Friday, April 26

  Location: Bathroom (which unknown)

  Operation: Successfully failed

  15:00 (Thanks, Dad)

  “Nothing much.”

  As soon as the words left my mouth, I felt the heat of suspicion sluice back over me like a second bucket of water. It was a terrible answer—thin, unconvincing, and nowhere near the heroic intel drop they clearly wanted. Principal Renner’s lips pinched, and the single word she released—“Useless…”—landed like a stamp on my forehead. Agent White exhaled through his nose and tapped two fingers against his knee, the rhythm patient and damning.

  Mr. Drails, on the other hand, kept his voice steady. “I think Jamal might be a good place to start,” he said. “He’s likely been riding Connor because Connor’s on the case. That lines up.”

  White muttered something I couldn’t catch. Principal Renner’s gaze cut to him. “What other plan do we have?” she asked, her tone all blade, no velvet.

  “It’s not about other plans,” White said, eyes back on me. “Because Connor could still be an informant. So here’s what we’ll do.” He sat forward, hands steepled. “Connor: the only way you clear your name is by finding the actual mole.”

  “Our own agents can handle this,” Mr. Drails said, the temperature in his voice dropping a degree.

  “I understand that, Captain,” White replied. “But forcing his hand may flush the mole. I’m saying it aloud because saying it aloud won’t change what happens next. If there’s no report of a mole—no actionable progress, no benefit to us—then the obvious deduction is that Connor is the TSA informant.” He didn’t blink. “And if there are any more attempted assassinations linked to you, we will not hesitate to eliminate the problem. Understood?”

  My throat worked. I forced down a gulp that felt too loud in the tiled room. He took my silence for assent—which, given the options, it was.

  “Don’t get comfortable,” Principal Renner added, her gaze running up and down me like a scanner. “Don’t.”

  Another swallow. My mouth was desert-dry despite the fact I’d just been doused.

  15:35

  Apparently that tiled purgatory was the YMPA football team’s bathroom. Meaning that every time I went in there to change, shower, or just exist, my brain would replay the sensation of an industrial bucket detonating over my head. Regret was real, immediate, and damp.

  I found clean clothes after twenty soggy minutes and slipped back into the student halls during passing period. Whatever adrenaline had carried me through the chase had burned into a jittering aftertaste. I needed to move—find the person who’d maneuvered himself into my periphery and, apparently, my team: Malachi.

  Not hard to locate. A solar system of attention orbited him wherever he went. He moved down the corridor flanked by a constellation of girls; the moment he saw me, he made a small, practiced gesture and the constellation drifted away like he controlled gravity. He didn’t walk so much as claim space.

  “All right, you didn’t die,” he said, casual as ordering lunch. “Nice. Next: what did they tell you?”

  “I have to tell you something before I tell you what they told me,” I said. He stared for a beat too long, like his brain had to buffer. Then he shrugged.

  “Yeah… sounds about right.”

  So I told him everything—the sprint, the glass, White and Renner, the toilet water, and the deal that wasn’t a deal so much as an ultimatum. Ten minutes, maybe more. I watched his face as I talked; he tracked the story with a focus that surprised me, then grinned like I’d shown him a trailer for a movie he wanted to be in.

  “Wow. Look at you, getting in trouble,” he said, sounding half entertained, half envious. “So that’s why they pulled me earlier? I was a target for assassination?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I always expected something like that,” he said with an airy shrug. “When you’re famous across the YMPA—probably all of EMO—you plan for it.”

  “You’re not worried?” I asked, and tried not to sound personally offended by his composure.

  “What could they get on me?” He started counting on his fingers, lazy, almost bored. “I’ve majored in fire, ice, earth, air, lightning, illusion—”

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  “Illusion?”

  He arched a brow. “Yeah. You don’t know that exists.”

  “Noted,” I said. “Either way, we have to find the mole. My vote: we start by watching your friends. They’ll be honored to be spied on by you.”

  “True, true,” he said, as if I’d suggested grabbing smoothies. “How are we going to do that, though?”

  I looked past him, scanning the hallway like a plan might be written on the lockers. Nothing came. Malachi did not strike me as a man who built plans—he starred in them. “I’ll… let you know,” I said. “But we need somewhere quiet. Not obvious.”

  “The field,” he said immediately.

  “The field? Where everyone is?”

  He grinned, shark-bright. “The football field. We grab a ball, throw it around, and talk about your plan.”

  There was something in that grin—something that felt like I’d been drafted for a commercial. He slapped my shoulder three times, already turning away. My mouth moved before my better judgment could tackle it. “Can you make sure Jamal stops being a nuisance?”

  “Jamal is the least of your problems,” he said without looking back.

  He headed for the stairs. Oncoming traffic parted to avoid him and then looked back at me, the heat of dozens of glances prickling across my skin. And every single time I met someone’s eyes, they snapped theirs away and pretended to study the nearest bulletin board. Unfortunately for them, their awareness crawled like a glacier; I caught them easily.

  As he went up, Nikki and Tisiah came down—sibling energy in coordinated steps. Nikki’s relief practically jogged ahead of her.

  “Oh, thank God. You’re alive,” she said. “What in the world happened?”

  “Jamal squealed to Principal Renner about what I did to Mari,” I said. “And since we’re on the mole case, they decided the mole was… me.”

  “So why are you here?” Nikki’s voice sharpened, making room for anger. “Why aren’t you suspended—or worse?”

  “Before White—”

  “White was there?” Tisiah’s eyebrows hiked.

  I nodded, very slowly. “Yeah. And they were in the Mage Football bathroom. They threw toilet water on me.”

  Both of them did the same horror-movie face at the same time—mouths tightened, noses scrunched, eyes wide. Twin revulsion.

  “Mr. Drails showed up and argued me out of a coffin,” I added. “Can we go somewhere… less surveilled?”

  “The bench out front,” Tisiah said immediately.

  Nikki bobbed her head and led the way. We cut through the main doors into the open air. The sun had started to tilt, and the early stretch of sunset laid a copper wash across everything. If despair had a lobby, at least it had good lighting.

  We claimed the bench to the left. It was far enough from the doors that people had to choose to eavesdrop. A few did. I lowered my voice anyway.

  “What did Mr. Drails say?” Tisiah asked.

  “He defended me,” I said. “But the new rule is this: I find the mole, or I am the mole. If I don’t turn up something solid, they’ll assume I’m the leak.”

  “But Mr. Drails invited you,” Nikki said, brow furrowing. “You’re his own son. Why is there confusion?”

  “Because optics,” I said. “And because whoever tattled framed it so I look like a walking red flag.” I exhaled. “Also: Malachi’s on the mission with us.”

  Nikki froze mid-breath like someone had pressed pause. “What drugs were they on when they interrogated you?” she asked the sky. Tisiah, on the other hand, looked bizarrely pleased.

  “Not officially,” I said quickly. “He wants me to do his homework. In return, he helps track the mole.”

  “And now that we’re connected to the target himself, we have more avenues!” Tisiah said, grinning wide enough to show molars. “Tell me this was the plan, Connor.”

  “Do you think I planned to be chased by the entire organization, get lassoed like cattle, and bathe in toilet water?”

  “I don’t think those were the details you anticipated,” he conceded gently. “Not those details.”

  “I think we already have enough on someone,” Nikki said.

  We both turned to her, eyebrows up. The intensity of our attention made her shift on the bench, but she didn’t look away. “Jamal,” she said.

  We sighed—at the same time, again.

  “Listen,” Nikki pressed on. “The day we got the mission, he started hounding you. Maybe ‘asking me out’ was cover. He wanted you out of Malachi’s orbit, and the way to do that was to get you arrested. He ambushed you and Greg on the street. That’s not coincidence—that’s strategy.”

  “That won’t convince White,” Tisiah said. “Maybe Mari will.”

  I swallowed a chunk of air. “Mari?”

  “Yes,” he said, already standing. “Relax. I don’t want to kill you yet. Let’s ask her.”

  He set off without waiting for my opinion; Nikki slid after him, her ponytail deciding for her. I followed because the alternative was sitting on the bench until a punishment found me.

  We climbed the main stairs, swung right down the dorm corridor. Doors thudded, laughter bounced, someone yelled through a wall about a missing charger—normal noises that made the last two hours feel like fever dream fragments. As we neared the split between the guys’ and girls’ sections, Tisiah nudged Nikki. “Room twenty-five,” he said.

  She nodded and disappeared through the threshold, a hand already up to knock.

  We waited. Then we waited more. The sounds behind the door escalated—muffled voices, a sharp syllable, the thunk of something soft hitting wood. I counted my own breaths. By the time the knob finally turned, my pulse had drawn long black lines around the number twenty-five on the plaque.

  Mari stepped out in pajamas—blue, patterned with crescent moons that somehow made her look both more human and more annoyed. A bandage still hugged the side of her head, its presence louder than her expression.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Nikki didn’t tell you?” I said before I could stop myself.

  “No, Cory,” she returned, deadpan. “She didn’t. And I wouldn’t want to hear it from her anyway.”

  Nikki’s eyes narrowed to slits.

  “We need your help,” Tisiah said quickly, wedging his voice between the two of them. “Do you have any clue who the mole might be? Connor’s life depends on it.”

  Mari’s tone changed—barely, but enough for me to see the shift. “What do you mean his life depends on it? What makes you say that?”

  “If we don’t find the mole,” Nikki said, “or produce real evidence about who it is, Connor will be accused instead.”

  The hallway noise seemed to shrink at that, as if the building itself were leaning closer to hear the answer.