SQUIIIIIIIIK.
The shrill screech of rubber soles on the gym’s polished linoleum pierced my eardrums.
The air reeked of teenage sweat—thick with a sudden hormone surge—and cheap floor wax.
To mere mortals, PE class is a chore.
To Coach Miller, it was a reenactment of the D-Day landings.
An ex-military man frustrated by early retirement, Miller paced the half-court line with the gentleness of a rabid pit bull.
I stood at the very back of the court, pressed against the padded wall, hoping to merge with the peeling paint.
I was a zombie.
My health bar was flashing red, locked at a miserable one percent.
My stomach was still fighting to digest pounds of breakfast peanut butter, and my right shoulder, though healed by the parasite, throbbed as if someone had driven an ice pick straight into it.
Dodgeball.
The ultimate Darwinian survival game.
I was making myself as small as possible, but Miller hated the weak with the passion of a grand inquisitor.
His eagle gaze swept the court and locked onto me, dragging my feet in the safety zone.
FWIIIIIT!
The whistle blast nearly blew my eardrums out.
Miller pointed an accusing finger in my direction.
“Frey! You think this is a knitting club?! Move your butt!”
He turned toward the opposing team, his eyes meeting those of one of Sam Kodd’s goons, who was holding a heavy, solid red ball.
The coach nodded in my direction.
The order wasn’t verbalized, but it was clear: Take him down.
The goon grinned from ear to ear, took a ridiculous, baseball-pitcher windup, and unleashed his arm.
The heavy red rubber ball was catapulted at full speed.
The trajectory was perfect.
It was flying straight for my face.
The world shifted into bullet time.
Time seemed to stretch like bubble gum.
My eyes widened, watching the textured grid of the ball spin on its axis.
My brain screamed at my legs to move, to dive, to do anything.
My muscles refused to obey—too exhausted, too heavy.
But fifty feet away, on the sidelines, my half-zippered backpack twitched.
The parasite’s survival instinct had just picked up the threat.
SWOOSH.
It was faster than a blink.
Faster than retinal persistence.
A flash of immaculate white cut through the air.
Not a single student saw the white filament shoot from the bag at the speed of light.
I barely felt the cold, slimy matter wrap around my right forearm.
In a microsecond, the fabric solidified, forming the formidable white-and-gold steel gauntlet of the “Hope” armor.
I controlled nothing.
My right arm rose on its own, a blur so fast it defied physics.
BAM.
My armor-clad fingers closed around the ball mid-flight.
The parasite didn’t do half-measures: my knuckles crushed the sphere with titanic force.
The air pressure inside the compressed rubber was so intense that the ball exploded with a sharp crack that echoed like a rifle shot.
POW!
Shreds of red rubber flew in every direction.
No one—absolutely no one—had seen the armored arm.
It had happened way too fast for the human eye.
Except for me.
Time snapped back to normal with excruciating violence.
Newton’s third law is ruthless: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
The brutal stopping force of my mechanical arm, coupled with the shockwave of the exploding ball, traveled straight back into my human bones.
CRAC.
My right wrist violently dislocated.
The pain was so white-hot it stole my breath.
Like a whip, the filament uncoiled from my arm and snaked back to the bottom of my backpack, vanishing from sight.
The entire gym was plunged into a cathedral-like silence.
Every eye was locked on me, stunned.
The students stared at the pieces of shredded rubber deflating onto the linoleum.
My wrist throbbed, out of alignment, beating to the rhythm of my heart.
Social panic took over from pure pain.
If I stood there with a broken wrist and a pulverized dodgeball, I’d end up in a government lab before the end of the day.
My brain flipped into pathetic survival mode.
I improvised the worst performance of my life.
I let out a high-pitched shriek, threw myself backward, and intentionally tangled my own feet with the grace of a drunken penguin.
I crashed heavily onto my back, clutching my mangled arm.
“Ow!” I yelled, my voice a forced whine, rolling around on the floor.
“I fell on my wrist trying to duck!”
The illusion was garbage, but the collective unconscious of a group of high schoolers will always prefer the simplest reality: Owen the coward had tripped and broken his wrist on the floor, and the ball… well, it must have been old or overinflated to pop like that when hitting the wall behind him.
Aamir was the first to rush over, breaking the silence.
“Man, are you okay?! Don’t move, let me see.”
Coach Miller walked over with heavy steps, looked down at me, and let out a sigh of absolute contempt that could have frozen magma.
“Pathetic, Frey. Absolutely pathetic. Get this weakling to the nurse’s office before he injures himself on a shoelace.”
Aamir helped me up, supporting my right arm while I grimaced in very real agony.
As I was guided toward the gym exit, I turned my head to glance over my shoulder.
My eyes locked onto my backpack, sitting innocently on the bench.
A shiver of pure terror, far deeper than the pain of my dislocation, turned my blood to ice.
The parasite didn’t need me to wear it to possess me.
It didn’t need my consent to intervene.
Physical distance meant nothing.
I wasn’t wearing the suit.
I was bound to it.
And the damn thing had just proven to me that it held the leash.