.
“If you try to repeat my exercises, you’ll only hurt yourself in the end. Anyway, thank you for the kind words and tonight’s sparring, but I know I am at fault.”
“The government and its stupid rules are at fault,” Elina said stubbornly. “Keeping you and the others inside like criminals…”
“We are criminals.” Yura crossed her arms. “Well, not all of us. But I am a chief’s daughter. Mothers fed me meat. You know what kind. And it is common among the Malformed to throw up prisoners and let their kits hunt them, to build up hunting instincts from birth. Just because I don’t remember much of my childhood doesn’t change the fact that I killed someone. Maybe even several people. I have to tough it out and join the military.”
“But why?” Elina asked. “The rules that are set up for the Malformed sucks! Drop out of the Academy, join a regular school, and enjoy life to the fullest! Why are you pushing yourself?”
“Because I have a responsibility!” Yura pounded her fist against her larger leg. “My former herd may be taken away from me, but they were supposed to be entrusted to my care. I have to, no, I must prove to everyone that the Malformed can be normal, so that the others don’t have to endure the shit that I and Jumail have to deal with.” She lifted her bone arm. “You see this? This is a sword that marks me as a warrior. I was meant to be a soldier, no matter what the therapist said. And I swore to become a knight of Iterna, to protect with my own body and soul the lives of those who saved my kin from a life of madness.”
What the hell is her therapist doing? The trainee had to stop herself from getting up, go to the medical wing and shove her boot up the ass of whoever was overseeing Yura’s recovery. This Malformed should never have been admitted to the Academy, for her own sake. She’ll break an order and die in vain!
“The military is not about throwing your life away,” Elina said carefully. “Some soldiers have served since the first war against the Reclamation Army.”
“Oh, I know! The defeat at the Blackened Abyss, the breakthrough at the Northern Pole, Deliche’s defense.” The Malformed’s eyes lit up with excitement. “Retreats, assaults, rescues of civilians, wars in the shadows, joint operations… I am reading about them all! Man-made Abnormals and Normies, working side-by-side with artificial intelligences. Warriors and heroes without equals. But the truth is, soldiers die in war. And if my life can be a coin to buy a stable life for Jumail and the others, then that is one sacrifice I will gladly make.”
“It won’t,” Elina grumbled. “Stop being stupid. One woman’s sacrifice won’t change a damn thing.”
“The Redeemer…”
“You are not a Redeemer,” the trainee said. “I am not a Redeemer. None of us will ever reach that level of dedication. A saint like her is born once a century. Don’t flatten yourself, Yura, and focus on living.”
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Elina fell silent and looked at Yura with growing concern. The girl took on a burden a bit too large for her. She knew why the Malformed had to endure such restrictions. Iterna was obsessed with safety. Mama, when she thought Elina could not hear her, always cursed the government for it. The embassy staff had seen countless lives snuffed out just because Iterna had stubbornly refused to bend most of the violent gangs to her rule, always cajoling, never invading.
There was a reason for it, of course. Iterna’s mistakes and atrocities were great. The refusal to admit refugees right after the Extinction, a decision leading to the deaths of millions. The Corporate Wars, which left several million dead before the three major corporations and the government joined forces to end nearly two dozen years of internal conflict. Next came the Purge, when the first president orchestrated the demise of so many abnormals, tainting relationships with the outside world. And many more fights and battles were fought over a misunderstanding. Culling the captured Malformed on the newly joined lands before the Oathtakers had proven they could be rehabilitated was not the least of the crimes.
Checks and balances were placed on both the government and the army, holding everyone, from a corporation to an Elite in strict chains of command, severely limiting their ability to act. This was the price of building a stable nation and protecting the rights of the people. But on the other side of the coin, those Malformed who chose to enter the Academy faced one too many restrictions designed to protect them and the other trainees. Add to that the natural fear of the locals, and you have a perfect recipe for disaster. There’s no way Yura should think about death at all! She had her whole life ahead of her, and worrying about her people should have been the job of adults.
“Have you ever thought about joining a club?” Elina asked, deciding that couldn’t let Yura dwell on such thoughts any longer. She had to distract the girl with anything, giving her something else to do, even if the instructor or the rest of her group couldn’t be arsed to do it. “How about the Art Club?”
Yura grinned from ear to ear and held out her finger to Elina. The trainee looked at the finger in confusion, and the Malformed nodded several times, inviting the girl to grab it. Elina obliged and felt the finger tremble. It was neither a gentle nor a violent trembling; the slow moving up and down of the finger reminded her of the workings of an engine.
“The therapist had the same face,” Yura giggled. “Nah, my blood pressure is normal. For my body. But I have three hearts, with a fourth not yet formed. I tried to draw, but with fingers like these… My paintings are not to my taste.”
“What about the Martial Arts Club?”
“You felt me in action,” Yura said. “I may not be as tough as Jumail, but just like him, the pool of partners who can spar with me is a tiny bit smallish. No matter how much I try to hold back, there is always be a risk of breaking someone. And holding back all the time is grating.”
“Dancing?” Elina asked with desperation.
The Malformed lifted a brow and pointed at her distorted legs, making the girl sigh in exhaustion. Yura was starved for the conversation; the girl used every opportunity to talk with Elina prior to and after the match, never shying away from anything. If Elina could just find a place for Yura to make friends, or at least find people with common interests, then perhaps the frustration of the harsh regime could be, if not alleviated, at least lessened.
Why couldn’t Akebia solve this problem? Instructor Augustus forced himself into their lives like a bullet, asking them every day why they hadn’t picked a club to join and if they needed help to choose one. Sure, it was a nuisance at first, but now Elina really enjoyed the Art Club, even if her drawings were mediocre at best. It helped her to socialize and to forget the fear of that cursed day...
“Do you like to sing?” Elina asked at last.
“I am bleating when I am excited,” the other girl said. “It’s annoying. I don’t like it.”
“Well, regardless, we got to solve this problem.” Elina closed her eyes. At least singing does excite Yura, so here’s something she enjoys.
She hated, despised, the solution to this problem. Of their group, Eliza was the second best at solving a person’s problems. Jumail sulked the entire week after they returned from training, obviously burdened by the need to be confined within the walls of the Academy after such exciting freedom. And in truth, Elina did not blame him at all, but she had no idea how to solve the problem, and Carlos had abandoned his duties, the traitor.
So what did Eliza do? She made the best gift possible for the Malformed. On the New Year, the boy always left to visit his family in rehab. This year, his PO will drive the boy there in a truck that Jumail helped to assemble just before the New Year. Eliza somehow convinced every member of the Car Club to help with this idea, and the Malformed almost shone with pride and happiness at the fact that he could show up to his siblings something he had created with his own hands. Or limbs, in this situation.
“I have a person who can perform miracles of sorts.” Elina cringed at giving praise to that despicable liar. “You, me, and her will visit every club tomorrow. There has got to be something you like, even if we will have to drag you by that…” She gestured at the bone limb, “bone appendage.”
“It is a sword!” Yura protested.
“Bone appendage!”
Maybe the Fencing Club? Elina wondered. The club got a fresh set of gear sold by them by the Ice Fang order, including regal claymores, power armor fashioned after knight suits, spears, even some whips. If the girl wants to be a knight, let her be one. Surely the Engineering Club can handle a simple redesign of Reclaimers’ power armor; they owed her this much for managing to convince the headmaster to purchase an old model of proton generator. And clad in battle plates, the students will be safe from having their bones readjusted by accident during a sparring match. But that begged the question: can the girl’s arm handle a blow from a real sword?
“Yura!” a voice thundered in the gym, making both the trainer and the girls jump. “Where is my second favorite troublemaker? Decided to start a shitshow while I was gone, did you? Want to make me look bad in front of Augustus?”
Is this… Akebia? A thought raced through Elina’s head upon seeing a gigantic mechanical construction stepping inside the training hall. Her steps caused tremors. The neon lips on the front panel formed a thin line, and her head almost scratched the edge of the doorpost as she passed through the doors. One of the giant hands was pressed against her chest.
But the woman’s voice undeniably belonged to the instructor who had saved the group during the training. Elina wondered if the woman was wearing a new model of power armor or something. But no, that couldn’t be right; no nanomachine power armor was that bulky, and no one in their right mind would build an entire mechanical suit in the form of a power armor.
“Chief Akebia!” Yura jumped on the training mats, landing before the massive machine. She placed her hands on the floor and raised her head, exposing her throat. “I have no excuses! You trusted me and I...”
“Ah, beat it already.” The metal arm, bigger than Elina’s whole body and larger than the Malformed leg, wrapped around the girl’s neck, lifting her in the air, while another hand started ruffling her hair. “The headmaster and the officials came to an agreement. Your punishment has been decided.”
“I am sorry, chief,” Yura mumbled, sniffing the air. “You smell different. There is no scent mark on you.”
“And thank God for that. You are worse than a skunk, Yura! Never mark anyone again,” Akebia said. “Also, the word is instructor, not chief.”
“Instructor,” Elina dared to say. She came closer and bowed. “What had happened was gross, but no one was really hurt, and you can’t pin the whole blame on Yura.”
“Drop the ranks, Elina; I am technically on sick leave. And don’t worry, none of my students are allowed to fail.” The thin neon line on the mechanical helmet turned into a smile. “As for your question, Yura, I am sort of riding this body; no biggie.” She hugged the girl closer, carefully balancing the tightness so as not to hurt her. “Oh, and I have no doubt that you are sorry, but you have no idea how tired you are going to be at the end, Yura! You and I will spend all the holy days helping to build new apartments; don’t worry about the outer limits; they’re dropped for the duration of your... lesson.”
“I get to be outside of the Academy?” Yura bleated the word ‘outside’ and quickly collected herself, speaking the rest in a normal voice.
“You bet! All day long, working, learning, and working out the frustrations. Nothing but sparks, the smell of concrete, and fresh air. Adorable. Get some sleep; your grades are way too low for my liking. We’ll work on them tomorrow.”
“Instructor,” Elina said, and the machine turned to her. “Me, Eliza, and Yura were planning to visit some clubs tomorrow to help her find something to her liking…”
“My little Yura is making friends at last?” Akebia asked, and Elina could have sworn that she heard synthesized notes of amazement in the woman’s voice, as if an AI was parodying human speech. “Of course, girls, have fun in the morning, but after that, we study, study, and study again. I didn’t escape from the hospital to do nothing.”
“Sorry for dragging you into this, instructor,” Yura mumbled, fighting against sounding excited.
“Why? What else was I supposed to do with my free time, filling in the journals?” Akebia easily lifted the Malformed by the neck, carrying her to the exit like a toy. “Nobody has time to be miserable, do you hear me? It’s nap time. Eight hours of quiet, normal sleep. And tomorrow will be education time. And we will continue to work on your discipline. There is more to being a soldier than knowing how to pull a trigger, Yura. A competent soldier does not snap, no matter what insults the locals may throw at him. A soldier endures for months, even years, if necessary. If you can’t do that, then military service is not for you.”
“I can!” Yura said. “I can, instructor. Never again will I crack under pressure. Never again will I dishonor the chance given to me.”
Elina waved them out of the gym and sighed, clenching her fists at the mere thought of talking to Eliza. That girl... She went to the rack and picked up a two hundred kilogram barbell. Mama won’t be waiting for her tonight; with Carlos gone, Elina decided to stay at the Academy and finish the preparations for the New Year’s celebration.
But right now, she needed to vent. Eliza, Eliza, Eliza! Elina wasn’t sure what it was about the girl that pissed her off. There were quite a few girls who liked to gossip behind her back, telling everyone how pathetic she was during the Numbers attack. Elina lifted a barbell above her head without using her shoulders for support. The trainer had left, and she was all alone in the gym. Screw safety!
Again. And again. The pain in her muscles was a nice, pleasant feeling. Every day was a carefully prepared workout, filled with the exact number of calories she needed to eat to gain fat, and a series of exercises to do to turn that fat into muscle. Elina wasn’t stupid; she consulted the doctors and her friends at the power-lifting gym, and her goal was to be able to bench press four hundred kilos above her head with one hand by the time she was in her twenties. Strength!
You know, back there you looked just as awesome as when we first met.
Elina growled and lifted the barbell again. What the hell did that bitch mean? Awesome? The two hundred kilogram barbell trembled in her hands as she lifted it above her head and lowered it. She had wet herself during the fight with Eight! That stupid, cheerful girl she was—the idiot who cared more about her looks than getting stronger—proved herself to be totally incapable of anything!
Elina breathed harder, lost count, and lifted the weight again and again. Why can’t Eliza understand? She tries to help her. Change is inevitable, no, change is necessary! To remain as you are is to be trampled and beaten. To be at the mercy of your enemies! So she changed herself, pushing through nightmares and fears to reach her goal. Strength... A vein appeared on her temple at the memory of ending up in a chokehold and falling unconscious during her spar with Eliza.
The rat-girl didn’t change, so what gives? How did this happen? Her body was still misshapen, ugly, and inefficient… How dare she end up being so strong! How could she be so strong? The barbell fell from her hands, and Elina roared in frustration.
Inferior… She jumped into the air at the memory of Eight’s voice; her fingers snapped before Elina could stop and think. A nearby punching bag disappeared in a blur of leather and sand, merging with her sweat and the wetness around her eyes. Rubbing her eyes angrily, the trainee dragged the instruments back to the rack and began to clean up the mess.
She… She was still alive. And now she was strong. There was no way Eight could get to her or Carlos or Eliza or Vasily or anyone else. Not now. Never. She is fine. She is safe here. And she will make her team stronger. She’ll save them all. Her breathing picked up, and she sat down on the mats.
Gather your thoughts, weakling. Her fists closed, allowing her nails to bite into the skin. Nails. A last memory of her old life. Used both to fool her parents into thinking she was still the same and to serve as an anchor of stability. To the times when she felt safe. To be honest, Elina hadn’t felt great for a long time.
But what the hell! There was still work to be done. Standing on her trembling legs, the trainee was about to run to her room to go over tomorrow’s schedule one last time when a call from the headmaster appeared at her terminal. She was to drop everything and report to his office at once.
Why would he call her? The grades were good; the group was mostly holding together, no one was hurt... If anything happened, Augustus was to be the one... Then it hit her.
That bitch! Eliza has been trying to undermine her authority since the first day she joined the group! First Eliza made her look weak, then she beat her in the ring, masterfully using the moment of distress. The mutant girl was no fool; no, she was a schemer, sowing confusion and then reaping the rewards. And the same thing happened again! The rat girl had said those words to confuse and distract her while she went to the headmaster and told him that Elina had freaked out during the field test!
Smart. With a heavy heart, she head out to the headmaster’s office. Once again, she had underestimated the opposition. It is time to be destroyed and come back stronger than ever. It was her duty, her duty to the group... And even to that bitch. Elina must become strong enough to protect them all, and she will!
“Headmaster?” she asked, coming into his open door.
“Come in, come in, Elina!” He greeted her warmly, ignoring her wet uniform. Torosian put aside the book entitled ‘Complete History of the Wolf Tribe, Volume 4’ and picked up a kettle, pouring hot tea into cups. “Please, sit down; here is some tea...”
“Sir, is this about our performance in the field?” the trainee asked bluntly. “If so, the guilt lies only with me. I have proven myself too weak to…”
“No,” he replied, filling her with confusion. What else could it be?
The headmaster moved around with the help of a cane. His wounded leg was encased in a medical contraption, forming a dome of steel over his destroyed knee. Rather than staying in the hospital, Torosian returned to the Academy straight after the mission, solving the problem with Yura and using his own power to help him move around.
But she noticed a strain on the man’s face and a tired look in his eyes. Torosian sat in his chair and pointed to the chair in front of him with the cane.
“I have no complaints about your group’s exemplary performance in the face of unexpected circumstances. Aside from the elevator, that is, but the guilt for this misstep lies on you all, collectively. It is you personally who are the subject of today’s discussion. Tell me, Elina, do you believe that you are the mere sum of your mistakes? Do you think that by bullying Eliza Vong you can push away a potential friend and thus be punished for your past mistakes?” Torosian moved a cup of tea to her side of the table. “Sit. We need to talk.”