Chương 44: Internship

The classroom gives you knowledge. The internship gives you context. One tells you how a thing works in theory; the other shows you what it costs in practice. The student who has only ever trained in controlled conditions has not yet met the version of themselves that difficulty produces. The break between years is not a rest. It is the first real examination."

- From the orientation records of University 3, first year intake address The weeks settled into shape quietly, one day at a time, each one close enough to the last that the differences only showed up in retrospect. Lifesciences moved into its practical phase with Professor Peaches leading small groups through the farm behind the main building, introducing them to the modified livestock warmly and firmly, with strong opinions about how people ought to behave around animals and no shyness about sharing them.

Kara found he was good at this, having spent years around creatures that could end him and come away with a working instinct for when to hold still and when to move. Professor Peaches noticed and appreciated him quietly, which he preferred. Combat arts became the anchor of his week. Instructor Ken ran the umbrella and chain dart sessions stretched too thin across too much ground - present, technically correct, moving on before Kara had fully consolidated what had just been shown.

This was exactly what he had been warned about, and the warning had not made it less true. Neither weapon was Ken's real expertise. He had working knowledge of both, enough to demonstrate the foundational forms correctly, but there was a difference between working knowledge and mastery, and Kara could feel it in every session as a gap where something should have been. He spent the hour after each class on the stadium grounds running the sequences alone. The chain dart remained the harder problem.

It went where it wanted to before it went where he wanted it to, and the work of closing that gap was slow and repetitive, and it was building toward something. He was making progress. He could feel it in the return of the chain - slightly less fight in it each week, the dart landing closer to where he had intended. He did not make the mistake of thinking this meant he was good at it yet.

Waggy grew, invisibly from one day to the next and unmistakably across a month - the sharp shoulder stub now long enough to require consideration when handling him, the blunt companion stub beside it developing a faint ridged texture at the tip. He was louder. The growl-purr had acquired a lower register he deployed primarily when hungry and secondarily when Kara was taking too long with anything he had decided was a priority.

Vixen visited twice a week with Vitaly, and the two of them studied each other carefully, each working out what category the other belonged in. They were slowly getting accustomed to each other's presence. The announcement came on a Thursday, delivered through the interface with the clipped efficiency of a message written for thousands of people. Year-end break internship requirement - all first year students are expected to secure a placement for the duration of the break.

Placements may be arranged independently or through the University's placement coordination office. Documentation due six weeks from today. Kara read it. Then he looked at the break duration - eight weeks - and did some arithmetic about how much of the semester remained and how much of that he had expected to spend not worrying about this particular problem. The answer was considerably more than was apparently available. Glasses read it at the same time from his desk.

He was quiet for a moment, already two steps down the road.

"I'll reach out to my dad's contact," he said.

"There's an infrastructure systems firm in Area 10 that's worked with his company. IT applications - drone network logistics, interface-side coordination with physical distribution. I've been interested in how that layer interacts in the current setup." A pause.

"That probably sounded more interesting in my head."

"It sounded exactly as interesting as it was in your head," Kara said.

"Which is to say it sounded like you." Glasses considered this and appeared to find it acceptable.

"What about you?" Kara looked at the notification again.

"I'll figure it out." He said this with more confidence than he had. Glasses took this with the polite scepticism of a man who had roomed with him for most of a year and knew the difference. He went to Narak two weeks later. The Council Building was in a cooperative mood. The branching interior arranged itself into a configuration that got him to Narak's office in under four minutes, which by the building's standards was practically an escort. He knocked. Narak already knew he was coming.

"Come in." Narak was not at his desk. He was at the window on the far side of the office, clearly doing something on his interface, caught mid-task by the knock and rapidly deciding which of the two mattered more. He closed the interface and moved to the desk - present, but with the residual energy of someone who had several other things waiting for him to return to.

"Internship, I assume," he said, sitting.

"What do you need?" Kara had prepared for this conversation on the walk over. He had considered several versions of it - what a reasonable answer looked like from the outside, how to arrive at what he actually needed without explaining too much of why. He discarded most of it.

"Weapons training, primarily," he said.

"I've committed to umbrella and chain dart. Neither is common, and that's the problem. Instructor Ken has working knowledge of both, but working knowledge isn't the same as depth, and I can feel the difference in the sessions. I'm behind on both." He paused, before continuing.

"I've spent time reading into the history of both, war umbrellas and chain weapons. The deeper I go, the clearer it becomes that I need a mentor who actually knows this material. Finding one hasn't been straightforward." Narak was looking at him with the composed attention he gave most things. But something shifted briefly in his expression as Kara named the weapons. The flicker of a man hearing a word he knew well turn up somewhere he had not expected it.

It came and went quickly, filed away before his face settled back into its usual steadiness.

"Anything else?" Narak asked. Kara had thought about how to approach this part for longer than the rest of the conversation combined.

"Exotic animals," he said.

"I've been developing an interest through Lifesciences. The adaptive physiology work raised some questions I'd like to follow up on practically." He kept his voice level, the tone of a student with a project.

"A placement with a research group, or somewhere with access to exotic specimens-""What species?" Narak interrupted. Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings. The question was quiet and direct. Kara looked at him. Narak looked back, unhurried, turning the prepared answer over and studying what sat underneath it. The silence stretched. Kara looked at his hands for a moment. Then back up.

"I should say first," he said, "with all due respect, Narak, Sir, I'm telling you this because I trust your judgement. Not because I'm required to. What I'm about to tell you hasn't been told to anyone official, and I request you to keep it that way."

"I understand that," Narak said. Carefully, without filling the space.

"I have a partner," Kara said. The words came out slowly, each one a small separate decision.

"An exotic one. He hatched during the semester break. I haven't disclosed him through any official channel." Narak went still, and it was the stillness of a man listening with everything he had.

"He's not just unusual," Kara continued.

"His potential classification is unique. Which means that if the wrong person found out about him-" he stopped, letting the rest go unsaid. Narak leaned back a fraction, turning it over before he said anything. There was no calculation in his expression, only a man weighing what he had just been handed and what it had cost Kara to hand it over.

"You've been on this campus for almost half a year," Narak said finally, "with a unique potential exotic partner, and no official record of him exists anywhere."

"Yes."

"How?"

"I've been extremely careful. He hasn't left the room yet. Not ideal for his development, but better than anyone finding out and something happening to him. I've also had help." Something in Narak's expression shifted. The expression of a man who had seen a great deal and could still be surprised by the shapes determination chose to take.

"Two people know," Kara said.

"Both of them I trust completely. That's the full list." Narak nodded once. He did not ask who they were.

"Alright. What else do you have on your wish list for the internship?" he asked.

"We both know there is something else." The question landed precisely. Kara looked at him. Narak looked back as though he had all afternoon, whatever was waiting on his interface.

"I want to find my brother," Kara said.

"And my parents. I know you can't make that an internship. I'm not asking you to. But if a placement existed that put me near the right people, or the right information - that would matter more than anything else on this list." Narak nodded.

"I'll see what I can do," he said. Vixen, across the same two weeks, was having a different experience entirely. Kara noticed it incrementally, the way you notice a change in someone you see every day, no single moment doing it, all of them together doing it. She was still herself in every visible way - loud in class, first to answer, the person who knew something about every animal Professor Peaches mentioned and occasionally more. None of that changed. But she spent longer on her interface in the evenings.

She sent fewer messages in the late hours. When the three of them were in the cafeteria and a senior passed whose name she knew, she sat up slightly differently, a small adjustment Kara had learned to read as her paying close attention to something. He asked her about it on a Wednesday evening, the two of them at a corner table while Glasses was at a session. She was quiet for a moment - unusual enough to be its own answer.

"It's harder than I thought," she admitted finally.

"The placement office has options, but the good ones were spoken for even before the announcement. And the ones that are left-" she paused.

"They're fine. They're just not what I need."

"What do you need?" She looked at her cup.

"A connection. An actual connection to the field I want to work in, beyond mere experience. Someone who knows someone who can open a door later." She said it without self-pity, reporting a fact she had made her peace with a long time ago.

"Some people already have those. Family contacts, faction connections, seniors who took an interest. I have Vitaly and what I know, which is a hell of a lot, but knowing a lot about animals doesn't get you into the rooms where decisions are made." Kara said nothing and simply listened, which seemed like the right response for the moment.

"My parents are G grade," she said.

"Tier 4, both of them. Common skills. My dad's been sick for about two years - nothing that stops him completely, but the treatment costs something and it slows things down." She said this plainly, having lived with it long enough that it no longer needed any tone at all.

"We belong to a community. A real close knit one - people who've been together for generations, who look after each other and care about the same things. Animals, mostly." Something in her expression shifted, warmer.

"They gave me Vitaly. The egg had been passed down so long that most people had stopped expecting it to hatch. Then it did, and the epic skill came through at the same time, and-" she shook her head slightly.

"The community decided unanimously to give her to me. Because of the skill, and because she'd hatched, and because they felt those things happening almost simultaneously meant something."

"They probably do," Kara added.

"I think so too. But as much as I love my community, they don't have corporate contacts. They don't have faction connections. What they have is each other, which is more than most people have, but it doesn't translate into what I need right now." She looked at him directly.

"People think because I'm an extrovert this comes easily. It doesn't. People come easily. Systems are harder. The reason I try to know seniors, stay visible, be in the right rooms-" she paused.

"It's not natural. It's deliberate. I am building what other people were born into. And I am further behind on that than I thought." There was a quiet after that. Not an uncomfortable one. Kara knew she had just made him privy to a part of her that probably not too many people knew. He appreciated it.

"You'll find something," Kara said and he meant it.

"You're better at this than you're giving yourself credit for." She looked at him, reserving judgement until the evidence turned up. It arrived on the last possible Friday - a third-year from the Animal Affairs Committee with a contact at a wildlife integration research group running a project through the break. She came to the cafeteria that evening and reported it like someone who had won by a narrower margin than she would have liked and was permitting herself exactly this much celebration.

"Finally," Kara said.

"Congrats!"

"Yes! Finally," she agreed, a small smile on her face.

"Thanks. That was closer than I'd have wanted, but atleast I got something I'm happy with." Glasses got up without announcement and came back from the counter with three portions of beer-battered onion rings and some brownies, set them down, and sat. The gesture covered everything the moment called for. They dug in. The notification from Narak came that same evening. Tomorrow morning. Nine o'clock. My office. Kara read it. Then read it again.

The message was short enough that everything it didn't say was louder than what it did. He was there at eight fifty-five the next morning. Narak was at his desk this time, coat on, the look of a man who had come in early for a specific purpose. He stood when Kara entered.

"Come with me," he said. He did not take him to the ocean floor room. They went further into the building, through a corridor Kara had not used before, and into a smaller space that held nothing but two chairs. The room had the quality of somewhere designed to contain what happened inside it.

"Prepare yourself," Narak said. He did, as best he could without knowing what he was preparing for. Narak activated something through his interface. The room dissolved. What replaced it arrived all at once, whole and immediate, as though the space had always existed and they had simply stepped into it. An office, but open to the world in a way that made the word office feel inadequate. One entire wall was absent, looking out onto mountains in the distance, enormous and snow-capped.

A river in the middle ground, fast over clean rock, its sound arriving as real sound through air that felt like real air. The desk in the centre of the room was simple, dark wood, and the chair behind it was occupied. Kara's Sixth Sense registered him before his eyes had finished adjusting. The same way it had by the lake during the festival - before he was in any range that should have been sufficient. The figure behind the desk looked up from whatever he had been reading.

"Khatarnak Arafel," he rumbled, almost as if tasting the name. Kara's skills started kicking into overdrive of their own volition.