Chapter 519 | You Jump

Chapter 519: 519 | You Jump

Vale was late.

Of course Vale was late. Vale had turned lateness into a philosophical position, a thing he did to me specifically because he found my irritation nutritious.

I stood outside the Summit gym at five in the morning with the ocean throwing salt up the cliffs and the sky doing the thing California skies did where they went from black to bruised purple to gold like someone was adjusting a dial. The door blinked red. Locked. The way it always was until Vale reached through space with his stupid untouchable Limitless ability and popped it open from wherever he happened to be lounging.

Five-oh-four.

Five-oh-nine.

I’d stopped drafting angry texts around week three. The angry texts fed him. Vale ate frustration the way I ate essence, and I refused to be his breakfast. I’d learned that lesson after the fourth time I sent him a message demanding to know where the hell he was, only to find him already in the gym when I arrived, reading my text aloud in a dramatic voice while sipping his coffee. He’d screen-recorded the whole thing. Posted it in the faculty chat. Misato had sent me a crying-laughing emoji.

So now I just stood here in the pre-dawn chill and counted seconds. Watched the sky change colors. Felt my calves complain about yesterday’s gate run. This was the game. This was his version of a training exercise, the kind that had nothing to do with push-ups and everything to do with seeing how long I could keep my temper leashed.

At five-thirteen the lock clicked green with no sign of him anywhere, and I pushed inside to find the lights already on, the resistance bands already calibrated to Bronze tier, and Vale sitting in his chair at the far end with a coffee mug that said WORLD’S OKAYEST HUNTER and an expression that meant he’d been awake for hours and had opinions.

"Milk Man," he said.

"That’s not sticking."

"It’s absolutely sticking. Burger Guy won the poll but Milk Man has staying power. Layered. Nobody knows why it’s funny except the six people who do, and those six people will never explain it, which makes it perfect." He sipped his coffee. His silver hair caught the fluorescents, one ice-blue eye and one storm-grey eye tracking me across the gym. "You’re on time."

"You unlocked the door at five-thirteen."

"The road of life is winding." He set the mug down. "Warm up. Twenty-two rounds. Then we talk about Monterey, because Misato texted me your formation and I have notes, and by notes I mean I’m going to poke holes in it until you learn to build one that doesn’t have holes."

"You saw the formation."

"I see everything. It’s exhausting." He waved a hand at the mat. "Push-ups. I want to watch you suffer before I’m nice to you. It balances my humors."

I dropped to the mat and started, and by round six my arms had opinions, and by round ten those opinions became a formal grievance, and by round fifteen I’d left my body somewhere behind me and become pure mechanical protest, and Vale sat in his chair drinking coffee and making notes on a tablet like he was reviewing a restaurant that had personally offended him.

Round twenty-two ended with me face down on the mat, breathing like a man who’d lost a bet with physics.

"Good," Vale said.

From Vale, that single word was a parade.

He stood, walked over, and crouched next to my head, and when he spoke again the humor had gone somewhere quieter, the way it did in the car when he’d talked about being alone at the top of a mountain waiting for company that never came.

"Monterey’s a real gate," he said. "Not the training kind. The tide problem is real. The entity count is real. And the thing about aquatic-adjacent biomes is that they hide their apex in the deep water where your detection specialists can’t reach until it’s already on you." He looked at me, both eyes, mismatched and old and interested in a way that made my spine straighten. "You’ve got a squad of eight that can barely stand each other. Two captains who spent nine years learning to hate the same person. A field lead position everybody’s already handed you whether you wanted it or not." He tilted his head. "Question."

"Which is?"

"When the tide comes in faster than Javier’s protractor promised, and Belle can’t see the deep water, and Blair’s fire is running at sixty percent, and something the size of a bus comes up out of the kelp with a grudge." He paused. "What do you do?"

I pushed myself up to sitting. My arms shook. The graft hummed against my sternum, eight rings, one flickering.

"I get everyone home," I said.

"Everyone."

"Everyone."

Vale looked at me for a long moment, and something moved behind those mismatched eyes that wasn’t amusement and wasn’t detachment, something closer to the thing I’d seen in the car when he told me he wanted me to catch up to him, to pass him, to become the thing that made him try.

"That’s the wrong answer," he said. "It’s the answer I wanted. But it’s the wrong one, because someday the math won’t let you have it, and the day you learn that is the day you either become useful or you die." He stood, and the moment folded itself back up behind his sunglasses, which he put on despite the fact that we were indoors and it was five in the morning. "Now. Resistance bands. Bronze tier. Fifty per exercise. And you’re going to run Wave Motion in your off hand the whole time, and if the spiral drops the rep doesn’t count."

"You did this to me last week."

"I did it worse last week. This is the same thing, easier, because I’m feeling generous." He picked his coffee back up. "Consequence is parked outside, by the way. We’re going to Santa Barbara Saturday. Yumi wants the pink one. Bring the pink one."

"Her name’s Naomi."

"I know her name. I’m testing whether you’ll correct me. You always do." He almost smiled. "It’s one of the three interesting things about you."

"What are the other two?"

"You jump," Vale said. "Bands. Now. Off hand. Go."