“Uh… who?” Nikki asked, brows knitting. “I thought we got our own mission.”

  “Demands aren’t really the currency here,” Tisiah said, dry as chalk. “Hand over the folders, please.”

  I passed them out. They opened in unison—perfectly synchronized, like a duet of cautious raccoons—and that weird, mirror-image simultaneity made me instantly concerned. We were either very professional or very doomed.

  “She’s in our next class. Master Tiphe’s,” Nikki said after a beat, eyes scanning. “Didn’t know her name was Mari, though.”

  “How?” Tisiah asked. “Don’t we know everybody in that class?”

  “We do?” I answered, and regretted all two words the second they escaped. Silence landed between us like a brick. Tisiah sighed the sigh of someone who has chosen friendship despite excellent evidence.

  “Let’s just… go,” he said, and we headed down the stairs.

  Master Tiphe’s class, if I haven’t explained it before, is outdoors—a broad training ground wrapped in a tall, high-security fence that looks like it’s waiting for an invasion that never learned our address. The whole space hums like a coiled spring. I didn’t realize the TSA liked crashing our place that much, but apparently we’re always expecting guests.

  Most of the class was already there, and so was Mari—posted at the far corner, staring off at nothing, or maybe at everything. Figures.

  We cut across the yard toward her. She glanced our way once, twice, as if her eyes were buffering and hadn’t quite rendered us as “approaching humans.” Her expression was a blend of mild confusion and profound boredom, like a cat evaluating a conversation.

  “Are you doing another one of those interview things,” she asked without greeting, “where you stick a phone in someone’s face and pretend it’s a microphone, then ask the dumbest question in the world—”

  “No,” Nikki said, crisp and decisive. “We’re not.”

  Mari looked at her and chuckled, a quick, dry sound. “New teammates?”

  “Surprised you didn’t guess that the first time,” Nikki said.

  “Trauma,” Mari replied simply. “Those boys never stop coming. Anyway—” she looked at each of us, cataloging—“I’m guessing you’re Tisiah?”

  “For sure. Nice to meet you,” he said, extending a hand.

  Mari put on a bright, deliberately fake smile—like a neon sign that said Look, I am smiling—and shook his hand slowly, eyes a little too wide to be casual.

  “And you’re… uh… Cory?”

  Talk about disrespect. “Connor,” I said.

  “Oh,” she replied, unruffled. “Should’ve been Cory.”

  Bro, what? When did we get Nikki 2.0? Tell that to my parents and watch them roll out a twenty-minute lecture on baby-name destiny.

  “We wanted to discuss the mission,” I said, steering us back. “The one you were on before your—uh… sorry for your loss—friend got removed.”

  “Thanks for telling me the story I already know,” Mari said flatly.

  Tisiah physically rocked back as if she’d flicked a pebble at his forehead. “And I assume,” she went on, “the assignment brief is in your folders.”

  “Didn’t read all of it… yet,” I admitted.

  Mari exhaled a long, theatrical sigh, the kind with chapters. “You know the CARGO Foundation,” she said. “Center of Excellence for Reliable Genetic—”

  “CARGO, yes,” Nikki cut in. “We’ve heard of it. Facilities all over the U.S.”

  “Great,” Mari said, flashing that awkward smile again. “But I’m out of cookies.”

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  Wow. Absolutely hilarious, you corny beast.

  “The TSA installed an informant inside CARGO,” she continued. “He’s leaking information to them. C.U.B.I. wants him gone. Preferably alive, but they’ll live if he’s not. They do not want CARGO to know there is an informant.”

  “Ahh… any idea what he looks like?” I asked.

  “Try looking at your folder,” Mari said. She’d perfected that even keel—just this side of hostile—that says I will only do the amount of work the paycheck merits, which in our case is zero.

  Tisiah tapped our shoulders in a gentle we’ll read later and angled us to peel off. The timing was almost graceful—right up until Master Tiphe’s voice ripped across the yard.

  “In formation!”

  We snapped to it.

  After a sequence of exercises carefully engineered to paralyze my entire life, the PA system crackled and everyone froze, heads tilted like we were one giant hunting dog.

  “Please meet in the Magnifico theater to receive your wands,” the voice announced. “They are now ready for you.”

  Cue the next exercise: survival.

  The entire class detonated into motion. We poured into the building, and the hallways shape-shifted from quiet corridors into New York sidewalks at lunch hour. Ten steps in, I had three elbows in my ribs, two backpacks in my spine, and a pair of shoulders compressing my lungs into origami.

  “Move!” I yelped, trying not to become a wall fixture. “Come on, move!”

  If I could just stay alive until the theater, I’d be fine. “Nikki!” I shouted.

  “Over here!” came her voice from my back-right.

  I craned my neck, spotted her and Tisiah, and body-slid out of my sweaty prison cell to reach them. A pocket of air. Safety. Blessed oxygen.

  “Where did you go?” Nikki asked, genuine confusion blending with exasperation.

  “I don’t know,” I said, equally honest. “But we need to go. Now,” Tisiah cut in.

  “We are going,” Nikki said, giving him a look. The doors of the Magnifico yawned open, and the ruckus finally had a reason.

  The wands were back.

  “Please wait for the transporters to distribute your wands,” Mr. Drails called from the stage. He wore a gray suit today, black vest and bowtie, smiling like a man perpetually picturing a camera lens even when none existed. Staffers clustered around a large crate at center stage, reaching in, handing out, moving fast. Between their hands gleamed wands.

  Students received them from all angles, and a hush overtook the chaos as each group turned the wood in their hands and narrowed their eyes in surprise. That reaction traveled through the crowd like a ripple across glass.

  What was different?

  A staffer stepped to us and held one out. Nikki and Tisiah both leaned in with reverent awe. At first glance, the wand looked exactly the same: the carved dragon perched confidently at the top, the length of polished wood descending like a sheathed sword.

  “Well…” I said, baffled. Then I rotated it and the difference stared back at me. Inset into the handle—a small, glossy, black screen. It blinked three times and lit up in cool blue letters:

  Level 1: 0 MP

  Oh. My. Goodness.

  I almost fainted. The tool to my future—the scoreboard, the ladder, the map—sat in my hand humming quietly, waiting. And we had a mission.

  Okay, yes: with Mari, who had introduced herself as a ball of thorns with occasional smile decals. But sacrifices must be made. This was my time to climb.

  “That’s cool,” Tisiah breathed. “When do we start the mission?”

  He flipped open his folder and scanned like he’d been paid in caffeine. Nikki and I watched his eyes move, the suspense turning our brains into tuning forks.

  “Tomorrow,” he said at last.

  Of course. The excitement popped like a bubble. It’s always tomorrow. They say they do it abruptly so we’re ready when plans change. If that’s true, fine—but if they don’t change, why train us on chaos? Also, you’re not putting me on an operation you haven’t even read.

  “Should’ve known,” Nikki muttered, turning away toward absolutely nothing in particular and glaring at it anyway.

  School ended. Eventually I made it home. I knocked—and braced for the usual shuffle of Mom’s footsteps—only for the door to swing open on the last person I expected:

  Greg.

  And now, if you care (and if you don’t, skip ahead), here are my questions: Why did Greg show up before I got here? How long has he been here? And how did Mom simply… allow it? He’s my brother, yes, but this is not his natural habitat.

  From upstairs, Mom’s voice rang out: “Greg, don’t open the door! I—”

  She descended the last step into view, spotted me, and shifted mid-scold without losing momentum. “Greg, if someone knocks, you do not open it unless I say so.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, bowing his head a millimeter with a smile that screamed unconditionally compliant. Good. Fear of Mom is the first pillar of wisdom. It prevents most of the headline-level choices.

  “Hey… Mom,” I said, and it somehow sounded like I had picked the wrong moment even though she was standing right there in front of me.

  “You know what to do,” she said, already pivoting away—code for: shoes away, bag down, homework check, life in order.

  I nodded and walked past Greg. He fell in behind me at an odd, scuttling pace, like he was trying to outrun Mom’s line of sight.

  I barely got my door closed before he blurted, “Did it start?”

  “Did what—”

  “What do you think?” he hissed, and I widened my eyes, gears finally catching. Ohhhhh. Right.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, it started. There’s a little screen now. It lit up—Level One, zero MP.” Overshare? Perhaps. But he got it.

  Greg frowned, all business. “And the mission?”

  “Got it,” I said. “Red-dot ’em. We’re going to the CARGO Foundation. C.U.B.I. thinks there’s a mole, and we’re supposed to expose him.”

  “What’s the CARGO Foundation?” Greg asked.

  I shrugged. “No clue.”