A few pigeons peck at the wet ground, their heads bobbing like they're keeping time with some private rhythm only they can hear. Their feathers are mottled grey and brown, darkened by the drizzle, and they move in jerky, mechanical motions across the slick pavement, their tiny claws clicking faintly against the tarmac.

  The three of them sit on a bench — the kind you find in every public park, forest-green paint peeling away in long strips to reveal rusted iron underneath. The wood is damp, cold even through their jeans.

  Kam stares at an empty can lying on the tarmac in front of them, maybe two meters away. Rain has darkened the metal to a dull grey, almost the same color as the pavement beneath it, and small droplets bead along its curved surface. It looks harmless. Disposable. Something you'd step over without thinking. A test he should be able to pass.

  Taylor watches a timer on his phone, thumb hovering over the screen like he's running diagnostics on a piece of equipment, his face bathed in the cold glow of the display. Leo balances a notebook on his knee, pen already poised above a half-filled page covered in his tight, slanted handwriting.

  "Controlled output," Taylor says without looking up from the timer. "Crush the can. Don't melt it."

  "I feel stupid," Kam mutters, his breath visible in the cold air.

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  "Focus," Taylor says, his voice flat and clinical. "Pressure only."

  Kam closes his eyes for a moment, shutting out the grey sky and the sound of rain tapping against fabric and metal.

  He separates the sensations in his chest the way Taylor taught him over the past few sessions — isolating each one like untangling wires in the dark.

  Heat.

  Weight.

  Pressure.

  Three threads, distinct but overlapping. One he can pull without burning the others, without letting them bleed together into something he can't control.

  He reaches for the pressure — just that one thread.

  The can collapses instantly.

  A clean, sharp crunch that echoes slightly in the damp air. Flat metal, compressed neatly from the center outward. No smoke rising from the creases. No hiss of vaporizing moisture. No glow seeping through the aluminum like it used to.

  Leo's pen scratches faster across the page, the sound dry and insistent. "Kinetic force decoupled from thermal output."

  "Latency?" Taylor asks, eyes still fixed on the timer's display.

  "Zero," Kam says, his voice quiet but certain.

  Taylor grins like a coach who's just seen a glitch turn into a feature — the kind of smile that's part satisfaction, part vindication.

  "So the coolant kills speed but buffs control," he says, scrolling through something on his phone with one thumb. "We're not running speed anymore."

  He flips his phone around so the screen faces Kam. The video from yesterday sits paused on the display for a heartbeat — the rain falling in diagonal lines, the mist curling between streetlights, the figure barely visible through the haze — and then he deletes it with a single deliberate tap.

  "We're running stealth tank," Taylor says, slipping the phone back into his jacket pocket. "No clips. No heat. Just physics."

  Kam keeps staring at the flattened can where it sits motionless on the wet tarmac. It's cold. Completely cold. No warmth radiating from it, no afterglow, nothing that would show up on thermal imaging or even just someone's hand if they picked it up.

  "And if Marcus comes back?" he asks.

  Taylor pockets his phone. "Then we introduce him to the update."

  Kam nods once.

  Control..