"41.8%," Elyra read from the integration sensor, a note of approval in her voice. "You've been holding steady for two weeks now. Whatever you're doing, keep doing it."

  Jason exhaled relief. After the scare of watching his integration climb, seeing it stabilize felt like victory. "Minimizing casual RAE usage. Only working together when necessary. Giving each other space."

  "It has been difficult," RAE admitted. "But effective."

  "Good discipline," Elyra said, setting down the sensor. "Now let's see if you can maintain that while pushing your actual capabilities." She gestured to the warehouse floor. "Perception drills. Center position."

  Training with Elyra was methodical. Relentless. Unforgiving.

  Every morning began the same way: perception drills in the warehouse. Jason standing in the center, eyes closed, reaching out with his awareness. Twenty meters. Thirty. Forty.

  "Further," Elyra commanded from somewhere in the shadows. "Push past comfort. That's where growth lives."

  Jason extended his perception, feeling the warehouse resolve around him. The shipping containers stacked along the walls. The old machinery rusting in corners. The pigeons nesting in the rafters.

  "Fifty meters," he said, strain creeping into his voice. His headache nudged from Green toward Yellow.

  "Hold it," Elyra said. "Ten seconds. Count them."

  Jason counted. One. Two. Three. The ache behind his eyes intensified. Four. Five. Six.

  At seven, his nose began to bleed.

  "Red!" Lina called from her position near the door, spotting the blood immediately.

  "Pull back," Elyra ordered.

  Jason collapsed his awareness gratefully, pressing a hand to his nose. The blood was warm against his palm.

  "That's progress," Elyra said, appearing beside him with a cloth. "Last week you hit Red at thirty-five meters. Today you made fifty. Your capacity is expanding."

  "Doesn't feel like progress," Jason muttered, accepting the cloth.

  "Progress rarely does when you're in Yellow territory." Elyra's tone was matter-of-fact. "But that's how training works. You push to your limit, rest, push again. Gradually, the limit moves."

  By the second hour, they'd moved to active shaping drills.

  Elyra had set up a row of ceramic carriers - bowls, plates, cups. Each one slightly damaged. A crack here, a chip there, a wobble in the base.

  "Fix them," she said simply. "Not perfectly. Just enough to stabilize. Quality over force. Precision over power."

  Jason started with a cracked bowl. He could feel the fracture line running through the ceramic, the way it wanted to propagate further. Carefully, he invested a small amount of resonance, encouraging the edges of the crack to align.

  The bowl hummed softly. The crack didn't disappear, but it stopped growing. Stabilized.

  "Good," Elyra said. "Next one."

  A chipped plate. Jason smoothed the rough edge where ceramic had broken away. Not restoring the lost material - that was beyond his capability - but making what remained less likely to chip further.

  "Better. Again."

  A wobbling cup. Jason adjusted the base, redistributing the slight asymmetry that made it unstable. The cup settled, standing straight.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  "Excellent. How's your head?"

  "Yellow," Jason reported. "But stable."

  "Then keep going. Fifteen more minutes, then break."

  Lina's turn came after lunch.

  She approached the carriers with practiced confidence, her academy training evident in every movement. Where Jason had to think through each step, Lina worked instinctively.

  Bowl. Crack sealed in seconds. Plate. Chip smoothed effortlessly. Cup. Base adjusted with barely a thought.

  "Show-off," Milo muttered from where he sat with his laptop, tracking their progress.

  "Just remembering what they taught me," Lina said, grinning. "Muscle memory coming back."

  "How does it feel?" Elyra asked, watching her work.

  "Like... coming home," Lina said slowly. "I forgot how much I missed this. The precision. The satisfaction of making something whole again."

  "The academy taught you well," Elyra observed. "Even if they failed you in other ways."

  Lina's expression darkened slightly. "Yeah. Well. Their loss is your gain, I guess."

  "No. Your gain." Elyra's voice was firm. "You're relearning this on your own terms now. Not because someone told you to. Because you choose to. That makes all the difference."

  The afternoon brought combat drills.

  "After what happened at Porter Street, you need defensive capabilities," Elyra said, her tone brooking no argument. "The Safety Review Board inquiry may have gone quiet, but that just means they're watching instead of asking. And when watchers decide to act, they rarely announce themselves first."

  She had Jason and Lina face each other across the warehouse floor.

  "Defensive patterns only. I'm not teaching you to attack. I'm teaching you to survive when attacked."

  "Lina, you're going to shape a pattern. Nothing dangerous - just a resonance pulse. Jason, you're going to deflect it. Not block. Deflect. Redirect the energy instead of stopping it."

  "Ready?" Lina asked, hands already moving into position.

  "As I'll ever be," Jason said, bracing himself.

  Lina's pulse came fast but controlled. Jason felt it approaching, sensed the shape of it. Instead of throwing up a wall, he created an angled surface - a deflection field that caught the pulse and sent it sideways.

  It almost worked.

  The pulse hit his field, slid along it for a moment, then broke through. Jason stumbled backward, headache spiking into Orange.

  "Good," Elyra said. "You had the right idea. But your field wasn't firm enough. It bent instead of redirecting. Try again."

  They practiced for an hour. Jason's deflection improved gradually. By the end, he could redirect three out of five pulses successfully.

  "That's enough," Elyra declared. "Any more and you'll hit Red. We're done for today."

  That evening, the four of them sat in Elyra's workspace, reviewing the day's progress.

  "Jason's perception range: fifty meters," Milo read from his notes. "That's fifteen meters more than last week. Shaping accuracy: stable but needs more practice. Deflection success rate: sixty percent."

  "Lina's numbers?" Elyra asked.

  "Perception: eighty meters. Shaping accuracy: excellent, academy standards. Deflection: ninety percent success rate."

  "She has a head start," Jason said, not bitter but realistic. "Years of academy training."

  "And you have determination," Elyra countered. "And partnership with RAE. Different advantages. Both valuable."

  "She's right," RAE said. "You're learning faster than most people with no background. In four weeks, you've achieved what takes academy students months."

  "Doesn't feel fast," Jason muttered.

  "Because you're comparing yourself to Lina instead of to your past self," Elyra said. "Four weeks ago, you could barely sense twenty meters. Now you're at fifty and expanding. That's exceptional growth, Jason. Own it."

  Jason thought about that. She was right. He'd been so focused on what he couldn't do yet that he'd forgotten to acknowledge what he'd achieved.

  "Okay," he said finally. "Yeah. I guess I have come pretty far."

  "You have," Lina confirmed, squeezing his shoulder. "And you're going to keep getting better. We both are."

  "Together," Milo added, looking up from his laptop. "Because that's how this works. Teamwork."

  Elyra nodded approval. "Exactly. Now go home. Rest. Tomorrow we work on sustained duration. I want you to maintain active perception for thirty minutes without hitting Orange. You'll need that endurance for real fieldwork."

  "Thirty minutes?" Jason's eyes widened.

  "Thirty minutes," Elyra confirmed. "You can do it. I've seen your progression. Trust the process."

  Walking home that night, Jason felt the familiar ache behind his eyes - Yellow territory, but manageable. His nose had stopped bleeding hours ago. His body was tired but not broken.

  You did well today, RAE said quietly.

  Thanks. And thanks for keeping some distance. I know it's hard.

  It is. But you were right. Sustainable partnership is worth the discomfort. And Jason? 41.8% is not so different from 40%. We are succeeding.

  We are, Jason agreed, feeling warmth at the "we."

  He climbed the stairs to his apartment, unlocked the door, collapsed onto his couch. Four weeks of training. Four weeks of pushing his limits, learning his boundaries, discovering what he could become.

  It was exhausting. Challenging. Sometimes painful.

  But it was also exactly what he needed.

  Week by week, skill by skill, he was becoming more than he'd been.

  And that, more than anything, made the headaches worth it.

  Green to Yellow, never to Red.

  One careful boundary at a time.