Friday, April 26

  Location: Dorm Hall (Scary Principal to the left)

  Operation: Get info from Mari

  15:58

  I hadn’t known she cared that much.

  The flash of concern on Mari’s face was instant—surprising, almost warming. Maybe the hard-edged version she showed the world was only her armor at first glance.

  After I laid out the situation, she said, “Jamal looks like the best lead. But it would be dumb not to question the other two with him.”

  “Maddie and Elf?” I asked.

  “Yeah. He’s probably trying to shield them, since they might be the real moles. You’re right—Jamal has the most evidence stacked against him. But what about the other two?”

  “How are we getting information?” Nikki asked.

  “Malachi,” Tisiah answered without hesitation.

  Nikki sighed. “Yeah… that.”

  Mari scanned our faces, already dividing tasks. “I’ll try to get something on Maddie—Nikki, we’ll do that together. You two”—she flicked a look at me and Tisiah—“work on Elf. See what he’s doing when no one’s watching.”

  “Why me?” Nikki asked. “Because we’re girls?”

  Mari met her eyes and nodded, not unkindly. “Yeah,” she said simply.

  The end of YMPA classes came, and I walked in the door around seven looking like anxiety had been my PE elective. Mom opened up with her usual soft smile, which wandered into confusion when she took in my face.

  “Lose a chess match or something?” she asked. “Or is it the girl you like?”

  “Related, but not exactly,” I said. “Just trying to figure things out.”

  She patted my back. “Get changed so you can eat. I held dinner so it wouldn’t go cold while you were at your club.”

  I smiled, then felt the smile falter. The thought drifted in, heavy as steel: if they pinned me as a mole, I’d be in a cell somewhere instead of here. No Mom, no Dad, no Greg. Not even Wolfpack School. I hated that place most days, but I’d miss it when it was gone.

  I dropped my backpack by my usual chair and headed upstairs. I opened my door and nearly swallowed my own soul.

  Malachi sat on my bed, watching some short-form clip designed for people with four-second attention spans. I screeched. Malachi jumped.

  “Jesus, Connor! How do you expect to be a spy if you scream the second an enemy is in your room?”

  “Because he’s in my room!”

  “Shhhhh,” he hissed. “Over here screaming for nothing. Be glad I soundproofed this room.”

  “You what? How?”

  “Doesn’t matter.” He reached into his backpack and pulled out a folder—ten sheets minimum, the bottom edges crumpled like they’d been living in a pocket—then dumped the stack across my bed. “I’ve brought your first set of homework. And I’m here for an intel check. Found anything?”

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  “Well… not exactly. But I have more people to watch.”

  “Who?”

  “The two with Jamal—Maddie and Elf,” I said. “If Jamal’s the loud one, he might be shielding the quiet ones. It’s a long shot, but it tracks.”

  “The what if those three are protecting the rest of my friends who might be against me theory?” He tilted his head. “That’s pretty far-fetched.”

  “What point are you trying to make?”

  “I’ve been thinking—” he glanced at his watch “—for the past two hours. Maybe they’re not trying to kill me at all.” He lifted a shoulder. “You said the whole point was for Lowman to get caught, right? And then they mentioned the MP system.”

  “Yeah,” I said slowly.

  “Maybe they’re trying to see how it works. If they can study our system, they can train their spies up faster too. We built a framework to accelerate power—levels, points, progression. If the TSA can reverse it and add their spin, they’ll get strength even faster.”

  I narrowed my eyes, running quick diagnostics for plot holes. It wasn’t nonsense. Not from him, not this time.

  “I thought the MP system was just a way to encourage majors to go deeper,” I said. “Not… a fast lane.”

  “Mhm.” He lounged back against my headboard like he lived there. “Mr. Robbs said last year that from the beginning, both sides have been trying to figure out how to push agents to higher power tiers faster. We’ve chipped away at it, sure, but it’s an ocean—we understand five percent at best.”

  “And you need me to do homework.”

  “I’m not dumb,” Malachi said, all stern edges. “I just don’t want to do this. Don’t disrespect me.”

  A laugh jumped up in my throat; I swallowed it. He sounded like a fifth grader with a crown.

  “Anyway,” he went on, “we should focus on who’s doing the worst thing, not who’s trying to kill me. They’ve had plenty of chances to end me. They didn’t. Thanks for trying, though—really got my blood up.”

  “Sure… when do you need this done?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Excuse me? How?”

  “I don’t know. I figured something out for you—so do this for me.” He laced his fingers, then uncoiled off the bed, crossed to the window, and hopped out. A crisp hiss answered him—the sound of frost deploying—and then he was gone.

  I stared after him, then remembered a crucial detail and shouted at the empty night, “There’s not even school tomorrow!”

  Saturday

  “Oh. Oh, wow,” Greg said.

  I sprawled on my bed with the phone on speaker and recited the whole saga: the chase, the interrogation, the bucket of toilet water. Principal Renner’s name burned a new notch in my grudge list.

  “This is good,” Greg said at last. “Now that you have Malachi working with you to, uh, save himself, you’ll take some heat off yourself—and off your September plan. How many levels are you at?”

  “Level five,” I said. “Still don’t know where to spend my points.”

  “They’ll announce how buying works eventually. I doubt it’s today.”

  “You don’t say,” I muttered. “But Malachi did say something interesting.”

  “About the MP system?”

  “No. About the mole. Sorry—no context.”

  “You’re excused.”

  I blinked. Somehow it made sense, which only made it weirder. “He thinks they aren’t actually trying to kill him. He thinks they’re trying to learn the system.”

  “Why?” Greg asked. “Couldn’t they just build their own little game to push majors deeper?”

  “According to Malachi, no. Not easily.”

  “Malachi said that?”

  “Listen.” I sat up. “He said our history teacher talked about both sides trying to find ways to accelerate power. They’ve only barely managed it.”

  Silence pulsed through the speaker.

  “Greg?”

  “How can you not see this?!” he wheezed at last.

  “What?”

  “It tracks.” He was suddenly breathless with ideas. “I agree with Malachi. And Malachi is still central to this. He’s top of the MP list, right?”

  “Wish it was me.”

  “So if I’m the TSA and I want to understand how your system builds monsters, I watch your monster. I see what he does, how fast he levels, which modes of training convert points best. I map out the cheat codes by watching the speedrunner. Then I copy it—faster, meaner. If they crack it, they can manufacture their own Malachis.”

  My eyes widened; my hands trembled.

  “That’s why he isn’t dead,” Greg said softly. “Because the mole doesn’t want him dead. The mole wants a live tutorial. It’s almost worse.”

  “Worse than killing someone?”

  “They could end up killing everyone if they get smart enough to improve what you built,” he said. “If they have it, we’ll have to have it. That’s an escalation spiral you can’t step out of.”

  “How come you’re a genius at the worst times?” I asked.

  “Because you only tell me the good stuff at the worst times,” he said. I sighed, hung up, and stared at the ceiling while one question drilled through the rest:

  Who’s at the bottom of that list?