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“I know it will,” Martin said. “But I’m sure you will manage it. I have faith in you.”

“Wouldn’t it be better for her to put the safety on rather than try and hold the trigger against someone trying to use it?” Lucy asked from where she was perched on the exercise bike.

“Possibly,” Martin said. “But all guns are different and she’d need to know where the safety was on the gun she was facing. I’m looking into it but teaching her that would be difficult.”

“Well the guys we’re most worried about are carrying AK-47s,” Lucy said.

Martin stared at her. “Are you sure?”

Lucy just shrugged. “Pretty much. That’s the consensus anyway. Don’t you read Youtube comments?”

“Not if I can help it,” Martin said. “Youtube comments are a wretched hive of scum and villainy.”

Lucy chuckled at that. “Yes, but sometimes you find a really good ship there, or at least pertinent information.”

“So you think the comments are correct?” Wendy asked.

“Wikipedia says it’s still the most popular assault rifle and it looks right.”

“You searched for it?” Martin asked sharply.

“Chill, Martin,” Lucy said. “I reckon half the town probably did, so it won’t have attracted attention. But no, I didn’t. My mum did. She can be a bit morbid sometimes and said that she wanted to know what might kill us.”

Sienna shuddered slightly at that. “So if it is an AK-47 can you get the schematics?”

Once we’re back online, yes,” Martin said. “Now do you want to attempt stopping Wendy from pulling the trigger? Or shall we leave that until tomorrow?”

Sienna checked her watch as she considered the question.

“Let’s leave it,” she said. “We’ve really only got time to see how my general strength and range are coming along before I have to go home, and I really want to see if it’s improved again.”

“That’s fair,” Martin said. “Well it’s fairly safe to say that your pull and push strength is okay. Since you were pulling and pushing the Nerf gun against Wendy’s resistance, but it’s not quite as heavy as you were dragging yesterday so we’ll do a measured run in a bit and start with lifting. Let me fetch the stuff.” He an into the other room and returned with two large bags of nuts and bolts and a set of scales. “Remind me how much you lifted yesterday?”

Sienna rolled her eyes at that. Martin knew exactly how much she had lifted yesterday. He’d been keeping notes and graphing her improvement to encourage her. “It was just over a kilo and a half,” she said.

“It was fifteen hundred and twenty-five grams exactly,” he said. “So let’s aim to get over sixteen hundred grams today.”

“Is that all?” Sienna said. “I’d like to try and reach two kilos today.”

“Ambition is good,” he replied. “But be careful. We don’t know your limits yet and we don’t want to overstress you.”

“I’ll be careful,” Sienna promised.

“Good.” Martin opened one of the bags of nuts and bolts and poured them on to the scale until the display read sixteen hundred grams. He dumped them on the floor in front of her. “Try lifting them for a start.”

“Okay.” Sienna concentrate and imagined scooping them up and holding them at eye level. It was only a few second before the bits of metal lifted off the floor and hover in front of her.

“Good!” Martin said. “Now lets see how your fine control is coming on. Float them over to table and put them down one at a time in the shape of a flower.”

Sienna chewed on he lip in concentration. This was the difficult bit. She moved them over to the table with no trouble but she had only shaped a couple of petals on her flower before the rest slipped from her grip and clattered to the table. She gave a heavy sigh. “I hate this game!” she muttered.

“Don’t look so disheartened,” Martin said.

“I am disheartened,” she said. “I can’t seem to do this.”

“You’re getting better,” he said reassuringly. “When you first tried this you could barely get to half a petal before dropping the rest.”

Which was true in so far as it went but it was still the hardest of the exercises Martin had come up with for her.

Lucy walked over and looked at the half-created flower. “Try again,” she suggested. “Repition is the key to success.”

“I know,” Sienna said. “It’s just hard.” She gathered up the nuts and bolts and started dropping them into the flower pattern.

“Breathe,” Lucy suggested. “You’re holding your breathe and you are so tense. I bet this would work better when you are relaxed.”

“And you’d know that how?” Sienna asked mildly but she took the advice and tried to relax.

“Logic,” Lucy said. “Tensing up rarely helps. When I was first learning to sew I would get all stressed and tense thinking I couldn’t do it. Then the thread would get all tanlgled and everything would ruck up and I’d ruin what I was working on. Not good. Once I learned to relax and do everything smoothly it all worked.

“It does make sense,” Martin said. “I can see your shoulders drawing in whenever you try this.”

“I suppose it does.” Sienna took few more cleansing breaths. “Okay, let’s try this again.” She lifted up the metal bits and began psychokinetically arranging them into a flower again. Except this time whenever she began to feel she was losing control she would stop and breathe until the stressed certainty she was about to drop them faded before continuing. It took longer but she was definitely getting further.

“Looking good,” Martin said. “Halfway there.”

Sienna paused and took another breath. “It’s slow this way, but it is easier. Why is fine control harder?” She went back to her task even as she spoke.

“I’m not sure,” Martin said.

“It could be because it’s more mentally sapping,” Wendy said. “And since this is a task you’re already using your already using your brain for it makes it harder.”

“Makes sense,” Sienna said as she put the last few bolts in the petals down and then placed the rest in the middle to make the centre of the daisy. “I did it!”

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