than doing something more heroic. The blow never landed; the hand stopped a hair's breadth from her skin.
The man seemed even less impressed with her than she felt. "Reflexes good, reaction... terrible. In the time you employed squealing like a child, you could have blocked or evaded. You have no combat training, just instinct." He returned his hand to join its partner behind his back. "This will be time-consuming and painful for you." He looked at the sports bag slung over her shoulder. "Get changed in the room over there. You will be here for the rest of the day."
Nadiya didn't move. "Wait, this is just combat training?"
The man, who had been about to walk back to recover his newspaper, looked at her icily. "Just combat training?" he said.
"Well, I'm not saying I couldn't do with some, but I sort of got the impression this was, you know, Talent training."
The man said nothing. Part of Nadiya's mind was telling her that this was an ideal time for her to shut up, but she just kept talking.
"I mean, if it's just martial arts stuff, surely there's a dozen dojos around the city where I could learn? I don't understand all the secrecy about this place."
The man raised an eyebrow. It rose slowly and impressively, like Nosferatu rising from his coffin. Nadiya knew she had said not just the wrong thing, but absolutely the wrong thing. Then she realised that she knew it purely from what he was letting her read through body language and expression. Her empathic Talent wasn't picking up anything at all. How was that possible?
"Dojo." He said it with infinite, frozen disgust. "Do I look Japanese?"
The honest answer was she couldn't tell, any more than she could tell a Belgian from a Frenchman by sight alone. She had a strong feeling that the honest answer would turn out to be the wrong answer, so she said nothing.
"My name," he said, disgust still at full force, "is Mr Shaou. Does that sound like a Japanese name?"
Nadiya could see that they weren't getting off to the best of starts, and the smart thing would be simply to agree with him and keep agreeing. She was pretty sure he was implying it didn't sound Japanese and, admittedly, from her manga-reading and anime-watching, it certainly sounded different, so she said, "No?"
"You are indecisive." Lovely; now he was disappointed as well as disgusted by her. "This is not a dojo. If you have to call it anything other than a training room, you may call it a kwoon." He pronounced it with a soft g sound with the k. "I teach a form of kung fu here as a martial art. I also teach meditation skills as a path to understanding your Talents. For example," he cocked his head to one side and regarded her as one regards a primitive yet challenging painting, "your empathic Talent cannot read me, can it?"
Nadiya was astonished into silence for a moment, then admitted, "No. I'm not getting anything from you. Only what you're letting me read."
"Your Talent is untrained. You have not required training before because nobody has ever shown the ability to resist the Talent before. So, you have assumed there is no such ability. Now you know differently. Do you have any understanding of any of your Talents?"
"I know my Talent is developing. I didn't use to be able to confuse people until–"
"No, no." He shook his head, the very picture of a schoolmaster with a nice but stupid pupil. "You did not listen. Talents. Ssss. Ssss. The plural."
She was flummoxed. "I don't have Talents in the plural. I've just got the mind tricks."
"The 'mind tricks,' Miss Kysla, use two distinct Talents. You have used both together for so long, that you have not recognised this."
"What?" Now Nadiya was past flummoxed and well into banjaxed territory. "What do you mean? Look, I know my own mind well enough to–"
"You know nothing about your mind. You have used it as a tool, and not cared as to how that tool actually works. I read your profile and it was instantly clear to me that you have two Talents. You may argue that you have only one, but that will slow your training. Do you understand? Your Talents must be trained separately. Once you understand them individually, then you will be able to combine them with discipline and control. Not in the instinctive and frankly embarrassing way you have muddled along with up until today."
Nadiya thought she'd been doing pretty well with her Talent – singular – up until today. Shaou was wrong. He didn't understand at all. Although, she had to admit, his ability to block her empathy was a bit unnerving. Perhaps he had a minor Talent like that?
"Okay, Mr Shaou," she said, "what are these two Talents I have that I don't know about, but you spotted just by reading my file? Impress me."
"Both psionic," said Shaou, ignoring her sarcasm. "Telepathy and telekinesis."
The sarcasm went out of the window in a second. "Telekinesis?"
"The telepathy is limited to emotions, and the more developed, because you've been more aware of it. It may be at its limits already. We shall see. The telekinesis is different. I think you have barely made anything of it yet."
"I'm not a telekine," she protested. "Don't you think I'd know if I could do things like that?"
"How else do you think you are able to affect the brain chemistry of others?"
"By using the empathy. I kind of talk the endocrine system into doing what I want it to."
"And the endocrine system listens? How very clever of it."
"No, the brain tells it what to do! Sort of on a subconscious level."
"Your understanding of the complexities of the human body is a wonderful thing, Miss Kysla. Your mantel must groan under the weight of all the Nobel prizes. The endocrine system is autonomic in operation. Your empathic Talent applies to the conscious and subconscious mind. There is no overlap."
"No, no, you don't underst..."
"Can you read a person's state of mind when they are unconscious?" said Shaou.
Nadiya was quiet for a moment. "No," she said.
"Then how do you propose that you influence functions of the mind that lie even deeper than that? The endocrine? The digestion? The beat of the heart?"
She had no answer. He nodded slowly, and said, "You use your empathic Talent to detect the current state of affairs in a conscious mind, then you use your telekinetic Talent to physically affect the brain at a microscopic level." He looked at her significantly. "Miss Kysla, you literally wring hormones into the bloodstream."
"No." She shook her head emphatically. "That's not what happens at all."
"Why are you in denial? Why do you turn your back on such a useful Talent as telekinesis," he said. He walked away a few steps, then turned to regard her appraisingly. "You realise that such fine control of telekinesis is very rare? Usual manifestations are gross, not subtle. It is almost certain that your Talent should extend right across that spectrum, yet such gross manipulation of matter – throwing things around et cetera – are not only beyond you, but you refuse to even think of them." He walked back, and looked closely at her. "Why do you suppress it?"
Nadiya was getting angry with Shaou, angrier than she'd felt in a long time. As her rage built, she wasn't even sure why she was so upset with him.
"You listen to me, mister. I know my own mind, and I know my Talent inside and out. Telekinesis would be great, I know that. I wish I was a telekine. It would be really useful in my work with the Squad. But I'm not. There's not a hint of it, not a thing. You think I wouldn't jump at the ability to 'throw things around et cetera' with my mind if I could?"
She thought of what that would be like. It seemed great. "Why would I suppress it? Good question. I wouldn't!"
It seemed amazing. "Holy God, if I had power like that, I'd be able to–"
It seemed... familiar.
"Oh. Oh, my God!" Her eyes widened, remembering. "Oh, my God..."
She put her hand to her mouth, horrified.
Shaou nodded, satisfied that she was beginning to see. While she stood in the middle of the room, eyes wide and panicking a little, he strode away, fetched a couple of chairs and his newspaper, and brought them back with him. He arranged the
chairs facing one another, and sat down, gesturing that she should, too.
She sat slowly. Old memories were coming back. Old events. She felt stupid. She hadn't understood at all.
"Your Talents manifested in pubescence, yes?" said Shaou gently.
"Yes. My skin... it used to be normal. It started to go pale. I got rings around my eyes. My hands... My family thought I was ill. But things happened. People would faint around me. I knew when people lied to me. My grandmother thought I was possessed. She brought the priest to the house. I wanted to be left alone. I was really upset. I was so upset."
Shaou didn't seem so aloof now. Indeed, this all seemed almost routine to him. Nadiya distractedly wondered how many times he had done this in the past. How many people he made see the truth of their Talents.
"What happened when the priest came?"
"I was furious. I'd said, I'd said, again and again that I didn't need any help. I'd figure things out myself. And then in walks the priest. They'd ignored everything I said, and brought the priest."
She was quiet for some seconds. Old wounds opening, old pain recalled. A tear ran down Nadiya's cheek.
"Then, things happened. A poltergeist. Things flew off shelves, broke. The priest, he was pushed out of the door." She looked up at Shaou, her eyes glistening. Still angry after all that time. Still feeling the pain after all those years.
"Nobody would talk to me for a week afterwards. One of my cousins said I was the Devil. My whole family turned against me. No. My mother. She didn't.