Thankfully, the rest of the week goes by without issue. Well, other than the few times my parents tried to bring up the whole academy thing. The only reason I was able to shift the topic away and save myself from arguing with them was centered on the fact that neither seemed to want to talk about it while the other was around.

  For example, I was working on a job, and my mother came to check on me. After a minute, she saw something in the central control console that needed work and jumped right in. Not five minutes later, just as I started to relax, she brought the topic up. It was only thanks to a well-timed – if a bit blinding – short that I pushed for her to let me focus on my work.

  Then there was my dad and his messages. Some were questions, while others had links to various posts and information boards about the benefits that academy students got simply for attending the place.

  He had to know I was ignoring the lot of it. After all, the system told him if I read the message or not. So why were neither of them getting the message? I mean, what part of me wanting to stay inside the safety the city provided did they not understand?

  At least today, they were off to get all their equipment checked out and together for their departure tomorrow morning. So the house, and my pad, were silent. Perfect for a last-minute check of my project before the test in the afternoon. A sharp rap on the house door jerked me out of my flow state and back to reality.

  I had to take a deep breath to contain the curses that poured from my mouth to simply grumbling rather than shouts aimed at the door. Maybe if I ignored them, they would go away. A second, much harder, series of knocks caused the door to rattle.

  “ELI!” Bert yelled. “I know you’re in there!”

  Oh, crap. What the fuck was he doing here? Shouldn’t he be getting ready to leave for the academy? After all, if someone like me managed to get in, then he was a shoo-in. Whatever the reason, I was going to play dumb as I did not want to face him if he was still angry over whatever I did. Given his tone, he sounded angry.

  “Either you open this door and let me in, or I will.”

  Damn it. Think. Think. Think. How could I get out of this? Desperate, I pulled out my pad and sent him a message. ‘Hey, I just got an alert that someone was at our house. Whatever they are doing is setting off the security settings. Do you know what is going on?’

  A soft pinging noise and his silence told me he had received the message. Instead of responding to my text, he shouted. “Hey, dumbass, your location services are still shared with me.” Oh. Welp. There goes any hope of getting out of this.

  With a mixture of fear at what he was likely here to say, anger at how he acted last time, and sadness over the fact that he was likely leaving soon, and we probably would never get a better chance to fix our friendship, I reluctantly moved toward the door. Each step toward the door felt worse than the last. Like my body was telling me that whatever he was here for would define my path forward.

  A lifetime and a minute later, I stood in front of the door as I hesitated to open it. But there was nothing I could do now. Either I opened it or he would. And the guy had a key. A consequence of my getting too invested in whatever job or project we had in our shop. It got so bad that my parents gave him the permissions he needed to make sure I ate when they were gone.

  The worn and weathered latch snicked open. With a nearly silent squeal, the door opened to reveal Bert. “About time.” He huffed.

  “What do you want?” I tried to keep my tone flat. It wasn’t easy, given the emotions flitting through me. The urge to run, to yell at him for what he did. To demand answers about his accusation.

  “Both of your parents contacted me separately. They both told me I needed to convince you to go to the academy.” Well, that wasn’t what I expected.

  “No.” I shook my head. “Now, if that is it, I need to get back to work.”

  The door barely moved before his hand reached out to stop it. “What is wrong with you?” His demand almost made me laugh. “Why would you turn this chance down? Do you know how many people would kill you to get such an opportunity? Yet here you are tossing it to the wind.”

  His words burned. It was like he didn’t realize what he did. The very idea caused some of my fear to start to simmer. Still, I kept my tone even as I carefully answered one of his questions. “I don’t want to leave the city?”

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  “Oh, don’t give me that.” He scoffed. “Surely you are not so afraid of the otherside of the wall that even the train ride scares you.” Why was it that he understood me better than my parents? It hadnt even taken him a minute to figure out why I didn’t want to go. Whatever he saw on my face caused his eyes to widen. “Really? Is that the issue? The trip there?”

  “So what?” I countered. “It isn’t like they can force me to go.”

  “True, but think about all the stuff you could learn if you went. The equipment you would be able to use and build. Things that you could never do here.”

  “All for the low price of possibly dying on the trip there.” I scoffed.

  “Even if the train is attacked, there is no chance that they will get anywhere near you.”

  “You can't promise that.”

  “No, but what are the chances that any monster makes it through the train's defenses, the people hired to protect the train, the staff running the train, the teachers and professors? And that doesn’t take into account all the students making the trip.”

  “Higher than if I stayed here.”

  My counterargument caused him to groan. “God, you can be so infuriating sometimes.” He took a second to think before speaking. “What if I promised to stick by you the entire trip and take on anything that got close to you?” The offer surprised me. For some reason, that confused him. “Did you think I would let you go there alone? Our friendship wouldn’t vanish even if we ended up in different programs or something.”

  “But…” We were still friends? I thought… He… What the fuck was going on here? Had I missed something? Finally, the words forced themselves out. “You attacked me.”

  The sigh he let out was deep. “I need air.” He was already standing outside. He had all the air he needed. “Can we go to the roof?” With a confused shrug, I opened the door enough to let him in. He bee-lined for the ladder in the back corner.

  By the time I managed to make my way up the ladder, he was across the roof as he looked over the sprawl of the city. In the morning light, I watched as people flit from store to store. As deliveries came and went. As people shopped or merely browsed the various wares on display.

  Finally, he spoke. “I was mad at you.”

  I scoffed. “I got that.”

  Judging by how deep and long the breath he took was, he was holding himself back. “You made me a promise…”

  “To try my best on the tests. I know.” I cut in.

  He shook his head. “If you remembered the promise, then why did you break it?”

  “What!?” My voice echoed around us. “I would never break…”

  “But you did.” The growl that emanated from him surprised me. It was something I would have expected from someone with a beast mutation.

  “No, I…”

  “You did.” He snapped.

  His need to keep me from getting more than a couple of words out was getting on my nerves. “When?”

  “The medical test.”

  “Nope.”

  “I saw you.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Trying to kill your patient!” His snapped words confused me enough that he had time to continue. “Why else would you have a blade against the thing's neck?”

  Wait, that was what all of that had been about? God, the guy was an idiot. While I knew he never studied in his free time, surely he had seen one or two medical dramas. “Its airway was closing. I was trying to keep it from suffocating.”

  I could tell when my words finally managed to dig their way through his thick skull. The anger on his face melted away as he mumbled. “To what?”

  “This is why I can never go with you to places. You are a fucking menace.” The joke was rough, but it did the job.

  The soft laugh shook his body. “You aren’t wrong. Now I feel like an idiot.” He grimaced. “I didn’t mess up your test, did I?” He waved off my answer. “I must not have given the offer from the academy.”

  “Offers.” While I was still annoyed at him over everything, I couldn’t help but correct him.

  “What?” He sounded a bit confused.

  “There was more than one offer.”

  “Of course you would get more than one offer.” He shook his head as if it was obvious. “I mean, if the academy thought you would be a good fit in one of their programs it other groups would have to be stupid not offer you something. I got something like twenty offers. Mostly security jobs.”

  “No, I got multiple offers from the academy.”

  “Bullshit.” His eyes narrowed as he looked me in the eyes. Almost as if he was checking to see if I was lying. Finally, though, he let out a bellowing laugh. “Of course you did. You lucky bastard. What were the offers? Anything good?”

  I pulled out my pad and pulled them up before handing the thing over. It was only as he started to read over it that I realized what I had just done. Now there would be no way for me to stop him from pestering me. At least, not until he left for the start of the academic year. But, so long as he was reading over it, he would be silent.

  My eyes scanned the wall and the buildings that bordered it. Parts of it was obscured by smoke and dust. Likely from training of some kind.

  “So, which program are you going for?” He spoke as though I was going to the academy.

  “I told you that I wasn’t going.” I jerked my pad out of his hand. “And I didn’t show you that just so you could keep pestering me.”

  Before he could say anything else, a massive explosion of dirt and rock erupted from one of the smoky sections. A wall of sound hit us as I watched buildings and various poles dance back and forth. The scene reminded me of the scenes in movies of boats in the ocean as waves shoved them from side to side.

  Given the roar that followed, whatever it was, it wasn’t some form of training. Something managed to get into the city without breaking through the wall. Moments later, a pair of similar explosions filled the air. While I couldn’t see the smoke or damage from where I was, I had no doubt that whatever had made it inside hadn't come alone.

  Around the whole city, the monster breach siren chose that moment to let out the ear-piercing wail.