The next afternoon, school let out with the weary groan of old hinges and dragging feet.
Doors banged open.
Voices spilled into the street in uneven waves, heat rising off the cracked pavement as students poured toward food carts, transit stops, and whatever parts of the city were willing to take them back.
Jup slung his bag over one shoulder and descended the stairs without turning back.
Three steps from the bottom, someone called his name.
“Yo, Jup. Hold up.”
Robert jogged through the crowd to catch him, pale and messy-haired, his bright green eyes carrying the look of someone who had either just gotten away with something or was about to try.
He slowed beside Jup, gave him one quick up-and-down, then stopped walking completely.
Jup took two more steps before realizing Robert wasn’t beside him.
“What?”
Robert pointed at him.
“Nah.”
“That’s not a sentence.”
“It is when the situation is offensive.”
“What situation?”
Robert walked up and tugged lightly at the sleeve of Jup’s jacket, then checked where the fabric sat too high on his wrist.
His eyes moved to Jup’s shoulders next, then his face, then his height.
“Bro, Mark’s clothes are fighting for their life right now.”
Jup pulled his arm back.
“Don’t touch my sleeve.”
“That’s not your sleeve. That sleeve belongs to your brother.”
Jup started walking again.
“I’m about to do a few jobs anyway.”
“Jobs?”
“Repair jobs.”
“For food?”
“Clothes.”
Robert looked him over again, more dramatic this time.
“Yeah, because those are definitely Mark’s.”
“They’re hand-me-downs.”
Robert shook his head.
“No. Hand-me-downs go down. Those are hand-me-ups now.”
A faint smile touched Jup’s mouth before he could stop it.
“You spent all day working on that?”
“No, that came naturally. Which makes it worse for you.”
“I’m devastated.”
“You should be. Also, when did your growth spurt decide to commit a crime?”
Jup kept his focus ahead.
“Recently.”
“Recently like yesterday recently?”
Jup’s jaw tightened for half a second.
Robert caught it because Robert caught things he pretended not to notice.
The joke faded, though not completely.
“Speaking of upgrades,” Robert said, lowering his voice, “I saw the boards.”
Jup didn’t answer.
Robert waited one step, then two.
When Jup gave him nothing, he leaned closer.
“Unranked?”
“Apparently I disappointed the machine.”
Robert stared at him.
“Jup, if you disappointed the machine, I need to start preparing for a life under a bridge.”
“You’d decorate the bridge.”
“I’d make it tasteful.”
“You’d steal furniture.”
Robert put one hand to his chest.
“Found furniture.”
“That’s what people say when they don’t want to explain why it still has somebody’s name on it.”
“First of all, names are temporary. Second of all, don’t deflect.” Robert’s grin weakened around the edges.
“Unranked is crazy. Actually crazy. You know that, right?”
Jup adjusted the strap of his bag.
“People keep saying that.”
“Because it is.” Robert kicked a pebble ahead of them and watched it skip over broken pavement.
“People drop one tier and act like their life ended. Marcus looked like somebody repossessed his soul. But you? The system didn’t even know what to call you.”
Jup glanced at him.
“You practicing speeches now?”
“No. I’m trying to tell you something without sounding like my aunt.”
They rounded the corner past 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.
One laughed under his breath.
Another tracked Jup with a cold, measuring stare, assessing him the way people measured targets.
“Don’t look at them,” Jup said.
“I’m not,” Robert said immediately, while looking directly at them.
“I’m just saying, if staring was a job, those dudes would have retirement plans.”
Jup didn’t answer.
Their attention shifted over him, measuring the new height, the tighter jacket, the way his body had stopped asking the ground for permission.
In Sector Seven, certain corners weren’t only places.
They were questions waiting for someone to give the wrong answer.
Robert lowered his voice once they had moved farther down the block.
“They’ve been out more lately.”
Jup stayed silent.
“My cousin says crews are pushing harder now. Younger kids. Money, rides, protection. Same old pitch, uglier packaging.”
Protection.
The word people used when they meant ownership.
Robert looked up at a camera mounted over the intersection.
“Probably helps if your score sucks.”
“What?”
“CMAS. Rankings. All that.” Robert waved one hand, like the entire structure of the city could be brushed away as easily as homework.
“You score high, people in suits show up smiling. You score low, people on corners do.”
Jup looked back toward the pharmacy.
One of the boys still watched them.
“That’s not official.”
“No kidding. Officially, everything is safe, fair, and improving.” Robert gave him a sideways look.
“Unofficially, tell me I’m wrong.”
Jup couldn’t.
The walk home cut through blocks that could not decide whether they were rebuilding or giving up.
Fresh glass sat two doors down from scorch marks, and patched walls carried new paint over old damage.
Overhead, a security drone drifted across the intersection, quiet enough to ignore if you had not learned what to listen for.
Robert noticed it anyway.
“Creepy.”
“They’re everywhere now.”
“Yeah,” Robert said, tracking the drone, “but that one looked at you like it knew your middle name.”
Jup left that alone.
The joke sat too close to possibility.
Robert clicked his tongue.
“Whole city acts like a number is supposed to decide what kind of life you’re allowed to have.”
“You talk like you don’t care.”
“I talk like I know people who do.” Robert glanced toward the street ahead.
“My cousin hit B-tier once and came back from training three sectors over talking like eye contact was beneath him.”
That almost got a laugh out of Jup.
Almost.
They passed beneath a storefront display cycling district notices.
CIVIC-MILITARY APTITUDE SCREENING — STUDENT EVALUATION WINDOWS ACTIVE
PLACEMENT ACCESS PRIORITIZED BY VERIFIED INDEX
Robert looked up at the display and gave a small, humorless nod.
“See? That’s what I mean.”
They cut across the old basketball court because it shaved five minutes off the route and because Robert always claimed walking around it was “letting the city win.” They had used the shortcut often enough for it to become habit, which meant enough people had probably seen them do it.
Today, the court was empty.
The difference reached Jup before the fence stopped rattling behind them.
At the edge stood an old civic scanner post, its display panel cracked and one corner permanently dark.
A faint strip of light still pulsed across it in weak intervals, as if the machine hadn’t realized nobody respected it anymore.
Triōhnah spoke into his awareness.
“Threat pattern forming.”
Where?
“Ahead.”
That’s not helpful.
“It will be shortly.”
Robert slowed.
“Ay, Jup.”
Jup already felt it.
The city was never truly silent, but the court held its noise back.
Their shoes scraped too loud.
Chain-link metal clicked once in the heat.
Somewhere nearby, a vehicle passed without turning onto their block.
Then six older teens stepped out from behind the far end of the rusted fence.
Blue bands showed on their jackets.
One of the smaller crews, which only meant they had more to prove.
Marcus walked at the front.
He had already decided someone was going to pay for the way people looked at him now.
Even from a distance, he looked different from the version he wore in school.
Same face.
Different weight behind it.
Out here, his hallway smirk was gone, leaving something flatter and meaner in its place.
He spread his arms like he owned the court.
“Well, well, well. Look who finally stepped outside the cameras.”
It didn’t sound like a teenager showing off.
It sounded like somebody stepping into a role he had already practiced.
Robert tensed beside Jup.
“We don’t want trouble.”
Marcus barely looked at him.
“Then he should’ve kept his little hero act indoors.”
The crew widened out, easy and unhurried, cutting off both exits with the kind of confidence that said they had done this before.
Jup counted automatically.
Six bodies.
Two exits blocked.
Too many angles for this to stay clean if they all came at once.
One of the boys tapped the chain-link fence with the back of his hand.
The metal rattled once in the heat.
Another laughed under his breath, low and comfortable, already believing the ending belonged to them.
Marcus took another slow step forward, close enough to make the space feel smaller.
“You always do this?” he asked.
Jup said nothing.
“Walk around like nobody can touch you?”
Robert shifted beside him.
“We said we don’t want trouble.”
Marcus smiled without looking at him.
“That’s the thing. You keep saying that like it matters.” His eyes flicked toward the old scanner post at the edge of the fence, then returned to Jup.
“They dropped me in front of everybody. B-tier to C.”
Jup understood then.
This wasn’t only revenge.
It was correction.
Marcus’s voice lowered.
“Everybody saw me fall. So everybody’s gonna see who I step over next.”
Robert let out a short, uneasy breath.
“Man…”
Triōhnah spoke with clinical timing.
“Conflict probability is ninety-nine percent.”
You waited a long time to tell me that.
“I was hoping one of you would make a better decision.”
Jup met Marcus’s eyes.
“Are you done talking?”
Marcus blinked.
“What?”
Jup didn’t move.
“I said—are you done talking?”