Location: Will vary
Operation: Three Goons
Time: 17:00
It ought to be illegal for someone to walk that fast.
Jamal moved with the kind of purpose that forced me to jog just to keep him in sight, which felt profoundly unfair given that he was not, technically, running. He angled toward the elevator like a normal student late to a normal class—then, without warning, cut hard left and dove into the stairwell.
Bad sign. Stairwells mean corners; corners mean line-of-sight checks; line-of-sight checks mean getting caught. And if he saw me tailing him, only two outcomes were likely, both terrible:
-
He’d start swinging and try to beat the trail off me.
-
He’d start talking—about Nikki.
Neither was a menu item I wanted to order.
Providence—disguised as a redheaded couple—pushed through the stairwell door just then. For half a breath I imagined September and me in their place, moving as one through the echo of cement steps and metal rails, and then I shook my head hard enough to rattle the idea loose. Focus, Connor.
The stairwell’s aesthetic matched the second floor’s: unflinching gray—gray walls, gray treads, gray air that smelled faintly like mop water and effort. The couple took the inside path and, unhelpfully, moved at the leisurely pace of people who had never fled a problem in their lives. Jamal didn’t even glance back, which meant they made good cover for me… until they didn’t.
At the landing, he didn’t take the next flight up. He took the next flight down.
Hold up. Underground?
The couple continued upward, oblivious. I paused mid-step, palm on the rail. I had attended this school long enough to know its humors, and yet I had never realized there was an underground. A secret bunker under the school? Of course there was. There’s always a secret bunker. Lord only knows what else I hadn’t noticed.
The light shifted as we descended. Fluorescents surrendered to shadows, and the stairwell threw us into a black hall, a tunnel that swallowed sound. Jamal’s hand dipped to his utility belt; a compact beam flicked on, white and tight, slicing the dark. So the belts carried lights. Noted. Did my belt have one?
I thumbed mine. A light popped on—then promptly clicked off with an audible tok that sounded, to my traitorous ears, like a firecracker. Jamal turned immediately, light swinging.
I catapulted up two steps and flattened into the angle of the wall, tucking myself behind the corner so fast my shoulder smacked cinderblock. Breath: gone. Heart: present, overzealous, unhelpful. I made myself into furniture, furniture that didn’t breathe.
Silence stretched. A subtle click. Footsteps resumed.
I peeled myself from the wall and crept down the stairs, then along the corridor—small steps, weight on the outer edges of my feet, what Mr. Robbs calls “respecting the floor.” Jamal’s beam bobbed ahead, now farther than before. He hadn’t slowed.
The hallway widened, the ceiling rose, and the bunker revealed itself—not a panic room, not a weapons cache, but logistics. On the left, two long ranks of industrial fridges, their gaskets pouting from hard use. On the right, towers of boxes—cardboard stamped with codes and dates. Farther down, a wide mouth opened into a concrete bay where a pair of small trucks slept, noses pointed at a roll-up garage door. A receiving level. A service artery. The school’s stomach.
The discovery knocked me a little stupid—and right then my phone buzzed in my palm. I jolted, thumbed the answer without even checking the screen, and thanked every merciful power that my settings were on vibrate so the ringtone didn’t sing my position to the walls.
“What?” I breathed.
“Have you checked your email yet?” Tisiah asked. No greeting, no preface.
I shook my head before remembering he couldn’t see me. “No,” I whispered. “What?”
“We got a message: practice is this Saturday. They’ll evaluate you there. That’s how they decide rosters.”
“And if I don’t—” I hissed, watching Jamal drift toward the trucks.
“Then you’re not on the team,” he said bluntly.
“Which means Malachi could also fail and not make the team,” I muttered. “Odds improve.”
“But it also means September isn’t coming,” Tisiah said. “And Malachi is too good to fail out of tryouts. That would be… diabolical. Who are you chasing?”
“What do you mean?”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“You sound hasty. Tiny-footstep hasty. Also the acoustics around you sound like an undisclosed location that probably violates five fire codes. Who are you chasing?” he asked.
“Jamal,” I said, sliding along a row of fridges.
Jamal had stopped. He opened one of the doors—the cool breath of frozen air rolled out—and peered in like a raccoon at a treasure chest. Inside, racks of frozen school supplies—by which I mean food. Even spy schools can’t escape the tyranny of prepackaged pastries.
“Jamal? Who is—”
“Black guy, jacket assaulted by graffiti, with the two who approached us earlier,” I murmured. “One of Malachi’s goons.”
“Ahh,” Tisiah exhaled, understanding clicking in. “What’s he doing?”
“Shopping,” I said, because that’s what it looked like. He was stuffing those neon-wrapped pastries—the ones with the white mascot in a chef hat—into his jacket pockets as if preparing for winter. “He’s grabbing the good stuff.”
“Is he maybe trying to poison anyone with them?”
“I… really hope not. That would be the gooniest move imaginable.”
Jamal’s phone rang.
“He’s calling someone,” I breathed, crouching slightly to cut my silhouette.
He tapped his pockets in a distracted rhythm and answered. His voice dropped half a key, the way it does when you want to sound casual and you are not. “Yo, Elf. What’s up—yeah, I’m bringing you some too, bro. Maddie as well.”
There was no way. No way I had just risked tendons and suspension in the dark to witness a pastry heist. I watched his head bob in agreement to whatever Elf said. “Yeah. Hold on, I’m coming back to class. Cook up an excuse for me.”
He pivoted and headed back the way he’d come, pockets now bulky with contraband. I waited until he passed my fridge, counted three beats, then slid out and straightened.
“He was just stealing pastries for the other two,” I told Tisiah.
He sighed. Relief? Disappointment? Both traveled the line. “We still need eyes on Jamal,” he said. “But here’s the huge problem: how do we keep eyes on everyone who’s friends with Malachi?”
“Annoyingly true,” I muttered. Malachi collected friends like lint. How do three people cover an entire lint roller?
On the other end, a quick intake of breath—the sound of a new idea clearing its throat. “Malachi’s the target, right?” Tisiah said. “He’s the one they might want to kill.”
“Yeah,” I said slowly.
“So follow him, the one being chased,” Tisiah said. “If they see us near him, the mole might pop up—either to intercept or to scope us. Or they’ll think we’re his friends and loosen up.”
“You want me to suck up to Malachi?” I asked, eyes going wide enough to feel air. “Like… on purpose?”
“Listen,” he said, channeling the wise old monk he is not, “you have to play the game to win the game.”
“What kind of idiotic, cancerous proverb is that?” I whispered.
“Effective,” he said. “Do it. Or—if you insist on being his enemy—just stick near him. Follow him. Proximity works either way.”
I swallowed, made a face at the philosophical inevitability of it. “Yeah. Is Nikki there?”
“Nature called her a few minutes ago,” he said. “You’ll have to wait.”
“Great,” I sighed. “So I’ll—whoa!”
I yelped because Mari materialized behind me like she’d been rendered into the world by an annoyed illustrator.
I hung up on instinct, shoved the phone into my pocket, and turned to face a portrait of unimpressed judgment. Arms crossed. Oversized sleeves drooping like the habit of a bored nun. Black hoodie, skinny jeans, and those trendy Jesus sandals that make me feel judged by footwear alone.
“Well, figures,” she said coolly. “You steal food here.”
“What—no,” I blurted. “I was following— We didn’t tell you, did we?”
“Tell me what?” She stepped closer. The fluorescent ghost-light made her eyes look like questions carved from glass. “Explain.”
“There were three guys,” I said, hands raised a hair, as if I could slow the moment by padding it with context. “In general. We thought we should keep eyes on them. I was following one of them—”
“What did they look like?” she asked. “Explain.”
“They seemed a lot like a—”
My wand chirped. A bright ping that made both of us glance down. On the tiny screen, blue light slid to the right and held there. Level 2 achieved.
“Oooh,” I said, because my mouth will narrate my surprise even when my brain begs it to stop.
No cards floated up this time. No weapons to spin and choose. “Where’s the—where’s the wea—”
“They changed it,” Mari said, impassive. “You earn points and buy what you want. Cuts down on people getting stuck with unwanteds.”
“So my old weapon resets?” Curiosity rose like a reflex I couldn’t kill.
“No. You still have what you had.” Her gaze lifted back to me. “Which doesn’t explain why you’re down here. You shouldn’t be.”
“Where did you even see me from?” I asked, buying seconds while my head rifled frantically for an exit plan that didn’t include detention or death. “Like—how?”
“When you entered the stairs,” she said, “I waited a few minutes, then came down. Then I saw you.”
“Did you see a guy in a graffiti jacket leaving?” I asked, last-ditch hope flaring. She scanned the hall left, then right, then shook her head.
“No. Not at all.” A beat. “But there’s no reason for you to be down here. I’m reporting you to Principal Renner.”
“There’s no way you’re being a snitch,” I said, a little too fast, a little too desperate.
Mari shrugged, merciless. “Might as well get on her good side.”
Oh no no no no no no.
I needed a miracle. Or a plan. Or a phrase that could pull a lever inside her and reroute this train. Nothing surfaced. Then my gaze dropped to the wand in my hand, to the inventory icon now subtly pulsing.
Fine. If words won’t save you, try a mallet.
The memory arrived whole: Open inventory, tap weapon, press EQUIP. The interface still looked like Minecraft’s cooler cousin—slots, grid, the faint sheen of possibility.
I pressed EQUIP.
The wand shivered in my palm and telescoped, wood swelling into a handle, head blooming like a storm cloud. In a heartbeat I was holding a mallet, ridiculous and heavy and, suddenly, very real.
Mari turned to go up the stairs.
I followed, one step below, lifted the mallet, and swung for a quick, low tap. She didn’t even turn. Her arm snapped back, wand carving a small crescent; I jerked my head aside as a streak of light sang past my cheek. Before I could rebalance, she pivoted and kicked—fast, efficient. First the thigh, then the chest. My ribs thunked like I’d been hit with a well-meaning bookshelf. Stability left the chat.
She flowed forward for the finishing strike—clean, clinical. I dropped under it, pure reflex, and countered with a desperate, rising arc.
The mallet landed.
Lord have mercy—she flew.
Mari slammed into the nearest fridge; the heavy unit rocked dangerously, scraped, and then toppled with a metallic howl, crashing sideways in a spray of frost and plastic wrap. The impact rang up my arms and into my teeth. Cold air rushed out to meet us in a shiver.
I stood there, rooted. The mallet’s head vibrated. My breath wouldn’t find a rhythm. I hadn’t planned to win. I hadn’t planned anything past don’t get reported. The fridge settled with a final groan.
Silence took the room in a single, astonished breath.
I stared, frozen, at what I’d done.