Chapter 15: MICK'S LESSONS
The cargo bay door wouldn't budge.
I'd been heading back to my quarters after another practice session—essence regeneration was slow, but steady—when Mick Rory appeared from behind a stack of crates. He carried a beer in one hand and a training knife in the other.
The knife was the concerning part.
"Cargo bay's mine for the next hour," he said. "You can stay or you can leave. But if you stay, you're gonna hurt."
"Is this a threat?"
"It's an offer." He kicked a crate into the center of the space, making a rough circle of open floor. "Saw the footage from Norway. You died because you couldn't fight, not because you weren't smart."
The footage. Gideon recorded everything for mission analysis. Of course Mick had watched my death.
"Most people don't survive getting shot three times in the chest."
"You didn't survive it either. You just came back." Mick took a long drink from his beer, then set it aside. "Which means next time you get cornered, you're gonna die again. Unless you learn how to stop dying."
[OPPORTUNITY DETECTED: COMBAT TRAINING]
[PHYSICAL SKILL DEVELOPMENT — NOT SYSTEM-BASED]
[RECOMMENDATION: ACCEPT — IMPROVES SURVIVAL PROBABILITY]
The system agreed with Mick. That was either reassuring or deeply concerning.
"What kind of training?"
"The kind that keeps you alive when everything goes wrong." He flipped the training knife—blunted edge, but solid weight. "Pretty fighting's for people with backup. You fight alone, you fight ugly. That's what I teach."
I thought about Norway. The mercenaries. Six bullets that hadn't been enough because I'd fired like an academic instead of a survivor.
"Okay. Teach me."
Mick's smile was unpleasant. "Smart answer."
The first lesson was pain.
Not elegant pain—not the clean impact of martial arts training or the structured discomfort of military drills. Mick's teaching method was simple: attack until Shane learns to defend, then attack harder.
"Too slow." The training knife caught my forearm. "Again."
I tried to block. Mick slipped past my guard and drove the blade into my ribs.
"Dead. Again."
The pattern repeated. Strike, fail, pain. Strike, fail, pain. My enhanced cognition tracked the angles, predicted the movements, analyzed the technique—but my body couldn't keep up. The Processing Boost helped me understand what Mick was doing. It didn't help me stop it.
"You're thinking too much." Mick stepped back, barely winded while I gasped for breath. "Thinking's good for planning. In a fight, it gets you killed."
"Then what should I be doing?"
"Reacting. Moving. Making the other guy worry about surviving instead of worrying about it yourself." He demonstrated a simple combination—wrist grab, thumb to the eye socket, knee to the groin. "Three moves. Practice until you don't have to think about them."
I practiced. Mick corrected. The movements gradually stopped being choreography and started becoming instinct.
"Better." The word was grudging. "You learn fast."
"Enhanced processing," I said without thinking.
Mick's eyes sharpened. "That part of whatever brought you back?"
Careful.
"Maybe. I'm not sure how it all works."
He studied me for a long moment, then shrugged. "Don't care about the how. Care about the results. Your brain's faster—use it. But don't forget the body has to follow."
We resumed training. This time, Mick added variations—attacks from unexpected angles, situations where the obvious counter was wrong. Each failure came with immediate correction.
[SKILL ACQUISITION: BASIC DIRTY FIGHTING]
[— EYE GOUGES]
[— THROAT STRIKES]
[— JOINT DESTRUCTION]
[— IMPROVISED WEAPONS]
[NOTE: PHYSICAL SKILLS NOT SYSTEM-ENHANCED — REQUIRE REGULAR PRACTICE]
The system cataloged the techniques without boosting them. Fair enough. Some things couldn't be shortcut.
Between rounds, we sat on crates, Mick working through his second beer while I nursed bruises that would take days to fade.
"So what are you actually after?" Mick asked. "Snart thinks you're running some kind of long game. Sara thinks you're hiding something dangerous. What's the truth?"
Partial truth. Give him enough to satisfy curiosity without revealing everything.
"Building something that lasts," I said. "Something that survives beyond me."
"Like what? An empire?"
The word hit closer than I expected. "Something like that."
Mick nodded slowly. "Not the worst answer. Most people on this ship are running from something. Their past, their failures, their guilt." He finished his beer. "You're running toward. That's different."
"Is that why you agreed to train me?"
"I agreed because you need it and Snart's curious about you. Keeping you alive means keeping Snart interested, and keeping Snart interested means..." He trailed off, something flickering across his face. "Means he's got something to think about besides the cold."
The cold. Snart's weapon. Snart's aesthetic. Snart's eventual death at the Oculus.
"You're worried about him."
"I'm always worried about him." Mick stood, stretching muscles that seemed impervious to fatigue. "He's the brain. I'm the muscle. When he does something stupid, I'm supposed to stop him. Problem is, he's smarter than me. Sometimes I don't realize the stupid until it's too late."
The Oculus, I thought. The sacrifice he's going to make. Mick won't be able to stop it because Snart won't let him.
"What if you could change that?" I asked carefully. "What if there was a way to make sure he didn't do something you couldn't undo?"
Mick's eyes met mine. Flat. Assessing.
"If you're asking what I think you're asking, the answer is I'd burn the world to keep him alive." He moved toward the door. "But you already knew that. That's why you asked."
The cargo bay fell silent after he left.
[INTERACTION ASSESSMENT:]
[— MICK RORY: LOYAL — TO SNART]
[— TRAINING RELATIONSHIP: ESTABLISHED]
[— POTENTIAL LEVERAGE: SNART'S SAFETY]
[— WARNING: MANIPULATION OF LOYALTY MAY BACKFIRE]
The system's warning was unnecessary. I wasn't planning to manipulate Mick. I was planning to use his loyalty as information—understanding the dynamics that would matter when the Oculus came.
Snart will sacrifice himself to save everyone. Mick will lose his best friend. And I'll be there, offering a contract that could change everything.
The plan was cold. Ray would hate it.
But Ray wasn't wrong about losing perspective. He was wrong about the solution. The answer wasn't feeling more—it was planning better. Making sure that when I did act, the actions mattered.
I stood, stretched my bruised muscles, and headed for my quarters. The training had been productive in ways beyond the physical skills. Understanding Mick. Understanding Snart. Understanding the web of loyalties and dependencies that defined this team.
[SYSTEM STATUS:]
[LEVEL: 2 — CHRONO-INITIATE]
[XP: 205/1,000]
[CHRONO-ESSENCE: 90 ✧]
[PROCESSING BOOST: STACK 3/10]
[CHECKPOINTS: 2/3]
[ESTIMATED MISSIONS TO LEVEL 3: 3-4]
Three or four more missions. Level 3 would unlock Territory Preview—the ability to scan resolved anomalies for annexation viability. After that, Level 5 for actual annexation.
The path was clear. The numbers were climbing. And now I had physical skills to complement the system's enhancements.
I sat on my bed and felt the checkpoint connections pulse in my awareness—1975 Norway, 1871 Chicago. Two points in time where I could never truly die. Soon, there would be a third. Then territories. Then agents.
An empire, Mick had said. Something like that.
The bruises ached as I lay down. Mick's training had been brutal but effective. Pain as pedagogy. Survival as curriculum.
My ribs throbbed where his training kicks had landed. The discomfort felt earned somehow—more real than the abstract progression of stats and numbers.
Ray wants me to feel more. Mick wants me to survive better. Snart wants to understand what game I'm playing.
And I want all of it. The feeling, the survival, the game. Everything at once.
The cognitive enhancement made it possible to hold all those goals simultaneously. Three stacks of Processing Boost, turning my mind into something that could track multiple objectives without losing any of them.
Was that still human? Was I still the person who'd transmigrated into Shane Bennett's body on that rooftop?
The question lingered as I drifted toward sleep. The system offered no answers—it tracked resources and abilities, not existential uncertainty.
But somewhere in the enhanced processing, a small thread of thought held onto Ray's words:
"What's the point of building something if you become a monster in the process?"
I didn't have an answer yet. But I was starting to understand why the question mattered.
Author's Note / Support the Story
Your Reviews and Power Stones help the story grow! They are the best way to support the series and help new readers find us.
Want to read ahead? Get instant access to more chapters by supporting me on Patreon. Choose your tier to skip the wait:
Noble ($7): Read 10 chapters ahead of the public.
Royal ($11): Read 17 chapters ahead of the public.
Emperor ($17): Read 24 chapters ahead of the public.
Weekly Updates: New chapters are added every week. See the pinned "Schedule" post on Patreon for the full update calendar.
Join here: patreon.com/Kingdom1Building