The class after history began with somebody Jup had never seen before standing beside the teacher’s desk.
That alone was enough to wake Robert up.
The girl wore the same Phoenix Academy uniform as everyone else, but somehow looked less trapped inside it.
Dark hair fell neatly past her shoulders, and she stood beneath the attention of an entire classroom without fidgeting once.
“This is Elizabeth Moral,” the teacher said.
“She transferred into Phoenix Academy this morning, so try to give her at least one day before convincing her she made a mistake.”
A few students laughed.
Robert leaned toward Jup.
“Moral. Like Mayor Moral?”
Jup looked toward the front again.
Apparently everyone else had made the connection too.
Whispers moved between desks.
Then Liz’s comm band flashed.
A-TIER.
Robert stared.
“Mayor’s daughter. A-tier. Sector Seven.”
“You’re saying words I can also see.”
“I’m saying those words don’t belong together.”
That part Jup couldn’t argue with.
Most A-tier students were pulled toward schools with better equipment, better placement pipelines, and ceilings where all the panels matched.
Someone with Liz Moral’s name had even less reason to end up at Phoenix.
The teacher pointed toward an empty desk.
Liz crossed the room.
A boy near the aisle shifted his bag too late, leaving the strap in her path.
She stopped, straightened it out of the walkway, then continued without looking at him.
Jup noticed her eyes pass over him, then return, briefly.
Robert noticed that too.
“Oh, no.”
Jup looked at him.
“What?”
“I’m respecting your privacy.”
“You don’t respect anybody’s privacy.”
“That’s how serious this is.”
Jup ignored him.
By the time the bell rang, he had almost convinced himself the transfer was none of his concern.
Then Liz stopped beside his desk.
“You’re the Unranked one.”
Robert looked up.
“Damn. Hello to you too.”
Jup studied her.
Most people said Unranked like an insult or a diagnosis.
Liz said it like a fact.
“Most people make it sound worse.”
“I didn’t.”
“No.”
Her gaze stayed on him.
“Most people don’t know what it means.”
Jup paused.
Neither did he.
Before he could ask, Liz turned and joined the students heading toward lunch.
Robert waited until she was out of range.
“Okay.”
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
“I was about to say the mayor’s A-tier daughter walked past thirty people to tell you your mystery classification means something.”
“That was significantly more than nothing.”
Robert slung his bag over one shoulder.
“I contain multitudes.”
They followed the crowd toward the cafeteria.
Jup had barely started eating when the room changed.
The noise didn’t stop.
It thinned.
Heads turned toward the entrance.
Marcus walked through the doors.
Yesterday’s bruise had darkened across his cheek.
Two older boys followed him.
One was taller than Marcus, lean and balanced, with a scar running from cheekbone to jaw.
He didn’t scan the room or puff himself up like Marcus’s crew usually did.
He simply walked.
Robert stopped chewing.
“That’s Darnell.”
“Friend of yours?”
“Blue Saints.”
“So no.”
“Very no.”
Marcus came straight to their table.
Darnell followed several steps behind while the other boy drifted toward Robert’s side.
Jup set down his fork.
Marcus stopped in front of him.
They looked at the bruises they’d given each other.
Jup leaned back.
“You brought five people.”
A laugh escaped from somewhere nearby.
Marcus’s eyes hardened.
“Still think you’re funny?”
“Sometimes.”
Marcus knocked Jup’s tray from the table, food scattering across the tile.
Robert shoved his chair back.
“Come on, man.”
Jup looked at the mess, then stood.
Marcus shoved him, and Jup gave half a step.
“Sit down.”
“You came to my table.”
Marcus shoved him again, Ki behind it this time.
Jup answered with a short reinforced punch, and Marcus’s head snapped sideways.
The cafeteria erupted.
Marcus came back swinging.
Jup slipped the first shot, caught the second across his forearm, and drove forward hard enough to bounce Marcus against the edge of another table.
Trays jumped.
Students scattered.
Marcus tried to reset.
Jup didn’t let him.
He hooked Marcus’s arm, turned him, and slammed him shoulder-first into a chair.
That was when Darnell stepped in — not because Marcus called him, but because Marcus was losing.
Darnell caught Jup by the shoulder and pulled him away before he could follow.
Jup turned with the grip and threw immediately.
Darnell leaned outside the punch.
Jup felt Ki gather through his right side — shoulder loaded, weight shifted, right hand coming.
Jup moved to beat it.
Darnell never threw.
The Ki vanished from the right and snapped left.
The reinforced left buried itself beneath Jup’s ribs, and pain folded him.
Jup stumbled away, more annoyed by the mistake than the hit.
Darnell had shown him exactly what he expected to read and changed it after Jup committed.
Marcus moved forward again.
Darnell put one arm across his chest without looking back.
“I got him.”
Marcus stopped.
That bothered Jup almost as much as the punch — Marcus listened.
Darnell faced him again.
Jup straightened.
“That trick usually work twice?”
Darnell’s mouth moved slightly.
“You tell me.”
He came forward.
This time Jup ignored the Ki and watched his feet instead.
The older boy shifted right.
Jup stepped left before the feint finished and drove a palm toward his jaw.
Darnell brought his forearm up, but a fraction late.
Jup’s reinforced strike clipped him clean enough to turn his head.
Darnell took one step back, surprise showing on his face.
Jup smiled despite the pain in his ribs.
“There.”
Darnell touched the corner of his mouth with his thumb.
Then he smiled too.
It wasn’t friendly.
He came back differently — no obvious load, no clean rhythm to follow.
Darnell shortened everything: small steps, tighter shoulders, Ki appearing only once the movement was already underway.
Jup blocked the first punch, slipped the second.
The third drove into his upper arm.
He answered with a hook.
Darnell ducked it.
Jup followed with a reinforced knee toward the body.
Darnell twisted aside, but the strike caught enough hip to move him.
Robert shouted somewhere behind them.
Jup glanced — bad decision.
The second Saint had Robert bent across a table, one arm trapped behind him.
Jup broke away from Darnell.
He crossed the distance and drove his shoulder into the Saint hard enough to knock him loose.
“Move,” Jup snapped.
Robert stumbled free.
“Working on it!”
Darnell was already behind him.
Jup felt the incoming strike and reinforced his ribs — nothing hit them.
Darnell’s fist cracked across the side of his head instead.
Jup staggered into a table.
Darnell had seen where he braced.
Jup looked up.
That changed the fight again — Jup couldn’t simply read him anymore.
Now Darnell was reading Jup back.
Darnell stepped in.
Jup flooded Ki through his right arm as if preparing to cover high, and Darnell’s attention shifted.
Jup dropped the reinforcement at the last instant, drove it through his left leg, and kicked low.
His shin caught Darnell above the ankle, and the older boy’s stance broke.
Jup surged forward and drove a Ki-backed fist into his ribs.
Darnell grunted — a real one.
Jup followed with another punch.
Darnell caught his wrist.
Irritation flashed across his face — something that hadn’t shown once until now.
Darnell’s Ki locked through his stance.
He planted, turned, and sent Jup over the edge of a table with his own momentum.
Jup hit the floor hard enough to lose his breath.
Darnell followed.
Jup rolled before the knee came down and got one foot beneath himself, almost upright before Darnell struck him across the shoulder.
Jup answered with an elbow.
Darnell blocked.
Jup reinforced high; Darnell went low.
Jup shifted; Darnell changed again.
Jup could move his Ki where he needed it.
Darnell could change where he needed it faster.
A punch rattled Jup’s jaw.
He covered, but Darnell hit his ribs, and Jup dropped reinforcement toward the pain.
Darnell’s next shot clipped his temple, and the room blurred at the edges.
Jup swung anyway.
Darnell slipped outside it, hooked an arm behind Jup’s shoulder, and dragged him down.
Jup hit the tile on his back, and Darnell came over him with one knee across his chest.
Jup shoved against it.
Darnell barely moved.
Then his fist twisted into Jup’s shirt, and their eyes met.
Something changed.
The next punch never came.
A pulse moved beneath Darnell’s hand, and Jup went still.
Not Ki.
Nothing moved through the familiar pathways.
A second pulse answered before the first had fully faded — separate, overlapping, exactly like Crawford’s screen.
Darnell’s grip changed — he felt it.
Jup knew he did because every trace of confidence left his face.
Darnell stared at his own hand, then at Jup.
Another rhythm moved beneath his grip, and his pupils widened.
Across the cafeteria, Liz stood beside her abandoned table.
Everyone else had recoiled from the fight.
She hadn’t.
Her attention had locked onto Darnell’s face.
Nia had gone still too.
Darnell loosened his grip by a fraction.
“What are you?”
His voice came out low, unsteady.
Jup’s stomach dropped.
Darnell had just proven he was better.
Better control.
Better timing.
Better at changing where his Ki went before Jup could answer it.
And now he looked afraid, which was worse than losing.
Jup understood anger, understood somebody wanting to hurt him.
Fear from the person who had just put him on the floor was something else.
“What are you?” Darnell asked again.
Jup had no answer.
A teacher shouted from across the room, and Darnell flinched like he’d forgotten anyone else existed.
Then the cafeteria exploded back into motion.
Staff grabbed Marcus first.
Two teachers pulled the other Saint away from Robert.
Someone caught Darnell beneath both arms and dragged him off Jup.
He didn’t resist.
He kept staring.
Jup sat up slowly.
Breathing hurt, his jaw throbbed, blood ran warm from his nose — those things made sense.
Above them, a cafeteria lens turned downward.
INCIDENT FLAGGED.
“Principal’s office,” a teacher shouted.
“All of you. Now.”
Jup got to his feet, swaying before his balance steadied.
Darnell still wasn’t looking at the teachers holding him.
Only Jup.
Liz’s attention moved between them, and there was no surprise in her expression.
That bothered him too.
Jup wiped the blood beneath his nose and followed the teacher toward the doors.
The scanner had found two rhythms; now Darnell had felt them.
Jup’s ribs would make sense tomorrow.
The rest of it wouldn’t.