There was a week between the second friendly and the start of the official season.

Seven days. Will had done the math the moment David mentioned it, standing in the car park outside Rockliffe Park with his bag over one shoulder and the post match analysis still running through his head. Seven days, two daily missions from the system, one tactical session, two full training sessions, and whatever time he could carve out at home in the back garden or at the rebounder wall at the crack of dawn.

He started using the wall again that Wednesday. Five in the morning. The light was already coming up a bit earlier now that August was creeping in. Not warm exactly, but the sky was pale instead of black, which meant he could see without the head torch for the last twenty minutes.

The daily mission that morning was sixty outswinging crosses, thirty from each side, delivered into a target zone that the system marked on the ground with a small amber rectangle in his overlay. Forty-eight per cent of his crosses currently fell within that zone, and the threshold for mission completion was seventy per cent.

He spent the first twenty minutes slightly below threshold. Getting the flight of the ball right from his weaker left side was the problem. The technique was wrong, leaning back when he needed to lean into it, so the ball kept curling too late and falling behind the target zone.

He adjusted. Moved the plant foot slightly further back. Leaned in earlier. The next one clipped the front edge of the amber rectangle. The one after landed cleanly inside.

By the time he hit his sixtieth cross, his success rate was seventy-four per cent.

[DAILY MISSION COMPLETE] [Cross accuracy: 74% against threshold of 70%] [Reward: 20 Credits] [Credit Balance: 355]

He rolled his shoulder back. It ached. Not badly, more the kind of thing you notice only when you stop moving and the body decides to surface all the small complaints it kept quiet while you were working. He stretched it out and jogged back towards the changing rooms.

The full squad training that day was set pieces.

Nobody liked set piece sessions. The outfield players stood around waiting to be told where to run while the coaches drew arrows on a small magnetic whiteboard that was too small for half the squad to see from where they were standing. The goalkeeper stood between his posts and watched the setup with the expression of someone waiting for a bus in the rain.

Will was fine with set pieces in principle. Not fine with standing still in the cold for twenty minutes between each routine, which was what it usually amounted to. His mental stat was improving but there was no system upgrade for patience with standing about in a cluster of teenagers pretending to listen to instructions they had heard four times already.

"Smithson," the assistant coach called. "You’re taking the near post corners."

Will nodded and walked to the corner flag.

The set piece sessions were recorded on a tablet mounted on a tripod on the touchline. David reviewed the footage that evening and distributed clips to the relevant players before the next session. Will had found out about this process from Marcus two weeks ago and had been watching his own clips each night, usually before he went to sleep, sometimes in bed with his phone balanced on his chest in the dark.

It was a small, uncomfortable education. Watching yourself do things on video was different from the way they felt when they were happening. A pass he had thought was good looked less good when he could see the angles clearly. A run he had thought was well timed was a second later than it needed to be. The system overlay was useful but it only showed him what was there in the moment. The video showed him the pattern over time.

He hit the first corner. Inswinging, hard, into the six yard box. Marcus, arriving from the back post, met it with his forehead and glanced it wide.

"Again," the assistant called.

He hit it again. This time the near post run from Jason drew two defenders and the far post arrived unmarked. Nobody had made the far post run. Three players were standing still on the edge of the box.

"Again."

On the fourth attempt, the routine worked exactly as drawn on the whiteboard. Jason’s near post run, the two defenders tracking him, the far post run arriving into the space, the corner whipped in at pace, a clean glancing header, the ball brushing the inside of the post and going in.

"Yes," the assistant said quietly.

Will jogged back to the corner flag.

[Ding!] [Set piece delivery recorded: improvement flagged in inswing accuracy] [Set Pieces: 46 > 47]

One point.

He told no one. Nobody would understand what that meant or why it mattered. He just filed it away and went back to work.

That evening Alex came round to the back garden with a bottle of water and a packet of biscuits and sat on the step while Will ran through a short dribbling drill. The cast was completely off now and Alex had the look of someone recently released from a minor imprisonment.

"Two more weeks on reduced load," Alex said, "before I’m fully cleared for contact."

"So you won’t be available for the first game," Will said.

"No." Alex ate a biscuit. "What’s the fixture?"

"Sheffield United away."

"Brutal," Alex said.

"We’ll be fine." Will collected the ball and set it at the start of the cones again. "I’ll be fine."

Alex watched him go through the drill again. He didn’t say anything until Will had finished. "David put you in the squad yet?"

Will picked up the ball and stood with it under his arm. "Not officially. But he hasn’t told me not to expect it either."

Alex nodded slowly. "That’s basically a yes in David language."

Will put the ball down.

"Yeah," he said. "I know."

A/N: Apologies, I couldn’t write the extra Chapter yesterday, but it will be coming later today, pinky promise.