Morning.
Godolkin University student housing.
A thread of gold light pushed in through the gap in the drawn curtains.
The room, which had been dark all night, slowly brightened.
Scattered across the floor: a very short skirt, thigh-high boots, and items of clothing that left no particular ambiguity about how the previous night had gone.
Something soft tickled at his nose and neck.
Los opened his eyes to find Cate draped across his chest in her white button-down, curled like a cat, fast asleep.
The gold hair had spread loose across the pillow, filling it with a faint scent, a few strands resting against his face and neck.
He looked at her for a moment.
She had the worn-out, unguarded look of someone who had completely run out of energy.
Six hours had almost not been enough.
In the end, it had taken a fair amount of persuasion to arrive at a workable arrangement.
Los had been straightforward with her: he wasn’t in a position to pursue a relationship right now, but he had started a company, and if Cate wanted, she could come on as his secretary.
She had agreed.
With that settled, every piece of the plan to take over Godolkin was now in place.
Los moved the sleeping Cate off his chest, got out of bed, and took a change of clothes into the bathroom.
He was toweling his hair dry when knocking came from the dorm door.
He ran a quick scan with his X-ray Vision.
Jordan.
Back from home already.
Jordan knew exactly what had been going on in the dorm.
Coming back this fast meant something had happened.
Los felt alert and focused, the rest having done its job cleanly.
He opened the door a crack.
“Get out here.” Jordan, in her female form, stayed in the hallway and kept her voice low.
“What happened?”
Los stepped out and looked at her.
Her expression was serious.
Jordan took a breath.
“I just saw Anderson on campus.”
“And?”
Los leaned against the closed door, keeping his face neutral.
Anderson had been badly injured less than a week ago.
He should still have been in the hospital.
“He was in a wheelchair.
Golden Boy was with him.
They went into Professor Brinkerhoff’s office.”
Jordan’s brow stayed tight.
“I can’t shake the feeling it’s about you.”
“Professor Brinkerhoff.”
Los said the name quietly to himself.
Brinkerhoff ran the Lamplighter crime-fighting program.
His authority within Godolkin’s structure sat above even Dean Shetty’s.
Anderson, still recovering from serious injuries, going to see Brinkerhoff.
The dorm door opened behind him.
Cate had heard them and woken up.
She had dressed in the skirt and shirt from the night before and looked out at Los and Jordan in the hallway.
“What’s going on?”
“Come inside.”
The three of them went back into the room and closed the door.
Cate settled on Los’s bed.
Jordan took her own.
A brief, quiet discussion.
“Do you want me to make contact with Anderson?
I could use my ability to confirm what he’s thinking.”
Cate’s expression was genuinely worried.
Since the previous night, her thinking had shifted toward what was good for Los.
Los sat in the desk chair, tapping the surface with his fingers, and shook his head.
“Not necessary.”
“Whatever Anderson’s thinking, the fact that he went to the professor means he wants institutional backup.
The question isn’t what Anderson wants to do.
The question is how the school is going to look at me.”
He started working through the worst scenarios.
Anderson alone couldn’t cause much real damage.
But if the school administration moved against him, the situation was different.
Godolkin wasn’t just an unusual university with doctors and security staff and scientists on the payroll.
Behind all of that was Vought International.
The countermove was already forming in the back of his mind.
Noon.
Los, Cate, and Jordan were in the middle of lunch at the dining hall when an unexpected figure approached the table.
“Golden Boy?”
Jordan stared at the good-looking student who had walked directly over to them.
This was the school’s number-one ranked student, who had been pushing Anderson’s wheelchair into Brinkerhoff’s office that same morning.
“Good afternoon.
Jordan.
Cate.”
Golden Boy’s gaze paused briefly on Cate.
“Golden Boy.
I’m with Los now.”
Cate wrapped her hand lightly around Los’s arm, and her voice was direct.
“I hope we can still be friends, the same as before.”
“Understood.”
Golden Boy nodded, then looked at the figure beside Cate.
“Los.
I actually came specifically to find you.”
“Oh?” Los looked up, genuinely surprised.
Golden Boy exhaled.
Something moved across his expression, like he was working through something he hadn’t decided on yet.
“I couldn’t stop Anderson.
He went to Professor Brinkerhoff and laid out a case that your ability is unstable and potentially dangerous, with the nature of matter conversion as the framing.”
“He brought in his own injuries and his missing legs and used all of it to push for serious disciplinary action against you from the school.” This chapter was taken from novelping(.)com without permission.
Golden Boy shook his head.
“You’re all classmates.
It shouldn’t have gotten here.” He gave what sounded like a genuine warning to watch himself, then turned and left.
Jordan watched him go.
“Didn’t expect that from Golden Boy.”
“It’s a decent thing to do,” Los said, with a slight shake of his head.
“Not entirely.”
He had no ability to read minds.
But through his X-ray Vision, watching someone’s heart rate and circulation during a conversation told him quite a bit.
Outside the dining hall at that moment, Golden Boy stepped into the sunlight and let out a quiet breath.
Sorry, Andre.
He clenched his fist, something fixed in his eyes, and said under his breath: “I’ll get you out of there soon.”
After lunch.
The three of them walked back to the dorm.
Los opened his laptop and turned it toward Cate and Jordan.
Both of them started out confused.
Their faces changed quickly.
The footage on screen was surveillance from a subterranean laboratory facility.
In more than twenty isolated lab rooms, researchers in white coats were performing procedures on young men and women.
The equipment on the tables had nothing to do with medicine.
What made it worse, what sent the cold down their necks, was that some of the young faces strapped to those tables were familiar.
Students who had quietly been reported as having withdrawn from Godolkin.
They were still here.
And at the end of the footage, walking into one of the labs in a white coat over his usual tailored suit, was Professor Brinkerhoff.
“This laboratory is directly underneath us.
Under the residential building.”
Los pointed at the floor and said it plainly.
“This is what Godolkin University actually is.”
Cate and Jordan both went still.
It took a long moment before either of them could respond.
“How dare they.” Cate’s jaw was tight, her whole body shaking with it.
Jordan held her poker face and looked at Los steadily.
“Do we take this public?
Release it outside the school?”
“That won’t work.”
Los shook his head.
“Vought International owns Godolkin.
The media sits on the same side as the money.”
“What about alerting The Seven?”
Cate got halfway through the sentence and stopped herself.
She had just remembered.
The Seven, the team the entire country was sold as their heroic protectors, was the most profitable product Vought International had ever built.
The crown jewel of the whole operation.