By Monday the video had two million views, which Cole found genuinely difficult to process, mostly because two million people struck him as more attention than the entire population of everyone he'd ever personally cared about, combined, several times over.
"You're trending," Mia said, sliding her phone across the breakfast table like it was evidence in a trial. "There's a hashtag."
"Of course there's a hashtag."
"#IdleKing. People made edits. Someone put anime sound effects over it."
"Did the sound effects improve the fight?"
"There wasn't a fight, Cole. That's the whole joke. You just stood there being unbothered while a grown man swung at you three times and then sat down on the sidewalk like his legs gave out from embarrassment."
"Accurate."
Mia didn't laugh, though he could see her wanting to, the corner of her mouth doing something it clearly hadn't authorized. She pulled the phone back before he could look further, thumb already scrolling, face settling back into the careful neutral she wore whenever something worried her more than she planned on admitting out loud.
"The Ministry's going to see this," she said.
"The Ministry already sees everything. It's their whole personality."
"I mean they're going to do something about it."
He didn't have a good answer for that. He ate his toast instead, honey dripping onto the chipped plate in its usual lazy spiral, and didn't mention that some part of him had been waiting for exactly this conversation since Saturday, the way you wait for a second shoe you already heard drop somewhere upstairs.
The call came at eight-forty. Landline, which nobody used anymore except institutions that hadn't updated their protocols since the technology existed, and a voice that identified itself as Ministry Compliance before Cole had finished saying hello.
"Mr. Vale. Director Halden would like to see you today."
"Today's a school day."
"Director Halden was very specific about today."
Cole looked at the honey jar. Looked at Mia, who'd gone very still, listening. Looked, finally, at nothing in particular, the way you look at a decision that's already been made for you by people with more paperwork than patience.
"Guess I'm skipping first period," he said, and hung up.
Halden's office looked exactly like Cole had expected an office to look for someone who drank gas-station coffee and hadn't slept properly since Tuesday — three weeks running, apparently, judging by the state of the desk. Files stacked at angles that suggested urgency rather than organization. A framed photo turned slightly away from visitors, just enough that you'd have to lean to see it, which meant you weren't supposed to.
"Two million views," she said, without preamble, tablet already in hand.
"I didn't ask anyone to film it."
"You didn't ask anyone not to, either."
"Would that have stopped it?"
Halden set the tablet down. Rubbed her eyes with the heel of one hand, briefly, like she was trying to physically push the tiredness somewhere it would stop bothering her.
"No," she admitted. "Probably not. Marek Osei filed a formal complaint this morning, incidentally. Wants a rematch. Under sanctioned conditions this time."
"Pass."
"That's not really up to either of us anymore, unfortunately. Halcyon Dynamics is pushing for it. Says it'll settle the classification question publicly, save the Ministry the trouble of running its own assessment."
"Convenient for them."
"Very." She said it flat, the specific flatness of someone who agreed with a criticism she wasn't allowed to voice out loud in an official capacity. "Kessington's counter-offering to represent you if you decline. Which means two corporations are now fighting over an eighteen-year-old the system can't classify, and I've got a stack of memos three inches thick asking me why I haven't resolved this already."
"Not really something you resolve. More something that happens to you."
"That's not comforting, Mr. Vale."
"Wasn't trying to comfort you. New hobby, being honest. Everyone keeps telling me it's unsettling."
Something in Halden's face shifted — not quite a smile, closer to the ghost of one, gone before it fully arrived, the way most things about her seemed to arrive halfway and retreat before committing.
"There's something else," she said, and set the tablet down again, screen up this time, angled so he could see it.
A photo. Grainy, security-camera quality, timestamped three days ago — Ron, from the Fracture incident, sitting in what looked like a Ministry waiting room, hands folded, calm in a way that felt manufactured rather than earned.
"He's stable," Halden said. "Better than stable, actually. Full psychological workup came back clean. No residual instability. No relapse markers." She looked at Cole carefully, the load-bearing-wall look again, sharper this time. "That's not normal recovery from a Fracture that severe. Recovery like that usually takes months. Sometimes it doesn't happen at all."
"Guess he had a good week."
"Cole." First time she'd used his first name. It landed strange, too personal for the room, like she'd reached across a distance neither of them had agreed to close. "What did you actually do to him?"
He thought about it. Thought about the shape of Ron's Conviction settling back into place under his hands, not fixed exactly, just — quieted, the way you quiet a dog that's been barking too long, not by silencing it forever but by giving it a reason to believe the threat had passed.
"I told him the truth was smaller than he thought," Cole said. "Guess that helped more than either of us expected."
Halden studied him a long moment. Wrote something down. Didn't share what.
"The assessment's in three weeks," she said finally. "Formal. Sanctioned. Whoever wins gets bragging rights and, unofficially, a much easier time with corporate sponsorship going forward. Whoever loses—"
"Doesn't matter. Not planning on losing."
"You say that with a lot of confidence for someone who's never fought under sanctioned rules."
"Rules don't change the read. Just the paperwork around it."
She almost smiled again. This time it nearly made it all the way there before retreating.
"Go to school, Mr. Vale," she said. "Try not to trend again before Thursday."
Reeve was waiting outside the building, hood up despite the sun, scrolling through something on his phone with the specific intensity of someone building an argument before he'd even said a word.
"Three weeks," Cole told him, before Reeve could ask. "Sanctioned rematch. Marek wants his dignity back."
"Are you going to give it to him?"
"Depends what he's willing to learn on the way."
Reeve fell into step, quiet for half a block, phone finally pocketed. "People online are already picking sides. There's a whole thread arguing about whether you're secretly S-Rank or secretly nothing at all. Somebody made odds."
"What are the odds?"
"Sixty-forty. Against you, actually. Marek's got real training. Real technique. You've got—" Reeve gestured vaguely at all of him. "Whatever this is."
"Sixty-forty's generous, considering."
"Considering what?"
"Considering they haven't seen anything yet."
Reeve looked at him sideways, something working behind his eyes — not doubt, exactly, closer to the particular thrill of standing next to someone about to do something everyone else had already decided was impossible, and knowing, quietly, privately, that the odds were about to mean nothing at all.
"Sixty-forty," Reeve said again, mostly to himself, mostly like he was trying the number on to see how wrong it felt.
It felt very wrong.
He didn't say so out loud. Not yet. But three weeks was plenty of time to start believing it anyway.
[End of Chapter 9]