The next afternoon, the school let out with the weary groan of old hinges and dragging feet.
The sound spilled into the street like the building itself was exhaling, relieved to be rid of its occupants for a few hours.
Doors banged open.
Voices surged in uneven waves.
Heat rose off the pavement, carrying the scent of fried food from a nearby cart, mixed with the faint metallic sting of ozone that never truly left this part of the city.
Even on good days, the air tasted like something had caught fire a long time ago and never fully stopped smoldering.
Jup slung his bag over one shoulder and stepped down the stairs without looking back, letting the dull rhythm of school fall away as the district took over.
Then, just before he broke into his run, someone called his name.
“Yo, Jup. Hold up. ”
Jup turned as Robert jogged through the crowd to catch him, weaving between bodies with the kind of energy that suggested he had never known a day of real exhaustion.
Pale skin.
Messy blond hair.
Bright green eyes.
Robert always looked like he had either just gotten away with something or was about to try.
He fell into step beside Jup without slowing.
“You about to train again, ” Robert asked,
“or just running from your problems today?”
Jup glanced at him.
“Depends. ”
“On what?”
“Whether you count those as different things. ”
Robert let out a quick laugh.
“You were gone again in math. The whole class was drowning in equations, and you looked like you were designing a missile. ”
“It wasn’t a missile, ” Jup said.
Robert grinned.
“That is not the comforting answer you think it is. ” He bumped Jup lightly with his shoulder.
“So what was it?””Just thinking.
”
“You?” Robert shook his head.
“That’s dangerous. One day your brain’s gonna overheat and melt through your skull. Then who’s gonna fix all the broken junk I bring you?”
A faint ghost of a smile touched Jup’s face.
Exactly what Robert had been aiming for.
Half the clutter on Jup’s desk came from Robert anyway—old comm units, cracked screens, stripped circuit boards, and busted drone parts.
Robert always claimed he had found them, using the word in the loosest possible sense.
Most of it was scrap.
Jup usually found a way to make it useful.
“You still messing with that little drone?” Robert asked.
“Yeah. ”
“How little are we talking?”
Jup held two fingers a few inches apart.
Robert squinted.
“That small? What’s it supposed to do?”
“Fly. ”
Robert pointed at him, already grinning.
“I walked right into that one.
” “But it keeps tilting left.
”
“Yeah, maybe it’s political or something. ”
Robert glanced at him sideways.
“Everything in this city leans one way or another. ”
Jup gave him a flat look.
They rounded the corner by the old pharmacy, where metal shutters still covered half the windows even though the place had technically reopened two years ago.
A group of older boys leaned against the brick wall nearby.
The colors on their jackets were an open challenge.
Their voices dropped as Jup and Robert approached.
One laughed under his breath.
Another tracked
Jup’s movement with a cold, measuring stare, the kind of look that didn’t acknowledge a person so much as assess the value of a target.
“Don’t look at them, ” Jup muttered.
“I’m not, ” Robert said immediately, while looking directly at them.
“I’m just saying, if staring was a profession, those dudes would be rich. ”
Jup said nothing.
He didn’t have to.
He could feel the weight of their attention.
In this district, certain corners weren’t just places.
They were questions waiting for somebody to give the wrong answer.
Robert lowered his voice as they put some distance between themselves and the pharmacy.
“They’ve been out more lately. ” Jup stayed quiet.
“My cousin says they’re pushing harder now. Younger kids. Money, rides, protection. Same old pitch… just uglier packaging. ”
Protection.
The word people used when they really meant ownership.
Robert glanced up at one of the cameras mounted over the intersection.
“Probably helps if your score sucks. ”
Jup looked at him.
“What?”
“CMAS. EPN. All that. ” Robert waved one hand vaguely, like the whole structure of the world could be brushed aside as easily as homework.
“You score high, people in suits come smiling. You score low, people on corners do. ”
Jup said nothing.
Robert huffed a short laugh.
“Not official policy, obviously.
But tell me I’m wrong.
“The walk home cut through a sector caught in a permanent tug-of-war between rebuilding and surrender.
One block wore clean glass and fresh paint like a desperate suit.
The next carried scorch marks above shattered windows, and walls patched so many times they looked stitched together.
A mural burst across the side of an old apartment building in bright color, though a black tag had already claimed one corner of it.
Overhead, a security drone drifted across the intersection, its rotors quiet enough to ignore if you didn’t know what to listen for.
Robert noticed it anyway.
“Creepy. ”
“They’re everywhere now, ” Jup said.
“Yeah, ” Robert muttered, still watching it.
“But that one looked at you like it knew your middle ” name.
Jup didn’t answer.
Not because he thought it meant something.
Because of what it would mean if it did.
They passed beneath a narrow storefront display cycling through district notices and ads.
One line held long enough to read.
CIVIC-MILITARY APTITUDE SCREENING — STUDENT
EVALUATION WINDOWS OPEN NEXT MONTH.
The next line followed right after it.
PLACEMENT ACCESS PRIORITIZED BY VERIFIED INDEX.
Robert clicked his tongue.
“See? That. ”
Jup kept walking.
Robert kept talking.
“Whole city’s obsessed with getting measured now. Like a number’s supposed to explain what kind of life you’re allowed to have. ”
“You talk like you care, ” Jup said.
“I talk like I know people who do. ” Robert glanced back at the display.
“My aunt checked my cousin’s index more than she checked whether he was eating. He hit B-band once and she talked about him like he’d been chosen by God. ”
Jup looked at him.
“Was he?”
Robert snorted.
“No. He got pulled into some training program three sectors over and came back talking like eye contact was beneath him. ”
That almost got a smile out of Jup.
Almost.
They had nearly cleared the block when one of the boys from the pharmacy stepped off the wall and into their path.
He didn’t rush.
Didn’t need to.
He moved with the casual confidence of somebody who had already decided how this was going to go.
Robert slowed.
“Man… come on. ”
The boy ignored him.
His eyes locked on Jup.
“You in a rush?”
Jup stopped just inches away.
“Move. ”
The boy smiled.
Thin.
Jagged.
“Or what?”
He reached out and caught the strap of Jup’s bag.
Didn’t pull.
Didn’t need to.
The threat was clear enough in the touch.
Jup didn’t raise his voice.
Didn’t square his shoulders.
He simply moved.
His hand closed around the boy’s wrist—not crushing, not dramatic, just precise.
At the same time, Jup shifted slightly off-center and turned his shoulder just enough to break the boy’s balance.
That was all it took.
For one second, the grip on the strap tightened.
Then the shape of the stance failed.
The boy had to stumble and turn just to stay upright.
It wasn’t a shove.
Wasn’t a strike.
Jup just moved through the space the boy had tried to occupy like it had never belonged to him.Behind them, the boy recovered quickly.
But the damage was done.
The quiet laughter from his friends made sure of that.
Robert caught up, blinking fast.
“Did you just— ”
“No. ”
“You definitely did something. ”
“I walked. ”
Robert looked back once, then forward again, and a grin spread slowly across his face.
“You’re getting weird, man. ”
Jup didn’t answer.
But a quiet satisfaction settled in his chest—not pride, not heat, just the cool relief of a problem solved cleanly.
They walked another block before Robert spoke again.
“You think they know?”
“Know what?”
“That you broke Marcus’s pride yesterday. ”
“I didn’t break anything. ”
Robert snorted.
“Man, if you hit somebody in front of the right people, you break something. ” He glanced sideways at Jup.
“Marcus probably loves that system stuff too. ”
Jup frowned.
“What system stuff?”
“Scores. Ranking bands. Placement tracks. All that official future nonsense. ” Robert shrugged.
“Guys like him always act like one clean number means they were born important. ”
Jup looked ahead.
“Maybe he just likes hearing himself talk. ”
“That too. ”
They reached the split where Robert’s street branched off from Jup’s.
Robert clapped a hand
“Saturday. ” onto his shoulder.
“What about it?”
“Don’t do that. ”
“Do what?”
“That thing where you act like you forgot because you’re hoping I’ll stop talking. ”
“I don’t know what you mean. ”
“See? Exactly that. ” Robert pointed at him.
“Saturday. You’re coming with me. ”
“To do what?”
“You’ll see. ”
“That sounds like a trap. ”
“It’s not a trap. It’s barely even illegal. ”
Jup looked at him.
“Barely?”
“Not the point.
” “The point is, you need to leave your room and interact with living people before you turn into one of your machines.
”
“I like my machines. ”
“Yeah, and I’m sure they like you. That’s the problem. ”
Robert turned and started jogging backward down the sidewalk.
“Be ready!”
“I didn’t say yes!”
“Your face did!”
“My face said no!”
“Your face can’t be trusted!”Jup watched him go, but the smile faded quickly.
Something in the air behind Robert’s retreating