I Choose the Skills Everyone Else Rejects

Pain filled the room.

Nate’s shoulder locked first. Then everything around it joined in.

Muscle tightened beneath his collarbone. His upper arm jerked hard enough to pull him sideways against the bed. Heat spread through the joint, followed by a pressure so deep he couldn’t tell whether Body Memory was repairing something or trying to tear it apart properly this time.

He grabbed the mattress. His Core dropped. Fast.

Nate shut his First Circuit before instinct could feed more current into the Skill.

Body Memory kept going.

That frightened him more than the pain.

He had never given it a request this large before. Usually it repaired a strain, pulled damaged tissue back toward what it had been a few hours earlier, preserved whatever adaptation the training had earned.

This time he had asked for years. A body from before Malvern.

The Skill searched for it.

Nate felt the answer arrive.

His shoulder snapped backward. He shouted.

Something moved beneath the skin. The sensation wasn’t bone shifting. It was softer than that and somehow worse. Tendons tightened. Muscle pulled around the joint in directions he couldn’t control. The old ache that had lived under his shoulder for weeks suddenly became sharp enough to blur his vision.

His Core fell below a quarter.

Nate reached for the Skill. Stopping it should have been easy. It wasn’t. The request had already found a state, and Body Memory was dragging damaged tissue toward it.

Nate rolled onto his knees. His stomach cramped. He hadn’t eaten enough for this. He knew that immediately.

The Skill wanted more than Core.

His hands began shaking. He crawled toward the small cabinet beside the desk and pulled it open with his good arm. Protein bars. Dried meat. Two nutrient packs Varo had made him keep after the last time Body Memory left him dizzy.

Nate tore one open with his teeth. Half of it ended up on the floor. He swallowed the rest too quickly, and his stomach protested.

Body Memory didn’t care.

Another contraction ripped through the shoulder. Nate hit the side of the desk. The lamp fell. He barely noticed.

For one instant, the pain disappeared.

Then the energetic pathway under the restored tissue lit up.

That was different.

The flesh remembered being healthy. The pathway didn’t.

Nate understood the mismatch as soon as it happened. Body Memory had rebuilt the physical structure around an energetic route that had never existed in that older body. The route pushed against tissue arranged for a version of Nate who hadn’t closed his First Circuit yet.

His shoulder burned.

Nate killed Body Memory. This time it stopped.

He stayed against the desk, breathing through his teeth. The room smelled like sweat and the nutrient gel he’d spilled across the floor. His Core sat almost empty. His left hand was still trembling.

Nate waited. Ten seconds. Twenty.

The pain receded.

He moved his fingers. Fine. Elbow. Fine. Then the shoulder.

He lifted his arm. Thirty degrees. No pull. Higher. The familiar ache should have appeared there.

It didn’t.

Nate kept going. His hand passed his head. He stopped. Slowly, he lowered it. Then raised it again.

Nothing.

A laugh escaped him. It sounded strange in the empty room.

Nate rotated the shoulder. Once. Twice. The joint moved smoothly. For the first time since Malvern, his body didn’t warn him to stop.

He leaned back against the desk and closed his eyes.

Weeks. He had spent weeks treating the damage carefully. Conductive pulses. Small restorations. Slow conditioning. Measuring progress in fractions.

And Body Memory had been capable of this the entire time.

Maybe.

Nate opened his eyes. The pathway beneath the shoulder still felt wrong. Not damaged the way it had before. Wrong in a new way. The route was intact, but the tissue around it hadn’t grown alongside it anymore. He could feel the difference even without a scanner.

He had fixed one problem. He might have created another.

Nate looked at the clock. 05:18.

Varo would hate him.

He stood anyway. His legs nearly folded. That part made the decision for him. He sat back down and ate everything left in the cabinet.

Varo stared at the scan for almost a minute.

Nate sat shirtless on the examination bed while she moved between three overlays. She hadn’t said good morning. That was probably reasonable.

Finally she pointed at the newest image. "What did you do?"

"Body Memory."

"I know that part." She enlarged the shoulder. "How much?"

Nate considered lying. Varo looked at him.

"A lot."

"Excellent measurement."

She switched to the previous week’s scan. The difference was obvious even to Nate. The inflamed tissue surrounding the old injury was gone. The small irregularities around the joint were gone. The tendon that had remained slightly thickened after Malvern looked almost identical to the scan taken before the Varen deployment.

Varo moved back to the current image. "What state did you restore?"

"Before Malvern."

Her hand stopped on the controls. "How far before?"

"I don’t know. Months. Maybe longer."

Varo looked at him properly now. "You can do that?"

"Apparently."

"Apparently." She turned the scanner off.

Nate waited.

Varo stepped closer and took his left wrist. "Raise it."

He did. Overhead.

"Back."

He moved the arm behind him.

"Pain?"

"No."

"Pull?"

"No."

"Weakness?"

"Not really."

She pressed two fingers against the front of the joint. Nothing. Harder. Still nothing.

Varo let go. Then she smacked the shoulder.

Nate jerked. "What was that for?"

"Testing."

"You could’ve warned me."

"Then you’d brace."

She returned to the scan. Nate rubbed the spot. It hurt now, but normally. That alone felt ridiculous.

Varo brought up the energetic overlay. Her expression changed. "There."

Nate saw it. The physical structure around the pathway had improved dramatically. The pathway itself hadn’t. It ran through the shoulder like a newer cable through an older wall. Stable. But poorly seated.

"What happens if I circulate?"

"You’re going to show me instead of discovering it alone at two in the morning."

"It was five."

Varo turned slowly. Nate stopped.

"Open shallow."

He did. Current entered the First Circuit. Chest. Arm. Shoulder. The moment it crossed the restored section, pressure tightened around the route. Not pain. Resistance.

Nate reduced the flow.

Varo watched the graph. "Again. Same level."

He repeated it. The response was identical. She enlarged the reading. "The pathway isn’t injured."

"Then why does it feel worse?"

"Because everything around it changed." She tapped the old scan. "This tissue adapted around the damaged route. Badly, but it adapted." Then the new one. "You restored the physical structure to before that adaptation existed."

Nate looked at the screen. "So I reset the conditioning."

"Part of it."

"How long?"

Varo shrugged. "Could be weeks."

Nate stared at her. She smiled. He didn’t.

"Could be days. I haven’t had a patient casually restore months of tissue history before breakfast."

"Useful."

"Don’t do it again."

"Why?"

Varo’s smile disappeared. "Because your Core was almost empty when you walked in, your glucose is terrible, and your body temperature was low enough that I checked the scanner twice."

Nate looked away.

"You could’ve passed out alone."

"I didn’t."

"That is never the defence you think it is." She handed him his shirt. "Eat. Sleep. No combat today."

"Darek has me at two."

"Then Darek can be disappointed."

"He won’t be."

"Then that’s one less problem."

Nate pulled the shirt on. The motion didn’t hurt. He paused halfway through.

Varo noticed. For once she didn’t say anything.

Nate finished dressing. At the door, he looked back at the scan. The shoulder itself was healthy. Actually healthy. The energetic route needed work.

That felt like a much smaller problem now.

Darek was disappointed.

"She said no combat?"

"Yes."

"And you came anyway."

"Yes."

Darek pointed toward a chair beside the training floor. "Sit."

Nate sat. Darek returned to the trainee he’d been working with.

For twenty minutes, Nate watched other people get hit. It was less satisfying than expected.

When the session ended, Darek walked over and tossed him a bottle. Nate caught it with his left hand.

Darek noticed. "Shoulder?"

"Healed."

Darek looked at him. "Actually?"

"Physical damage."

"How?"

"Body Memory."

Darek’s eyes narrowed slightly. Nate had never explained much about the Skill publicly beyond recovery. "What changed?"

"I asked for an older state."

Darek took the bottle back before Nate could open it. "Show me."

Nate raised the arm. Full rotation.

Darek stepped behind him, gripped the wrist and slowly pulled the arm backward. Nate felt tension. Normal tension.

Darek released him. "That’s different."

"Yeah."

"Pathway?"

"Needs conditioning again."

Darek nodded. That bothered Nate.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"You do that when something bothers you."

Darek looked at him. "Do what?"

"Go quiet and nod."

"I’ll work on being less mysterious."

Nate waited. Darek sighed. "Your Skill just restored a major injury by referencing your own physical history."

"Yes."

"And your complaint is that the Circuit conditioning needs rebuilding."

"When you say it like that."

"I said exactly what happened."

Nate looked toward the training floor. Darek handed the bottle back.

"Good Skill."

Nate opened it. "Legendary."

Darek paused.

Nate realized the mistake immediately. Publicly, Body Memory was not supposed to be his defining Skill.

Darek looked at him for a second. Then at the bottle. "That your classification?"

"Figure of speech."

"Bad one."

He walked away.

Nate drank. That had been careless. The happiness had done it. He hadn’t realized how much of himself had been occupied by the shoulder until it stopped hurting.

That evening, Nate tried the route again. No Body Memory. No aggressive conditioning. He opened the First Circuit and moved around the room. Slowly. Rovan’s steps.

The restored shoulder resisted the current at first. Nate lowered the flow until it stopped. Then he moved. One step. Another.

The memory from the night before returned. Rovan hadn’t forced his Second Circuit to exist in stillness. He had let movement create the conditions for each section.

Nate increased the current while his arm swung naturally. The shoulder route tightened. He reduced it. Next step. Again. A little farther. The pressure came later.

Nate stopped. His Core was still recovering from the restoration. Trying more tonight would be stupid.

He sat on the edge of the bed.

Posthumous Disciple stirred. Not enough to drag him into another Echo. Just recognition.

A fragment surfaced. Rovan’s hand. Mud beneath it. His unfinished Second Circuit collapsing for the sixth time.

Then another fragment. Same night. Same body. But one detail Nate hadn’t understood before.

Rovan hadn’t entered that fight ready to become Second Circuit. He had entered it already close. Very close.

The memory showed Nate what that meant. His First Circuit was carrying more current than Nate’s could. The unused routes around it had been conditioned enough to accept brief contact without tearing. Rovan’s body had known the shape before he completed it.

Nate looked at his own arm.

The shoulder wasn’t the only thing he’d spent weeks conditioning. He had been opening shallow routes. Training movement under circulation. Recovering. Repeating.

And now the biggest physical obstruction was gone.

He opened his hidden interface. The third Node was still empty. That annoyed him more than it had yesterday.

Nate closed it. One problem at a time.

His terminal vibrated. Talent Services. Tomorrow’s observer schedule. Three public selections. One name had a note beside it.

ADVISER SUPPORT REQUESTED

Nate almost dismissed the schedule. Then he saw the Class prediction attached to the candidate’s regional screening.

MOTION-ALIGNED CLASS FAMILY

He read it again.

The third Node stopped feeling theoretical.

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