The Heart didn’t do "hangars" the way other places did. It did temples that pretended to be gyms.
Alteea led them into a hall where the white wasn’t empty but hungry. The floor was broken into lanes with embedded rails and shallow grooves - panels on the walls retracted and advanced like breath. A ceiling grid could open and close into chimneys of air. It looked designed for people who launched themselves across space and wanted the building to help.
"It’s called a traversal gallery" Alteea said, glasses glinting. "Engineers built it for staff-users who blast themselves instead of walking like the rest of us. Perfect for bruising egos with safety foam."
Saffi ghosted in behind her, slate ready.
Esen rolled his shoulders as if the room had been invented to flatter him. His rings clicked softly, settling along his fingers. "You can save the spectacle. I move quite fine."
Keahi made a thoughtful noise. "He does move fine. Like a very enthusiastic flea."
"Jealousy is an illness" Esen told her. "I hope you recover."
Alteea’s smile was all heat and mischief. "Beautiful confidence. Hold onto that for... about thirty seconds." She pointed at a lane. "Trial one: straight-line burst. Clean pulse propulsion. End line is the wall. Please don’t give it an aggressive french kiss."
The end line, unfortunately, looked very kissable - smooth, shining, unavoidable.
Esen hopped onto the starting mark like a man greeting a stage. "Watch and learn" he told everyone, mostly himself. He lifted his hands, rings aligned, elbows tucked –
The pulse was gorgeous: a white-blue burst that grabbed the air and shoved. Esen rocketed forward, ginger hair snapping, baggy trousers flaring like a banner.
It was also... a little too gorgeous. He accelerated a beat faster than his balance had planned for. His feet chased his chest. Halfway down the lane he made a sound that was either a laugh or the beginning of a prayer.
"Brake!" Arashi shouted helpfully.
"With what?" Esen shouted back, already deciding.
He twisted his wrists, trying for a counter-pulse. The rings answered - too eagerly. He spun ninety degrees, then one-eighty, then became a very elegant, very alarmed wheel. A soft whump cut the lane a stride before the wall. He staggered, bowed, and pretended that had been the plan.
Alteea golf-clapped. "Ten out of ten for drama. Six for physics. Reset?" She flicked two fingers. The wall exhaled and the cushion telegraphed another save, just in case.
"First try" Esen said, smoothing his hair. "One must calibrate, you know."
"Take two then" Alteea sang. "Gate slalom."
Panels slid out of the floor to form a zigzag of waist-high gates. Each gate flickered a ring of light that narrowed if you hesitated. Esen took a breath, rolled his shoulders again, and launched with a cleaner burst. He threaded the first gate, then the second, then the third - and on the fourth, overcorrected.
He went through it sideways, which should have been impossible and, for a second, was. Then the lane’s micro-turbines exhaled. He spun a tidy pirouette, bumped the gate with one hip - beep! - and landed facing backward. He blinked, considered pretending that had been a tactical retreat, and pushed on, now laughing breathlessly as he righted himself and scraped through the last two rings.
"Time?" he asked, breathless.
Saffi, without looking up: "Not competitive."
"Savage" Esen said, impressed despite himself.
"Trial three" Alteea purred. "Vertical grab."
Vents in the floor’s seam opened with a hush. A column of air shouldered upward through a grated pit, not enough to lift a person but enough to make them honest. The target - a soft, dangling sphere the color of righteous smugness - dropped from the ceiling.
"You launch" Alteea said. "Catch it. Don’t sue us."
Esen squinted at the moving target, then at his rings. "This is a trap" he informed the ball. The ball, to its credit, continued to be a ball.
He crouched, fired, and jumped at the same time. For a heartbeat he was perfect - body and pulse in the same sentence. He rose into the moving column, reached, fingers brushing -
The updraft nudged him left. The counter-burst overcorrected. He pinwheeled beautifully, clipped the ball with the back of his wrist - beep! denial chirped - and then the safety cushion reappeared, bounced him to the side, and he landed with a drunk ballerina’s grace
Silence. Then Lynea, very gently: "You almost had it."
"I completely had it" Esen said from the floor. "And then I generously returned it to the atmosphere."
"Again?" Alteea asked, sweet as a knife.
Esen popped to his feet. "Again."
He missed again. He also laughed again, and the second laugh wasn’t defensive - it was honest, edges bright. The third try he actually caught the thing - fingers slapping shut just as the updraft tried to bully him - and his whoop made the room admit it liked him.
"Better" Alteea allowed. "But I am writing "high spin risk" in six places."
"I prefer dynamic angular excellence" Esen said.
"Of course you do." She winked at him. "Take five. You’re pretty when you’re dizzy."
Esen lowered his hands with exaggerated dignity. "Compliments from Command. Please put that in my file."
"Yeah, yeah. Don’t worry, most staff users or interesting individuals like you usually get to your point in 5 weeks of continuous training. Be proud, but not an idiot."
Arashi had been watching like a cat at a fish tank - still, calculating, tail flicking somewhere you couldn’t see. When Alteea’s attention tilted toward him, he didn’t waste the invitation.
"I need height" he said simply. "And angle. If I can’t see over, I’d rather not be there. Mobility in the sky."
Alteea’s grin sharpened. "Perfect. Actually, the timing is even better. Come meet a mistake we’re proud of."
"Prototype?" he asked, hopeful.
"In the Heart" she said, "we don’t call it a prototype unless it’s almost bored of being perfect."
She took them through a pressure door that whispered behind them. The research bay beyond was a cathedral for people who worship components. Benches were islands of organized chaos. Tool walls glittered. Engineers in clean coveralls turned with the same look dogs get when you come home with interesting mud on your shoes.
"Where’s my deck?" Alteea called.
A tech with a buzzcut and an unadvisable amount of pride rolled out a sleek plank that looked like someone had taught a katana to dream of surfing. A soft, recessed anchor ring for a safety tether sat near the nose, embarrassed to exist.
"This is the Astra-203" the tech said, not even trying to sound casual. "She’s run the gamut. Stabilized gyros, redundant propellers, edge thrusters for micro-yaw. She’ll hold a bead better than a bench rest if you treat her right."
"Why 203?" Arashi asked.
"Because it’s the two-hundred third attempt and model."
Arashi ran a hand along the board’s side like he was greeting a horse he intended to adore. "Hello" he told it. "Do not betray me in front of my friends."
Keahi folded her arms. "If you fall, I will laugh politely."
"Rude" Arashi said. "But fair."
He stepped onto the deck. It balanced under him with a tiny live adjustment, as if old sea learned a new trick and wanted praise. The tech clipped a tether to his belt, patted his hip, and retreated with a prayer disguised as a cough. Find the newest release on novel·fire.net
"Takeoff in assist" Alteea said. "Then we kill the nanny."
He bent his knees. The board lifted a handspan, then a foot, then his grin did a thing that made everyone remember why they kept him. He leaned forward and the deck obeyed: a clean glide across the bay, the hum rising like a whisper that liked him. He drifted left, right, made a lazy S in the air.
"Stability" Ichiro observed. "Good platform to shoot from."
Arashi drew one pistol and said, "Yes" the way a craftsman agrees with a good tool. He didn’t fire - nobody needed holes in the roof - but he sighted down and you could see how the board steadied his aim, not by locking him, but by refusing to bicker.
"Kill assist. Or aimbot" Alteea said.
The board wobbled, flirted with petulance, then found him again as Arashi adjusted. He rode it into a gentle slalom through a column forest, bent a knee and kicked a micro-thruster to rotate in place, then slid up along the wall in a diagonal climb that made Lynea gasp and Esen mutter something about show-offs.
He tried a stop. The deck obeyed - grudgingly. He drifted a half meter longer than he wanted and kissed the safety field with his shoulder. Whump. The board, affronted, hummed higher as if it had been perfect and gravity had been the one to mess up.
"Not bad" Alteea said, affectedly bored. "Try an up-and-stall."
Arashi rose, rose, rose - then cut forward momentum and held. The deck fought the idea of down - Arashi let his weight find the sweet point and floated. He grinned, tipped a fraction, and the board rolled, giving him a new angle without killing the stall. From there he could have put a bead on anything and the anything would have felt very exposed.
"Alright" he admitted, "I have fallen for her."
"Don’t marry it" Keahi said. "Batteries don’t do vows."
"So I don’t have your blessing" Arashi replied.
"Land before you propose" Alteea said, amused.
He landed. The tech rolled the board back to the cradle with the care of a midwife.
"Again" Arashi said, already hungry.
"In a minute" Alteea told him. She was watching Esen out of the corner of her eye. He was stretching his shoulders and pretending nothing in the world had ever been better than missing a ball three times and catching it once.
Then, she whispered, more to herself: It wasn’t even calibrated to his weight or height... How in the world...?