"My name is Kelly," she said, without turning around. "I’ll be in charge of you both while you’re here."
The name had not come up in the yard, and Alex realized only now that the young woman leading them had not introduced herself. She walked ahead with the tablet under her arm and her light hair cut, unhurried, like she had done this walk many times.
"Stay close," Kelly said. "I’ll show you around. Ask questions at the end, not during."
They stopped at the front of the compound, where a paved path led from the dirt lot to the building’s main doors. Up close the place looked bigger. The gray walls were scuffed, and long rows of windows stared down at the field.
"That’s the training ground behind you," Kelly said, pointing back over her shoulder. "Track, obstacle course, sparring rings. You’ll see all of it soon enough. Everything else is inside."
She pushed open the doors and they stepped into a wide lobby. The floor was polished. A reception desk sat empty to one side, and a staircase climbed toward the upper floors.
’For a place full of convicts, it’s surprisingly clean,’ Alex thought.
"Up," Kelly said.
They climbed to the second floor and turned into a long corridor lined with identical doors. She stopped at the third one and opened it.
It was a classroom, with rows of desks facing a screen and a whiteboard covered in faint marker streaks. A handful of chairs had been arranged near the front.
"This is where the three of us will work ," Kelly said. "Theory in the morning, drills in the afternoon. You’ll sit here, and I’ll teach."
Alex looked at the whiteboard. Someone had left a diagram half erased, a sketch of what looked like a suit with arrows pointing at different parts.
"You’re the teacher and the babysitter?" he asked.
Kelly looked at him for a moment. "Something like that."
"Just checking."
She said nothing and led them out. Jerry glanced back at Alex, but Alex only shrugged.
On the third floor there was another corridor, narrower, with doors close together. Kelly stopped at the fifth one and slid a keycard through the lock.
"Dorm," she said. "The two of you will share."
The room was small. Two beds on a bunk, one above, one below, a narrow closet, and a window that looked out over the field. It was cleaner than the cell, and it had a door that opened from the inside.
Alex let out a slow breath. ’A real bed.’
"Drop your things," Kelly said.
They had almost nothing. Alex put down a thin cloth bag with a spare set of clothes and a toothbrush. Jerry set his on the down bed and stared at the window without speaking. Then, quietly, he spoke for the first time since the classroom.
"Are the doors locked at night?"
"Yes," Kelly said. "But you can call the front desk if you need something."
Jerry nodded, and that seemed to be enough for him.
"Now for the parts you’ll actually care about," Kelly said. "Follow me."
She led them back down the stairs, past the lobby, and along a wide corridor on the ground floor that ended in a set of glass double doors. A faint hum came from behind them. When Kelly swiped her card, the doors slid apart, and cool air spilled out.
The room beyond was vast. Long steel tables ran the length of it, crowded with machinery, cables, and sheets of metal.
People in white coats moved between them with tablets and tools. Sparks flew from a welding station in one corner. In the center of the room, held upright in a steel frame, stood something that made Alex stop walking.
It was a suit.
It was not finished. Panels were missing from the chest, and wires trailed from the shoulders. But the shape was clear enough, a humanoid frame of dark metal, taller than a man, with a smooth helmet and thick plating along the arms and legs.
"This is the muscle suit lab," Kelly said quietly. "It’s where prototype Ravager suits are created and worked on. What you see here is not what you’ll be fitted with. Those are built elsewhere. These are experiments. New joints, new plating, new technology,new ways to draw power."
"They build them here?" Alex asked.
"They test them here. The scientists here are trying to make the next generation." She glanced at the technicians. "Don’t touch anything. Don’t talk to them. They don’t like being interrupted."
They stood for a while at the edge of the room, watching. A woman in a white coat was bent over one of the arms of the frame with a slim tool, and a man beside her was reading numbers from a screen. Nobody looked up.
’So that’s what I’m supposed to put on,’ Alex thought. ’And it might take me apart if it doesn’t like me.’
Kelly moved again. "Next."
She took them along another corridor to a heavy steel door marked with a hazard symbol. Beyond it the air smelled of metal and something sharper, like burnt sugar. The room was lined with glass tanks and sealed containers.
"This is the drop site," Kelly said. "Where drops are refined."
"Drops?" Jerry asked. It was the second thing he had said, and he sounded almost surprised at himself.
"When a Beast is destroyed, it leaves something behind. Crystals, shards, sometimes residue. We call them drops." She moved to the nearest tank and tapped the glass. "The purity and concentration of a drop depends on the level of the Beast. A level one Beast leaves almost nothing usable. A level nine leaves something a hundred times more potent."
"So the stronger the Beast, the better the drop," Alex said.
"Yes. And the harder it is to get."
She turned to face them. "These drops are the basic resources used to make weapons and suits. They’re refined here, then sent to the labs and the workshops. The weapons that go into the suits, the blades, the cannons, the armor coatings, all of it starts from a drop."
Alex looked at the shards behind the glass. Each one held a dull inner glow that pulsed slowly, like a heartbeat.
’They’re made from the monsters themselves. That’s how they fight back.’
"Is that a lot of drops?" he asked.
"It’s never enough," Kelly said.
She led them back through the corridors, and the smell of the drop site faded. They came at last to a large room with rows of long tables and a counter at one end, where trays sat under warming lights.
"Cafeteria," Kelly said. "Meals at six, twelve, and seven. Don’t be late. The food isn’t bad."
Alex looked at the counter. After weeks of gray slop in the prison, it looked like a feast.
"You’re not going to make us eat with the other students?" he asked.
"There are no other students here." Kelly paused, then lowered her voice slightly. "The rest of the academy candidates are at the academy. The ones selected to be here, the ones you saw in the yard, are the cream of the crop. The Foundation picked them for this."
’The best of them,’ Alex thought, ’assigned to a bunch of convicts. That doesn’t sound like an honor.’
Kelly turned and crossed her arms. For a moment her face was tired, almost human, and then it sealed shut again.
"Don’t worry about it," she said. "We have all of a month to get the inmates..." She stopped, her mouth tightening. "To get you both up to speed. It’s a tight schedule. But it’s enough."
Alex noticed the slip. He did not say anything. Inmates. It was what they were, after all.
’I can’t blame her,’ he thought. ’It’s the truth. She’s just the first one honest enough to nearly say it out loud.’
Jerry seemed not to have noticed. He was staring at the empty tables with a distant look.
Kelly uncrossed her arms.
"Ok," she said. "Let’s head back to class and get to work."
The tour was over. Alex glanced once at Jerry, then followed her out.