Chapter 12: Teaching Sin
Sin showed up an hour before class started, sitting on the gym steps with the patient determination of someone who'd outlasted worse than locked doors. Ben found her there when he arrived to open the building, small and still and radiating the kind of focused intensity that meant she'd made a decision that would be difficult to change.
"We're not open yet," Ben said, fishing for his keys.
"I know. I wanted to talk to you before the others got here."
Ben unlocked the front door and gestured for her to follow him inside. The gym felt different in the early morning quiet—larger somehow, without the usual crowd of people working through their fears and limitations. Dust motes danced in streams of sunlight that cut through windows still grimy despite his attempts to clean them.
"What's on your mind?" Ben asked, turning on lights and checking equipment with the routine of someone who'd learned that maintaining safe spaces required constant attention.
"I want you to teach me the real stuff."
Ben paused in his inspection of the heavy bags. "What real stuff?"
"Not the basic self-defense you teach in class. The things you actually know. The techniques I've seen you use when you think nobody's looking."
Careful. She's too observant for vague deflections.
"What makes you think I know anything beyond what I teach?"
Sin gave him the look that teenagers had perfected for adults who insisted on playing dumb about obvious things. "I've been watching you for weeks. You move like fighting is a language you're fluent in. You spot trouble before it starts. You position yourself like someone who knows exactly how violence flows through a space."
Ben sat down on a bench, recognizing that this conversation was going to require more honesty than he usually allowed himself. Sin had survived on the streets by reading people and situations with deadly accuracy. Trying to fool her would be an insult to her intelligence and a waste of both their time.
"Why do you want advanced training?"
"Because basic training isn't going to be enough."
"Enough for what?"
Sin shrugged, but her eyes remained sharp and focused. "For whatever's coming. You feel it too—the way the city's changing, the way things are escalating. The hooded guy, the increased gang activity, all the weird stuff happening that doesn't make it onto the news. Something big is building, and when it hits, people like us are going to be caught in the middle."
"She's right. She doesn't know about the Undertaking specifically, but she can sense the growing tension, the way events are accelerating toward some kind of climax. Street kids develop instincts for that kind of thing because their survival depends on reading the broader patterns of violence and chaos."
"Advanced training is dangerous," Ben said finally. "Not just the techniques themselves, but what knowing them does to you. Once you cross certain lines, it's hard to come back."
"I'm not asking to come back. I'm asking to be ready."
Ben studied her face—sharp with intelligence, hardened by experience, determined in the way that only came from having no safe alternatives. Sin reminded him of the children he'd failed to save in his previous life, the ones who'd depended on adults to protect them and discovered that sometimes adults weren't enough.
"If I do this," he said slowly, "there are conditions."
"Name them."
"You keep attending regular school. Whatever training we do happens outside those hours."
"Okay."
"You don't share what I teach you with anyone else without my permission. Not because the knowledge is secret, but because it's dangerous in the wrong hands."
"Understood."
"And you have to understand that this isn't about turning you into a weapon. It's about survival. The goal is always to get away, to protect yourself and others, to minimize harm. The minute you start looking for fights instead of avoiding them, the training stops."
Sin nodded with the gravity of someone who understood that agreements like this carried real weight. "Why are you willing to do this? You barely know me."
Ben felt the familiar twist of guilt and regret that came with remembering children he couldn't save. "You remind me of someone I couldn't protect. Don't make me regret this."
For the next hour, Ben taught Sin to read environments the way a soldier learned to read battlefields. Not martial arts techniques or fighting moves, but the deeper skills that kept people alive when violence erupted around them.
How to identify escape routes automatically when entering any space. How to recognize the body language that preceded aggression. How to move through crowds without attracting attention. How to trust the instincts that warned when something was wrong, even when you couldn't articulate what had triggered the alarm.
"Violence has patterns," Ben explained as they walked through scenarios in the empty gym. "Most people think it's random, chaotic, unpredictable. But it's not. There are warning signs, escalation patterns, tells that let you know when a situation is about to go bad."
"Like what?"
"Watch people's hands. Aggressive individuals fidget, clench fists, touch their weapons unconsciously before drawing them. Listen to voice patterns—when someone's working up to violence, their speech changes rhythm, volume, tone. Pay attention to group dynamics—how crowds move when something's wrong, how bystanders react when they sense danger."
Sin absorbed everything with frightening intensity, asking questions that cut straight to the practical applications. She wasn't interested in theory or philosophy; she wanted knowledge she could use to stay alive in a world that had already proven it would kill her if given the chance.
"What about when you can't avoid the violence?" she asked during a break. "When escape isn't possible and you have to fight?"
"Then you fight to create escape opportunities, not to win. You cause enough pain and confusion to break free, and then you run. Nobody wins street fights—you just survive them or you don't."
"That's not what the movies show."
"The movies are lying. Real violence is ugly, chaotic, and over quickly. Your goal is to not be there when it happens."
Ben realized his Prescience had stayed completely quiet during the entire session. His body recognized the safety of the training environment, the absence of genuine threat. But his instruction was colored by knowledge he couldn't share—awareness of what Sin would face in the coming months and years, the dangers that would require her to be stronger and smarter than any teenager should have to be.
When regular students began arriving for the morning class, Sin helped Ben set up equipment with the easy cooperation of someone who'd found her place in this small community.
POV: Sin
After class, Sin walked home through the Glades with a group of other street kids, her mind processing everything Ben had taught her during their private session. The advanced lessons had confirmed what she'd suspected for weeks—Ben Hale knew far more about violence and survival than any civilian should.
"So what's the deal with your teacher?" asked Marcus (not the gym owner, but a kid around her age who'd taken the name from some rapper). "People are saying he's connected to that hooded vigilante somehow."
"People say a lot of things."
"Yeah, but this feels different. The way he moves, the stuff he knows, the timing of when he showed up in the neighborhood." Marcus kicked a discarded beer can across broken asphalt. "Plus, have you noticed how he's never surprised by anything? Like he knows what's going to happen before it happens."
Sin had noticed. Ben positioned himself perfectly for trouble that arrived seconds later. He flinched at sounds nobody else could hear yet. He taught them to avoid specific locations that later turned out to be exactly where bad things happened.
"Maybe he's just really good at reading situations," she said.
"Or maybe he's crazy," offered Zoe, another kid who lived in the same abandoned building where Sin had claimed a corner. "Like, trauma crazy. PTSD or whatever. Sometimes people who've been through bad stuff develop weird abilities."
"What kind of abilities?"
"My cousin was in Afghanistan. When he came back, he could spot IEDs that nobody else could see, predict when incoming fire was about to start. Military called it 'combat intuition,' but he swore it felt like seeing the future."
Sin considered this as they navigated around a police barricade where yesterday's gang shooting had left bullet holes in storefront windows. Ben's enhanced awareness could be explained by trauma, by having survived something terrible enough to fundamentally change how his brain processed information about potential threats.
But it didn't explain everything.
"There's something else," Sin said finally. "He cares. Like, actually cares. Not just about looking good or feeling like he's helping, but about whether we live or die. That's rare."
"Rare enough to be suspicious," Marcus pointed out.
"Rare enough to be worth protecting."
The other kids exchanged glances that acknowledged Sin's territorial instincts when it came to the few adults who'd proven trustworthy. They'd learned to respect her judgment because it had kept them alive more than once.
"Ben Hale is either crazy or he can see the future, and either way, he's the kind of crazy the Glades needs. He teaches us to survive, he doesn't ask for anything in return, and he treats us like people instead of problems to be solved. Whatever his secrets are, they're his business unless they become a threat to the people he's trying to protect."
Sin made her decision as they reached the building where she'd claimed a corner of an abandoned apartment. Ben's secrets were safe with her, because people who actually gave a damn about the Glades were rare enough to be worth keeping alive.
And if anyone tried to threaten him, they'd discover that Sin had learned more from his lessons than just how to avoid violence.
Ben watched Sin leave with the other street kids, feeling the familiar weight of responsibility settling on his shoulders like a lead blanket. Every connection he made, every person he trained, every relationship he built increased his investment in this world and made hiding more difficult.
"I came here planning to observe and intervene minimally. But I'm becoming what I swore I wouldn't—a player in this story rather than just someone trying to prevent its worst outcomes. Every person I teach increases the chances that someone will survive when Malcolm's earthquake machines activate. But it also increases the chances that my secrets will be exposed before I'm ready to reveal them."
Ben locked up the gym and headed home through neighborhoods that felt different now—not just because of the developing tensions around the Hood's activities, but because of the connections he'd built with the people who lived here. Sin, Marcus, the mothers who came to his classes, the shop owners who'd started nodding when he passed—all of them were counting on him to be what he claimed to be.
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