CHAPTER 16

The gleaming face of Sasaki Tower loomed in front of him, a monument to the spirit of industry and innovation. Alex squared his shoulders, took a deep breath, and checked again to make sure his shirt was buttoned right. He joined the press of people walking through the bank of revolving doors and let the tide of bodies carry him to the reception desk. A woman in a starched white blouse looked up from her desktop monitor as he approached.

"Yes, can I help you?"

"Hi, yes, I'm here for the internship. The AIT summer internship. In engineering. I'm supposed to start today?" At the woman's blank stare, Alex fished in his pocket for the printout and unfolded it on the desk. "It says to, uh, ask for Ms. Takeda?"

The woman's eyes scanned the paper, and she nodded. "Right, okay, let me dial her extension real quick." She tapped a series of digits into her phone and waited as it rang. "Hello? Ms. Takeda? There's someone at the front desk here for you. He has a document with your signature on it for an internship program?" She fell silent for a moment. "All right. Thank you." The receptionist hung up and glanced back to Alex. "She'll be down in a moment."

Alex waited by the reception desk and watched the queue of Sasaki Industries employees walk into the building. There were suited executives, rank and file office workers in simple but chic business casual clothes, along with engineers and researchers wearing everything from lab coats to jeans to shirts and ties. They all swiped an ID badge to pass through chrome turnstiles to elevators waiting to whisk them off to the upper floors.

One of the elevators slid open to reveal Noriko Takeda. Her heels clicked on the tiled marble floor as she strode out through turnstile and held a tablet computer in one hand. "Mr. Alvarez," she said with a curt nod. She transferred the tablet to her other hand, and held out a small plastic ID card. "You'll need this. Now please follow me." She turned and walked back through the chrome gates, Alex struggling to catch up. They boarded an elevator alone (Alex saw other workers steering clear), and were swept up to a higher floor. As the elevator ascended, Noriko glanced over at him. "We used the picture on file at AIT for your badge. Mr. Sasaki wanted you onboarded as quickly as possible. However, there is still some paperwork we need you to fill out."

The elevator doors slid open, revealing another expanse of marble. Alex heard the faint hum of server banks as Noriko led him past a reception area and into a conference room with a large window overlooking midtown. She tapped a sequence on her tablet and set it down on the table before gesturing to a seat. "Please take a moment to read through the information there. It's standard disclosure and privacy agreements."

Alex nodded and sat down in one of the chairs, scanning the dense text in front of him. He reached the bottom and used his finger to sign the appropriate field. Noriko took the tablet back and brought up another form. "This is for your benefits, insurance, and compensation. If you would be so kind…?"

"Compensation? I thought I was an intern."

"Sasaki Industries makes it a policy to fairly compensate all of its workers," Noriko said in a clipped tone. Alex figured she had read it off a script. "As an intern and a student, you will naturally not be paid as much as one of our fully vested engineers, but Mr. Sasaki arranged for your salary himself. If you have any questions regarding your compensation, you are free to reach out to HR at a later time." She handed the tablet back to him, and Alex's eyes went wide.

"That's my hourly rate?"

"As I said, if you have any concerns, you may bring them up with—"

"No, no problems at all," Alex said, signing again. With that kind of money, he could start buying gourmet instant noodles. Or better yet, actual food.

When his paperwork was signed, Noriko motioned him to follow her again. They left the conference room and walked down a hallway to a room barely larger than a supply closet. An IT technician took Alex's fingerprints ("A security concern, you understand," Noriko said. "Company policy.") and a retinal scan ("An added measure for certain secured labs."). Alex complied, still in a daze, until Noriko led him back to the elevators and up to an even higher floor.

There was no curated marble expanse this time. The walls were a sterile white, and soft fluorescent light reflected off linoleum floors. Noriko and Alex had their eyes scanned at a small black panel on the wall, and were admitted into one of five workspaces on the floor. A single figure was seated at a table, his back to Alex. A Blaziken lounged on an office chair nearby. The seated man was bent over and tinkering with something before him, and Alex heard a crackle of electricity followed by the sudden reek of ozone. Noriko wrinkled her nose and cleared her throat.

"Jiro, Mr. Alvarez is here."

The man at the bench stood and turned with a grin. "Wonderful!" Jiro Sasaki extended a hand for Alex to shake. "It's so good to see you again!" When Alex returned the handshake, Jiro's smile grew wider.

Noriko inclined her head. "Well, I'll leave you to it. Mr. Alvarez, I wish you the best. And Jiro, try not to break anything." She turned and went back to the elevators, her fingers already dancing over her tablet.

When the door slid shut behind her, Jiro sighed. "She insisted on being the one to handle your paperwork. Usually we get someone from HR, but this time… Well, she's usually not that interested in the new hires." Jiro cleared some space on a bench and waved Alex over. "Come on, sit down. You've got to let me know how the new suit is working."

"It's amazing," Alex said. "It's so lightweight, and it glides like a dream! And it's so durable!"

"That's fantastic! We've never tried using nanofibers for something like your wingsuit before, and we didn't have the time to run a full battery of tests. I'd worried about that, but everything seems to be working?"

"I think the rooftops of Avenbrooke are a pretty good testing ground. I can't complain." Alex looked around the laboratory, taking in the machines and tools, and all the idling computers. "This is… a lot."

"Oh, it's not all mine," Jiro said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Well, I guess it is, since the company owns it, and I own the company. But I share this floor with a few other engineers. I had them work in other places today so we'd have the run of the place."

"I meant this whole internship thing. It's… a lot." It wasn't every day you woke up to an email from your dream company saying you had been selected for an internship you hadn't applied for, let alone an internship created especially for you, to work alongside your personal idol.

"Thank Johannes for that," Jiro said with a laugh. "He set all of this up."

"I know. I have." Alex had been going to the Hammer's repair shop for the past three weekends to help weld the Hammer's new suit. He hadn't dealt much with hydraulic engineering and machinery, but Johannes had been patient and willing to teach him while Hierro sparred with Albrecht and Siegfried in the yard.

Jiro stood and walked back over to his workspace. "I thought for the first day or two you could help me out with some new pulse weapons I'm developing for the Blaziken Man armor. I've almost got what I need, but I think I need an extra pair of hands. We can chat later about what you want to develop, or anything you want to learn while you're here. I've got the resources, so just say the word and I'll get you set up. That work for you?"

Alex could have wept for joy. He managed to nod, not trusting himself to speak.

Jiro twirled a thin screwdriver between his fingers. "Hey, did you bring your partner along?"

"Yeah, Hierro's right here." Alex palmed Hierro's pokeball from his belt, and the Hawlucha appeared in a burst of light. Hierro fluffed his feathers and glanced around the workshop, giving it an appreciative nod.

"Masakado, why don't you take Hierro down to the fitness center?" Jiro said. His Blaziken unfolded itself from the swivel chair and stretched his arms over his head. The fire type gestured for Hierro to follow him, and the smaller fighting type bounded after the Blaziken. "I figure we'll let them blow off some steam while we work." Jiro tapped the gauntlet on the table. "Give me a hand with this?"

Before Alex knew it, hours had passed, and his stomach was starting to cramp up from hunger. Jiro heard it rumbling and grinned. "Time for a lunch break, I think. I usually have food sent up, but I guess it's a good time to show you the commissary." They returned to the elevators, and Jiro took them down to the fifth floor. The commissary took up the entire level and buzzed with conversation. When Jiro stepped off the elevator, a ripple passed through the surrounding area, and several people rose up out of their seats.

"Mr. Sasaki, do you have a moment?"

"I wanted to discuss the plans for—"

"Regarding our requisitions for the Devon merger—"

"Sir, if I could just—"

"Mr. Sasaki, your designs for the Mark V armor are—"

Jiro held up a hand. "Later. If any of these things need my attention, Ms. Takeda will let me know. I'm tied up with another matter presently." He steered Alex towards the food counters with a wry smile. "This is why I usually have lunch sent up," Jiro said. "Anyway," he gestured to the trays of food lined up under heating lamps, "we stock the commissary with anything you could want. If you're vegetarian we have counters for that, but mostly the food is divided up by region. We hire from all over, so we try to serve something that everyone is comfortable with." He handed Alex a plate. "Load that up and then we'll find a table."

Alex picked up two sandwiches and filled the remaining space with a salad before following Jiro to a small table. Jiro set down a plate of sushi and glanced around the commissary. "Sorry about all this fuss."

Alex shook his head. "Oh, don't apologize!"

"They'll be watching you now," Jiro said. "We get interns all the time, but outside of a handful of people, no one in the company has the kind of access to me that you're getting. They're going to wonder why an intern gets to work so closely with me." He popped a piece of sushi into his mouth and shrugged. "I know you try to keep your night gig on the down-low, and I probably just made that a lot harder for you. The more people start asking questions, the harder it will be for you to keep up your secret identity."

Alex shrugged. "I'll figure something out. I'm a genius prodigy from AIT, after all."

"I think 'genius' is a bit of a strong word for someone who tried to punch Marcus Braun in the face," Jiro said with a laugh.

Alex was about to respond when he caught a strong whiff of nicotine. A man slid the third chair out from their table and sank down with a sigh. He pulled a tablet from his bag, put one earphone in, and resumed a video feed, some Unovan crime drama. "Hey Jiro," Noboru Takeda said around a mouthful of sandwich. "Nice of you to join the rest of us mere mortals today." He nodded to Alex. "Good to see you again, kid. I see you survived my sister's welcome wagon."

"It wasn't that bad, really."

Noboru smirked. "You don't have to be polite. She probably isn't listening." He glanced back down at his TV show. Without looking at Alex, he continued, "Your, ah, friend busted up that sleepwalker den in Avenbrooke a little while back, right?"

"Yeah, that was me… I mean him."

"I couldn't believe it when I heard," Noboru rumbled. "That many sleepwalkers?" He put down his sandwich and shook his head. "Well, if nothing else, I hope they start taking this thing seriously."

"Who's 'they'? And what's 'this'?"

"Jiro, I like this one. He knows how to ask the right questions." Noboru's mouth twisted into a wry smile, but he didn't look up from his TV show. "'They' are anyone willing to give me a research grant. And 'this' is ending the epidemic that the Sins started. I'm working on a medication to block the effects of dream dust, a new kind of naloxone for a new kind of opiate."

Jiro's expression grew serious, and he lowered his voice. "How are the trials coming?"

"Tied up in ethical knots," Noboru replied. "Dream dust is fucked up, Jiro. I can make medication that targets the neurotransmitters the dust targets and try to combat the physical effects, but there's a lot of psychic type voodoo mixed up in there. It's attacking the sleepwalker's consciousness along with their mind. From what I can tell, targeting the physical effects and leaving the mental rewiring untreated could have serious long-term repercussions. This ain't your average opioid. A pill a day and a twelve step program isn't going to cut it for these addicts." Noboru's hands had started shaking, and his eyes darted back and forth. "If I send this to trial before I've accounted for the variables, the side effects could be worse than the drug itself."

"Easy," Jiro said. "You know you have the company's full support. If that's not enough and we need more collaboration, I can put out some feelers and—"

"That's only half the equation," Noboru said. "The other variable is time. The longer I take with this, the more time people like Eva Mueller and the Baron have to spread this on the streets." He waved his hand. "I'm preaching to the choir, I know. You two just keep fighting your good fight, and I'll keep fighting mine." He finished his sandwich in two quick bites. "Well, I'll leave you to it. I just wanted to say thanks for taking those chemists down. Let our, uh, mutual friend know I appreciate it, if you see him. I need a smoke." He left, and Alex and Jiro turned back to their meals.

When Alex and Jiro returned to the lab, Jiro cleared his throat. "Noboru has a tendency to throw himself into his work, perhaps a little more than is healthy. Once he's started in on something, he's like a Granbull with a bone. Sorry if that was a lot on your first day."

Alex shook his head. "No, I've seen what dream dust does to people. I'm glad someone's working on it, especially someone who cares as much as he does."

"Noboru knows better than most what it's like to go down the dark path of addiction. He had help saving himself, and now he's doing everything he can to save others. He may not make the headlines like we do…"

"But that doesn't mean he isn't a hero too."

"Exactly," Jiro said. He sat down at his work bench and twirled a screwdriver in his fingers. "Now then. As much as I would appreciate having an extra pair of hands to help me make tweaks on the Blaziken Man armor for the next few months, I created this internship to give you the resources you need for your night gig. I made your suit as close as I could to your original specs, but I'm not the one flying over Avenbrooke every night, so you're the authority here. What can Sasaki Industries help you with to make your job easier?"

Alex nodded thoughtfully. "Well, I always have to keep weight distribution in mind. All of my equipment needs to be lightweight, or it's going to drag me down when I try to glide. The suit has been pretty good about stopping knives, and the padding can stop some blunt trauma, but a solid hit is still going to leave me with a bruise. I'd love to reinforce it, but unless you've made another breakthrough in nanofibers, I think it's as sturdy as it's going to get." He picked up a drill and tapped the bit. "Lately I've been wondering if I could add something to my fingertips, some kind of alloy that would allow me to dig into stonework. If I have to pull out of a glide and there aren't any handholds, being able to make my own could literally be a lifesaver. But really, the thing I most want to develop is a lightweight grappling hook.

"Hierro and I need to be airborne to do our best work, and once we're off the rooftops, we're vulnerable. In the battle two months ago, I was pinned on the ground, and it nearly got me killed three times. In Avenbrooke, most buildings have a handy fire escape, but even then I have to climb. If I could safely get up onto the rooftops from anywhere, I'd be way more mobile."

"Sounds like a great place to start. Let's draw up some designs this afternoon and see if we can figure something out."

After sketching some preliminary designs for his grappling hook, Alex looked up from the calculations on weight he was working through. "Jiro, why don't you fly?"

"Huh?"

"Your armor has thrusters on it, right? You do the whole leap a tall building in a single bound thing, and it looks like it generates significant lift. So why not develop and implement sustained flight? Is it a power issue?"

Jiro tapped his pen against his lips. "You're right, it's technically possible. The reactor that powers the armor can generate enough power for the thrusters to make flight theoretically feasible, but the real problem is stability. The amount of power required to get off the ground is one thing, but to keep me in the air it would require constant force. The gyroscopes in the suit can stabilize me if I'm just jumping up, but to maneuver in the air the way I'd need to if I was flying is too much. I've thought about different ways to work around it, but the amount of extra hardware it would require would make the armor too unwieldy."

"And the thruster jumps have been enough so far, yeah. What's your vertical with them?"

Jiro flashed an immodest smile, looking for all the world like a kid bragging about his new toy. "If I go all out, I can clear about seventy, maybe eighty feet." When Alex whistled appreciatively, Jiro held up a hand. "To be fair, the landings are usually pretty rough when I do go that high but… well, it is pretty impressive, I have to admit." He glanced down at some of his calculations. "What about your suit? I know how it should work theoretically, but I never had the chance to test it in anything other than lab conditions."

Alex thought for a moment. "Speed and lift vary, obviously. Depends a lot on the winds I happen to catch. As far as swooping and diving, I've only been using the Avenbrooke rooftops, and not many of those are more than six, seven stories. During the battle with the Sins, I jumped out of a helicopter with the old suit and it held up okay, so I figure this one can probably handle that kind of speed and altitude too. Actually, a lot of it comes down to arm strength."

"Do you think if we added more material you would have better results?" Jiro sat back and tugged at his beard. "I'm willing to defer to you here. You're the expert, as far as I'm concerned."

"Well, yes and no. There are people with bigger wingsuits who do like, base-jumping and whatever. And while they probably have smoother flights and better maneuverability on their drops, the suits are pretty cumbersome on the ground. What I have now is perfect for gliding from rooftop to rooftop, and I'm not about to go jump off Avenbrooke Tower. Or even another helicopter, if I can help it."

"Right. You've got to balance your aerial capability with your work on the ground."

"Exactly," Alex said. "I need to be able to use my hands and feet without getting tangled up in a ton of cloth. Hierro and I are really mobile when we fight, and if I'm getting tripped up, I'm probably a dead man."

"So minimalism is the way to go, then." Jiro twirled his pen between his fingers. "Duly noted."

The next time Alex looked up from the drafting table was when the lab door hissed open to let Masakado and Hierro in. The Hawlucha's feathers were rumpled, but he seemed otherwise in good spirits. Masakado dropped into an empty swivel chair and rested his head on his knuckles. Jiro laid a hand on his partner's shoulder. "How did the sparring go?" Masakado leveled his gaze at Hierro for a drawn-out moment. Finally, he lifted his hand and flashed a thumb-up. Hierro beamed.

Alex sat up with a groan and stretched before glancing at a clock on a nearby monitor. "It's five already?"

Jiro nodded. "Easy to lose track of time here. Let's call it a day. And," he added, "don't stay out too late. We've got more work to do tomorrow."

"Will do. See you later!" Alex and Hierro got on the elevator and swept down to the lobby, where they joined the press of workers leaving for the day. As they stepped out into the early evening sunlight, Alex blinked and looked down at his partner. "I can't believe that just happened. This is going to be the best summer internship ever." Hierro bobbed in a full body nod. Alex grinned. "I can't wait to show you my grappling hook designs. Jiro's giving me access to everything I could possibly need." As they walked to their subway stop, they passed a bakery. Hierro paused to look at the confections in the window, and Alex stopped short beside him. "Those look really good. Pick any one you want." Hierro looked up, and then down at the pocket where Alex kept his wallet. Alex grinned. "No need to worry about that anymore. It's about time we treated ourselves."