Godolkin University.
The dining hall.
Two women sitting together for a meal had drawn more than a few heads turning their way.
One of them was bright-faced and warm, in a beautiful flowing dress.
The other had her usual poker face and was dressed in a sharp, androgynous suit.
Cate and Jordan, in her female form.
“A lot of people are looking over here,” Jordan noted.
“Not at me.” Cate shook her head with complete self-awareness.
“Mostly because of Los.
I’m his rumored girlfriend at this point.”
Jordan couldn’t argue with that.
Her roommate had gone back-to-back, crushing wins over eighteenth and sixth in the same day, and shot from 383rd to third in the school rankings.
All in one afternoon.
School history.
A legend in his first year.
If anything, Los had more standing and pull on campus right now than Golden Boy, who held the top rank.
There had been a time, not long ago, when students had started paying attention to Los because Cate was interested in him.
Now it was completely the other way around.
Cate was drawing attention because of Los.
That was what real strength and personal presence could do.
Cate propped her chin in her hand and stirred her orange juice with the straw, like the question had just occurred to her.
“Speaking of which.
Where has Los been?
I haven’t seen him come to the dining hall with you in a while.”
“He’s been locked in the dorm room.
Something he’s building, I have no idea what.
He’s had me bring back packed lunches and dinners every day.”
Jordan paused.
She looked at Cate on the other side of the table, who had been visibly distracted since she sat down, and worked out what was actually happening.
Cate hadn’t come to have lunch with her.
She had come specifically to find out what Los was up to.
Jordan found this slightly unnecessary.
“You have his number.
Why not just message him directly, or ask him out?”
Cate shook her head and tucked a strand of gold hair back, showing a pale earlobe.
A small knowing smile.
“When a man is in the middle of something, a woman does better to stay out of his way.”
Jordan looked at Cate and suddenly understood, with new clarity, why her own female form was so much less popular on campus than the woman sitting across from her.
The face and the height qualified Cate as the kind of person who could front any fashion magazine.
She looked like the American sweetheart of the entire country.
But underneath that, she understood men in a way that was sharper and more precise than it appeared.
She knew exactly how to make herself felt without being suffocating, how to get close with intent without making it obvious.
No man was going to hold up against that combination.
Jordan was still thinking about it when Cate asked, with a slight edge of real uncertainty in her voice: “Jordan.
If a girl makes the first move, do you think he’d think less of her for it?” This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
Cate was starting to question herself.
The first time Los had saved her, she hadn’t exactly moved him.
She had since made her interest about as obvious as it could reasonably be.
He still hadn’t come to her.
And lately, other girls around school had started paying attention to him, which was making it harder to sit still and wait.
Jordan thought it over.
“If it’s Los, I don’t think he cares who goes first.”
She felt something quietly staggering about the situation.
The girl that every man on campus wanted and couldn’t have was sitting here trying to work out how to make her move.
That roommate of hers.
He really had something going.
Jordan was increasingly curious about what Los was planning and where it was all heading.
“Los.”
Jordan pushed the dorm door open with her elbow, takeout bag of beef burgers in hand, and walked in.
Every window was shut.
The desk had been completely transformed into a workbench.
Mechanical equipment and tools covered every surface.
Wiring and components ran across the walls and ceiling in dense, deliberate patterns, turning the dorm room into what looked like a small specialized workshop.
Jordan had gotten used to it over the past week.
Los had started the full conversion of the room about seven days ago.
But this time, something was different from the usual state of things.
“You’re back.
You don’t have to announce it.”
Los stood up from the desk chair and came forward to take the beef burgers from her, pulling the door shut behind her as he did.
“What is that?”
Jordan stared at the workbench.
The desk lamp was on, but there was another light in the room entirely.
A sharp, mysterious white light pulsing at the center of the workbench, brilliant enough to compete with the lamp: something that looked like condensed energy, contained inside a metallic ring housing, glowing and concentrated.
“The Arc Reactor.
First version.”
Los said it while taking a bite of the burger, like he was describing something he had picked up at the campus store.
“Los.
I’m not joking around.” Jordan’s eyes went wide.
This was more shocking than the gold had been, both visually and in some deeper way she couldn’t quite name.
Her female form could generate and release energy, which meant she was genuinely sensitive to it.
She could feel what was coming off that small housing, less than the width of a palm, from where she was standing.
The output was extraordinary.
Los let himself smile at her reaction.
This was only the first version, running on palladium.
If he could eventually synthesize the new element that came after palladium, something closer to what the Tesseract suggested was theoretically possible, the post-palladium Arc Reactor would be on a completely different level.
The actual ceiling of what a compact energy source could be.
“That little thing could probably power this entire campus,” Jordan said, still slightly at a loss.
“What are you actually planning to run off it?”
“You’ll see soon enough.”
He looked at her.
“This wouldn’t have come together as fast as it did without you.
Letting me convert the room, sourcing the materials.
I mean that.”
His matter conversion worked most efficiently when the starting material had a molecular structure close to the target.
Converting iron to gold was difficult because the gap between them was too large.
Mercury or platinum to gold moved quickly because the molecular structures were already close.
The same principle applied across everything he had been building.
“We’re friends.
No need to make it formal.” Jordan waved him off.
Then she seemed to remember something and pulled a card from her pocket.
“Here.
An anonymous Wall Street bank account.
Eight and a half million dollars inside.
What was left after selling your gold.”
“Hold onto it for me,” Los said, barely looking at it.
“I’ll ask when I need it.”
“This is eight and a half million.
Dollars.” Jordan raised an eyebrow.
“You’re not worried I’ll just keep it?”
She heard herself say it and almost laughed.
Eight and a half million dollars was a serious amount of money even for a Wall Street heavyweight.
For Los, he could produce gold worth more than that in an afternoon from his dorm room.
And that was before the Arc Reactor, which, if he applied for a patent and put it on the market, would make him the wealthiest person in America without any additional effort.
Some people had completely unfair lives.
Jordan watched Los finish the burger and let out a slightly deflated sigh.
“I feel like your assistant at this point.”
Los took the opening immediately.
“So do you want to be?
Officially.”
Jordan went still.
She met Los’s eyes, and the room went quiet.
She thought back to what he had said before: that there was more than one way to prove yourself to your parents, and that proving it outside the school’s ranking system might be more meaningful than proving it from inside.
Her heart was doing something undignified.
She crossed her arms.
“Fine.
I’m already doing the work anyway.
You’d better pay me.”
“A hundred thousand a month.
Take it from the card yourself.”
Los snapped his fingers, satisfied, and considered his next step.
“Good.
First assignment for my new assistant.”