“Look at this one.”
Los scrolled the surveillance footage back and pointed at a specific lab room.
Inside was a white boy, more heavily guarded than anyone else in any of the other rooms.
Cate and Jordan looked carefully.
Cate went still.
“He looks a lot like Golden Boy.”
“He really does.”
Jordan’s eyes went wide.
She looked at Los sharply.
“Don’t tell me he’s…”
Los finished it for her: “His name is Sam.
He’s Golden Boy’s younger brother.”
He paused, then worked through it: “Golden Boy has known about the lab program called ‘The Woods’ for a while.
He knows his brother Sam is being held underground.”
Cate connected the rest of it.
“He’s trying to get Sam out?”
“Now it makes sense.” Jordan’s voice was flat and certain.
“Los.
When Golden Boy came to warn you at the dining hall, it wasn’t for your sake.
It was about rescuing Sam.”
“He wants you fighting with the school so he can pull his brother out of the lab in the chaos.”
“That’s what I figured.” Los nodded.
Golden Boy had probably worried that the school would move to contain him directly, so he had come to make sure Los was prepared.
Keep Los in the fight and the confusion covered his actual objective.
Jordan exhaled in disgust.
“I actually thought he was being decent.
Came over just to warn you.
Turns out he had his own angle the whole time.”
Cate didn’t say much.
She made a quiet decision.
She and Golden Boy weren’t going to be friends anymore.
Not after this.
Targeting Los now was the same as targeting her.
“So what do we do from here?”
Both of them looked at Los.
Neither of them had to say out loud that he was the one they were following.
“Better to move first than sit here and wait.”
Los pulled the desk drawer open.
A blast of light filled the room, white and sharp as daylight.
The Arc Reactor.
Everyone in this situation had their own objective.
Anderson wanted revenge.
Golden Boy wanted his brother.
The school administration had their own purposes and wanted to use Los as a piece on their board.
Fine.
He was done playing within the frame.
He was going to flip the board entirely.
That thought was still forming when his phone buzzed in his pocket.
He looked at it.
A slight, knowing expression.
“It’s the Dean. This story is hosted at novelping.com.
Indira Shetty.
She wants me to come to her office alone tonight.”
Cate was quick: “I’ll come with you.”
“Absolutely not.” Jordan shook her head, voice serious.
“Los.
Leave the school now.
We can’t win on their ground.”
Los turned down both of them.
Bringing Cate and her mind-manipulation ability to the Dean’s office would announce his intentions before he was ready.
And running: where would he run to?
“Whose ground this is,” Los said quietly, eyes half-closed, “is not quite settled yet.”
He opened his eyes.
The look in them was sharp and precise.
“From here on, follow my lead.”
That evening.
Night settled over Godolkin as it always did, and students drifted back from dinner to their dorms, with curfew approaching.
Los walked alone in the other direction, toward the main building and the Dean’s office.
Out on the athletic field, a figure in a wheelchair watched Los cross toward the building, satisfaction plain on his face.
At the same moment, on the roof of the residential building, a white student watched from a distance with a complicated expression and let out a quiet breath.
To Anderson and Golden Boy both, the campus legend who had risen so fast was going to fall tonight, like a shooting star on its way down.
Knock.
The moment Los’s knuckles hit the door, a sharp, clear response came from inside: “Come in.”
Los pushed the door open.
A large, modern office.
A middle-aged woman in a tailored suit sitting behind the desk.
The current Dean of Godolkin University, Dr.
Shetty, looked back at the student who had just walked in.
Young.
Clean, good-looking, with particularly sharp, alert eyes.
The student who had gone back-to-back in public matches, sat at third in the school rankings, and made himself a permanent entry in the school’s record books.
Dean Shetty smiled.
“Have a seat, Los.”
She let a light, joking note into her voice.
“You’ve become quite popular.
I hear a lot of the female students are after you.”
Los sat down without ceremony, directly across the desk.
“Dean.
It’s late.
What did you need?”
Shetty’s expression adjusted slightly.
The usual approach of building rapport with students, the easy warmth used to put people at ease, was clearly not going to work here.
In that case.
“I wanted to understand your ability.”
She looked straight at him, as if she could see past the surface if she just looked long enough.
“My ability?” Los tilted his head.
“What’s there to understand?
It’s all in my student file.
Enhancing and degrading non-living objects.”
“But from what I know, you can convert metal objects like coins into non-metallic material.”
Shetty paused.
“And in the public match, you converted part of the training ground floor into an explosive.”
Los spread his hands.
“Honestly, I’m not sure how I did it either.” This chapter is updated first at g.com.
Shetty tapped her fingers on the desk.
“You’re on your guard with this school, Los.”
“It’s not that I came in on my guard,” Los said.
“You and everyone here made me feel that way.”
The conversation was starting to break down.
Shetty kept her composure, but privately she felt the ground slipping.
Professor Brinkerhoff had come to her earlier that day.
He wanted a particular student handed over for research purposes.
That student was Los, whose ability appeared to involve matter conversion at a level that could be enormously useful to Vought’s research operations.
Shetty had considered making a case for him.
If Los came clean about his abilities and was willing to operate under her direction, she might have been able to shield him from what was coming.
But he wasn’t cooperating.
The easy warmth left her face.
“What you did to Anderson in the public match, blowing off both his legs, that went too far.”
“As I understood the school’s rules for public matches, injuries are considered a normal part of the contest.”
Los’s expression didn’t shift.
“If I were the one who had lost both legs that day, would the school be holding Anderson accountable?”
Shetty was quiet.
Anderson was a different situation.
His father was the hero Polarity, and also a member of Godolkin’s board of directors.
She looked at Los with something close to genuine regret.
Brinkerhoff’s demands.
The board pressure from Polarity.
And now Los refusing to work with her.
The decision was already made in her mind.
An exceptional student was worth less to Vought than an exceptional experimental subject.
Subjects were easier to manage.
Shetty picked up the dedicated phone on her desk and dialed a short internal number.
“Send a team up.”
She had barely put the phone down when the student across from her said:
“Dean.
Sending one team from the Woods isn’t going to be enough.
You might as well call every security officer you have.”
Shetty stared at him.
Her thinking scattered completely.
How did this student know about the Woods?
“It’s about time.”
Los stood from his chair without any urgency and glanced out the window at the deep darkness covering the campus.
Shetty had no superpowers.
But she had always been good at reading people, and something she was reading right now was setting off every instinct she had.
Her foot found the red emergency button under the desk and pressed it, trying to reach Vought’s headquarters.
“That won’t do anything,” Los said calmly.
“The school’s external signal was cut off just now.
No call or network traffic is leaving this campus.”
He was carrying the signal-blocking equipment on him.
From this moment, nothing was getting out.
Los was done being careful.
The cards were on the table.
Godolkin University was now under new management.
Tonight was the night before he received Superman’s strength.