Back in the dorm room, on Los’s bed.
Cate pushed the covers aside and straightened her slightly disheveled clothes.
With her face still flushed from sleep, she genuinely looked like someone who had just finished something she hadn’t.
Jordan, in her female form, pulled Los quickly into the corner of the room.
Her eyes were bright.
She shot a glance at Cate, dropped her voice, and asked with barely contained excitement:
“Los.
Tell me everything.
How did you get Cate in a single day?”
It wasn’t jealousy and it wasn’t envy.
It was pure, burning curiosity.
From where Jordan stood, Cate was someone completely out of most people’s reach, a high-and-distant type, and a dangerous manipulator underneath the beauty.
Without cracking the top ten rankings, you normally wouldn’t even get her attention.
Did her roommate have some unusual quality she hadn’t noticed?
Jordan was giving Los a very thorough look at close range, her gaze drifting downward before she caught herself.
“You’re reading this completely wrong.”
Los pushed her face back to a reasonable distance, genuinely surprised that someone who wore a poker face all day turned out to have this kind of gossip energy underneath.
Then again, he couldn’t really blame her.
Posted on any campus forum, this would have been the top trending story by morning.
“This morning I found Rufus using his ability to knock Cate unconscious,” Los explained.
“After I dealt with Rufus, I didn’t know where Cate’s room was, so I just brought her here.”
“Oh.”
Jordan’s expression cleared, then immediately shifted into something like disgust as she mimed gagging.
“That piece of garbage.
I’m reporting him to the dean.”
Los shook his head.
“There’s no need for that anymore.”
“Why not?”
Jordan looked at him, puzzled.
On the bed, Cate had pushed herself upright and was watching Los with the same question in her eyes.
After waking up in Los’s bed, Cate had worked backward through her last clear memories and fairly quickly concluded that Los was the one who had pulled her out of Rufus’s room.
What had happened to Rufus after that, she had no idea.
“He’s dead,” Los said.
“Dead?”
Jordan’s eyes went wide.
She covered her mouth.
“God.
You killed Rufus?”
Cate’s expression was unreadable, something moving behind her eyes that was hard to place.
“No.
Homelander killed Rufus.”
He left out the conversation he and Homelander had actually had.
He spread his hands at the end of it.
“You really think if I had killed Rufus, the school would have buried it for me?”
Godolkin tolerated a high-pressure competitive environment, but a student-on-student killing would result in expulsion at minimum.
Jordan let out a breath on Los’s behalf, then said with satisfaction:
“Good riddance.
Homelander cleared out a major pest for us.”
Cate pulled on her thigh-high boots and stood, turning to Los with a formal bow of her head.
“Whatever the details, you’re the one who saved me.
Thank you again for stepping in.”
“You deserved to be saved, didn’t you.” Los smiled slightly.
He had taken a serious risk by going in after Rufus and making an enemy of him.
It wasn’t a simple rescue-the-pretty-girl situation.
Taking control of Godolkin was the actual goal, and Cate’s ability was a critical piece of that plan.
Los’s interest in Cate’s ability was entirely undisguised.
To Cate and Jordan, who had no context for that, it read as exactly the kind of attention men typically directed at someone who looked like she did.
Boot heels on the floor, Cate stepped toward him.
Her eyes held Los’s reflection as she looked directly at him.
“You have to come to the freshman social I’m putting together this weekend.
I’ll buy you a proper drink and thank you for today, the rescue and the lunch both.”
“If I’m free, I’ll be there,” Los said without hesitation.
Jordan rolled her eyes nearby.
These two, using her money and her room to be insufferable about it.
Though, looking at how this was developing, her roommate might actually be pulling this off.
He might genuinely be getting the campus sweetheart.
She was already looking forward to the weekend.
Three days later.
Saturday night.
A deep, dense darkness had settled over the campus.
Jordan pushed the dorm door open and found Los sitting in his desk chair, turning three small metal balls in his hand, the material of each one impossible to identify at a glance.
“Los, you didn’t forget, did you?
Cate’s social is tonight.”
Los shrugged.
“Haven’t forgotten.
I’m already ready.”
“That’s what you’re wearing to a party?”
Jordan stared at the cartoon T-shirt and the no-brand casual pants that had probably cost less than ten dollars.
She herself was in an expensive Italian suit, cut with a slight androgynous lean, hair slicked back, completely put together.
“I just showered.” Los smiled with full confidence, as if this was the absolute peak of what a man could do to prepare for a social event.
Jordan put a hand to her forehead.
She had almost forgotten.
Los was currently so broke that she was covering his meals. Get faster updates on novelping.com.
She turned to her wardrobe and started pulling things out.
“I’m lending you one of my new men’s outfits, come on.”
Los shook his head and turned her down.
He stood, gave her shoulder a pat, and moved toward the door.
“No need, let’s just go.
Also, I should be able to pay you back tomorrow.”
“You found a way to make money?” Jordan’s expression shifted to something complicated.
“You’re not going to be a male exotic dancer at a club, are you?
Because I would absolutely throw money at that.”
“Get out of here.”
Los flipped her off without turning around.
She had that completely composed poker face all day, and then this was what was happening underneath it the whole time.
Besides, it wasn’t that he’d found a way to make money.
It was more like he’d found a way to print it.
Los looked down at the metal balls turning in his palm, their luster shifting.
Unlike most universities, Godolkin had a lights-out policy even on weekends: students weren’t technically permitted to leave campus late at night.
That rule meant approximately nothing to a building full of supes.
Night campus.
A stretch of exterior wall.
“I’ll get you over.” Jordan raised her left hand toward Los and pushed.
Los nodded, and an invisible energy burst expanded from Jordan’s palm, lifting him cleanly off the ground and up to the top of the wall without any drama.
Then Jordan switched to her male form and cleared the three-meter wall in a single easy jump.
After a few days of living together, Los had a complete picture of his roommate’s abilities.
In female form: energy shockwaves, better suited for ranged combat.
In male form: substantially enhanced strength and physical resilience, suited for close-range fighting.
What he also knew, because they had become actual friends by this point, was something much more personal.
Jordan had been born female.
As a young child, her parents had injected her with Compound V, wanting a son from a daughter they had.
The result was her current intersex biology.
The defiant response to that, ever since, was to spend most of her time presenting as female by choice.
Friends, to be clear, not the zero-distance kind she had offered on the first night.
The two of them left the school grounds and arrived at a bar not far from campus.
From the moment they walked in, Jordan stayed in male form, and leaned toward Los with a quiet word:
“Watch yourself in here.
If something comes up, find me.”
Los frowned slightly.
“It’s a freshman mixer.
What’s there to watch out for?”
Jordan shook her head.
“That’s not really up to you.”