Training Room, Lambent Laboratories, Cell 3,

Africa Dome

"Ah, you're early."

Peppermint hadn't heard Jasper approach and started at his voice. She'd been thinking about how long it would take Maple and Nick to realise there was a problem before living up to their word and charging in to save her. Swinging around, she returned Jasper's smile with a glare.

He took a step back from her expression, frowning. "Is everything—"

"Is that the same story you tell all the denizens you bring here?" she asked, injecting venom into her voice.

"I'm not sure—"

"A brain lesion?"

Jasper halted. He had the decency to look embarrassed, at least. "Peppermint, you must understand, this is a highly classified operation."

Jasper didn't maintain eye contact with her. She scowled at him as he began rubbing the back of his neck.

"Why didn't you just drug me the first time I arrived, huh? Then you could have kept me here and experimented on me as much as you wanted."

"Because then your friends might have worried."

Peppermint's mouth opened for a scathing reply, but then closed again.

"The last thing we want is for your friends to worry about you." He lifted his hands. "Is there anything else you need to get off your chest, or can we begin?"

She glanced around the testing room. "Where's Onyx?" She'd been working on a scathing harangue she couldn't wait to throw his way.

"He should be here any minute now." Jasper sighed. "Shall we begin in the meantime? He's generally not involved in the meditation exercises."

"Meditation? We're going to meditate?"

"Not us. You. Follow me." Jasper passed her, heading toward the far corner of the testing room.

Peppermint glanced around again. There wasn't much to see in the sparsely furnished room. It was large, about twenty meters in diameter, partitioned into quarters with waist-high screens of frosted glass. One of the quarters interested her in particular — it held a strange oblong contraption, constructed from a dull metal with an old-fashioned LED screen above a control panel.

Jasper led her into the south-east quarter, the closest to the door. A long-haired rug spread over the slick, pale tiles, and a few cushions lay in a tidy heap on the side. There was nothing else in the quadrant. The man seated himself on the rug and turned to look at her when she remained motionless.

He swept the air beside him. "Come in."

"Yeesh," she whispered under her breath and stepped gingerly onto the carpet. "Uh, is this... necessary?"

"Very much so."

She sat down on the carpet. Peppermint stared at the man with apprehension as she crossed her legs. He smiled amiably back at her and placed his hands with exaggerated care on his folded knees. She mirrored him, watching his face for the first sign that this was all somehow a very elaborate joke that would have her profile trending for the next month. He touched his thumb and middle finger together on each hand, raising his eyebrows until she mimicked him. Make that the next year.

"Listen Jasper, I still have no idea—" she began.

Jasper took a breath. His chest rose, and air whistled into his nose.

"You have to still your mind. Meditation focuses your mental energy, allowing you to direct a flow of energy into a specific conduit of your choosing. Your mind is filled with thousands of thoughts, each bustling for attention. Now you have to try and separate yourself from the conscious, in order to access your subconscious. Are you ready?"

She shrugged. "As I'll ever be."

A strange light filled the man's eyes. It reminded her of Onyx's fervency earlier that day. She suppressed a shiver and took a breath, trying to push away a flurry of unwelcome thoughts. Meditation? The dire thoughts racing through her mind after Onyx's revelation hadn't touched on newer-new-age crap like this. Anal probes and robot limbs, yes. Incense and meditation, no.

"Let's begin. Are you comfortable?"

"I guess."

"You'll need to stay in this position for as long as possible. If you start feeling irritation in your legs then try and direct a flow of energy into them, to calm the nerves."

"Sure."

"First, I want you to close your eyes. We're going to be doing some deep breathing, similar to what you did yesterday. So, a long, smooth breath in and then slowly let it out."

Peppermint quickly slipped into the rhythm — her body welcomed the change of pace. Her limbs began to weigh down on her. An uneasiness began in her legs, a tickling, squirming sensation that made her want to uncross her legs and stand. She decided to ignore it, still not sure how to direct a flow of anything anywhere.

At first she was keeping track — seven breaths, eight, nine — but as she reached thirty, her mind began to wander. She thought back on her brash induction with Onyx. When could she leave? Never. Onyx's eyes filled her mind, and she forgot about her breath.

"If you lose the rhythm of the breath, simply dismiss your active thought and start again."

Even though Jasper's voice was a nearly inaudible whisper she jerked in surprise. Her eyes fluttered open before she could stop them. They stared at each other for a moment.

Jasper smiled at her. "Try again. This time, don't close your eyes fully, keep them a hair's breadth open, trying not to focus on anything you can see."

How in the name of tech—

But with her eyes only open a fraction, everything was blurry and dark. And not the thought-spawning blackness of her mind. Her breathing started of its own. Heaviness returned to her limbs in an instant.

"I want you to imagine a flower in bloom, slowly folding open, petal by petal."

"A... flower?" She didn't want to speak, knowing it would disrupt the blissful sensation of calm soaking into her body.

"Yes... any flower—"

"I... uh..." her eyes snapped open.

Jasper had been staring at her. She shuffled.

"What happened? You were doing so well."

"I haven't seen a flower. Not a real one, anyway. Definitely not... what... in bloom?"

"Oh, of course." He shook his head. "We'll try something more tangible then. What about a snowflake?"

"Yeah... no."

"Okay, uh... I'm not quite sure..."

"Does it have to be something living? Can't it be like... a pattern?"

"Yes, a mandala perhaps?"

"A what now?"

"It's a pattern—"

"Tell you what," Peppermint interrupted. "Club Zero does this amazing thing on their psyche nights, with like, these psychedelic spirals and colours and stuff."

"Is it... relaxing?"

"Depends what you're on."

Jasper's eyes widened. His chin dipped down as he struggled for words. "Yes, well, uh, then let's try that. The visualisation is important, so it would have to be something you can easily picture."

"'Kay." She closed her eyes, found her breath, and settled back, trying to ignore the complaints from her legs.

After a few minutes, she tried to think of the tie-dye spirals that had flickered on the walls and ceiling the last time she'd been at a psyche night. The image was surprisingly intense and she sat for a few moments just staring at the colours, nearly losing the rhythm of her breath. She wasn't sure how long she watched the visuals before Jasper spoke again, but she no longer had any sensation in her limbs.

"Focus your gaze on the area just above the bridge of your nose, the lower middle of your forehead."

Her muscles strained to force her eyes into a position they'd never been in before. Her eyeballs started to ache after a few minutes. Was there more? Was she supposed to—

Her eyes popped open in shock.

Jasper's amicable brown eyes greeted her. "Did you feel it?" His smile was deep and reassuring.

"My skin was crawling." Peppermint touched her forehead. "And the flesh underneath. This whole area was... crawling."

"It's a physical response to a concentration of mental energy."

It still tingled ever so slightly. "That was amazing," she whispered.

"How are you feeling?"

"Fine. Good."

"Do you remember any dreams you had last night?"

She frowned. "What?"

"Your dreams. Do you recall any of them?"

"If I did, what in the name of tech makes you think I'm going to tell you about them?" Her tone emerged more abrasive than she'd anticipated.

Jasper compressed his lips. "Let's move onto something else for now, shall we?"

"Yeah, let's do that." Her dreams? What next? Would he want access to her e-diary?

He stood, leading her into the adjacent quadrant. Her eyes went to the strange contraption as they passed.

"What is that thing?"

Jasper gave it an absentminded frown. "Nothing to concern yourself with."

And just what was that supposed to mean? She had to tear her eyes away from the thing when he spoke to her again.

"Take a seat."

She glanced down at the steel desk, with what she assumed was a computer on it.

"This thing should be in the museum."

"It's perfectly functional and does exactly what we need it to," he replied sharply.

"Sorry."

She sat down and stared at the ancient nineteen-inch LED screen with distrust. Jasper disappeared somewhere behind the desk. A loud hum started under the tabletop. Peppermint decided not to satisfy her curiosity by looking, because if it looked anything like a bot she was going to squeal.

The machine booted up. The screen flashed a few times to display a fascinating series of messages about reading this and checking that.

"Is this connected to Phoenix?"

"No, of course not. The software is too outdated."

"It uses software? But I thought everything runs on firmware."

"No, well, that's just Phoenix. This computer isn't connected to Phoenix."

"So how does it work?"

Jasper sounded exasperated. "Let's just focus on the task at hand, shall we?"

Peppermint shook her head, dazed with incomprehension. She grew more mystified as Jasper pressed a button on the frame of the screen and a block of light beamed down on the tabletop, filled with letters and numbers and arrows.

"This is a keyboard. You use it to communicate with the computer."

"It can't hear me?"

"No. It's not Phoenix."

"That's pretty stupid."

"You see that gray block on the screen?"

"Yup."

"Behind it is one of those five symbols on the bottom of the screen. The square, the star—"

"But it's gray."

She narrowed her eyes at the screen in case it was one of those old holographic monitors.

"Yes, but that's just... a film. Behind that gray layer is one of those symbols."

"How do you know?"

"That's how it's programmed."

"Okay. Got it."

"So you have to guess which symbol it is, and then select it."

"And then what?"

"That's it," Jasper said, resting his fingertips on the desk. "You must spend an hour on this then we'll tally your results."

"What's this supposed to—"

Jasper calmly interrupted her question. "You can begin," he said, and strode out of the quadrant.

She watched him as he made his way across the floor and into the observation room, its dark window obscuring him. Turning her attention back to the screen, she stared at the gray block, her head shaking slowly from side to side. A symbol, behind the gray. She decided on a random symbol and tried to select it. Her fingers touched on the desk. The machine beeped frantically at her as she struggled to choose the correct key.

After a few minutes and twenty more guesses, she leaned forward, resting her chin in her hand as she stared at the screen. Her mind drifted. What were Maple and Nick doing? Where they still at Titans? Probably still asleep. She should be asleep. Her eyelids drooped.

She was surprised that she hadn't fallen asleep during the meditation. It had been so deeply relaxing. The breathing — in, out, in... out. That slight pause before the inhale. Amazing how a second devoid of breath felt glorious and not perturbing in the least. She tried the breathing again, taking a deep, long inhale. Pause. Exhale. It was so soothing. A psi. What was a psi? Were they really going to keep her here, forever? Why hadn't she just read the stupid NDA before signing it?

Peppermint's eyelids fluttered closed, her finger shifting as it selected symbols on the keyboard.

. . .