Date: Mon, April 24

  Location: Recreation

  Operation: None

  Time: 19:00

  “You have a death wish, Connor,” Tisiah said, verdict first, explanation later. Nikki stood beside him with her palm pressed to her face, an entire opera of despair performed with one hand and a sigh. We’d ducked into the training center because outside was a blast furnace; even the shadows were sweating on the field. The other students did not care. They were still out there, boiling themselves for fun or points or pride—whatever drove teenagers to sprint under a sun with fangs.

  “Listen, alright—she was going to snitch on me,” I said, both hands up in a surrender that asked for understanding, “and basically expose to Jamal that I was following him. Either way, I would be dead.”

  “Who is Jamal?” Nikki asked without looking up. She already knew, but she wanted the official record.

  “Graffiti on his jacket,” me and Tisiah said in unison.

  Nikki lowered her hand a fraction and nodded slowly, as if an image were resolving in her mind pixel by pixel. Then her expression collapsed into disgust, the kind you get when you discover the cafeteria’s “lemon squares” are neither lemon nor square.

  “As I said before,” I repeated, making sure the logic stayed nailed to the wall, “she was going to snitch on me and tell Jamal I was following him. Either way, I would be dead.”

  “Rather by a goon or Mari?” Nikki said.

  “Mari sounds more legacy-like,” I said, and even I heard the wobble in my bravado.

  “A man—no matter how pro–gender equality the world is—getting folded by a girl will definitely make people laugh at you,” Tisiah declared, wagging a finger like an ancient prophet. “And I’m sure September isn’t going to want a man that can’t protect her.”

  “She very well can protect herself,” Nikki cut in, cool as a winter spell.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, forcing a grin. “I used the mallet before. I’ll just use it again.”

  Tisiah scrunched his mouth. “Sure… yeah… why not.”

  “Where is she even at?” Nikki asked, pragmatic gears already turning.

  “Most likely in the nurse’s office,” Tisiah said. “She’s probably using an ice pack. Apparently that mallet made her fly. Somehow.”

  “Yeah,” I said with an anxious smile that tried to be a shrug and landed closer to a wince. I hadn’t really stopped to think about the after. I’d swung because an immediate future of being reported felt like a sure route to the long, humiliating kind of death. Now there was a different after, a hallway full of consequences waiting like bouncers. What would she do next? What would she say next? Could I block a complaint with a mallet? (Answer: please don’t try.)

  But one thing was certain, and the certainty steadied me: that mallet is good.

  I was starting—against my better judgment—to appreciate it. The weight, the leverage, the way the world responded to it. Of course, that opened up the new thing we’d all noticed in passing: the update to the wand.

  “Also, also, also,” I said, excitement sprinting ahead of coherence. “Remember when you would have the three cards and you would choose one and get your weapon?”

  “Yeah, what about it?” Nikki said.

  “They apparently updated it,” I said. “According to Mari. Now you don’t get forced into a weapon. You just earn MP points and buy the weapons within your level at the shop.”

  Nikki scoffed. “Should’ve done that in the first place. All I have right now is a boomerang. If I had—shop?”

  “Yeah, there’s apparently a shop,” I said, tilting my wand and tapping the tiny screen as if a hidden button would reveal a mall. “Although I couldn’t find it on this small screen.”

  “It probably means you have to go to a machine or a person to trade in MP for weapons,” Nikki said. “It would make a lot of sense.”

  “Where though?” I asked, glancing around the training center as if a kiosk labeled SPEND YOUR LIFE POINTS HERE might roll out from behind the mats.

  “I’m not sure,” Tisiah said. “But I’m sure that’s gonna be a new thing of some sort.” He pulled out his phone and checked the battery with the gravitas of a field medic. “Okay, y’all, I’m gonna charge my phone real quick.”

  Nikki looked at me. I offered an oblivious smile, which is what my face does when my brain crashes. “I’ll leave you alone if you want,” she said at last, giving me that nod between empathy and mercy. They both headed for the door.

  And then there was me, alone in the training center.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  Ambient hum from the air handlers. The dull rubber smell of mats. Racks of practice gear standing at attention like soldiers with no orders. Outside, the heat pressed against the windows; inside, the cool air held me in the present. Recreation still had time left before our last two classes. I could go to the dorm, call Greg, dump the anxiety into a familiar ear. Hide.

  Two sets of footsteps answered that plan before it fully formed.

  They were heavy in the way confidence is heavy, and they belonged to Elf and Maddie. When they stepped through the doorway, my heart lurched downward like an elevator missing its floor. What were they here for?

  “Hey… y’all,” I started, already backpedaling into excuses. “I’m gonna tell her soon, I’m going to—”

  “No need to speak any more, Connor.” Maddie’s tone cut the room in half. She reached back and shoved the door shut—hard—the sound smacking off the walls. “Jamal told us quite the news. Apparently—” she took a deliberate step forward “—you apparently tried to kill someone, in this school.”

  “I’m sorry?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady and landing on guilty. “Where did you get this from?”

  “Jamal didn’t tell us who,” Elf said, hands tucked in his pockets like he was already on a smoke break. “As far as we were concerned.” He and Maddie exchanged a look that carried a paragraph. “But it did make us wonder if that’s the reason why Malachi was suddenly escorted by a hundred agents.”

  “Because I tried to kill someone, who isn’t Malachi?” I said. “That’s… not even connected.”

  “So you did hit her,” Elf said, casual as a bus schedule.

  I froze. My worst fear arrived in the simplest sentence. A room can shrink even when the walls don’t move.

  “I never said that,” I managed. “And even if I did, that would make no given sense as to why Malachi was even escorted.”

  Maddie looked at Elf. Elf looked at Maddie. “He saw you,” she said.

  “He—” The word trapped itself in my throat.

  “Yeah,” Elf said, smiling with the kind of gentleness that makes you want to throw a chair. “Jamal saw you in 4K, and there’s nothing you can say otherwise. So since you want to be so… inconsiderate about our requests, we’ll make sure the school knows about this and makes your life a living furnace.”

  “You meant—” I started.

  “Don’t interrupt us.” Maddie’s voice sharpened. “We still have that proposition. Tell Nikki about Jamal, and you’ll be more clear than water.”

  “Why doesn’t Jamal come and tell me this himself?” I asked. “If he has a mouth, he can use it.”

  Maddie scoffed. “He doesn’t want to associate himself with you—who is probably the leading suspect in what happened with Malachi.”

  “You guys praise him too much,” I said, heat rising. “He’s just a good agent.”

  “And you are?” she asked, chin lifting a fraction.

  I shrugged. “Can’t say I’m not.”

  Maddie shook her head slowly, disappointment rehearsed into elegance. “He’s still our friend, which is something you should know very well about. You have this week to do so. Now, please don’t waste our time.”

  “Sure…” I said, the word tasting like defeat and delay.

  They traded one last glance—contract signed, threat delivered—and left. The door sighed open, then shut. My heart started hammering again, fast and unhelpful, like it was punching air.

  Malachi’s goons had just made my life three full levels harder.

  Wednesday

  15:10

  The last bell knifed through the day. I made it through without getting jumped, which felt like the kind of miracle you don’t brag about because it scares the miracle away. Still, I was positive Jamal had already sent a handful of “friendly” spies to tail me between classes, to trap me near an empty stairwell, to start a conversation with fists. Every time I glanced his way, he lifted his fingers and showed me how many days I had left—countdown clock, human edition. I hated those fingers more than I hated a Mari glare. That’s a high bar.

  I hadn’t told Greg. I was starting to understand that was a mistake. Greg could be… discouraging, sometimes. He has this talent for puncturing a balloon with a single syllable. But he’s also right more often than I wish he were. If there was ever a time to cash in on rightness, it was now.

  He was unlocking his bike at the corner of the school, sun bleeding gold across the handlebars. The grounds looked like a brochure: palm trees trimmed into smug silhouettes, lawns shaved down to military buzz cuts. Greg likes riding his bike on the grass, carving slender lines into the green. He’s gotten detention twice for it and calls it performance art.

  “Greg!” I shouted, sprinting toward him. Thank God his ears work like radar. Anyone else would’ve pushed off and disappeared into the bright, bike-sparkled distance.

  “What?” he asked, blunt as a hammer. “Something you wanna tell me?”

  “Obviously, Greg.” I gulped air. “I have a situation, and I need your advice. Please.”

  His eyes widened, then softened into a grin. “Oh… something juicy happened, didn’t it?”

  “Most definitely,” I said.

  “Well, we live close to each other. We might as well go,” he said, swinging a leg over the seat like an ad for confidence.

  “But I wanted to say it where my mom or your mom isn’t,” I said. I could already hear the questions if we walked in mid-story.

  “I know that,” Greg said. “Hop on.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Get on. I’ll drop you off. After all, I’m the one with the bike.” He flashed every perfect tooth in his head. The reflection should have been registered as a beacon.

  I climbed onto the rear rack, hands awkwardly negotiating where to exist. He pushed off, rolling us off campus, coasting to a stop at the first crosswalk. Three other bikes glided up beside us like we were the start of a parade.

  “So, hit me,” he said, watching the little red hand flicker into a white walking man.

  “Remember the Lowman mission?” I asked. He nodded. “So, we had suspicions on three specific goons of Malachi—”

  “Goons?” He snorted. “What do you think this is—a high school drama? Might as well start breaking out in song in the middle of the highway.” He laughed, and one of the other cyclists glanced over and smiled despite not knowing why.

  “Either way,” I said, “there were three goons we were suspicious of. I don’t wanna say it out loud here, because based on how many friends Malachi has, this goon probably already sent someone to spy on me.”

  “Really? You got some enemies, huh?” Greg said as the signal switched and we rolled forward with the slow grace of law-abiding daredevils.

  “Apparently,” I said. “So, I followed him down there, and found out he wasn’t doing anything at the moment. Then with that, Mari caught me.”

  Greg turned his head, eyes huge. “Ohhhhhhh.”

  “She was going to snitch on me,” I said, gripping the seat, “so with my MP wand, I spawned the mallet and whacked the mess out of her… completely.”

  Greg tried to look back at me again and nearly swerved into the curb. He righted us, then started wheezing. “Mallet?!” he shrieked. “And she flew from that?!”

  “Yeah, it was apparently given steroids or something. I’m not sure why she flew,” I said. “But then, the goon found out what I did to her. And he threatened to tell the school unless I did what he wanted.”

  “So he asked you before?” Greg said.

  “Yeah. To basically tell Nikki to go out with him or something like that.”

  “So tell her,” Greg said, which I widened my eyes in fear.