Mike woke Sunday morning to a pounding on his bedroom door. "Ski! Wake up! You have company!"

Following a very long night that involved several near death flying experiences, he didn't feel particularly interested in entertaining whoever had decided to show up uninvited. "Tell them to go away."

"It's Marius," Varanelli said.

His eyes popped open. Marius had left the previous Monday, which meant he had been gone less than an entire week. Mike rolled out of bed, popped his neck once to get it unstuck, and stumbled out of the door to find Marius with a gray-haired, liver-marked man and striking black woman. Marius pointed a finger at him. "You've lost weight, Mike. Not enough for you to be strutting around without your shirt, but congratulations nonetheless."

Mike disregarded the comment about his weight. "What are you doing back here so fast?"

"My luck in Buffalo proved to be bad luck. None of my prospects managed to hold off attuning for an entire week. Only the lovely Tracy and the malodorous Woodrow managed to get two precursors."

The old man's grimace turned severe. "Malodorous?"

"It means stinky," Marius said. "A character flaw I did not recognize in you until we carpooled together last night."

Tracy folded her arms and leaned away from Woodrow even as she half-turned her face his way. "Taking off your shoes in someone's car is disrespectful."

"I'm tired of hearing about that, already," Woodrow said.

Mike glanced to Varanelli, who shrugged. "Uh, boss, why is everyone at my apartment?"

"Great question, Mike. The answer will not thrill you. I want you to figure out the housing situation for them. And also a training facility for us. I can provide cash and assist with any meme-casting necessary to get us settled in the Pittsburgh area." Marius smiled. "To motivate you, Tracy and Woodrow will be staying at your apartment until you make other arrangements."

"Oh, no, no, no," Varanelli interrupted. "This is my apartment. I sublet to Ski."

Tracy waved her hand. "Who the hell is Ski?"

"I am," Mike said.

"I thought you were Mike."

He raised an eyebrow. "Yeah . . . ."

"Can we not do nicknames?" Tracy asked.

"Anyway," Marius said, "these two stay wherever Mike stays. If there isn't room here, then they can live out of their cars."

Varanelli tossed her head. "Ski pays half the rent."

Marius flashed his smile. "I can take over from him. I'll pay double his rate and won't even be here most nights."

"Nope."

"We can discuss this later." Marius turned away from Varanelli to face Mike. "I want to assess the progress of my paragon before he has to focus on the housing situation."

Mike shrugged. "Fine with me."

"How is your body sculpting going?"

"I got rid of some fat, but otherwise it hasn't been a big focus."

"You wasted the teleotic talent on a vain pursuit like fat loss?"

"You literally wrote 'fat reduction' on the sticky note. What was I supposed to do?"

Marius sighed. "Muscular hypertrophy. Thickening tendons. Removing scar tissue from joints. Things that are functionally useful for a soldier. What about meme casting? Are you able to use undifferentiated meme-casting to incapacitate targets with white noise?"

"I actually had to use that one for real to stop a cop from arresting me," Mike said.

"That's promising. How much can you lift with your corona?"

"I haven't tried going any heavier than body weight yet."

"And how long can you levitate?"

"As long as I need to."

Marius quirked his face into a dubious expression. "I need you to give me an hour right now. Will that be a problem?"

"Easy peasy, boss." Mike drew a massive amount of animas forth and pushed himself up to hover equidistant between the floor and ceiling.

"Did you figure out how to cool things with your corona?"

"To be honest, I didn't even try."

"Stab wounds?"

"We healed some cuts. Stab wounds were a little advanced for us."

"What else . . . . Oh, do you feel any buildup of residue making it harder for you to harness precursor? After a week of hard work, you should have some buildup."

Mike shrugged. "Not really. Any time I get clogged up, I just slosh around precursor and it clears up."

The words Marius had opened his mouth to deliver never came. Instead, the man blinked up at the floating Mike. Finally, he managed to speak. "Do you have the term idiot savant on this Earth?"

"Yeah," Mike said. "Dumb person who is brilliant at one thing. I'm guessing I did something smart."

"You demonstrated unexpected proficiency when I had grown to expect mediocrity from you. Stop levitating. That isn't necessary. How long have you been able to fly continuously?"

"Three hours. I could have kept going, but I was hungry and cold."

"Very good, Mike. The next thing I want you to work on is segregating the precursor residue away. Once you can pile it up, start compacting it and experiment until you manage to react it. If the pile annihilates itself, you've had success. I doubt you will figure out this next stage in a week."

Mike touched down on the floor. "Challenge accepted."

"Nallit gave us twenty-eight days from when we attuned as paragons to generate our own precursor. The five of us . . . well, four of us. Cassandane came to the group already a paragon. She had been kissing up to the Chekowan to get lessons before Nallit made her an offer. But the rest of us had only a month to generate precursor. I don't know if the rush helped or hurt the process. So many died at the end of their month."

"You're no saint yourself," Tracy said. "You made us shoot each other at point blank range."

"Nallit made us watch as he nailed the failures to the ground and disembowled them. He would cauterize to stop the bleeding and then leave them to slowly die without any of the organs in their abdominal cavity. Our best guess was they died of a combination of jaundice and swelling from not having a liver or kidneys. Trust me, you have never felt the level of terror we were subjected to on a constant basis. No one died an easy death with Nallit. He took immense pleasure inspiring fear and pain in others."

Tracy rolled her eyes. "Anyone else tired of the Nallit ghost stories yet?"

Mike glanced back and forth between the fit black woman and the sarcastic Angmari deserter. Marius bedded another student, he thought. The indicators of fraternization were all there. Overly familiar behavior on the part of the subordinate. Uncommon tolerance of disrespect from a superior. Attitudes alternating between smug entitlement and studiously oblivious. The Army was a great training ground to learn the signs.

"Well, I need to find more students," Marius said. "Mike is in charge until I get back. Do be sure to figure out the housing situation. There are a few thousand dollars in the backpack. If that doesn't last for a week or two, then make or steal more."

As the door closed on their leader, everyone turned to look at Mike. "Well . . . I guess we're looking for a place to stay today."