(AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN) SOMETHING ELSE APPEARS

Taylor had expected the training to make her better, although she had not expected the difference to become so obvious so quickly. At first, the changes had been small enough that she barely noticed them, but as the weeks passed, she had started recognizing improvements she once would have overlooked. Her feet no longer crossed when she moved laterally, her shoulders stayed loose while she waited for an opening, and she had finally stopped watching an opponent's hands as though they were the only part of their body capable of hurting her. Reynolds had spent weeks correcting those habits, sometimes through explanations and sometimes through demonstrations that left her on the mat before she had even worked out what she had done wrong.

She had hated it at first, but that had changed once she started learning, and one afternoon she realized just how much progress she had actually made.

Reynolds tried a maneuver he had used against her several times before. Taylor recognized the shift in his weight before he committed to it, moved with the attack, and avoided the sweep that would once have put her on her back.

She still did not counter properly, and Reynolds caught her arm a second later, but she had stayed upright, which was enough to tell her that the training was beginning to pay off.

"Better," Reynolds said as he released her.

Taylor rubbed her wrist and looked at him. "You said that last week."

"And?"

"And I'm beginning to suspect you only know one compliment."

"I don't use compliments very often."

"That explains a lot."

His expression remained reserved, although she had learned that the slight crinkle around his eyes usually meant he was amused.

"Again."

Taylor sighed, raised her hands, and stepped forward.

The next exchange lasted longer.

She still lost, and Reynolds still managed to find the openings she left behind, but the difference between losing now and losing when she had started training was substantial. She understood why she had been beaten, and more importantly, she could usually identify what she should have done differently before Reynolds had to explain it.

She was beginning to understand the real purpose of the training. Reynolds was not teaching her how to win every fight so much as teaching her to understand why she had lost, and that distinction mattered.

She had spent so much of her life thinking about mistakes as things that happened to her that she had never really considered how much they could teach her. Her power had forced that lesson upon her in the most brutal way imaginable, but Reynolds was teaching her how to apply it without dying first.

That alone made the sessions worth every bruise.

She caught herself smiling as she reset her stance. A few weeks ago, she would have been wary of making a mistake in front of him. Now she was more interested in seeing how long it would take before he found the next one.

"You're thinking too much," Reynolds said.

Taylor blinked. "I thought thinking was the point."

"Thinking before you move is the problem."

"That sounds like a contradiction."

"It isn't."

He stepped forward, and Taylor immediately raised her guard.

She watched his shoulders this time.

The first strike came from the opposite side.

She blocked it.

The second followed faster than she expected, but she shifted backward and let it pass.

Reynolds tried to close the distance, but Taylor moved with him instead of retreating. And for several seconds, neither of them gained much ground.

Then Reynolds caught her shoulder and sent her sprawling.

She landed hard enough to knock the air from her lungs, but she rolled onto her side before he could offer his hand.

"I thought you said I was thinking too much."

"You were."

"I stopped."

"You stopped thinking about the wrong thing."

Taylor stared at him from the floor. "That's deeply unhelpful."

"You'll figure it out."

She pushed herself upright, breathing hard as she considered that.

He was probably right.

That was becoming an irritatingly common occurrence.

Still, she had to admit that she liked the person she was becoming.

Taylor had spent so much time surviving that she had rarely considered what came afterward. Every decision had been about reaching the next hour, the next confrontation, the next attempt, and the next opportunity to prevent something terrible from happening. Training was different. There was no immediate crisis waiting for her at the end of the session, and there was no body cooling on the ground if she made the wrong choice.

She could simply improve, and after spending so long fighting just to survive, there was something deeply satisfying about that.

She changed back into her clothes after the session and left the training room with the familiar soreness settling into her muscles. Her arms ached, her shoulder was beginning to complain, and there was probably going to be another bruise somewhere on her body by morning.

But she had become strangely accustomed to that.

School had become easier to endure as well, although that was largely because she had stopped expecting Winslow to become a better place.

She kept her head down, went to class, completed her work, and avoided giving anyone a reason to pay attention to her, which had worked surprisingly well, particularly where Emma was concerned.

Taylor had barely spoken to her since their last exchange, and that had been intentional. There was little point in wasting energy on someone who had spent months making her miserable, and after everything that had happened, Taylor had far more important things occupying her thoughts. The ABB had collapsed, Lung and Oni Lee were dead, and the Empire Eighty-Eight was now the next problem she intended to deal with.

Emma should have become irrelevant, and for the most part, Taylor had managed to make her so. Emma, however, did not seem inclined to let things remain that way.

Taylor first noticed it during lunch.

She was sitting with her tray in front of her, working through an assignment while the cafeteria was busy around her, when she felt someone watching her and looked up.

Emma was sitting several tables away, and when their eyes met, she smiled.

Taylor looked back down at her work.

That should have been the end of it, but it wasn't. The same thing happened the following day, and then again the day after that, until Taylor could no longer dismiss it as coincidence. Sometimes Taylor caught Emma looking at her from across a classroom, while on other occasions she noticed her standing in the hallway with that same expression.

The smile was what bothered her most, since Taylor knew Emma's expressions well enough to recognize the difference between the one she showed her friends and the one she wore whenever she had found someone she could hurt.

This one carried something Taylor could not quite place, although every instinct she possessed told her that she should pay attention to it.

Emma looked happy, yet there was something unsettling about the expression, as though she were imagining what it would feel like to hurt someone. Taylor had no idea what had happened to make her look that way.

Emma had always been cruel, but she had also been predictable. Taylor knew how she behaved when she wanted attention, when she wanted to impress someone, and when she wanted to make Taylor feel small. So although she could not quite explain what she was seeing, it was different enough that she caught herself watching Emma in return.

She could not have said exactly how the girl had changed, and she did not trust herself enough to assume it was merely a change in attitude. There was a greater confidence in the way Emma carried herself, but it lacked the childish arrogance Taylor remembered. Emma seemed more focused now, as though something had given her a purpose that she had not possessed before.

Whatever it was, Emma was keeping it to herself, and that was what made Taylor uncomfortable.

People rarely became more dangerous by accident.

She had learned that lesson the hard way.

Taylor returned her attention to the assignment and tried to ignore the sensation of being watched.

It worked for perhaps thirty seconds.

Then she looked up again.

Emma had already gone back to her conversation, although Taylor caught her looking over again a few minutes later.

She lowered her eyes and continued writing.

There were too many possibilities to consider, ranging from another attempt at humiliation to something happening in Emma's personal life, or even the possibility that she had simply decided Taylor was interesting again after being ignored for several weeks.

Any of those possibilities could explain what Taylor was seeing. None of them explained why her instincts were telling her to be careful. That was the part she could not dismiss, since her power had taught her to respect patterns even when she did not understand them yet.

She could have confronted her.

The thought crossed her mind more than once, but each time she dismissed it. Confronting Emma would give her exactly what she seemed to want, which was Taylor's attention, and Taylor had no intention of rewarding whatever game she was playing.

Besides, she had more important things to worry about.

The Empire Eighty-Eight remained out there, with Kaiser, Hookwolf, Purity, Fenja, Menja, and the rest of the gang still entrenched in Brockton Bay, and Taylor knew enough about them to understand that removing one threat would not make the others disappear.

She had already decided what came next, and training was part of preparing for it. She needed to become better at fighting, better at judging situations, and better at recognizing when she was walking into something she did not understand. Reynolds had given her a foundation, but Taylor knew that a foundation was only useful if she built something on top of it.

Her power had always given her opportunities to learn, while training was teaching her how to turn that experience into something more practical. Before, she had relied on experience to tell her what could go wrong. Now she was beginning to understand what to do when it did, and the difference was becoming easier to recognize with every session.

She still made mistakes, but they were different mistakes now, and that distinction mattered more than she would have expected. Reynolds was teaching her how to recognize the reasons behind her failures, while her power had given her years of experience doing much the same thing under considerably worse circumstances. For the first time, those two things were beginning to complement each other rather than existing separately.

She had spent most of the walk home thinking about training, the Empire, and what she needed to do next, yet Emma had somehow managed to work her way into the back of her thoughts anyway. Taylor glanced over her shoulder, although nobody was following her, and reminded herself that there was no reason to become paranoid. Experience had taught her, however, that there was a difference between paranoia and caution. Paranoia invented threats, while caution recognized them, and Emma was beginning to look like one.

Taylor still had no idea what had changed, and she had no intention of finding out unless Emma forced the issue. Until then, she would keep training and prepare herself for the Empire Eighty-Eight, while whatever had happened to Emma could wait until it became her problem.

For now, Taylor had an Empire to dismantle.