“Am I in trouble, sir?” Vasily asked cautiously.

He was half worried that the instructor was going to beat him up. Augustus was a strange person, but there was a certain order to his actions. He was a distant figure who rarely interacted directly with the trainees. And certainly he never attended a meeting dressed to the waist, and never before did he start lining up tables and chairs against the wall to make room for something.

“Augustus,” the instructor reminded him. “In a manner of speaking, yes.”

“If this is about the teasing, I am ready to accept any punishment…”

“The punishment has already been meted out.” Augustus slammed a chair in the middle of the room and waved Vasily over. “Unless Eliza wants it, there will be no further reproach. No, the purpose of this meeting is you and you alone, Vasily. I heard about your problems, but I never realized how serious they were until the mission. No man should hate himself.”

“That’s pretty rich coming from you,” Vasily fired without thinking. The instructor wanted honesty. He’ll give him honesty.

“I’ve never hated myself,” Augustus said. “There were and are times when I chastised myself for a mistake I made. But hate? Never. You see, there’s a big difference between blaming yourself for the things you could have changed and hating yourself for the things you can’t control.” Augustus put a hand on Vasily’s shoulder and made the boy sit up. “The guilt I feel is well deserved, but even now I do not feel disgust for myself. I’m working to atone for the things I should have done differently and to repay the debt I owe to Iterna. But you, Vasily.” The instructor sat cross-legged, facing Vasily. His height made them look at each other eye-to-eye. “There is no guilt on you.”

“My parents certainly don’t think so.” Vasily kept his composure when Augustus took his hand and squeezed his fingers, releasing his disgusting, filthy claws.

“Some people are assholes,” Augustus said quietly. “It doesn’t mean that they need to be punished; it’s just a matter of life. There are people who won’t accept others, no matter what. But look at your hand. With these very claws, you helped save the life of a young girl…”

“How is she, by the way?” Vasily asked, both genuinely curious and trying to change the subject. He had heard the same speeches from his grandmother a thousand times.

“Happy, healthy, and confused about the need to take the power suppression pills. Unfortunately, she had decided against joining the explorators or the military,” Augustus sighed, “but the last I heard, the Intelligence had assigned a few agents to trail her. Both to guard her and to use the poor child as bait to flush out any potential kidnappers.”

“Bastards.” Vasily frowned. “Even when she refused to work for them, they still found a way to use her.”

“Such is life,” Augustus replied. “Her power is valuable enough for the entire world to rile up in an attempt to get her. At the very least, in Iterna, she will have a chance for a normal life, and the Intelligence has promised to be discreet. Regardless, you won’t change shift the topic, Vasily. You have a problem.” The instructor paused, as if trying to choose his words carefully. “There’s nothing shameful about having problems. Or difficulties in dealing with them. But you need help, and I can’t give it to you. So I called for assistance.”

The instructor stood up, leaving his terminal on the floor. With a snap of his fingers, the device emitted a beam of light that reached the ceiling, where it splintered and shone onto the wall, forming a ghostly canvas that slowly filled with color. Augustus’ eyebrows arched as a towering mechanical suit appeared in the room, half of its head merging with the ceiling.

“Augustus,” Instructor Akebia boomed, running with two fingers along her frame. “Nice to see you at last, even in a somewhat undignified view.”

“What is the meaning of this?” Augustus turned icy again. “How dare you break into my communications?”

“Well, how else would I be able to contact you?” Akebia shrugged her shoulders. The woman had painted her new body in crimson and gold, leaving only the faceplate untouched, and a neon smile danced across the screen. “No, seriously, Augustus. Your group has disappeared from the radars. The Intelligence told us that everything is fine, but Torosian is worried sick about his trainees. I took it upon myself to keep penetrating your communications until I found an opportunity. Pardon the security breach, but we can’t be left in the dark about what our kids are doing. Explorators don’t abandon their own. Hi there, Vasily!”

“Hello, instructor.” Vasily tried to stand, but Augustus put a hand on his shoulder.

“We got involved with the Shadows’ business,” he said, and Akebia whistled. Augustus briefed her on the mission, and Akebia grew more serious by the second, folding her arms and pinning him with the light of her oculars. The hologram projection continued to work, showing more of the place where Akebia was standing.

It looked like the spacious assembly chamber of an abandoned warehouse. Vasily had spotted several rusted assembly lines, but someone had ripped out most of the machinery and taken it away. Dust and rust covered the walls, but the floor was clean, and a pile of destroyed scout and combat bots lay in the corner. Someone had taken great care to dismantle them, setting aside the energy reactors and removing the low-power energy weapons. On the wall above the pile was a crude letter written in red paint: “Hands off the mechanisms. If you break any, you’ll pay for it out of your own pocket.” A cord connected one of the broken robots with a stationary terminal.

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Further in the room stood Akebia’s ‘bedchamber’, a large cylindrical device in which the woman could adjust parts of her mechanical frame. Behind it were large doors leading outside, and next to them was a small door leading to the trainees’ resting places. In the dim light, Vasily could see that someone had cleaned out the other room, but the presence of a fist-sized mine on the door confused the boy.

“Shit. Torosian won’t like it. Not one bit, and he’ll be yelling at me instead of you,” Akebia stopped, and her neon eyes glanced at Vasily. Her tone changed, and the woman started speaking softer. “You tried to contact them because of…”

“No,” Augustus stopped her. “Everyone is fine. That is a separate matter and none of your business. How are things on your front?”

“Augusty finally learned how to call for help. How nice; I am proud of you, truly,” Akebia chuckled softly. “Well, the preparations for receiving the Reclaimers are underway. Several of their fluffy scouts showed up, sniffed and marked the approach, and challenged me and Yura to a fight. I had to stop the princess from cracking a few skulls for the sake of diplomatic relations. I’ll let you know that Olaf’s team has already finished surveying the first three floors of the facility, taking out much of the security prepared for them by the Intelligence. One of my clever girls found a link that connects all the bots underground…” Akebia pointed at the pile of broken robots. “And released a nifty piece of malware that messed them up, and the team moved ahead of schedule.”

“So they won,” Augustus stated. “Congratulations, Akebia. You have trained them well.”

“Of course I did! But it would be so boring if they won this easily,” Akebia said. “All kinds of complications happen in our line of work. I asked for a little help from two bored out of their minds scouts from the Wolf Tribe, and they played along, concocting a few surprises on the lower levels. If the kids can overcome these tribulations, which they will, your team will be left in the dust. My team will be the ones to get the perfect score this year, Augustus. Mark my…”

“By the Planet, she mined everything!” a scream interrupted Akebia’s boast. “Instructor, there are mines everywhere!”

The doors behind Akebia flew open, releasing four arguing trainees. Vasily recognized Olaf, Yura, and a girl who had been playing New Year’s cards with them. The last trainee, a teenager with almost rock-solid skin due to excessive sub-dermal armor, was unknown to him. All of them wore dusty civilian clothes, with their armors visible underneath. Olaf and Yura nodded to Augustus and Vasily, and they returned the gesture. Akebia raised a hand, called up a map on her wrist, and whistled again.

“Yura, I asked you to secure our home base, not turn it into a death trap!” Akebia said with both surprise and pride.

“It is secured, ma’am,” Yura reported.

“From everyone! Us included!” The trainee with the rocky skin snapped.

“Even the toilets are mined! Who?! Who traps the damn toilets?!” Olaf grabbed his head.

“Now the enemy can’t hope to access our areas of intimacy.” Yura smiled, put both hands behind her back and lowered the bone sword. “In light of the incident when a Wolfkin scout snuck into our barracks for fun, I concluded that we needed better protection Each mine is linked to both a signal from our terminal and our DNA signature, making it too complicated for outsiders to disarm in a short time. This forces a potential enemy to either try to disable each one, alerting us when the mines go off the radar, or charge ahead and take casualties. It’s a brilliant strategy. No mangy werewolf would ever make a fool of us again.”

“Yura, they are our allies.” Olaf took the girl by the shoulder. “Both sides are trying to show off; there is no harm. But what if someone gets injured by one of your mines? Can you imagine the diplomatic horror it would cause?”

“Already did and accounted for this,” Yura replied with pride. “The regular mines, when placed in such close proximity, run the risk of causing a chain reaction when they explode. After careful research, I used the ones that release an energy pulse that renders an intruder immobile for a few hours. Apart from the humiliation, there will be no physical damage.” A flicker of anger appeared in her eyes. “And they deserve to be humiliated after making such a mockery of my defenses!”

“Yura, I want to take a leak,” the female trainee almost begged. “How am I supposed to do that with a primed mine beeping at the door?”

“It’s easy. You take out your pissing tube…”

“Yura, do you have a penis?” the other girl asked the Malformed in disbelief.

“What? No, males have penises. I mean a pissing tube!” Yura looked at their confused faces. “Don’t tell me you don’t understand what I mean! Everyone has one! Here, let me show you …”

Augustus grabbed his terminal, cutting off the communication and banishing the hologram before Vasily could see anything else.

“Does… Does Jumail have a pissing tube?” Vasily asked. “Is this something that all the Malformed have in common?”

“I prefer to remain blissfully unaware of that particular part of their physiology,” Augustus said.

The instructor tinkered a bit with his terminal, establishing the connection more slowly this time and checking several times to make sure no one was trying to interrupt him. When he was finished, the familiar beam appeared again, forming a window to the distant place, but the image that appeared in that window was drastically different. A man in his early thirties sat behind a wooden desk, its cabinet painted in soft yellow tones. Vasily felt his heart sink when he saw a soft couch near the table. A therapist. He had always avoided talking to one. He wasn’t crazy.

“Greetings there, Mr. Augustus and Vasily. My name is Elias Dunlap,” the therapist introduced himself. “Vasily, your instructor has brought me up to speed on your problems, but I would like to confirm a few things myself, if that is okay with you.”

“Sure, sir,” Vasily said in a dead tone. “I suppose I am expected to talk my mind out?”

“If you wish, but in our first session, you will find that I will be the one doing most of the talking,” Elias said. “Normally I would offer you a more comfortable seat, but I suppose we will have to make do with what we have. Make yourself comfortable; don’t worry about anything; feel free to grab a drink anytime; and let us start from the beginning…”