The Closed Training Ground was a facility belonging exclusively to the Trillium and used solely for the preparation of striders and other agents—for honing.
Here, three skills were trained—separately or in any combination: dodging, resonator handling, and unarmed control—UC.
The ground itself was an enormous hangar. Or rather, a fragment of pristine mountainous terrain enclosed by walls and covered with a roof. Inside, the space was divided by irregular, fractured holographic partitions into separate “battle zones.”
Depending on size and configuration, each zone functioned either as a UC platform, a dodging route—with or without a resonator—or a hybrid of everything at once. What made them battle zones was the presence of simulated opponents: anthropomorphic mechs, either unarmed or equipped with pseudo-resonators. Each zone contained one or several such adversaries.
A strider’s objective was either to complete the route with minimal hits taken and maximum hits delivered, or to neutralize the opponent without a weapon—or to accomplish all of it simultaneously.
The layout and terrain of the zones changed daily so that conditions were always new. A dedicated team of mechs handled the reconfiguration. They moved massive boulders, installed simulated trees, barriers, and other objects. Some elements were holographic. The result was simple: there were no “familiar” battlefields. Every session took place in entirely new, unfamiliar terrain.
Art and I entered the hangar.
Near the entrance stood a reception console, behind which hovered an administrator mech. As we approached, it silently issued us two pseudo-resonators and a pair of backpacks. The packs resembled standard strider gear—but they, too, were simulations.
“It’s important to train with the pack on,” Art said. “As close as possible to real picking conditions.”
We stopped beside one of the smaller battle zones.
At the far end stood a mech nearly indistinguishable from a human—camouflage jacket and trousers, high boots. In its hand it held something very much like a resonator.
An orange number 1 appeared in my mask. The “res” in the mech’s hand lit up orange as well, and in my clip I heard the characteristic signal of an active device:
Beep… beep…
“We’ll start simple,” Art said. “Short, straight route. Ten meters. Minimal obstacles. Neutralization at the end.”
He added that he would demonstrate first.
“For clarity, we’ll switch on demo mode. You’ll see the mech’s pseudo-res the way I see it.”
I nodded.
Art stepped to the starting point. The mech opposite him slowly raised its resonator. The icon in my mask—and the device in its hand—flashed red. The signal in my clip shifted into a sharp, urgent warning:
Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep!
And in the next instant, Art moved.
It was… impressive.
A burst forward. A deflection. A roll. A sudden lateral shift, a leap, another roll. His movements were fast, economical—and astonishingly unpredictable. It was as if he wasn’t moving through space so much as continually failing to be where he was supposed to be.
A couple of seconds later—the first shot.
Vzzzt!
A blue pulse erupted from the mech’s resonator and slammed into a massive boulder—precisely where Art had been an instant earlier.
Almost immediately, Art fired.
His pulse struck the mech cleanly.
Another series of bursts and rolls. Another exchange of shots.
The mech—missed.
Art—hit again.
The mech didn’t get a third shot.
Art was suddenly beside it. He slipped past the strike, intercepting the mech’s arm and carrying its momentum forward. A sharp pull—and the mech went down hard. Art followed instantly, pinning it and twisting the arm into a lock.
A second later they were already standing.
The mech, not the least bit offended, retrieved its pseudo-res from the ground. Its icon had shifted back to orange—then vanished entirely. The mech froze in place.
Only then did I realize that Art’s resonator was already on his belt. He had secured it to free his hands for unarmed control—and I hadn’t even caught the moment he did it.
Session results appeared in my mask:
Dodges: 2
— successful: 2
Shots fired: 2
— justified: 2
— hits: 2
Neutralizations: 1
— justified: 1
— successful: 1
I was so impressed that I couldn’t find words.
I simply spread my hands in silent acknowledgment of the obvious—Art’s mastery was absolute.
Art walked over to me. He didn’t look triumphant or smug—if anything, he seemed almost preemptively apologetic.
“Well, Mac. Your turn. The first attempt usually goes… not great. That’s normal. Just do it however you can. We need something to build from.”
I took that for simple politeness.
In my head, I had a very clear, confident understanding of what needed to be done. It seemed to me it would be just like this morning—controlling the devices. It would simply… happen.
I had overlooked one thing.
Your body is not a remote device.
It’s your body.
And it knows how to hurt.
When the mech raised its resonator—now glowing red—and the sharp, pulsing warning filled my clip, I lunged forward.
For the first two seconds, everything seemed fine.
Then I attempted a roll.
I went down hard onto my side. Pain shot through my hip and shoulder at the same time. My head rang from the impact. And almost immediately I realized something else: rolling across rough ground with a backpack on is wildly inconvenient.
A split second later I heard the ugly:
Vzzzt!
I didn’t feel impact or touch—but somehow I knew I’d been hit.
I threw myself forward, somersaulted—rolled again over the pack, scrambled to my feet—and my entire right side flared with the pain from that first fall.
And then I took a second hit.
I pushed through a few more desperate steps. Only a few meters now.
That sound again—and I saw the blue beam strike me.
Only then did I remember I had a resonator.
I snapped it up and fired, watching the mech jerk aside. The beam missed.
Instantly I understood I had a brief window. I surged forward, stepped, and leapt sideways.
Shot. Beam—yes! Missed.
Encouraged, I charged the mech, barely paying attention to the lens trained on me.
And, predictably, took another hit.
But I was close now.
The mech struck—short, compact, no wind-up—with its left.
And connected.
I ran straight into its fist with my stomach. The blow knocked the air from me. A nauseating wave surged through my head; everything dimmed for a second—
—and I hit the ground.
The mech immediately pinned me and twisted the arm holding the resonator behind my back.
The pain forced my fingers open. The resonator dropped to the ground.
The mech released me at once, rose, and went still.
With my body aching, my head heavy and fogged, and a burning, almost physical sense of humiliation pressing down on me, I had no desire to stand.
I wanted to stay down.
Or better—disappear.
Or sink straight into the ground.
“Mac, listen—that wasn’t bad!” Art’s voice came from above. “You reached him. And you dodged one shot. In my first session, after the fourth hit, I just stopped and decided to restart. You’ve clearly got potential.”
For a moment I thought he was mocking me.
But when I pushed myself up and looked him in the eye, I realized—he meant it completely.
“Thanks, Art,” I muttered bleakly. “But honestly, you’d be better off yelling at me. That was… humiliating.”
“Careful what you wish for,” Art snorted. “Kirsten, for example, never held back. And I can tell you—the experience isn’t exactly pleasant.”
Despite everything, I couldn’t help smiling.
Seeing that, Art clapped me on the shoulder and smiled properly this time—openly encouraging.
“Alright. What does the session report say? And check your skill bar while you’re at it.”
The report was already in my mask:
Session Results:
Dodges: 5
— successful: 1
Shots fired: 1
— justified: 1
— hits: 0 Neutralizations: 1
— justified: 1
—successful: 0
Then I opened my skill scale. I knew how. Picking up the training resonator from the ground, I summoned my profile in the mask and selected the appropriate panel. In the corner of the display hovered my small, official-looking 3D portrait. Beneath it:
Mac
Agent, First Rank
Essence Picker, First Class
Current Skill Levels:
-
Picking: 1 (+0)
-
Piloting: 0 (+0)
-
Dodging: 5 (+5)
-
Unarmed Control: 1 (+1)
-
Resonator: 1 (+1)
Each skill was visualized as a beige bar—mine still very short. At the end of each bar glowed a small green segment: recent progress.
Art looked at me expectantly. I realized he couldn’t see the data—by default, it was confidential. I quickly took a screenshot of the skill scale and sent it to him.
He studied it carefully, then nodded with satisfaction.
“That’s what I thought. The NA gave you five points for that successful dodge. I’ll repeat: that’s an excellent result for a first attempt. The single points for picking, UC, and shooting just log participation. You made the right moves—just without results. Yet.”
I still suspected he was exaggerating slightly about the “excellent result.”
But my gratitude for his support was entirely genuine.
We returned to the starting point.
“Now let’s isolate the skills. First—dodging. You can stash the res in your pack. The task is simple: run the route and touch the mech. Preferably without getting hit.”
To be honest, I’d rather not describe the full extent of my subsequent humiliation, so I’ll limit myself to the results.
We started with dodging. Over the next ten sessions, I managed to avoid being hit only twice more. I quickly realized that the first success had been largely luck. As if sensing this, the NA stopped being generous and awarded only one point per successful dodge instead of five.
Honing resonator shooting felt like a pistol duel between me and the mech. Either one of us—or both—would advance toward the other. The mech constantly altered its rhythm: fast movements shifting to slow, sharp motions blending into fluid ones. The objective sounded simple—draw, fire, and hit—but only if the opponent genuinely intended to shoot.
That was the real difficulty.
The mech regularly performed threatening but ultimately harmless gestures—sudden lunges forward or sideways, simulating attack. The moment I raised the res and pulled the trigger, it would instantly break into motion, dodging with inhuman agility—in both the literal and figurative sense.
I don’t remember how many such “duels” we went through, but in the end my resonator proficiency bar did grow—by eight points.
And then came UC.
In other words: sparring.
Which also meant blows, falls, and painfully efficient holds. Or, to summarize—pain, pain, and… significant pain.
After about half an hour—when the NA, as it seemed to me, most reluctantly awarded me a third point in Unarmed Control—Art took pity and announced that he was hungry and it was time for a break.
“After lunch we can head to the open ground and work on piloting.”
I exhaled with immense relief.
We left the hangar and entered the adjacent administrative and service wing of the training complex.
Some time later, standing in the sanitizer chamber of the spa section, rinsing dust, sweat, and the remnants of my illusions about my strider competence off my body, I fortunately remembered that all sports and fitness sanitizers include a healing mode—and immediately switched it on.
By the time I stepped out of the spa, I felt almost normal again. The scrapes, bruises, and swelling had nearly vanished.
Art and I stopped at one of several small cafés located in the same building. It turned out to specialize in Asian cuisine and offered “replica-class” food. So the noodles placed before me by the café’s sole attendant—a compact mech-waiter—looked like ordinary meat, vegetables, and herbs. In reality, everything had been synthetically produced.
As I quickly discovered, this had no negative effect on the taste—quite the opposite. Every component of the dish, and the dish as a whole, tasted exquisite. I might even call it benchmark-level.
Noticing my obvious satisfaction, Art explained that artificial ingredients make it far easier to achieve a perfect flavor profile than natural ones. He personally preferred replica-class food.
I decided on the spot to follow his example—and informed him accordingly.