The first thing I registered was the headache.
Not the gradual, manageable kind that builds over time and gives you a chance to negotiate with it. The immediate kind, a gnawing, pressurised weight sitting directly behind my eyes, like the inside of my skull had decided to try a different size.
I became aware of noise next. Music, and underneath it, a voice doing something to a microphone that the microphone hadn't consented to.
I blinked until the room came together.
Luminescent lighting. Booths. The specific smell of recirculated air and cheap upholstery.
A karaoke parlour.
Fantastic. Truly. What a natural next location for this beautiful day.
"You're awake." Something moved into my field of vision, leaning close. A grin, mostly. The face behind it was still blurry from whatever had been on that handkerchief, my eyes weren't fully cooperating yet.
But I could make out the lit cigarette. That part was hard to miss, especially when he took a long drag and breathed the smoke directly at me.
"Let me guess, you're the boss," I said. My fingers were doing that thing where they move on their own, trying to confirm the body still works. "And you didn't bring me here just to talk, did you?"
"Smart." He said it like a small reward. Like he was genuinely pleased I'd worked that out. "I see why Tyler couldn't beat you."
Tyler. It all came back in sequence. The setup, the suspension, the East High kid at the gate. This was the through-line connecting all of it.
He was with them. The name surfaced alongside everything I'd heard and half-dismissed about him. Rumours about him being connected to a gang led by an East High student — which had always seemed unlikely given that Silvic High and East High had a mutual and deeply-held dislike for each other..
But the more I'd watched Tyler operate, the more the pieces pointed the same direction. The overloaded confidence. The certainty that consequences wouldn't reach him. The way he acted like there was always something behind him.
It was because there was. And that something was apparently this person— Sancho, sitting in a karaoke parlour with a cigarette, looking at me like I was a mildly interesting problem.
"Let me guess," I said. "Elaborate kidnapping, karaoke venue, all of this, to pick up Tyler's fight for him?"
Sancho actually laughed. Not performed laughter, the real kind, brief and genuine, like I'd said something that caught him off guard.
"Pick up his fight." He repeated it like he was tasting the phrase. "That's a way to put it." He stood upright, still smiling. "But I'd be misrepresenting myself if I said that was the whole picture. I'm an empathetic person, Ren. When someone comes to me— when they beg me — it's not in my nature to turn them away."
My eyebrow moved on its own.
"Instinctive, truly." He set the cigarette down on the table, balanced across the rim of a tumbler, and let it burn. Then his hand came down on my shoulder. Casual. Like contact between acquaintances. "And don't read this wrong. It's nothing personal. But when someone hurts a member of my gang, I can't ignore it. That would be irresponsible leadership."
And then something moved through me.
It wasn't exactly pain, at least not at first. It was a wave. Cold, fast, starting at the point of contact and radiating outward like a shock moving through water.
It reached my arms before I'd finished processing what was happening. Then my legs. Then my head. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, I realised I couldn't move.
Not wouldn't. Couldn't. My limbs had stopped taking instructions.
[Warning: Poisoning Effect Activated]
[Warning: Poisoning Effect Activated]
"What are you—" The words came out wrong. Pressed flat, like they'd had to fight through something to get out at all.
"Don't fight it, Ren." Sancho lifted his hand from my shoulder and stepped back, watching with clinical interest. "The poison moves faster when you resist. You should know that." That thin smile again. "Beating Tyler really did turn out to be a death wish."
Geez. I'm actually going to die here.
After everything, the street fight tournament, Cypher, Tyler, two weeks of building something that was starting to resemble actual strength — I was going to die in a karaoke parlour because I got chloroformed outside my own school gate.
"Ren." Amelia's hologram materialised, and the tone of her voice was different from anything I'd heard from her before. Urgent, without the usual editorial. "Your vitals are sending constant warnings. What happened?"
I tried to answer. My face felt wrong — cold, probably blue. And my mouth had stopped being something I had reliable access to. The air was there but getting to it felt like a negotiation.
"Stay with me." She was moving, pulling up the system screen, scrolling rapidly. "Damn it. You don't have any health equipment in your inventory."
Of course I didn't. The system rewarded what I'd earned. Health equipment wasn't something I'd discovered through necessity in a fight, it hadn't existed as a concept until thirty seconds ago when I needed it badly.
Do something!
"I am!" The sharpness in her voice landed differently than usual. "I can hear your thoughts, Ren. An antidote is possible but it takes three minutes to synthesise. Can you hold on?"
Three minutes. I ran the numbers on what I currently had access to, which was my own slow suffocation and a steadily narrowing field of vision — and decided that three minutes was a negotiable timeline.
Hopefully.
"Resilient." Sancho was still talking, which was something I had mixed feelings about. "Most people I've used this on are out within a minute. I assumed cripples would be on the more vulnerable end." He tilted his head slightly. "Apparently not."
The door opened.
Someone walked in. I couldn't resolve the face with the state my vision was in, but I didn't need to. I knew that sound, the specific quality of that footsteps, the weight behind them.
Tyler.
"Look who it is." Sancho's voice lifted. "Just in time."
Tyler came into my blurred line of sight and leaned down toward me with that grin. The one that had been present for virtually every bad thing that had happened to me in the last two years. I would have hit him. I was thinking about it in real-time. My fist was absolutely willing. My arm had simply stopped participating.
"Told you, Ren." He straightened, making that pose — the one that said he believed he was the centre of whatever story was being told. "You'd regret winning against me in that arena. And somehow you managed a double, got yourself suspended and ended up here." He spread his hands. "Today's your lucky day."
The main fool. Standing in a room full of fools, performing victory for an audience of one person who was too poisoned to fully roll their eyes.
"How can you bring me here if you don't even know which room they're in?" A voice came from somewhere outside the parlour. Frustrated.
Then the door crashed in.
Someone walked in. Silver hair. Crimson eyes visible even through my compromised vision, sharp enough to cut through the blur. She stepped into the doorway and stopped, just for a second, taking in the room the way someone takes in a situation they've walked into with a plan already made.
"There you are." Her voice had a specific quality. Not loud. Just certain. "Sancho."
The room shifted.
"Aria?" Sancho's voice had something new in it. Something he was working to keep out, and mostly failing. "You're supposed to be suspended."
"Rowan." Tyler's voice came from somewhere to my left, the specific way you say a name when you've just understood that you've been betrayed. "You brought her here?"
What followed was not a long fight.
Aria moved through the room the way water moves through a gap, finding the path, using it, not stopping to consider the obstacles. One of Sancho's people went down from a knee jab before he'd fully committed to engaging.
Another caught an uppercut that resolved the situation immediately. She wasn't performing — there was no showmanship to it, no excess. Just clean, direct, efficient violence, and the room filled briefly with the sounds of people meeting the floor.
[Antidote Complete]
[Activating Antidote]
The cold wave reversed direction. Sensation returned to my limbs in pieces, fingers first, then arms, then legs, like a system rebooting from the outside in. My vision sharpened. The blue feeling in my face receded.
That's what breathing normally feels like. I'd almost forgotten.
Tyler had found a corner and was moving toward the exit with the specific energy of someone who hopes that if they move quietly enough, no one will notice.
Aria noticed. She crossed the room, grabbed his collar, and reintroduced him to the nearest wall with a force that made me genuinely reconsider everything I thought I knew about upper body strength.
How often is she in the gym.
"You bitch—" Sancho's voice was back, loud now, the composure finally gone. "You think you can walk into my private space and do this?!"
"I mean." Aria glanced at him. "I already did."
"You'll pay for this!—"
He charged. Both fists up, full commitment, the kind of rush that had enough weight behind it that it probably worked on most people most of the time.
Aria threw one punch. Direct, clean, no excess motion. And Sancho went down and stayed there.
The room went quiet.
I looked at her, this person I'd heard about for years without ever having a real conversation with, who had just walked into a gang's private location and systematically dismantled everyone in it, standing in the middle of the aftermath, studying the scene with the unhurried expression of someone admiring something they'd just built.
She dusted her hands. Actually dusted them.
"That does that." She looked up and found me. Then something shifted in her expression, not concern exactly, more like assessment. "You look out of shape."
"You look like you're in too much shape." I glanced at Rowan, still standing in the doorway like he wasn't sure the violence was entirely finished, and back at her. "That's not a compliment."
"I just saved your life. You could try gratitude."
"I didn't need your help."
She seemed amused. And I chose not to acknowledge that.
I pulled out my phone and walked toward Tyler, who was on the floor in the particular configuration of someone whose body had recently been introduced to a wall at speed. I looked down at him for a moment.
Then I hit him.
The first punch landed and the second followed before the first had fully registered. I wasn't being strategic about it, I was thinking about every single time he'd put me on the floor.
Every beating that had happened in hallways and classrooms and the arena ring. Every carefully constructed setup that had added days and weeks to a school experience that was already operating at maximum misery. The cheat note. The suspension. The karaoke parlour.
My line existed somewhere, and he'd just found it.
BAM. BAM. BAM.
When I was satisfied that he was starting to bleed at multiple locations, I stopped. Grabbed his collar. Brought him up to a level where we were having a direct conversation.
"You're going to tell the truth," I said. "To everyone. That you tried to frame me. Twice now. That's what you're going to say."
"In your..." He tried. Didn't quite get there. "...dreams, cripple."
BAM.
Then again. Faster. I let the rhythm find itself — thought about the arena, thought about the floor of the gym, thought about the principal's office and Rowan's face and the handkerchief and the whole cascading sequence of things Tyler had decided I deserved.
BAM. BAM. BAM.
"Okay—" It came out wet and compressed, working its way through whatever structural changes his face had recently undergone. "Okay. I'll do it. I'll say it."
I let him down slightly. Pulled up my phone. Tapped record.
"Speak."
.
.
.
Extra
Name: Sancho Reeves | Ability: Toxic Influence | Rank: B | Fortitude: 6.6
Name: Aria Sinclair | Ability: ?? | Rank: ?? | Fortitude: ??
Name: Ren Mora | Ability: None | Rank: E [Progressive] | Fortitude: 1.6