[External POV]
"Funny thing, really." Sancho didn't look up when Tyler walked in. "I didn't think you'd actually come back here on your knees."
The chuckle that followed was quiet, almost private. But it landed exactly where it was meant to, right in the centre of Tyler's chest, where what remained of his dignity was sitting in pieces.
If Tyler had known it would come to this, that he'd end up at Sancho's door, head down, asking for help, he might have treated his position in the gang with a little more care. Might have paid more attention when Sancho told him, more than once, that overusing power had a ceiling.
Sancho Reeves. Ace of East High, technically. But technical titles weren't really how Sancho preferred to be described. He was the boss of the Sancho gang: small, by gang standards, but notorious in a way that had nothing to do with size.
Students from multiple schools had filtered into it over the years, drawn in by the two things Sancho consistently offered: protection and power.
The best analogy for Sancho was a snake. Not for any particular dramatic reason, just because it was accurate. He was quiet when it suited him, nearly invisible until it didn't, and the moment you forgot he was dangerous was usually the moment he reminded you.
Tyler had been given access to that power and had spent it recklessly. Sancho had flagged it. But Tyler had kept going anyway, comfortable in the assumption that picking on low-tiers was a victimless way to burn excess energy.
And then Ren Mora, without an ability, no rank, no business being able to do what he did — had beaten him in front of an audience.
The evidence was still sitting on Tyler's face. Swollen around both eyes, features rearranged in ways that would take time to settle back. And somewhere underneath all of it, a headache that hadn't stopped since that day and that suggested the skull might have opinions about what had happened to it.
The highest form of embarrassment Tyler could imagine. And it had come from the weakest student in Silvic High.
"This matters." Tyler forced the words out around the headache. "A member of your gang just got publicly humiliated. Are you really going to sit there and do nothing about it?"
Sancho's smirk appeared and left in the same second. He unfolded himself from the couch, stood, crossed the room toward Tyler with a cigarette already between his lips. He lit it, crouched down in front of where Tyler was sitting, and took a long, unhurried drag.
"And?" He removed the cigarette, let the smoke out slowly. "You got humiliated. Specifically, what is it you want me to do?"
Tyler met his eyes. Held them.
"Teach him a lesson. Ren Mora." The determination in his voice was the only thing in his face that wasn't damaged. "Make him understand who he actually touched."
Sancho looked at him for a long moment. Not studying, more like assessing whether the request was worth the energy it would take to respond to it. He took the cigarette out again and breathed a slow stream of smoke directly into Tyler's face.
"Alright." He stood, turned away. "I'll help you."
Tyler blinked. Something small and victorious moved through his expression. He got to his feet, brushed off his knees.
"Yeah? You actually—"
He almost didn't register the movement.
Sancho turned and hit him, one punch, full weight, no announcement, and Tyler went down again, hitting the floor the same way he'd hit it on Friday. Not again. He'd absorbed enough today. His skull was filing a formal complaint.
"There." Sancho looked down at him, took another drag, almost serene. He dropped the cigarette and ground it out under his foot. "Now we're square." He tilted his head slightly. "So. Tell me more about this Ren."
***
[Author's POV]
"I'm sorry to confirm this, but the rumours turned out to be accurate, and earlier than any of us anticipated." Mr Chen set down his notes after the session. "Registration for the BHA entrance examination opened this morning."
The Monday morning timing was its own particular cruelty.
The room responded the way rooms always did to news that was genuinely alarming, not with silence, but with a low, spreading murmur. The kind that meant everyone was doing their own private calculation simultaneously, trying to determine how worried they were supposed to be.
Justifiably worried, most of them. The BHA's examination wasn't structured to be approachable. It was structured to be passed only by people who were actually ready, and announcing it at the last possible moment was part of their design.
They didn't give warning because warning wasn't the point. They wanted students as they actually were — not as they'd had six months to prepare to present themselves.
Random season selections, last-minute announcements, rigid formats. The BHA had been doing this long enough that unpredictable had become one of its defining characteristics.
"Additionally," Mr Chen continued, "this year the terms have been expanded. The BHA will be allowing cripples to participate as well." His eyes moved across the room and stopped, briefly, specifically on me. "They want to make sure that anyone interested in a trial has access to one, regardless of their current ability status."
I processed that.
An open slot. Technically an invitation, on paper, for students without abilities to walk into an examination designed by and for people who had them.
In practice, what that meant was a front-row seat to watching everyone else demonstrate flashy, developed abilities while I contributed whatever it was a person without abilities contributed to that kind of environment.
The bottom. Same place everyone already expected me to finish. Just with a more formal setting and more witnesses.
"The examination runs from the fifteenth to the seventeenth of this month. Registration closes this Friday, so handle that before the week is out."
Mr Chen left. The room filled in behind him.
The low-tiers were the loudest, not out of excitement, but out of something closer to quiet panic, the kind that expresses itself through urgent whispering and repeated phrases.
Even some of the middle-tiers looked like they were running numbers they didn't love. The only person not contributing to the noise was Tyler, who was sitting with his eyes moving to me every few minutes in that flat, expressionless way he'd developed since Friday.
He looked like someone who hadn't entirely accepted what had happened yet. Like he was still processing, still somewhere in the early stages of understanding that the outcome had been real.
Good. Let him sit in it.
Though the more I thought about it, if he'd actually kept his word and gone to Mr Chen with the truth about the cheat note, he should be dealing with more than just wounded pride right now. A suspended student didn't generally sit in class looking bruised and vacant. He'd be somewhere else.
Which suggested he hadn't said anything.
"Ren Mora, report to the principal's office immediately."
The announcement speaker voiced flatly.
I hadn't been summoned to the principal's office since the incident with the senior, the one where I'd been accused of raising my hand against someone who outranked me, a situation that had been planned from beginning to end by someone who knew exactly how those accusations played out.
That someone had been Tyler.
He was the throughline. Every significant piece of school trouble I'd been in traced back to him eventually, and this, arriving on the Monday after I'd put him on the floor in front of a crowd, had his fingerprints on it before I'd even stood up from my seat.
I looked at him on my way out. Held it for a second. The message wasn't complicated: if you're involved in whatever this is, I'll find that out. And then we'll be back where we were on Friday, except I'll have less patience for the buildup.
He didn't react. I left.
I knocked on the principal's office door and opened it in the same motion, not waiting for the response. I wanted this finished.
"There you are, Ren." Mr Ross Williams. Three years as principal of Silvic High, and not once in that time had his voice defaulted to warmth, even on the occasions when he was technically being welcoming. It was just how he was built.
Mr Chen was standing beside him, holding a sheet of paper I recognized immediately. My handwriting. My answer sheet. On the desk in front of Mr Ross was the cheat note, Tyler's— sitting there like evidence that had been patient.
This is not gonna end well.
"I asked you here because Mr Chen raised some concerns regarding your last class test." Mr Ross settled back in his chair. "The reports I received were... not what I expected. Specifically, that you were involved in malpractice."
"Those allegations are false," I said.
"Ren." Mr Chen exhaled the word like he was tired of the shape of it. "You told me you were going to take responsibility. Why are we still having this conversation—"
"This note." Mr Ross lifted the cheat note. "It was found inside your test papers. What's your explanation?"
"Tyler planted it." I kept my voice even. "He admitted it to me directly and agreed he would come forward and confirm it to you. That was the arrangement."
Or what had passed for one.
The two of them looked at me, Mr Ross for longer, with the specific intensity of someone trying to determine whether they were being told the truth or a very confident lie. He hummed once, tapped his announcing device, and spoke into it.
"Tyler Wilson, report to the principal's office immediately."
The wait was a few minutes. Tyler walked in, took in the room, took in me standing there, and arranged his expression into something neutral before directing it toward the principal.
"Clear something up for me, Tyler." Mr Ross raised the note again. "Ren is telling me you planted this in his test script. Are you confirming that?"
Tyler was quiet. Long enough that I thought, briefly, that he might actually do it, that whatever remained of the deal we'd made might surface and produce the one honest thing I needed from him.
"I don't know what he's talking about." His voice was even. His face was clean of everything except a practiced look of confusion. "I don't know anything about a cheat note."
"You son of a bitch—"