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The girl wouldn't leave.
I told her to go home. She laughed. I told her I didn't train kids. She said she wasn't a kid. I told her to get out of my bay before Victor's men came back, and she just stood there with her arms crossed, staring at the Type-7 rig like it was the only thing in the world that mattered.
"I can help you," she said.
"You can't."
"I can see the sync pulse. The pattern. I watched you fight tonight—you're bleeding lag on the left shoulder actuator. You compensate, but it's there."
I stopped wiping down the cockpit rim. Turned. She was right. The left shoulder had a 0.3-second delay I'd been masking with pre-angle corrections. Nobody should've caught that from the stands.
"Who taught you to read sync?" I asked.
She shrugged. "Nobody. I just see it."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I have."
I looked at her. Really looked. Twenty-one, maybe twenty-two. Canvas jacket two sizes too big, boots held together with tape, fingers stained with oil she hadn't washed off. Runaway written all over her. The kind of kid who showed up in the underground circuit looking for a way out and ended up in a body bag within a year.
"Go home," I said again.
"I don't have one."
Of course she didn't.
She stepped closer. "Let me in the rig. One test run. If I'm lying, I walk. If I'm right, you take me on."
"No."
"You owe Victor sixty thousand credits. You just won twelve. You need more fights, and you need a co-pilot for tag matches. I can be that."
"You don't even have a sync license."
"Neither do half the pilots down here."
She had me there.
I should've said no. Should've shoved her out the bay door and bolted it shut. But I was tired, and my hand still hurt from where the neural burn had flared during the fight, and some stupid part of me wanted to know if she was actually telling the truth.
"One run," I said. "You get five minutes in the rig. You do what I say, when I say it. You don't touch the combat protocols. You crash my mech, I throw you to Victor myself."
Her face lit up. It was the first time I'd seen her smile. It made her look younger. More breakable.
"Deal," she said.
I regretted it before she even climbed in.
The cockpit of a Type-7 isn't built for someone her size. She had to crank the seat forward, tighten the harness twice. I leaned in to check the straps and caught the smell of cheap soap and something sharper—fear, maybe, or adrenaline. Her hands were shaking as she reached for the control yoke.
"Breathe," I said. "Sync starts in your spine, not your head. Let it come to you."
She nodded. Closed her eyes. I backed out of the cockpit, climbed up to the supervisor perch, and plugged into the override panel. If she did anything stupid, I could kill the engine before she hurt herself.
The rig hummed to life. Neural sync initialized. I watched the readout—her sync rate climbed fast. Too fast. Forty percent. Fifty. Sixty.
"Ease off," I said into the comm. "You're spiking."
"I'm fine."
"You're at sixty-five percent. That's redline for a first-timer. Drop it to forty."
"I said I'm fine."
The mech moved. Smooth. Fluid. She took a step, then another. No stumble, no calibration stutter. Most rookies spent their first ten minutes just trying to get the legs to respond. She walked the rig across the bay like she'd been doing it for years.
"How's the left shoulder?" I asked.
She rolled it. Once. Twice. "Delayed. You're compensating by pre-loading the joint angle before you commit to the strike. Works, but it costs you speed."
I stared at the readout. Seventy percent sync. Seventy-five.
"Lila. Stop. Power down."
"Not yet."
She pivoted. Fast. Faster than I'd moved the rig in months. The actuators screamed. She threw a punch at the reinforced wall—pulled it at the last second, let the fist stop an inch from impact. The whole bay shook.
"Lila—"
"I can feel it," she said. Her voice was breathless, crackling through the comm. "The pulse. It's like… like music. I can hear where it wants to go."
"That's the sync talking. You're too deep. Pull back."
"I don't want to pull back."
She launched forward. Full sprint. Straight toward the bay's back wall—solid concrete, no padding. The rig accelerated. Eighty percent sync. Eighty-five.
"Lila, stop!"
She didn't stop.
I slammed the override. The kill switch engaged one second before impact. The rig froze mid-stride, servos locking, neural feedback snapping back through the sync line. I heard her gasp through the comm—pain or shock, I couldn't tell.
The cockpit hissed open. I was down the ladder before it fully retracted. She was slumped in the seat, hands still gripping the yoke, breathing hard. Her eyes were wide, pupils blown. A thin line of blood ran from her nose.
"What the hell were you thinking?" I yanked the harness release, hauled her out of the seat. She barely had her footing. I had to catch her by the shoulders to keep her upright.
She was warm. Too warm. Sync burn. Her skin was hot enough I could feel it through the jacket.
"I had it," she said. Her voice was hoarse.
"You were about to paste yourself across a concrete wall."
"I had it."
"You had nothing. You spiked to eighty-five percent on your first run. You know what that does to your brain? You want to end up like the burnouts in the clinic, drooling into a cup for the rest of your life?"
She shoved my hands off. Swayed. Steadied herself.
"I'm not like them," she said.
"Everyone says that."
"I'm not."
She looked up at me. Her eyes were still too bright, too sharp. The sync hadn't fully let go yet. I could see the pulse behind her pupils—faint flickers of light, like afterimages. Neural bleed.
"You're done," I said. "Get out. Go wherever you came from. I'm not doing this."
"Yes, you are."
The voice came from the bay door. I turned. Victor stood in the doorway, flanked by two of his men. He was smiling. That was never a good sign.
"Eighty-five percent," Victor said, walking in like he owned the place. He did, technically. "On her first sync. Cole, you didn't tell me you found a prodigy."
"She's not mine," I said. "She's leaving."
"No." Victor stopped in front of Lila, looked her up and down. She didn't flinch. "She's exactly what you need. You're in a hole, Cole. Sixty thousand credits deep. You won tonight, sure. Twelve thousand. That leaves forty-eight. You planning to fight four more times this month without your heart giving out?"
"I'll manage."
"You won't." He turned back to Lila. "What's your name, sweetheart?"
"Lila."
"Lila. You want to pilot?"
"Yes."
"Good." He looked at me. "Two weeks. You train her. Get her ring-ready. I'll book her a debut match. She wins, I'll cut your debt in half. She loses…" He smiled. "Well. Let's hope she doesn't lose."
"She's twenty-one," I said.
"She's talented. And she's willing. That's all that matters down here." Victor turned toward the door, his men falling in behind him. He paused at the threshold. "Two weeks, Cole. Make her profitable, or sink with her. Your choice."
He left. The bay door clanged shut.
Lila was still standing there, blood drying on her upper lip, eyes locked on mine.
"Two weeks," she said. "That's enough."
I looked at her. At the cockpit behind her. At the mess I'd just walked into.
"No," I said. "It's not."