Chương 158: His Big Fat Mouth

Elia Manning. Apex flyer. It made so much sense in retrospect. Leo should have known. Apex flyers were NFL veterans. Leo glanced at the officer walking ahead of him.

"How should I address Mrs. Manning?" The officer slowed. Turned. Gave Leo a look.

"Her Si exceeds most Nascent Soul Lords. She outranks most of them too." The officer looked at him.

"But she asked for you by name. As a Giant. So don't make it weird." Leo nodded.

"Understood." They walked in silence. Leo processed the implications. The officer had emphasized Si. That was the key. A Foundation Establishment flyer who maxed out their divine sense would have a hundred thousand Si before breakthrough. If Elia underwent repeated Gold Core surgeries until she formed a superior core, her Si would quadruple to four hundred thousand. Most Nascent Soul Lords operated around the hundred thousand baseline. Their paths focused on weaponizing their domain.

Divine sense was too expensive to train at the Nascent Soul level. Elia Manning had four times the divine sense strength of a typical Nascent Soul cultivator. No wonder the military classified flyers at this level. No wonder Earth built an entire sport to train more of them. The NFL wasn't just entertainment. It was a cultivation pipeline designed to produce the most dangerous combatants in human history. It was extremely cost effective.

Rather than training divine sense with expensive spiritual qi, the military had flyers develop their Si through competition and funded the whole operation through ticket sales, sponsorships, and television contracts. The officer stopped at a door. He knocked twice, then pushed it open.

"Good luck," he said, and left.

Elia Manning sat behind a desk, still wearing the black flight suit from the demonstration. Her helmet rested on the surface in front of her. She looked exactly like her portraits. Dark hair pulled back. Sharp features. The kind of calm expression that suggested she'd seen everything worth seeing and found most of it boring.

"Take a seat." Leo sat. Elia studied him for a moment.

"How's Vince doing?" The question caught Leo off guard. He'd expected something about his training. His performance in the drills. His decision to show up at a military installation instead of attending OTAs.

"He's good," Leo said.

"I've only worked with him for a short while, but I respect him. He's a good captain." Elia's mouth curved slightly. Not quite a smile.

"Vince wasn't like that when he joined the league." Leo blinked.

"When Vince joined, he was always working an angle. Couldn't help himself. Every conversation was a negotiation. Every relationship was an investment he expected returns on." She leaned back.

"I told him once that if he treated the rookie cornerback like a mark one more time, I'd bench him for the season. He didn't believe me until I actually did it." A faint smile.

"After that, he started to figure it out." She gestured vaguely toward the ceiling, toward the world above.

"Outside the team, he's hopeless. Still chasing whatever scheme caught his eye that week. But in the locker room? He tries. That's more than most people manage." Leo thought about Vince checking in on him between drills. The way he'd called Niki an old hag and stepped in without being asked. The way he'd offered real advice wrapped in jokes and unsolicited business pitches.

"The Giants were never the same after you left," Leo said. Elia sighed.

"No. They weren't." A pause.

"And you're looking to change that. Right?" Leo opened his mouth. Closed it. The last three days hadn't gone well. He had hundreds of reps. And he was nowhere close to micrododging flak.

"I was on the right track," he said.

"But..." He trailed off.

"Spit it out." Leo took a breath.

"I came here because I wanted to learn how to dodge T4 shrapnel.

"My Governing Vessel was remodeled during my Foundation Establishment breakthrough. Ninety percent more conductive than baseline. My execution time is two point five milliseconds." Elia's expression shifted slightly. Interest, maybe.

"I can see the fragments," Leo continued.

"I can track every trajectory. I know exactly which ones will hit me and where. But I can't move fast enough to avoid them." He paused.

"And I want to know how you broke past air resistance. You were moving like the atmosphere wasn't there." Elia was quiet for a moment.

"Air resistance negation is from formation work," she said.

"Drag-reduction arrays built into the flight suit. Very expensive. Burns through T4 spiritual qi faster than you'd believe." She shrugged.

"It's already preemptively banned from NFL competition. You won't be able to acquire it unless you become an apex flyer yourself." Leo nodded. He'd expected something like that.

"But the micro-dodging." Elia leaned forward slightly.

"Tell me more about your training so far. What exactly are you doing when you try to evade?" Leo walked her through it. Everything he had tried. Elia asked questions. Leo answered as best he could. The conversation felt like a diagnostic. She was running through possibilities, eliminating variables, narrowing down the problem. After a few minutes, she sat back.

"I understand." Leo waited.

"The problem is that you're someone who thrives under pressure." Elia's voice was matter-of-fact.

"You're a specific kind of learner. You need stakes. Real consequences. Unfortunately, holographic projections are just images and points. They don't provide pressure." Leo's chest tightened. He thought about the Mountain Domain. Every mistake resulted in a death. Real pain. Real fear. Lord Ironhorn had painfully killed him dozens of times in the Azure Profound Continent before he'd learned to thread his domain. All of his training up to this point had been painful.

He'd learned through suffering because suffering was his only teacher.

"The solution is simple," Elia said.

"You need force feedback. Pain feedback." Leo tried to figure out if he could say no.

"I'll tell the technicians to fit you with a special flight suit. One that ignites your pain receptors every time you take a hit." She paused.

"And goggles that display the fragment trajectories visually." Leo's face grew ugly.

"The goggles are a training tool," Elia continued.

"You can't use your eyes to track shrapnel in real combat. You need Omnidirectional Awareness for that. But for learning the timing, for building the instincts, visual feedback will help you understand where your reads are failing." She stood.

"I believe you can do this." Leo remained seated. His mind raced through the implications. A flight suit that made every hit feel real. Hours of drilling against T4 flak where every hit meant agony. Suddenly sitting on the bench for a few years didn't sound so bad. Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more. Elia walked toward the door. Leo heard her speak to someone in the hallway. An aide, probably.

"Lock him in the force feedback suit until he learns how to dodge shrapnel. Set the pain to ten." Leo's blood went cold.

"Don't let him get comfortable. Don't let him leave until he learns it." Elia turned back. Her eyes found his across the small room. She smiled. It was not a kind smile.

"I'm looking forward to watching you lead the Giants to another Super Bowl," she said.

"Don't disappoint me." The door closed behind her. Leo sat alone in the room. Three years on the bench. That's what Harbach had offered him. Three years of development behind closed doors, no pressure, no pain. He really needed to learn to keep his mouth shut.

Lord Astor stood at the observation deck window. He'd overseen every phase of the base's construction and every class of flyers that came through it. Elia Manning stood beside him, arms crossed. Three hundred feet below, eleven flyers lifted off in a standard diamond. A twelfth trailed behind. Far behind.

"Flyer Seven, you're drifting." The squad leader's voice crackled through the observation deck's speakers.

"Equipment malfunction?" A pause. Then Leo Chen's voice, tight and careful.

"Negative. Equipment nominal."

"Then close the gap. We're entering the kill zone in forty seconds." The twelfth figure accelerated. Gingerly. It was Leo's first drill using the force feedback suit. Elia watched him slot into position at the rear of the squad. His movements were hesitant. None of the fluid confidence she'd seen in his earlier drills.

"Ten seconds to contact," the squad leader announced.

"Standard evasion protocols. Watch your spacing." The Gate's emplacements opened fire. Holographic explosions bloomed across the squad's flight path. The flyers scattered and reformed, each one sliding through gaps that existed for fractions of a second. Leo Chen took a direct hit. His flight suit lit up. His arm jerked backward like something had struck it. Then he started screaming. The sound cut through the observation deck's speakers. Raw. Uncontrolled. The group stuttered.

Two flyers broke pattern, their attention snapping toward the source of the noise.

"Flyer Seven?" The squad leader's voice was sharp.

"Seven, report. Are you injured?" Leo's scream died into ragged breathing. His flight suit still glowed with damage indicators.

"I'm..." His voice cracked.

"I'm fine. Continue the..." Another explosion. Another hit. The suit lit up across his chest and his whole body convulsed. The second scream was worse than the first.

"Command, this is Squad Leader." The squad leader had pulled back, hovering at the edge of the kill zone.

"Something's wrong with Flyer Seven. Requesting medical evaluation." The other flyers had scattered. The drill fell apart. Half of them watched Leo writhe in the air while the Gate's emplacements continued their barrage, holographic explosions blooming around targets that were no longer evading.

"Is the kid having a seizure?" Another voice on the comms.

"His suit's showing nominal but he's..." Leo screamed again. Three hits in rapid succession. His flight path corkscrewed as his body jerked in three different directions.

"Command, we need to pull him out. This isn't..."

"Negative." Elia's voice cut through the chatter.

"Helmet systems, activate audio dampening on Flyer Seven. Suppress all external vocalization." A pause on the comms.

"Ma'am?"

"You heard me. Mute him and continue the drill." She watched Leo take another hit, watched his body convulse, watched his mouth open in a scream that now no one could hear.

"Flyer Seven is running a specialized training protocol. His performance is not your concern."

"Ma'am, with due respect..."

"Continue the drill, Squad Leader. That's an order." Elia reached over and switched off the observation deck's comms panel. Below, the drill continued in silence. Flyers scattered and reformed. Emplacements tracked and fired. And one figure in a flight suit that kept lighting up tumbled through the kill zone, his body jerking with each impact, his screams silent. Lord Astor watched without expression.

"You requested that I come here personally." She paused.

"Why?" Lord Astor was quiet for a moment. Below, Leo took another hit. His flight path went erratic, spiraling downward before he caught himself.

"I met him five years ago," Lord Astor said.

"At Exeter. He was a freshman. Fourteen years old. Mortal." Elia glanced at him.

"He arrived at Exeter with an SI of sixty. As a mortal." A faint smile crossed Lord Astor's face.

"I asked him how. He refused to tell me anything." Eli waited.

"I offered him protection. Cover. Safe assignments in the Catacombs with my son's unit." Lord Astor's smile faded.

"He turned me down." Below, Leo had stopped trying to evade. He hung motionless in the air, taking hit after hit, his body jerking like a puppet with cut strings. The military flyers flowed around him, treating him as an obstacle rather than a teammate.

"I asked him for one thing," Lord Astor continued.

"A promise. That if he was ever in a position to save my son's life, he would try." Elia said nothing.

"He agreed. Said he couldn't promise success, but he would do his best." Lord Astor's voice was quiet.

"Then he walked out of that room and forgot the conversation ever happened."

"And your son?"

"Will was at the Battle for Fort Cambridge. Eastern element. His transport was trapped behind enemy Lords. No extraction possible." Lord Astor's hands tightened behind his back.

"I was there. I watched it happen. I prepared myself to lose him." The words hung in the air. Below, Leo had started moving again. Slower now. More deliberate. Each hit still made him convulse, but he was trying his best to dodge.

"Leo Chen broke the encirclement," Lord Astor said.

"Did the impossible. Saved everyone trapped there, including Will." Elia watched Leo take another hit. His flight path stuttered, recovered, continued.

"He has no idea Will was there. Probably has no idea he ever made me a promise." The drill ended. The emplacements went silent. The military flyers descended toward the staging platform. Leo Chen descended alone, two minutes behind them. His movements were stiff. Pained. But he was still flying.

"So when Major Santiago asked if she could let him in," Lord Astor said, "I did what I could." Elia turned to face him.

"He's going to hate this, you know." She gestured at the glass, at the figure below struggling to land without collapsing.

"He's not going to see pain as a gift. He's going to see it as torture."

"I know."

"And you haven't told him any of this. About Will. About Fort Cambridge. About why he's here." Lord Astor watched Leo stumble off his sword and nearly fall. A technician rushed over to check his suit. Leo waved them off and straightened, visibly forcing himself to stand.

"No," Lord Astor said.

"I haven't." Elia studied him for a long moment.

"Well," she said.

"I hope he figures it out before the pain breaks him." Lord Astor didn't answer. He just watched.

Three weeks later. Aruba Leo's phone buzzed against the arm of his beach chair. He considered ignoring it. The Caribbean sun was warm on his face. The lemonade in his hand was cold. The sound of waves lapping against white sand was the most peaceful thing he'd heard in three weeks. He picked it up anyway.

"Hey, pal." Vince's voice blared through the speaker.

"Where are you? I've been calling for three days. Three days, chief. You know how many voicemails I left? Eleven. Eleven voicemails. That's a personal record. I don't leave eleven voicemails for my own mother." Leo took a sip of lemonade.

"Aruba." Silence on the line.

"Aruba." Vince said the word like it was a foreign language.

"Aruba. The island. The Caribbean island. You're telling me you skipped every single day of OTAs to sit on a beach in Aruba."

"That's correct."

"Every single day. Four weeks. Sixteen practice sessions. Thirty-two hours of film review. You missed all of it."

"Also correct."

"Let me tell you something, pal." Vince's voice pitched higher.

"I've been in this league twenty-two years. Twenty-two years. You know how many rookies I've seen skip OTAs? Zero. None. Not one. Because OTAs are where you prove you belong. OTAs are where coaches decide if you're worth the roster spot. OTAs are where..."

"They're optional."

"They're technically optional. Technically. The way telling your wife she looks fat is technically not a crime." Vince made a sound like a wounded animal.

"A rookie skipping OTAs is a statement, chief. It's a big statement. It's a statement that says 'I don't care about this team, I don't care about this opportunity, I'd rather drink margaritas on a beach than compete for a starting spot.'" Leo set down his lemonade. The last three weeks had been the most painful experience of his life. At least when he'd threaded the Mountain Domain, he could only die once every fifteen hours. The respawn timer gave him space to recover. Space to think.

Space to prepare for the next attempt. The military facility had no such mercy. Once every fifteen minutes. That was the drill cycle. Fifteen minutes of agony, a brief recovery period, then back into the air. And if he refused, if he tried to rest longer than his allotted break, they simply activated additional projectors that hit him directly. Forced him into the field of fire whether he wanted to or not. He screamed until his throat gave out.

Then he screamed in silence, his vocal cords too shredded to produce sound. By the end of the first day, he had stopped thinking of himself as human. He was just a thing that existed to be hurt.

"You there, pal?" Leo blinked.

"Vince." He stared at the waves.

"I don't know how to put this, but I'm thinking of retiring from the NFL." A pause.

"Retiring." Vince's voice was flat.

"You're nineteen years old. You haven't played a single professional game. And you're thinking of retiring."

"Yes."

"To Aruba."

"Yes."

"You can complain all you want, pal. You can sit on your beach and talk about retiring. That's fine. That's your right as an American citizen." Vince's voice hardened.

"But tomorrow is mandatory minicamp. Mandatory. Not optional. And if you don't show your face at the facility by nine AM tomorrow morning, Commissioner Goodell is going to fine you a hundred thousand dollars." Leo's hand went slack. The phone tumbled from his grip, bounced off the arm of the beach chair, and landed face-down in the sand. A hundred thousand dollars. He did not have a hundred thousand dollars. He had thirty-two million dollars of debt accruing interest at seven percent.

He had a rookie contract that barely covered his living expenses. He had about three thousand dollars in his checking account, and almost all of which was earmarked for next month's rent. Leo scrambled out of the chair. Sand sprayed across his towel as he dropped to his knees and snatched up the phone.

"I'll be there." He brushed sand off the screen.

"I'll catch the next flight out."

"That's what I like to hear, chief. That's the fire. That's the hunger." Since when did it become thirty-two? Wasn't it just thirty-one? Leo resolved that once he ascended to Deity Transformation, he would declare interest illegal and jail all the bankers. No. Wait. He would be the one who collected interest. The bankers would work for him.

"Hey, pal." Leo paused.

"What?"

"Did you figure it out?" The question hung in the air. Leo thought about the last three weeks. About the pain. About the screaming. About the moment, somewhere in the second week, when things began to finally click. He smiled.

"You'll find out tomorrow."