Date: Monday, April 24th

  Location: Wolfpack Hallway

  Mission: None

  Time: 10:15

  Most of my morning dissolved into a loop of thoughts about September—about us, or the idea of an us, or the delusion of an us if you asked the crueler parts of my brain. It wasn’t a soft daydream; it was a full-on strategic preoccupation, a flowchart that branched and tangled and doubled back on itself. So many variables, so many moving pieces: Malachi’s shadow everywhere, the whispers about the MP board, the threat of a mole, the unspoken rules of our school, the thousand tiny social currents you either learned to ride or drowned in.

  It felt like too much—honestly, was too much. So I gave myself a plan simple enough to hold without breaking: spend time with September. As much as I could. Keep it steady, let it grow. No fireworks, no shouting-from-the-rooftops confession, not yet. Just presence. Be there, again and again, until “there” felt natural. If Malachi’s edge came from proximity—he was always around her, always already in the conversation—then I’d match the tactic instead of trying to out-flash it. Build comfort, let comfort become confidence, let confidence become honesty. And then, when it felt right, say how I felt.

  Boom.

  As I approached my locker, the hallway hum steadied into that mid-morning lull: footsteps, locker doors clanging shut, the scrape of a backpack zipper, a laugh skipping down the corridor from some unseen corner. I could feel Greg’s presence before I saw him; he slid into place beside me the way a puzzle piece finds its home.

  “So…” he said, drawing the word out like a fishing line. “Been an uneventful few days, huh?”

  “Yeah, pretty much.” I spun the combination and tugged. “Something normal for once.”

  “Anything on that C.A.R.G.O mission, thingamabob?” He glanced down at his phone, thumb flicking.

  I opened my mouth to dismiss it, to keep the whole knotted mess out of the air. Then I remembered everything—the Interrogation Watch, Lloyd White, the gun pressed to Marcus’s head, Tilli dragged in, the casual terror of it all—and my eyes went wide. “A lot, actually.”

  “And you said it was an uneventful few days.” Greg’s grin tilted into a mock-sneer.

  “What—no, you said that—”

  “Come on,” he said, bouncing once on his heels. “Hit me wit’ em.”

  I let out a sigh, felt it leave like steam. “We were brought to the Interrogation Watch. That agent—Lloyd White, I think—questioned Marcus. In the end, we figured out their plan was to use us to pinpoint the facility and then send a mole inside—”

  “WHOA.” Greg practically shouted it, earning a couple of head turns from lockers down. “I’ve always wanted that to happen in the FMA. But the most excitement we get is when they storm the halls with their marching band.”

  “Nonetheless,” I went on, lowering my voice, “we got some intel that the mole might be tied to a few of Malachi’s friends. It… would make sense.”

  “Make sense of what, exactly?” Greg asked, brow furrowing.

  “They said they were looking for someone with great power. According to what the TSA told Lowman, it’s about someone with a lot of power inside our facility. The MP system came up.”

  “And Malachi’s the top.”

  “Fortunately… and unfortunately.”

  Greg squinted at me, confusion shading into curiosity.

  “Our plan,” I said, tapping the locker door with one knuckle as if the metal could steady me: “Kill two birds with one stone. I join some sports—Mage Football, for example—and with my Perk, I fight my way up the MP board. If I climb fast and loud enough, the mole’s attention pivots from Malachi to me. That keeps him safe. And being high on the board gets September’s attention. So: save Malachi, and get noticed.”

  Greg’s face lit. “Talk about a plan. And I love it. It gives you something real to point to when you’re around her.”

  “Yeah. But maybe just… talking to her more would—”

  “No.” He cut me off with a flat palm. “This is a plan distilled straight from nectar. Who created it?”

  “Nikki,” I said.

  Greg clapped once, loud. “You need to start listening to her more. She is your ticket out of here. You’re making it out with this one.”

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  “Sure… yeah—definitely.” The word definitely came out like a question and tried to disguise itself as a promise.

  Greg smiled anyway. “You’ve got good friends. Really good friends. And you’ve got a good brother who lives fifteen minutes away. You’re set.” He patted my back, a quick drumbeat of reassurance.

  I wasn’t sure where to file that—comfort? warning? both?—so I just stared past him for a second, into that bright nowhere of the hallway.

  “Yeah… sure,” I muttered, then turned back to the locker and let the clatter of its interior become my cover.

  After school I portaled in and, because the universe has a sense of humor, crash-landed directly onto the hood of a car. Metal buckled, glass spidered, my ribs sang, and a thoroughly undignified “Nggh…” escaped before I could corral it. For a heartbeat I lay there, sprawled and blinking at the sky, and then I angled my head enough to see the man himself: Mr. Drails, trilby lowered, long black jacket immaculate, gray suit threaded like a sermon, red tie exactly centered. A few other agents flanked him, concerned in that way professionals are—alert without fuss.

  “Bad day, huh?” Mr. Drails chuckled, as if I hadn’t just dented a vehicle with my body. “Dropped my wand there.”

  “Yeah, like you always do,” I winced, rolling off the hood and checking that all my pieces still articulated. Fury prickled behind my face. Of course I would do this in front of real agency people, not just academy staff.

  “Can you fetch another vehicle?” he asked the agents mildly. “I’ll be here for a bit.”

  They moved. He turned to me, took off his hat. Under it his black hair shone, precise as always. He looked at the cratered hood, then at me.

  “How have things been?” he asked.

  I shrugged, the motion discovering new bruises. “Weird… I guess. Poor.”

  “Why’s that?” He set the trilby on the roof, leaned his hands on the ruined hood like it was a podium. “Being the Armonk assignment you successfully completed, I’d assume you’d have some friends. Sheesh, you have Malachi.”

  I winced again. Even saying Malachi’s name pulled something tight in my chest. The smug bend to Mr. Drails’s mouth faded; his eyes softened.

  “Come,” he said, shifting to the front of the car where glittering chips of glass gleamed in the afternoon light. “Stand by me.”

  I obeyed, stepping beside him. Out beyond the lot, the grounds opened into a long sweep of grass. There was almost no wind. The blades moved only as much as they wanted to, which wasn’t much at all.

  “Tell me,” he said. “Tell me everything.”

  “Isn’t that a bit intrusive?” I tried, aiming for teasing and landing closer to defensive.

  He glanced sideways at me and chuckled. “Even my established spies have to tell me everything. And I’m your father. So you have to tell me everything.”

  I sighed, lifted, dropped my shoulders. “Sure…”

  “So,” I said, and the word felt too small for the confession it had to carry, “I’ve been having feelings for—”

  “I knew it!” he burst, clapping once as if he’d successfully predicted a twist in a show we both watched.

  “September,” I finished.

  The clap died. He nodded slowly, turning the name over. “September.” A beat. “You’re going for the biggest fish.”

  “Yeah,” I said, throat tight. “I’ve had feelings for her. I want to tell her.”

  “Have you?”

  “No. My friends think I shouldn’t. They think I need to get her attention by being great at something first.”

  He shrugged, like the solution hovered just over our heads. “Your Perk. She knows about that, for sure.”

  “Yeah, but Malachi has similar intentions. He’s always there, always already there. He grabs her before I can even get close.” I looked at my hands, flexed them once. “I’m just… not sure how to do this.”

  His eyes widened with a flicker of genuine sympathy. “Oh. And Malachi is your opponent. That’s a long battle, Connor. Long battle.”

  “I figured,” I said. “But there’s a small… chance. Two.”

  “Two chances? Probably not so small, then.” His mouth kicked toward a smile. “Let me hear them.”

  “Well, I’m sure you heard about the mole possibly in the academy.”

  He nodded. “We’ve got agents on that. Unless that’s what you are doing as well.”

  “Yeah. From the interrogation, it sounds like the target is someone with a high MP.”

  “We just started the MP system a few days ago.” His voice tilted practical. “How would they know whom to target? It takes months—occasionally a year—to properly place a mole in any facility, not to mention ours.”

  “When did you think of the MP idea?” I asked.

  He lifted his brows. “A week before that day.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “That doesn’t sound like months.”

  “And it sounds less like a year,” he said, a soft snort of amusement escaping.

  “But we do have a suspicion. Specifically three people.”

  Now he narrowed his eyes. “Names?”

  I rummaged the mental list. “Jamal. Maddie. And a guy with Goku hair.”

  “David Elfron,” he said immediately. “But he likes to be called Elf.”

  “He’s not even small,” I argued weakly. “He’s the complete opposite.”

  “It’s his favorite movie,” Mr. Drails said, ending the debate.

  “Ahh… got it.”

  He tapped the hood twice, then looked me straight on. “I’m going to ask you a question before you go inside, alright?”

  I nodded. Listening was non-negotiable under that tone.

  “If you and your team fail to catch the mole in the act, or fail to pull any meaningful information, my people will take the case.” His voice wasn’t hard, just solid. “You’ve earned enough already to call your mission a success. We won’t hang this around your neck.”

  To my surprise, relief crept in around the edges of my pride. I wasn’t against that. Being benched hurt, but being blacklisted would’ve killed me.

  “Okay, bucko, getta’ moving,” he said finally, re-perching the trilby with a small, precise motion. “I’ll be here a bit longer.”

  I headed for the building, the automatic doors gliding open with their usual sigh. Behind my sternum the words beat a slow drum: Well… dang. There wasn’t a more poetic summary available. The day had decided to be blunt; I could honor that.

  Still, necessity sharpened itself in my mind as I crossed the threshold. The mission had just acquired an addendum—unofficial, urgent, mine. Follow the three (and possibly more), keep to the shadows, and try to get information. Not glamorous. Not simple. Not safe, either, if I was honest. But necessary.

  Hard enough.