“Let’s talk about how your first mission went on the train in Iran.”

I sat on a straight-backed chair in Abram’s office on the top floor of The Base. It was a bit like being called in to see the Principal at school. That had only ever happened to me once when Bill Jackson had broken his fist on my face. It was a bit like that, only if you had recently flown back from the Middle East with the Principal in a private jet.

Oh, and it was way more scary.

It shouldn’t have been, but it was. Abram sat in a tall, brown leather chair with huge armrests behind a long, wide mahogany desk. There was nothing on the desktop except for his interlinked fingers, a beautiful silver pen in a holder and a free-standing model globe off to one end.

The blue and white of the UN flag, a world map encircled in a laurel wreath, was draped over most of the wall behind him. There were no windows—we were still underground, effectively in the sub-basement of the UN headquarters—but the other walls were hung with fancy-looking paintings, much like the ones that adorned the corridors elsewhere in The Base. Two free-standing lamps in each of the far corners lit the room warmly.

It was my turn to talk.

I swallowed my saliva. “Er, ok, then…I mean, ‘yes sir’.”

Come on Gonzalo, don’t be such a weakling, I thought. He’s on your side, remember...

When he didn’t speak again but just continued to look at me calmly, I ventured “How do you think it went then, sir?”

Abram let out a long sigh. Uh oh. “Well, to tell you the truth, Gonzalo,” he said eventually, “I’m quite disappointed in you.”

I stuck my hands underneath my thighs. I could feel my whole body tensing. Don’t cry.

“Let’s review what happened, shall we?” Abram went on. He held my gaze steadily, but it was all I could do not to tear my eyes away and stare at my feet. “Your first objective was to locate a female metahuman, name of Amina Amari, by infiltrating a train traveling from Tehran to Tabriz. So far, so good. Apart from a few hiccups with the landing procedure, you undertook the first part of the mission excellently. Well done.”

Oh. That wasn’t so bad. “Er...thank you?” I risked.

Abram smiled at me without opening his mouth. “Yes,” he said. “Then what happened? Tell me.”

I hated it when teachers did this.

I had no choice but to obey. “Then some other people caught up to us on the train, sir.” I paused. “I guess they were from Viper?”

“Correct,” said Abram without batting an eyelid.

“...okay. Yeah, so then some Viper terrorists caught up to us on the train and started shooting people. I suppose they must have gotten hold of the same intel that tipped us off about the metahuman appearance...?”

“Also correct. Then what did you do?”

“I, er, engaged them...” I had been practicing my military speak in my lessons at The Base lately. I said ‘engaged them’ when really I had just ‘run at them waving my hands around and shouting loudly’.

I paused again, unable to stop myself from wincing at what was coming next.

“Mm-hmm,” said Abram. “And then what happened, Gonzalo?”

“Well, sir, then a situation developed where we no longer knew the location of the woman...I mean, the metahuman, and where...Mute was taken hostage by the terrorists.”

I stopped there. Please don’t make me say it, I thought. This is hard enough. I rubbed my arm.

“And then what happened?” said Abram.

I licked my top lip and tried to gather the words. “Then, sir…then I took action in order to rescue Mute.” I didn’t stop this time but quickly ran on to my next sentence, trying to avoid giving Abram an opportunity to interrupt me. “In the process the metahuman woman assisted me and extricated us from the sit—”

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“You deliberately disobeyed me, is what happened!” Abram cut me off, raising his voice a little, his eyes flashing.

I jumped in my seat. Now all I could do was look at my feet. I had never seen Abram angry before. I had heard him angry, or at least animated, over the mind link on the mission for the first time, but I had never seen it. I didn’t like it. It was unsettling, like something about the Universe was out of place.

But even more than that, Abram’s anger made me feel disappointed in...myself. The thing was, I knew I desperately wanted to please Abram, to do right by him, to make him proud.

“I’m sorry, sir…” I said to my shoes. “I...I only did it because I didn’t want Mute to die...”

“Be that as it may,” said Abram, “I had ordered you to keep your focus on your primary objective.” His voice returned to its normal soothing pitch, but his words were no less difficult to hear. I clenched my jaw tight and dug my fingernails into the undersides of my thighs as if the pain from that would block out the pain from what he was saying. It didn’t.

“I had ordered you,” Abram went on, “to focus on retrieving Amina, and to let Mute worry about himself.”

I thought about speaking up in defence of myself to say that Mute had been pleading with me to help him and that I’d judged I might be able to rescue him and still retrieve the woman, but I decided this was not the time. I didn’t want to make things any worse for myself than they already were.

“Instead,” Abram went on, “what did you do? You disregarded my order, and not only that, but you actually went so far as to ask Mute to shut me out of the mind link. To shut me, your Commander, out of the one available communication channel.”

My cheeks felt like they were wobbling ever so slightly and my eyes threatened to fill with water. Abram’s pitch was still level, but his choice of words made it clear he was furious inside. When you put it like that, it did sound pretty bad, I supposed...

Oh God, I realised, he’s going to kick me out of Miracle Force. He’s going to strip me of my rank and send me back to live with my mother forever. There goes my college tuition. There goes my chance of making it with Ali Carter. I can’t believe this is happening. This is a disaster...

Abram kept going. “Didn’t you think, Gonzalo, that I knew what I was doing when I gave you your orders? Didn’t you think that I had the situation in hand? You know that Mute’s telekinesis has been getting stronger lately and that it’s stronger when he’s experiencing extreme stress or anxiety. That’s why he was easily able to redirect the terrorist’s shot so that it hit the other gunman instead of his own head.”

At that I couldn’t help from looking up just for a moment.

“Yes,” said Abram, “I’ve had a full debrief with Mute as well, of course, so I know exactly what happened. Mute was perfectly able to take care of himself, he was just flustered. That’s why I was commanding you to keep focused on your primary objective. By failing to do that, and by encouraging Mute to temporarily shut me out of the mind link, you unknowingly put the whole mission, Mute, Amina, and perhaps even yourself in jeopardy, Gonzalo.”

My eyes plunged straight back to my feet. What an idiot. What a moron. What a weakling. It had seemed so much like the right thing to do at the time...

A vast silence stretched out between us. In my mind I filled it with more terrified imaginings of what Abram was going to say next and what was going to happen to me. I imagined him slapping me, shouting at me or, worst of all, commanding me to leave Miracle Force forever and then receding into cold indifference.

“That’s why,” said Abram, “I considered discharging you from Miracle Force.”

Oh God, here it –hold on, what does he mean ‘considered’?

I dared to raise my gaze again.

“However.” He paused, and my mind filled the huge, yawning moment of silence with all sorts of possibilities for what he was going to say next. “I do acknowledge that this was your debut mission and you are still getting used to seeing live action in the field as well. Therefore, instead of discharging you, I have decided to only temporarily suspend you from active service with Miracle Force. One week’s disciplinary leave, starting today.”

I was trembling all over, but I thought I should say something.

“Th-thank you, sir,” I stammered. “I won’t let you down again, I promise.”

“I know you won’t. But let me also be quite clear. You are on very thin ice here, Gonzalo. I am being quite generous with only giving you one week’s disciplinary leave for this incident. A soldier should always obey their Commander, under any circumstance. If anything even remotely like this ever happens again, you will be off the team.”

Relief had been starting to spread through every muscle of my body, but now they tensed again.

“Do we understand each other?” said Abram.

“Yes sir,” I nodded quickly.

“Good. George will drive you home. You will be able to return to The Base to resume training in seven days’ time. Dismissed.”

I saluted, and the Commander saluted back.

I shut the door behind me and leant back against it, breathing out a heavy sigh.

It sounded like I had only narrowly avoided complete expulsion from Miracle Force entirely... That was a close call. I’d nearly lost my place on Miracle Force, my education, my future college tuition, and my way of impressing Ali all one go.

I couldn’t slip up like this again.

I wouldn’t.

All I had to do now was get through my disciplinary leave without doing anything stupid.