"This is so…" Zax looked for the right word to describe his impressions.

His nanites didn't show any anomaly in his body, but Aran had insisted so here they were, in the waiting room of the healing centre, waiting for their turn. For the Nth time, Zax was renewing the diagnosis from Aran's nanites, but he kept getting all-green status even from the supposedly more fragile C-nanites. The missing thirty something percent in her load had been replaced, and with more added more since the expert was now more confident in what this amount would do. The body scan was still in progress, so he could only bite his nails waiting.

"Odd?" SG proposed in a soft voice.

She kept glancing around them in the new environment, part cautious part curious. She thought she understood "clean and sterile" since she had moved in the dot, but this place was in a league of its own.

"Crazy?" Aran followed.

The situation being more stable, she was free to examine her new additions and get used to the sensations. She had noticed balancing on the light road was easier and her tail easier to control. Longer too, unlike the rest of her body. Not by much, maybe the width of a closed hand, but it made a notable difference. She was done playing with her partly extendable claws and was currently rubbing the ebony fur on the back of her hands, enjoying its softness.

"Ludicrous." Zax settled. "The forums keep orienting me to the fiction category. Not that I can blame them, I wouldn't take myself seriously either."

"What could they even tell you about nanites?" Aran threw a quick glance at him.

"I know." He sighed, leaning back on his seat. "But who else can I go to? And to be fair, I've already found interesting perspectives and inspirations there. You never know."

Their turn with the diagnostician soon arrived – no obvious mutations – and they were let in the room. They explained the reason for their presence, and while her displeasure at the mention of nanites was plain on her face, she was professional enough to not comment on it.

The doctor quickly but thoroughly examined Zax, but found nothing unusual. He was still a purestrain, and as healthy as a purestrain could be. She insisted on examining Aran too, since her activation was apparently the trigger. Maybe a mutation had given her taser-like traits.

"Unlikely." Zax commented as his friend's turn came anyway. "Her mutation didn't have related traits, the shock happened at the very beginning of the activation, and SG would've been affected too. She was touching the two of us."

"She is advanced enough to have some resistance or resilience." The doctor countered the last argument.

"She doesn't. I checked."

"I don't have a better idea." She admitted, ignoring the interruption. "You're fine, the nanites are fine, that leaves only her."

Zax couldn't argue with such logic.

"If not her, whatever happened is outside my expertise. Besides, examining a fresh activation is never a bad idea. And who knows? You might have a surprise. Not every trait is immediately obvious." She added, more to Aran.

The three friends chuckled, amused at the idea of something escaping Zax's scan. Still, crossing references was never a bad idea, and it wouldn't cost more, materially.

Both gave the same results. Besides the obvious, she was healthy, her tail could now produce a few pheromones, and she now beneficiated from a slight but notable metabolic enhancement and increase in her base stats. Meaning she was a bit stronger, faster, more agile and so on, her body used fuel more efficiently, produced less waste, and needed less work to maintain this new state or build up on it.

"Those are good results, congratulations. You must have a healthy lifestyle. Have you thought of your new job already?" The doctor asked naturally.

"Er, what?" Aran blinked.

She hadn't. They hadn't.

"Apparently not." She smiled. It was a fairly common reaction when one activated at this point in their life. "With your new state of being come new possibilities. You might get new offers, and try your luck in a specific field. The choice is yours. Here, this flyer can help." In a practiced move, she sent something from her bracelet to her patient's. "It links to many sites and resources designed to help people in your situation. I'm sure your friend had the same, but just in case." She nodded to SG.

Honest mistake, they didn't comment on it.

"I don't know…" Aran frowned, reluctant.

"I don't think you mutated enough to be invited in the Circle yet, don't worry." Zax understood what was unsaid.

The doctor was nonplussed at the statement, but her patient was appeased so she didn't pursue the matter.

Done with the appointment, they left the healing centre. They still needed time to process everything, so they walked the first portion of the way. Zax used the opportunity to run a scan and a diagnostic of SG's nanites. Without the Z-Box, it required him to maintain direct contact with her body, so he grabbed her wing-wrist as they strolled. It had occurred to him when he had said it; she was touching them both when it had happened. She may have been affected, even if to a lesser extent. Or maybe her nanites had picked up on something. In any case, worth a check.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

It didn't reveal anything unusual about her body, her hardware or her software, but she had lost 8% of her initial nanite load. Way more than normal wear, but way less than a disruption field would destroy. Like Zax's and Aran's.

She, or at least her nanites, had been touched without effect?

A new riddle. Or a new hint, but not exactly explicit. Is the Resonance involved somehow?

The only common point was inexplicably affecting all three of them. Tenuous, but it felt meaningful.

Zax was pulled out of his musings by a new message.

"Uh. That went faster than expected."

"Hmm? Something happened?" Aran asked.

"The detective from yesterday mailed me to come visit some victims of the recent string of sabotage. She said it would take a long time to prepare everything because of the lawyers doing lawyer things, so I'm surprised to hear back from her already. If he didn't give up, maybe the Civilian smoothed things up?"

"Is that good?"

"I guess so?" he shrugged. "For them at least, less time wasted. It doesn't change much for me."

"Too bad they only pay with units." Aran smirked.

"Har har." Zax deadpanned as SG giggled. No templates for him, but the compensation was still a huge amount. "Anyway, she gives a few options, but I think I'll just go with the first one: tomorrow. No point in dragging it. Would you be alright managing the shop on your own?" He turned to his apprentice, practically an assistant at this point.

The winged girl nodded, with less hesitation than usual. It could nearly be called confidence, even. She had experience now.

"And you? What will you do? You just activated, so you're free for the day." He reminded the foxy cat girl.

"Ah, right. 'The perks of the service industry'. I forgot."

"I advise to use it to think about what the doctor said." Confused eyes blinked back. "About your future? Even if you don't want or care about a new job, you can think about what you want to do. Further your mutation or not? It can clearly go further. You've activated from emotional agitation, maybe work on the cause of that agitation? You've decided to 'be both' – not sure both what. Maybe ponder what it means, what it will entail, how to do it best? Solidify this choice, orient it, amend it?"

She had been too caught up in the successive surprises to actually ponder about their impact.

"You passed an important step in life. No reason to keep stagnating."

Luckily, the rest of the day was uneventful. Aran's scan finished and confirmed the preliminary and medical results. The structure of her partly extendable claws was particularly interesting, even if they were still too short and soft to be more than cosmetic. Her fur was incomplete as she could sweat from those parts, but it wasn't unusual for low mutations.

She did feel a difference in the day's free running session; the exercises were easier, less tiring. SG quickly put an end to any arrogance she might have felt by ramping the difficulty up. Both students still had a long way to go.

The same couldn't be said of their nightly meditation, however. Once Zax's mind was tranquil enough, he focused on his body, as usual.

His heartbeat. His breath. The minute shivers he couldn't help. The tension in his muscles.

Something felt different.

Something was different.

Something more.

Something new.

It was tenuous, hard to focus on, but it was there.

In his hands, his palms, his fingers, his nails.

In his limbs. His head. His eyes.

His torso. His lungs. His heart. His blood. His muscles. His bones. His nerves. His brain.

Everywhere.

It looked like veins and arteries, but it wasn't carrying anything and it didn't react to his pulse.

It looked like nerves, but it didn't react to his thoughts and perceptions.

It looked like a grating, but it didn't block or frame anything.

He had never heard of something like it, but it felt familiar, somehow.

It had always been there, barely out of sight, out of reach. He knew it for a fact, even if unable to explain how.

It was not out of reach anymore.

He could feel it now. Touch it. Move it?

Just a small push, in a less stable part. It wouldn't do much, right?

As in a trance, he reached with his will. He slid along the uniform pathway, not doing anything, until he reached a split in the road. He could do something there. A light pinch, and it would-

The session was over. The audio guide they were using for meditation had run its course.

Zax had woken up just before he could perform the pinch. He could have. He didn't know how he knew, he didn't know what it would do, but he knew he could have, and it would have done something.

"Not easier." Aran lamented as she stretched. "Oh, well. I improved a lot elsewhere."

"No brain mutation." SG correctly concluded.

"Heh, you're right, I'm not sure I would've like it. You okay, Zax?"

"Hmm? Fine, I'm fine. Did it feel any different today?"

"Not really?" She shrugged. "I'm still excited and everything, so I couldn't go very far. It just felt, normal, I guess?"

"Hmm." Listening with one ear, Zax was staring inside his hand.

He used his HUD to help him visualise what he had felt. He couldn't get the details, they were too complex, but seeing electric blue approximation of veins forming in his forearm, through his clothes, made him realise why it had felt so familiar.

The glowing meridians!

A thought changed the colour of the assisted projection to glowing green, and the similarity was even more obvious.

The hobbyist quickly bid good night to his friend and hurried to his bedroom-workshop. A quick search in his archives confirmed it: it was the glowing veins he had seen ad nauseam during his trip in the Core. The ones that only appeared during strong activations, and that looked a lot like acupuncture maps.

Glad I woke up at that moment.

In acupuncture, the smallest mistake could have cascading consequences anywhere in the body. Who could tell what would have happened if he had actually pinched? A lot, probably.

Did that shock unlock something?

It then dawned on him; he had actually been in trance. It had happened a few times, when directly interfacing with the main computer while emotionally shaken. He only noticed after the fact, it left no trace in the software, hardware, or wetware, and he couldn't do it on purpose.

At this moment, he wasn't emotionally vulnerable, and as improved as his nanites had been by the swarm, they were still far from a quantic computer's prowess. He wasn't focusing on a specific problem either. He didn't know if he could to it again. Everything else was similar.

Similar enough to compare, but different enough to count as a its own phenomenon.

3G. Activation. Meridians. Resonance. Trance. Even nanites.

They were all related or interacting, but how? It should be impossible.

Zax couldn't help the grin growing on his face.

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