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Martin hummed thoughtfully to himself. “Tomorrow at the earliest. I need to check the computer for any kind of malware that might have infected us and passed on the information they needed to locate us. Then I need to get a new dongle or two cash.”

“Leave that bit to me,” Wendy said. “This month’s stipend from the trust fund just hit so I’m flush. For now we should get on with Sienna’s training.”

“That’s a good idea.” Martin said and reached under the desk. Sienna expected him to bring up the tennis balls they had been throwing at her in order to train her to shield but instead he produced a nerf gun and tossed it to Wendy. “Use that.”

Wendy looked from the lurid orange toy to Martin and back again before raising an eyebrow. “What do you want me to do with this?”

Martin chuckled. “Well we can’t shoot a real gun at her. We don’t have one and can’t get one and anyway I’m not convinced her psychokinesis will stop a bullet. Not yet at least though her strength is increasing quickly.”

“So this is a stand in for a real gun?” Wendy still looked as confused as Sienna felt. “But since she probably can’t stop bullets what do you want me to do with it?”

“I want you to try and shoot her with it and I want Sienna to stop you firing it,” he said. “Even if it turns out she can stop bullets it’s still safer not to have them flying around in the first place.”

“Okay, that makes sense,” Wendy said. “But it doesn’t work much like a real gun either.”

“Yes, I’m working on that bit,” he said. “But the main idea with this is to stop Sienna freezing if someone points a gun at her. She needs to react faster than they can pull the trigger because I really doubt she’s faster than a bullet unless she can wangle superspeed out of her psychokinesis somehow but she can probably be faster than a finger.” He paused thoughtfully. “Actually some sort of psychokinetic superspeed might be possible, let me think about it.”

“Let me get a handle on the powers I already have before trying to add more, Martin,” Sienna said dryly. “And that thing is bright orange. I’m not going to freeze having a toy gun that shoots foam bullets pointed at me.”

“Fair comment, that’s why once you’ve got the hang of it we’ll paint it black to look more like a real gun.”

“Yes, but I’ll still know it’s a toy.”

“You will,” he agreed. “But the idea is to train your responses to kick in even if your brain freezes. It’s more about not thinking about it being real, acting in that moment before you realise and freeze.”

“I see,” Sienna said dubiously. “I see where you are coming from but I don’t think it will work.”

“It does sound a bit wacky,” Lucy said.

“I suppose it does,” Martin said. “But it can’t do any harm can it?”

Sienna considered the question for a moment then shook her head. “No, the worst it will do is be a fun way to refine my powers. But we’ll need something else as well – these aren’t as heavy as real guns are they?”

“Yes, I’m thinking about a solution for that issue as well,” Martin said. “But for now this is what we’ve got. Shall we adjourn to the gym and try it.”

“You have a gym down here as well?” Lucy asked incredulously.

“We have a third room with some weights and an exercise bike we’ve scavenged and fixed so we didn’t have to buy it,” Wendy said. “But it’s hyperbole to call it a gym.”

Lucy’s eyes lit up. “I want to see. Improving a gym set up is something else I can help with.”

“Okay, it’s not like we can buy more equipment,” Wendy said. “We don’t want to do anything that might look like we’re training in case it attracts attention.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Lucy’s lips twitched. When Wendy just looked at her blankly she actually chuckled. “Athlete training for the national trials remember – once my lungs get better anyway. No one will bat an eyelid if I buy fitness stuff. Heck I have some old stuff in the attic that I can probably give you if you need it. You may not need as much as you think.”

“Oh!” Wendy said. “I never thought of that. Come on then.” She headed back to the second room and pulled aside another wall hanging to reveal a third room.

Lucy paused in the doorway checking the wall and the door frame. “Okay, this looks sturdy. You could easily put a pull-up bar here. That would be a good start.” She surveyed the room. “Okay so you have an exercise bike and some free weights. This is pretty good. I’ll bring you books on bodyweight exercise and suggested plans over next time. For now shouldn’t you be trying to shoot Sienna?”

“Hah! Yes!” Wendy sounded entirely too enthusiastic about that idea in Sienna’s opinion. “Let’s do this!”

“We should start with a warm up with the tennis balls first,” Sienna said.

“You just want to show off for Lucy,” Martin said. “But it’s not a bad idea to check you’ve got that fully bedded in before moving on.” He ran back into the other room and returned with two new tubes of tennis balls which he opened before tossing a couple of balls to Wendy and Lucy.

“What do we do with these?” Lucy asked.

“Throw them at Sienna as hard as you can, of course.” Wendy said. “If it hits her we get a point if she stops it she does.” She threw one of her balls hard without warning obviously trying to catch Sienna off guard.”

“Nice try!” Sienna stopped the ball about half an inch from her nose. She pushed it back to Wendy with a thought. “You might have managed to surprise me if you hadn’t thrown it at me when I was looking at you.”

Lucy gave a low whistle. “That’s pretty impressive!” She threw one of her tennis balls and grinned as Sienna stopped that as well and sent it back to orbit Lucy’s head like a miniature moon until the other girl grabbed it out of the air. “Cool!”

“Your control is improving,” Martin said. “Five minutes of this, I think. Then we can move on.” He set the stopwatch on his phone. “I’ll keep score.”

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