Chapter 14

  Beginning of the First Act (III)

  The transition from the dim, hushed atmosphere of the auditorium out into the now loud and bustling main concourse was jarring.

  Glancing at my phone screen, the time read 12:06 p.m. Around us, the shuffling mass of bodies and collective murmur of a thousand voices bounced off the high, vaulted ceilings. The adrenaline from President Fields’ speech was already bleeding out, replaced by the immediate, practical anxiety of figuring out where we were actually supposed to be next.

  A lady in a blue staff shirt was calling out into the crowd as she stood by the large staircase leading up.

  “All breakouts are in the Campus Center building, check your schedule in your folder or on the app for your assigned room!” She kept repeating her announcement every so often while maintaining her smiling appearance.

  “Wait… are the breakouts in different rooms?” Ruben suddenly stopped, nearly causing a pile-up behind us. He was glaring at his phone screen, then leaned over to try and peer at Felicity’s. “Which room are you guys in?”

  “Don’t read over my shoulder,” Felicity muttered, swatting his arm away without looking up. She was chewing mindlessly on the frayed string of her hoodie, eyes scanning her digital schedule. “I’m in Campus Center 229.”

  “Uh,” Paul chimed in, scrolling with his thumb. “Yeah, I’m 232.”

  “Shoot, man…” Ruben aggressively rubbed the side of his face, his agitation spiking. “244?! Bruh, why are we all in different rooms?!”

  “Well, breakouts are usually smaller,” I offered, trying to inject some logic into his panic as we fell back into step with the moving crowd. “It would be kind of hard to evaluate us all individually if they just shoved us into another massive lecture hall.”

  Ruben just offered a thoroughly unconvinced shrug, muttering something under his breath about the Institute trying to divide and conquer.

  As we approached the massive, sweeping staircase that led to the upper levels, I noticed Yvette. She was walking a half-step behind the rest of us, her eyes locked onto her phone screen, entirely, and unusually, silent. The once bright, kinetic energy that she usually carried was now absent. It had been so since the auditorium.

  I slowed my pace slightly to fall in beside her.

  “Hey,” I said, offering a gentle nudge to her shoulder. “Which room are you in?” She didn’t respond immediately. She just kept staring at the screen. “Yvette?”

  “Huh?” She finally vocalized, her head snapping up. She blinked at me, her expression guarded. “What?”

  “Which room are you in?” I asked, my voice dropping a little, the energy draining out of my own words. “You good?”

  She looked at me for a fraction of a second before her eyes darted back to her screen. Her jaw set into a tight line. “Yeah. I’m fine. I’m in… 232.”

  “Oh, nice, you’re with Paul.” I said, trying to force a smile that her eyes didn't stick on me long enough to see.

  “What about you, Jesse?” Ruben dragged out his words with a heavy scoff, dropping his head back in defeat as we began the trudge up the stairs. “Please, dear God, tell me you’re in 244. I am so not interested in trying to be social with new people today.”

  “What are you, a child?” Felicity chided at his whining.

  I looked down at my own schedule, finding the bolded text for the breakouts. I frowned, rereading the line to make sure I wasn't mistaken. “Huh… 332.” I said, my voice carrying more of a question than a statement. I looked up at the group. “Guess I’m on a different floor entirely.”

  “Feck,” Ruben muttered, letting out a long, heavy sigh. “Figures.”

  We trudged up the rest of the staircase together. When we reached the second-floor landing, the crowd naturally began to split off between the second floor and the stairs continuing up to the third floor; students peeling off into the sprawling corridors of the Combatant and Non-Combatant wings.

  Paul, Felicity, and Ruben paused, turning toward the eastern hall. Yvette just paused just a few paces away, staring down at her phone, not sparing us even a glance.

  “I’ll, uh, catch you guys at lunch,” I said, offering a wave that felt entirely too small.

  Felicity gave a quick two-finger salute, and Ruben just groaned and dragged his feet as he left. I stood on the landing for a moment, watching them disappear down the corridor, before turning to face the next flight of stairs alone.

  ~~~~

  Yvette lingered at the base of the staircase, her eyes tracking Jesse’s back as he ascended toward the third floor, slowly disappearing into the sea of Non-Combatants. A heavy, uncomfortable knot sat in her chest—a tangled, anxious feeling she couldn’t quite name or pin down.

  Her gaze dropped to the phone clutched in her hand. Chewing aggressively on her lower lip, she unlocked the screen, pulled up her messages, and tapped her mother’s contact icon. Her thumbs hovered over the keyboard before she began typing.

  Hey mom. I need your help answering something.

  She stared at the blinking cursor. The dissonance between what Jesse had said and what she knew—or thought she knew—was gnawing at her. She took a breath and hit send.

  "Alright!"

  Yvette jolted, her shoulders hiking up toward her ears. She hastily locked her phone and turned to find Felicity standing entirely too close, staring at her with laser-focused intensity.

  "What the hell is going on with you?" Felicity demanded, crossing her arms over her hoodie.

  To Yvette's right, Ruben took a quick step back. "I'll... uh, catch you guys later," he muttered, giving a stiff, awkward wave before immediately stepping off into the moving crowd of students.

  "Yeah, see ya in the breakout," Paul added hastily, already backing away to follow Ruben.

  Once the boys were swallowed by the crowd, Felicity took a step closer, shifting her weight. Her voice dropped its accusatory edge, softening into something more genuine, but no less demanding. "Seriously, Yvette. What's going on? Did Jesse do something?"

  Yvette shook her head, her grip tightening on her phone. She stepped out of the main flow of traffic, putting her back to a concrete pillar so she wouldn't keep getting bumped. "No. Not really. It’s… it’s all kinda stupid, honestly."

  Felicity arched an eyebrow. "Okay, so… are you gonna make me guess? Spill."

  "He told us he was adopted," Yvette blurted out, the words tasting strange on her tongue.

  Felicity stared at her for a second, waiting for the rest of the sentence. When Yvette didn't continue, she frowned, clearly confused. "Okay. And? Lots of people are adopted, Evie."

  "What—Okay, no…" Yvette groaned, running a free hand through her hair in frustration. "I’ve known Jesse since we were in diapers. He was only two when I was born. I have photos in my baby book of his mom, Alan, and him visiting my family in the hospital. Our moms were best friends, Felicity. I know his family and he knows mine. Not once in my entire life has anyone ever said a word about Jesse being adopted. Ever!"

  Felicity’s expression shifted, clearly hesitant to poke holes in that logic. "Well, I mean… just because you’ve never heard or seen anything doesn’t mean it isn't true. Unless your mom or his mom explicitly said he wasn’t…?" She let the question taper off into a higher register, stepping carefully to avoid detonating the ticking timebomb of Yvette's frustration.

  Yvette let out a sharp, hissed breath, her hands waving in vague, frustrated gestures as she fought to keep her voice down. "I don't remember any specific conversations about it. I mean, I definitely would remember something like that! But I’m pretty sure I remember his mom complaining about giving birth to him… like, joking about it when he was being a real pain in everyone’s ass.”

  She slumped slightly, the lack of concrete proof draining her momentum. “I just… I don't know. Ever since his mom died in that car accident ten years ago, we just don’t talk about what life was like before that. We don't bring it up.”

  Yvette slowly shook her head, her anger melting into a heavy, defeated sigh. “God, I feel like a moron. I feel like I should know this shit. It's tearing me up thinking I'm only just learning about it now, while he’s been sitting on this for God knows how long.” She leaned back hard against the concrete pillar, tipping her head up to stare at the ceiling.

  Felicity absorbed this, chewing on the inside of her cheek as she untangled the situation. "I get you, Evie. Trust me, I do. If Ruben hid something massive like that and then casually dropped it on me in an auditorium, I would probably want to stab him in the eye for being an emotionally constipated Neanderthal.”

  Yvette let out a weak chuckle, shaking her head. “Yeah. That’s a pretty accurate summary of how I feel right now.”

  “And that’s okay,” Felicity said, reaching out to grip Yvette’s arm. “It just means you care. You want to know more about your best friend—who doesn’t? Maybe in some weird, strange, Jesse-esque way… this was him trying to open up.”

  Yvette’s brows knit together, the thought catching her off guard. She pondered the words, the anger receding to leave behind a quiet confusion. Was that what he was doing? she wondered. Was he trying to open up?

  Felicity leaned in a little closer, dropping her voice. "Look, just talk to him about it later. I don’t think he’s the type to avoid the topic, especially since he’s the one who brought it up initially. You can corner him later and iron this shit out. But right now? You’ve only got one shot to make a solid first impression in there, and you can’t blow it. I absolutely forbid it!”

  "I—" Yvette sighed, her shoulders slumping against the pillar as the fight drained out of her. “Yeah. Yeah, you're right.”

  “Of course I am,” Felicity said. She watched Yvette for a second, seeing the lingering tension in her face. Deliberately, Felicity gave Yvette’s shoulder a firm tap. “Come on. We gotta pitter-patter.”

  The last of the straggling students were trickling through the halls, making their way into their designated rooms and leaving the wide corridors feeling suddenly, heavily quiet.

  Yvette blinked, the sheer absurdity of the phrase short-circuiting her anxiety. She let out a shaky breath that caught in her throat, morphing into a reluctant smirk. “Pitter-patter? Really? You haven’t said that in years…”

  “Hey, you just gotta put one foot in front of the other, and keep doing it… until you're moving. Pitter-patter!” Felicity shot back, perfectly deadpan. “What? You sayin’ you don’t pitter-patter no more? You too good to walk now, Evie?”

  Yvette finally let out a genuine chuckle, the tight, uncomfortable knot in her chest loosening slightly. She pushed off the concrete pillar, throwing an arm around Felicity’s shoulders, her tall frame dwarfing the other girl as they started down the hall together.

  “I’ll have you know, I can still pitter-patter with the best of them,” Yvette murmured.

  “That’s my girl,” Felicity smiled, throwing an arm around Yvette’s waist.

  Walking down the empty corridor, Yvette leaned into the contact. She would perhaps struggle to admit it, but she needed this. After all, she thrived on the proximity; the easy banter, the deep, tangling roots which bound her to every single one of her friends.

  It was the people you let into your life that gave it shape. They helped define every single one of your edges and smooth your curves, just as much as you helped in defining theirs.

  As they walked, the smile still lingering on her face, the messy static in her head settled into a clear and sharp realization.

  That was exactly why Jesse's words had terrified her so much.

  ‘It’s not a big deal…’ His dismissive, casual tone echoed in her memory.

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  ‘Yeah… actually, it is,’ she answered him in her head.

  Because when you care deeply about people—your people—you want to know them. It’s normal. For Yvette, when it came to Jesse, there had always been this specific, unspoken possessiveness she carried—a complicated, buried feeling she keeps expertly smothering.

  Between the two of them, a whole lot of mileage had been put in together on this journey of life, and she would be damned if she adamantly refused to look at him too closely. They had too much history to be hiding behind bullshit.

  She hated the unknown, but more than that, she hated the idea of a locked door inside the head of the boy she knew better than most.

  Yvette squared her shoulders. Splitting off from Felicity as she tapered off toward her own breakout session, she stared at the door in front of her. The anxiety was, oddly enough, gone now; but her frustration was still present. She could at least make do with that much. A quick sigh left her nostrils as she pushed through the door.

  A single thought engraved itself into her psyche at that moment.

  ‘You don’t get to keep secrets from the people who helped make you.’

  ~~~~

  As I stepped through the heavy doorway of Room 332, the chaotic, echoing roar of the concourse was instantly shut out. It was replaced by a heavy, pressurized silence, underscored by the deep, sterile hum of high-end server racks and aggressive air conditioning.

  I let my eyes trace the architecture of the room. It was an expansive, amphitheater-style space dominated by fixed, tiered seating that curved gently downward toward a central teaching well. The massive lightbars inset into the ceiling cast a clean, shadowless glow over everything. A few other students brushed past my shoulders, moving quietly to claim their seats. Their energy was entirely different from the adrenaline-spiked combatants outside; they were quieter, more calculated, eyes already scanning the room for tactical advantages like outlet placements.

  Yeah, this is definitely the major for the nerds.

  Down in the well, the instructor stood behind a massive, sleek desk that looked less like a lectern and more like a custom-built command station. It was loaded with two distinctly different keyboards, a heavy-duty monitor mounted on an articulating arm, and some sort of specialized controller that I had never seen in my life. She was tapping rhythmically on a tablet, occasionally glancing up to scan the rows as the room populated.

  I hitched the strap of my bag higher on my shoulder, made my way around the back toward the far right side of the classroom, and slid into an empty seat on the edge of the middle tier.

  It took a few more minutes for the room to fill just past the halfway mark. When the final few stragglers filed in, the woman down front set her tablet face-down. She moved around to the front of the desk, leaning back against the edge, and clapped her hands. Once.

  The sharp, singular crack easily severed the remaining idle chatter.

  “Alright, everyone. I have a full attendance sheet, so we’re getting started,” she said. She offered a welcoming, if sharply angled, smile. “My name is Bethany Kline. For those of you in the Non-Combatant tracks, get comfortable with my face, because we are going to be seeing a lot of each other over the next couple of years. I’ll start by giving you a brief rundown of my background.”

  She checked her watch, pushed off the desk, and began a slow, measured pace across the well. Fishing a small remote from her pocket, she clicked it once.

  Behind her, the entire back wall didn't just drop a projector screen—the wall was the screen. A massive, seamless LED array flared to life, displaying a crisp, high-resolution photo. It showed her looking a few years younger, standing in the center of a dimly lit, high-tech command center surrounded by a tense-looking team.

  “For fifteen years, I was a strike team strategist,” Bethany said, her voice projecting effortlessly as the images behind her slowly cycled through various forward operating bases and tactical maps. “Later, I was promoted to Field Operations Coordinator for the Kestrel Division up in the Great Lakes region. As a strategist, I started out handling basic team operations. Designing standard operating procedures. In a Guild like Kestrel, information is currency, which meant we were shifting our SOPs every other month just to keep our people alive.”

  She clicked the remote again. The photo shifted to the same space, but she was now in formal attire, wearing a different badge.

  “When I made Coordinator, I transitioned to a small, focused team of veterans. We drafted the operational parameters that all our Guild teams used out in the field. Reconnaissance, target acquisitions, convoy deployments into dead zones. If you can think of a tactical nightmare, I probably spent days mapping a way out of it so our people could operate safely.”

  I leaned forward slightly, resting my forearms on the desk. Strike team strategist. Operational parameters. Reconnaissance. Pretty much everything she was rattling off was the precise foundation of the elaborate plan Alaric and I had been cooking up. It was the mechanical structure I needed to actually "edit" this world effectively—even if our plans hadn't evolved much past Alaric telling me I just needed to learn it.

  “Now, for many of you coming into this field, whether you are magic-sensitive or not is honestly irrelevant,” Bethany said, pausing to look directly up into the tiers. “I'm not. I’m just a basic girl from the Midwest who grew up treating isometric RPGs like a second job, min-maxing party compositions, and mapping out turn-based tactics until my eyes bled.”

  A low, appreciative chuckle rippled across the classroom. Bethany smiled, turning to walk back behind her massive desk.

  “But that doesn’t mean you get to ignore the mechanics of magic. You need to understand how your Operators… well, operate. Magic is what directly fuels the environment; it feeds the Rot. It dictates the behavior of the infested wildlife and the spread of the diseases out there. If you lack a deep, functional understanding of those variables, you will fail your team. And failing your team means burying them.”

  She leaned over her keyboard, her tone dropping its casual edge, hardening into steel. “What your teams need is a sharp mind and an obsessive appreciation for detail. Because that is what keeps them alive.”

  She hit a button on a small control deck in front of her. The overhead lights instantly dimmed.

  “Today is just a teaser. You won’t be quizzed on anything we cover, so don’t go stiff on me. We are just going to do some light exercises and work those tactical muscles.”

  She clicked her mouse, and the presentation on the LED wall vanished, replaced by a split-screen live broadcast. The camera feeds were crystal clear, showing multiple angles of a large, utilitarian space filled with students.

  “Sweet. First try,” she muttered with a small smirk, pleased the routing software was behaving. She clapped her hands again, raising her voice.

  I stared at the screen, my heart giving a sudden, hard thump against my ribs. The room on the feed had a massive "232" painted on the far wall. It was the combatant breakout room directly below us. The camera panned over the milling students, and for a fraction of a second, I spotted the back of Yvette's head standing near the wall with Paul. Even from a bird's-eye view like this, that man looked like a refrigerator.

  “We're going to be observing the Combatant demonstrations in the room beneath us," Bethany announced. "But it looks like they haven't officially kicked off down there. So, while we wait..."

  She crossed her arms and looked up at the tiered seating.

  “Let's see how you think. Broad question, no wrong answers: What is a key trait you believe a strategist must have? Who wants to start?”

  An awkward silence wafted through the room. A few seconds ticked by. Nobody moved.

  “Well, I guess I’ll start then. Communication! That’s the obvious one,” Bethany prompted with a chuckle, her eyes scanning the rows. “But why not dig deeper? Okay, I’ll call on someone to start us off.” Her gaze swept up the tiers and, sure enough, locked right onto me. “You there. Middle row. Introduce yourself and give us one trait.”

  I sighed inwardly and shifted in my squeaking chair. Taking the bullet here, guys. Give me some grace.

  “Hi, I’m Jesse Parks,” I said, trying to project my voice as the heads of a dozen nerds swiveled in my direction. For a second, I felt completely at a loss, but then I thought about the Draft.

  I thought about the sheer, overwhelming panic of seeing the future unravel, and what it actually took to fix it without losing my mind. I found my answer. “I would say… composure.”

  “Composure! Good answer, yes, absolutely. We all need it,” Bethany said, clapping once before pointing to another student whose hand had tentatively gone up. “Alright, now we’re rolling. Give us your name and a trait.”

  I sank a fraction of an inch lower in my seat, rubbing the bridge of my nose where the phantom ache of a nosebleed still lingered.

  Jesus, how long is this breakout supposed to be?

  I glanced up toward the screen and looked at Yvette, standing by Paul. As if she could suddenly feel my gaze, her eyes turned and looked directly into the camera.

  ~~~~

  The transition into the Combatant breakout room felt less like entering a classroom and more like stepping into a sterilized testing chamber. It was a massive gymnasium with reinforced concrete walls and soaring ceilings. Every so often, the air near the structural supports would ripple like heat rising off asphalt—the telltale shimmer of heavy containment wards.

  Yvette Sousa tilted her head back, her eyes locking onto a line of matte-black security cameras mounted along the ceiling. At six-foot-one, she was used to looking down in crowded rooms, but the sheer scale of the gym made her feel exposed. She brushed a stray lock of dark hair from her face, her naturally bubbly energy dampened by the oppressive, heavy weight of the room... it was definitely the room.

  “You good?” a deep voice rumbled beside her.

  Yvette blinked, tearing her gaze from the ceiling. She looked over—and slightly up—at Paul Jones. Standing next to Paul was like standing next to a mountain. The bald, African-American teen was a staggering wall of muscle that naturally parted the sea of anxious freshmen around them. Despite his deeply intimidating size, his brown eyes held a polite, welcoming concern.

  “Yeah,” Yvette replied, her voice carrying easily over the ambient noise. “Just noticed the cameras. There’s a bunch of them up there.”

  “Oh. Right.” Paul nodded, crossing his massive arms.

  A booming voice suddenly tore through the room. “Alright y’all, we’re behind schedule, so let’s bust a move here!”

  The voice belonged to a tall, solidly built man wearing a black tank top and gym shorts over compression tights. He looked like he had just stepped out of a workout room as he bounded up onto a small, raised platform at the front of the immaculately clean gymnasium.

  He tapped an earpiece. “Alright, check, check, can you guys hear me?” He paused, listening. “Sweet. I wanna get going down here.” He muted the mic and looked out over the crowd.

  “My name is Jorge Guzman. I am your Strike Team Tactics instructor. Today is just a brief demo run of how your semester is going to look. No points at stake, no evaluations—other than organizing you into the teams you will be working with for the semester.”

  As nervous murmurs broke out across the gym, Guzman scoffed.

  “Look, don’t stress too much. You get two weeks to figure out who you want in your group, but they can only be from our section. We ain’t moving your best friend from some other class just because you already have chemistry, or whatever reason you have. It ain't happening.” He shook his head vehemently. “After two weeks, you are stuck. You should be working on getting along with people you don’t like anyway. It’s called life. Get over it.”

  “Man, this dude is already rubbing me the wrong way,” Paul murmured skeptically.

  “Yeah.” Yvette sighed. “Seems a little extra.”

  Guzman pointed a thumb over his shoulder, and the gym wall suddenly shifted colors, turning into a massive digital display.

  “Most Operators run in groups of five, and that's the model we have adopted for our curriculum. Based on simple math, we should have twenty-five groups. You have fifteen minutes. Make your squad.” He smiled, hitting his earpiece again as he looked up toward a large, tinted window near the ceiling that looked like a two-way mirror.

  “He must have a whole team up there working with him,” Yvette muttered.

  The gymnasium instantly erupted into chaos. The noise level spiked as over a hundred students scrambled, shouting names and frantically trying to find familiar faces.

  Paul looked down at Yvette, a little awkwardly. “Uh, should we form a group? Or did you want to go find some other people?”

  Yvette looked at the rushing crowd, then back at the giant standing next to her. Since they were both basically untethered, it just made sense. “Ah, yeah. Let's group up. We should go see who else is out there.”

  They barely took three steps before a girl with short, wavy brown hair intercepted them. Her hazel eyes scanning Paul up and down with calculating approval. Trailing quietly behind her was a slightly shorter Asian girl with a strikingly reserved posture. Oddly enough, she was wearing some long, traditional-looking robes that stood out sharply against the standard clothing or tactical gear everyone else chose to wear.

  “Are you two still looking for a group?” the brunette spoke first. Her voice was steady, completely lacking the frantic edge of the rest of the room.

  “Yeah,” Paul replied with a polite smile, offering a massive hand. “I’m Paul Jones. We went to Red Rocks together, right? You’re one of the St. Claire twins.”

  The girl accepted the handshake without hesitation. “Malika. Nice to meet you. You're kind of hard to miss, Paul.” She turned to Yvette. “And you are?”

  “Yvette Sousa. I was in Class 13,” she answered, shaking Malika's hand.

  “Cool, nice to meet you. This is Bao Lin,” Malika said, gesturing beside her. Bao Lin merely nodded, keeping her head held high as she spoke.

  “It is good to make your acquaintance. Thank you for allowing us to join.”

  Yvette and Paul shared a quick glance almost in sync. Yeah, she was definitely not from here. Before Yvette could suggest they go hunt for a fifth member, Malika’s attention snapped away.

  “Oh, Matthias!” Malika called out.

  A boy walking a few yards away stopped and turned. He looked strikingly similar to Malika, sharing the same wavy brown hair and athletic build, but he carried himself with a heavier, more aggressive posture.

  “Hey, we need a fifth!” Malika said, her tone carrying a sudden, underlying urgency. “Come join us. We've got a good foundation here.”

  Matthias looked at the mismatched group—basically a giant, then a tall Latina, some Asian girl in robes, and then his sister. He scoffed and chuckled to himself.

  “No thanks, Mal,” Matthias said coldly. “I'm… gonna go find my own group.”

  “Whoa, wait a sec! Matthias, what—” Malika pressed, unable to finish speaking as she stepped forward.

  “I said no.” Without another word, he turned his back and walked away to join a cluster of students.

  Malika stood completely still. For a fleeting second, Yvette thought she saw a flash of panic pass behind Malika's eyes, before the girl ruthlessly forced it down and cleared her throat.

  “Okay. Well, there’s four of us.” Malika said, her voice tightening with forced composure.

  Yvette watched the exchange, her defiant nature instantly wanting to break the heavy, awkward tension. She scanned the center of the room and caught sight of a lone figure standing perfectly still amidst the now settling crowd. He seemed to be alone, and he was a taller guy, around her height with striking white hair. He dressed in black cargo pants and boots. The oddity of him though, remained in the odd black mask completely obscuring the lower half of his face. His very presence radiated an unwelcoming, brooding vibe.

  Of course, that did not really deter Yvette much at all. Maybe he was just shy. Naturally, she pointed across the floor.

  “Well, unless we want to get stuck with somebody,” Yvette said, gesturing off toward the center of the room, “I say we go see what Luchador’s deal is over there.”