Imagine being a mid-tier office worker, shopping for groceries on a Sunday, and bumping into your boss's boss in the dairy aisle. Your level 6.1 superior, someone who stood so far above you that you'd never spoken to them without bowing your face into the floor – buying milk and eggs for sustenance, no different from anyone else.

  The encounter could undermine the gap you felt separated them from you, couldn't it? Such a simple, banal observation, that god-tiers need calories and macronutrients to live, but there was a good chance it might. And if you saw them multiple times a year at the grocery store, you might begin to treat them with a little less deference, maybe feel less fear at provoking their anger.

  That would be an unacceptable state of affairs for The Authorities. A partial solution was simply that most high-tiers hired people to buy everything for them, but that didn't account for those who preferred to shop for themselves. What about them?

  "Two pints… Isn't this twice as expensive as it has any right to be?" As I frowned and inspected a tub of overpriced gelato, in the middle of my Sunday morning grocery trip, I found the answer to my question.

  I was shopping in 'Produce Peak,' a niche grocery chain that sold everything at triple markup, making their stores devoid of any low-rankers. This made it the default among high-tiers who liked to shop for themselves. It was so popular that when I mentioned grocery shopping a few days ago, Giorgia had assumed this was what I meant and invited herself along with me.

  "Don't worry about it," my fellow intern said. "Just get it if you want. Hey, they have acai sorbet!"

  She waved me over with a hand. I put the gelato back in the freezer and walked over, making a mindless comment on their cartoony acai berry mascot.

  Georgia made a conflicted noise in response, her face nearly pressed against the glass screen of the freezer window, contemplating the health implications of 200 calories and 13 grams of sugar per serving. She eventually placed two tubs in our cart with finality. I wanted to tell her to leave frozen things for last, but didn't.

  We moved on, chattering about random things, most of them only tangentially related to work. I noticed Giorgia's posture didn't hold the level-conscious decorum it would have worn if we'd been at a regular grocery store. There were no employees around – only self-checkout stations – so the place was bare of people, and I only saw a few other customers on our path through the aisles.

  "The movie we saw on Saturday was really good," she said when we reached the exotic produce section. "Final Confrontation III. Which I guess is kind of an oxymoron, because 'final' means there shouldn't be a third one, but it didn't affect how good the fight scenes were."

  I took a few starfruit and gave her a knowing look. "Are you pitching for me to come along next time?"

  "Kind of," she replied. "I think you would enjoy it."

  Giorgia smiled and put her arm around my shoulder. In my experience, people were more physical and touchy in this world, though I hadn't bothered noting it in a journal entry.

  "I know you were busy yesterday, but it's valuable to hang out with everyone on the weekends. Especially since we're working on projects together." She paused for a moment, thinking. "What was consuming your Saturday afternoon, anyway?"

  I hummed. The truthful explanation – 'staging an encounter with the son of the god-tier woman our bosses are using as a test subject, so I can eventually create ability-altering drugs like they are' – was obviously unviable.

  "Just a lunch date with my fiancé," I lied. Sorry Arlo.

  "Oh. Well, I hope you had a good time," Giorgia said, searching through the brightly-colored fruits. She turned around and did a double-take at my deadpan.

  "That was a joke, right?"

  I shook my head. "Our clans put us in an arranged marriage when we were three years old. It was part of a big cooperation agreement. Do you want to see him?"

  I pulled out my phone and showed her my newly set wallpaper, an old picture of Arlo eating lunch with me. She blinked at it like I was showing her proof of aliens on the moon.

  Given my general discomfort with my intern peers, I thought I deserved an alternative method of enjoying myself around them. I'd decided on telling the most entertaining, off-color lies I could think of whenever necessary. And it was necessary – or at least really useful – that I had an excuse to skip out on weekend hangouts, one nobody could take issue with. Saturday had revealed that I needed all the time I could get.

  "God. Sorry." She composed herself. "I've heard of clans doing that, but I didn't think… What's it like? And what's he like? Are you planning on introducing him to everyone this summer?

  "Arlo's my age, so I don't know if he'd be interested. He's more into turf wars and fighting than anything."

  "But are you okay with, you know, not being able to choose for yourself?" Giorgia asked.

  "I like him." I smiled as though the thought of him made me happy. "I know it's pretty lucky that I do. He took the train all the way to New Boston for me, and he has this amazing defensive ability that lets him reflect damage back at people. His clan's pretty well-known for it in Wellston City."

  Giorgia looked like she wanted to type 'reflect defense clan' into a search bar the minute she got home. Once she did, she would likely spread the news to everyone else, and someone would probably notice my Lingard clan earring as corroborating evidence. That was how I planned it out, anyway – a more calculated, indirect version of the status-leeching my mother had suggested a week ago.

  "Okay. Wow. I thought I felt sorry for you, but now I'm jealous." She shook her head as she grabbed a loaf of whole-grain bread. "Does that mean you're projected pretty far into the sixes?"

  "I don't know if I should say. I know everyone else is curious too, and if they knew I told you, they'd probably bother you…"

  "I won't spread anything around," Giorgia said. "I promise."

  The common connotation of 'clan' was that the family had at least one 6.0, while an arranged marriage practically smelled of purposeful breeding and 'strong genes.' The totality of my hinting thus far was a fair reason to think I stood above the cutoff.

  "My doctor thinks I can get to 6.3 if I'm lucky," I said after a deliberate pause. "But don't tell anyone exactly! Say six-ish if anyone asks. Or just six. For some reason, it feels wrong if everyone knows my projections."

  "I totally get what you mean," Giorgia said with a nod, looking gravely committed to my privacy. In truth, I knew 6.3 would be circulating through the intern group by Wednesday, but that was just fine by me.

  I made us speed up our shopping, explaining that I was going out with my fiancé again. In reality, for the rest of the day, my focus would be wholeheartedly on trying to figure out what to do with John, Jane, and William Doe. To that end, as we checked ourselves out, my thoughts became entrenched in the family's circumstances.

  Getting any sort of access to Jane would be like robbing a bank, so I focused on John. But even with him, it was hard to say where to begin – his conception of his own ability was horrendously off, for one, but I couldn't exactly fault him. He didn't have a tutor or reference for his one-in-a-billion ability. Other kids with complex abilities had a natural teacher in their mother or father, thanks to the laws of genetic inheritance, while John had to figure everything out independently.

  There was also his behavior. He'd called himself a 'little bit weaker' than Zirian, but the gap between 3.0 and 3.7 was far from little. He'd shouted at a waitress for being slow during our lunch, then turned back to me and kept talking as if it was the most normal thing in the world. He had also flinched incredibly obviously when I'd gotten a little close.

  All of it implied he held the popular perspective of this world – that people far enough below him shouldn't be respected, and likewise that he shouldn't expect it from someone far above him. He had been hesitant to admit he was a whole level below me.

  Of course, John was the protagonist, but that didn't mean his understanding of the hierarchy had to depart from the norm at age fifteen. I'd hoped it would be different, with William as his father, but one man's influence could hardly match a whole world. And my plan to grow his level as fast as possible probably wasn't going to help. From the undercover Authority agent's words, John reaching a high level was a requirement for creating drugs and technology, but it also felt uncomfortably risky.

  Not that I have any better options, I thought, stifling a sigh as Giorgia and I finished loading groceries into fancy reusable bags. The rank-discriminatory grocery chain was funnily eco-conscious.

  "I'll come over this evening and pick up my share," I told her. "Don't inhale everything before then."

  "No promises," Giorgia smiled and agreed – we were living in the same apartment complex.

  Once we were outside, I said goodbye. Giorgia headed for the subway while I got in a streetside cab. I told the driver my destination of Citrona Park, a masculine voice affirmed me, and we were rolling onto the road.

  I thought a lot more, slouching into my slightly musty car seat. About what I was actually trying to do, and if I had the stomach to see it through for a whole summer. This wasn't at all similar to the hour I'd had with Seraphina, and it wasn't like what I was trying to do with Arlo, either. I could already feel my grip on John, his motivations and beliefs malleable if I put forth a full, shameless effort over the next ninety days.

  Half a year ago, I'd made it a non-negotiable point to get an internship in New Boston. It was mostly because of John. I was going to use every trick I could think of, sucker punch him in ways nobody would ever think to defend against – that much was already decided. The difference, now, was that I had seen his face instead of his action sequences on my laptop. I'd held his hand instead of scrolling through a comic panel.

  Thankfully, the driver struck up some small talk once we got into street traffic. It kept me from talking myself out of anything.

  "Citrona Park gets pretty popular in the summer," he said blithely. "Lots of high school kids like to train out there all day, pushing themselves to the limit."

  "That's me," I agreed, but not in the way he was thinking.

  ***Beautiful***

  Claire stared at John's slouched, sleeping back from the desk behind him, unsure if waking him up was a good idea.

  He'd crossed 2.5 back in April. Ever since, she had watched as he gradually stopped paying attention in English class – but he'd never made it as obvious as today, with his head cradled in his arms and snoring without a care.

  At his level, you could stare out the window, daydreaming instead of actually dreaming, with the excuse that you were only momentarily distracted. Like Mrs. Palmer just so happened to spot your ten seconds of misbehavior among an hour of enraptured attention. This was how it worked in every class in their high school, because there wasn't a single teacher in the 3's.

  But actually sleeping was a different story altogether.

  Respect and the appearance of respect were two entirely separate things. Throwing away one didn't mean you could toss out the other. If a handful of higher-level students spent every lesson openly sleeping, unpunished, then the rest of the class could hardly take their teacher seriously, whether the other students were god-tiers or low-tiers. A few staring out the window didn't have the same effect. This was the reason behind a seemingly random distinction: immediately obvious disrespect was never alright, even if you had the level for it, but push it one layer beneath the surface and you were golden.

  Avoiding a dressing-down from Mrs. Palmer wasn't the reason Claire wanted to wake him up. It was the Monday of their last week of school, Thursday and Friday would be Final Exams, and starting a week from now, their English teacher would have zero influence on the rest of their lives. Why care if the woman got angry now?

  The reason was seventeen missed calls and a creepy vision of the future. Maybe John was learning in school after all, the way he'd been ignoring her instead of openly telling her to screw off. He knew to push it one layer beneath the surface.

  So she jabbed him on the spine, maybe harder than she'd been meaning to, and John's limbs scrambled as he jolted awake. "Who?" he blurted as he spun around.

  "Claire," she said. "Morning, sleepyhead."

  "Oh. Morning." He yawned, nodding in recognition, and glanced around the otherwise silent classroom. She noted his confused expression.

  "We're studying this period. No lecture."

  "Right." He blinked, long and slow. "So why'd you wake me up?"

  Claire felt her eyebrow twitch. Still, there were several other things she could say, besides the truth, which was probably better to save for the hallway after class.

  "The final exam is in three days, you know, and I know for a fact you haven't been studying at home. If you don't start now…"

  John immediately slouched back to earth, as if exasperated at the reason, and moaned into his desk. "My grades are fine, dude. Just let me sleep."

  "At least get your book out," she replied. "You can sleep for a whole summer after the week is over."

  Claire even reached for his backpack, quickly finding his textbook, but he was already asleep or pretending when she set it on his desk.

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  God, she thought, he can be so annoying…

  It was true that his grades were okay. Fine enough to get into a decent college as an elite-tier, which was probably what he would end up as. But Claire remembered how John had been in middle school, his grades good enough to medal in their graduating class. In comparison, his current state felt like a total waste of talent.

  "Do you think some high-tier jerk is gonna care if you're a mid-tier or a cripple?" he'd once said to Oliver. "We're all ants to them. The only difference is that you're a bigger splat on the ground when they step on you. And with how stupid you are? I'll be getting a degree, and you'll be the janitor cleaning my bathroom."

  It was a stupid thing to say at the time. Oliver had already been done messing with them, but after the insult, he'd promptly busted John's ribcage with his Shearing Laser.

  Still, there was an underlying truth to it.

  Who cared about anyone at New Bostin High? Everyone at the school was a small fish in a small pond, and it wasn't like their former bullies would go and do something great with their lives. What was so wrong with staying out of conflict, studying hard, and doing better than them a few years down the line? If you wanted revenge or satisfaction, wasn't that also a way to get it?

  With how badly John had injured Oliver recently, he clearly didn't think so anymore. It was almost like he'd become an entirely different person in the last year.

  Once the period was over (having badly distracted herself from the review she'd meant to do), Claire moved to wake John up again. It turned out he was already blinking himself to consciousness. He yawned, this time short and quick, and glanced around the classroom, seeming much more awake than before. Everyone else had already left for lunch, and even Mrs. Palmer was stepping out into the hallway.

  "You didn't have to wait for me." He gave her a dumb smile. "I'll be awake for the rest of the day."

  "It's fine. I just want to know what you were doing over the weekend to make you so tired." There, she thought. There isn't any hint, any signal, more obvious than that. You'd have to be a-

  "I stayed up a little later than I should have," John said instead of explaining himself. "That's all."

  Claire rolled her eyes. She shoved her phone in his face, 'fourteen unanswered calls' front and center on the screen. "You were clearly busy doing something – I know Adrion called you five times, too, and you never answered. If you don't want to tell us what it is, that's fine – but at least tell us honestly that you're keeping a secret. You don't have to pretend we don't exist."

  When John had the decency to look sheepish, she sighed and said, "My voice is still hoarse from yelling voicemail messages. You should have to listen to all of them on max volume."

  "It's not that I was trying to keep a secret or anything, really. What happened this weekend is so big it's eating up all my time and attention." John started packing up his supplies, an unused pencil case and textbook returning from where they came. "Maybe life-changing level important – in a good way, that's why I couldn't sleep. And everything else just doesn't seem as big a deal in comparison."

  Temporarily, she didn't think about what could possibly be life-changing over a weekend. Or that she and Adrion were implicitly unimportant.

  "John… You couldn't have taken five minutes to text what you just said to the groupchat?" He seemed properly, genuinely sorry for once, so she dropped it. "Whatever. You can tell me what happened now, right? Since you're spending time at school instead of skipping to do 'life-changing' things."

  They made it out into the hallway as she finished speaking, though there would be nothing but scraps and week-old carrot sticks left in the lunchroom. John stopped cold in his tracks and blinked to himself, as if he was realizing something important for the first time.

  "What is it?" she asked.

  "Nothing, it's just…" He grinned. "Two days ago, I met this girl, Meili, at Citrona Park. She's a 4.2 at our age."

  They both went silent for a moment, Claire from surprise and John in thought.

  "She's been an intern at this place called NxGen, starting a week ago, with a bunch of college students. Her school probably let her start summer break two weeks early. But for some reason, I didn't think of that until just now – and now I'm wondering what kinds of benefits I'll get once I'm a high-tier."

  'Once I'm a high-tier.' As though it was a sure thing, not a long shot, that he'd make it to 5.0 in high school.

  She huffed, now thoroughly confused. "Can you start from the beginning?"

  .

  .

  .

  "She really beat up Zirian down a hand?" Adrion whisper-shouted, clearly just excited to be included. "Goddamn. Do you think she can make you that strong, John? I mean, this is-"

  "Quiet!" Claire actually whispered. "We don't want anyone to hear. This all sounds fishy as hell, but if it's really true…"

  Ever since John had made the top ten at their high school, the three of them could consistently secure a corner table by the window for lunch. Still, he wasn't Zirian, so he wasn't immune to eavesdropping – and with the way the tables around them kept glancing over, they were doing a lousy job at being subtle.

  John had probably noticed, too, but he didn't seem to care. He gave both of them the same smile, overbearingly satisfied, that he'd smiled repeatedly over the past ten minutes. He had been explaining what happened on Saturday as they ate.

  "Just listen," he said quietly. "I'm not even close to done – we met up again on Sunday, and I managed to do something new in just a day. Literally six hours."

  "Get out of here." Adrion was literally sweating, Claire realized, his blonde hair darkened with moisture. "Two abilities at once?"

  "Nothing that big. I didn't manage an enhanced copy just yet, either." John glanced at a combat-cracked window that the school hadn't bothered to fix. "But there's this guy I always see at Citrona Park, who makes these exploding light grenades that I always try to copy. Maybe I've mentioned him before. You know how, whenever I use someone strong enough, my copy ends up being worse in whatever way?"

  "Of course," said Claire, giving him a light tap on the arm with her fist. "You only spend half of every lunch complaining about it."

  He gave an exaggerated shrug, still grinning, as if to say, 'What else do we have to talk about?'

  "The point is, these light grenades have two main properties – they blind people by being super bright and do damage with heat burns. So when I copied his ability before, I always concentrated on trying to get the light and heat exactly like the original. Then, on Sunday, Meili told me to try focusing on having light and heat related to the original."

  "There's a difference?" Claire asked.

  John nodded. "I didn't think anything would change, either, but just the change in thinking made something different happen with my aura. I started leaning into the new feeling I was getting, and after a few hours of playing around, I made a grenade that was way, way less hot than all my earlier copies but a lot flashier."

  His grin widened, and he leaned into the center of the table, whispering. "Meili has really strong vision enhancement, and she said it was even a little brighter than the original ability."

  A little brighter than the original. It sounded pretty minor – having to sacrifice one attribute for another – but Claire knew that John had never been able to push any aspect of even low-tier abilities beyond the original. And it wasn't like the constraints of 'Aura Manipulation' were defined anywhere. If John could do a little brighter, why not a lot brighter? If he could do a lot brighter, why not a lot faster, a lot stronger? At that point, even multiple abilities didn't seem so far-fetched.

  The three of them had decided, a few months ago, that a single perfect copy was probably the best he could aim for. Maybe they were wrong. Adrion was already patting John on the back, congratulating him, but for some reason she felt skeptical.

  "I don't want to be a downer or anything," she interrupted, "but are you sure the guy you copied was going all out at the park? 'Just as bright' and 'a bit brighter' would mean two different things."

  "We thought of that on Sunday, too," John said."We asked him if he was going 100 percent, and he said he was, so I don't think it's a fluke. But I'll try doing it with another ability after school."

  He nodded to himself. "Anyway, I haven't even gotten to the best part yet. Meili thought I might have grown, so she took me to a private ability evaluator in one of the business districts downtown. I got my level measured, and I'm a 3.21, apparently! I didn't even realize you could measure the second decimal point, but it means I'm definitely progressing again. I think there's a really good chance that one of her theories is true."

  "Of course, I thought it was impossible to grow this fast, especially without getting into a single fight. So I asked her about it. She told me that, as a late bloomer, my natural growth rate is supposed to be high for another year or two. She thinks I only got stuck at 3.0 because I haven't been using my ability correctly in the first place."

  He was gesturing now, excited. Adrion seemed engrossed, staring at him, and Claire realized she hadn't been blinking. It struck her especially hard that he'd accepted the title of late bloomer – when, for the past few months, John would get angry at anyone for even mentioning it, for the reminder that he'd been weak most of his life.

  John crunched on a carrot stick, made a face of mild disgust, and spat it onto his lunch tray. Bits of orange splattered across the plastic ridges.

  "What's funny is, Meili dragged me into one of the restaurants in that district to celebrate, and I could barely pronounce the name of anything on the menu. But everything was really good. And compared to what we get here? God, she lives in a totally different world. To her, Zirian might as well be a loser and a bum."

  Not something you would usually say at New Bostin High. Claire shushed the two boys again, deep in thought, as Adrion quietly pestered John for pictures of the ability-evaluation facility and the fancy dinner he'd lucked into.

  Everything was good news. She was happy for John. But something about the whole situation was starting to feel off, and she couldn't figure out why.

  The series of events was too convenient, maybe, in that storybook way. A teenage mid-tier guy bumps into a powerful girl by chance, and she unlocks the secret of his hidden potential? That was straight out of a coming-of-age movie, not something that was ever supposed to happen in reality.

  Or maybe it was just the idea – someone strong enough to bully Zirian being helpful and nice – that she'd dismissed out of hand. It wasn't fair, exactly, because she'd never even met Meili.

  Claire shook her head, deciding to ignore the feeling. "Whether it's an enhanced copy, multiple copies, or whatever... Congratulations," she said to John. "Getting to 3.2 is a huge accomplishment. I'm glad you managed to break past your plateau."

  "Thanks." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I guess I don't have to keep bothering you for visions of training hints, now."

  It was as close to an apology as she would get, for the selfish way he'd been treating her Clairvoyance. She smiled, appreciating the gesture.

  Then she turned to Adrion, who'd been swiping eagerly through John's camera roll, and saw the picture on John's phone screen.

  It was a fancy-looking dinner, like John had said, with dishes she probably couldn't name. In the picture, a girl sat on the other side of the dining table, no doubt Meili.

  The same redheaded, violet-eyed girl who had appeared in Claire's vision, who'd been siphoning blood from an unconscious John.

  Meili. Intern Aurology researcher. Interested in studying John's Aura Manipulation…

  She couldn't help but make the connection.

  Research was probably easier with a full-time test subject, willing or not.

  .

  .

  .

  It took her until the end of the school day to act on her thoughts.

  Claire went back and forth in her agonizing through the afternoon, making for a bad omen of her academic future, but she finally grabbed John's arm from behind in the hallway. Everyone else was heading home. Adrion had already left, and the school building was becoming empty of observers, but she still didn't know what to say.

  So she said nothing for a while, and neither did he. There'd been a fight earlier, but between two low-tiers, so there was relatively minor damage and only a few stray splotches of drying blood. She kept bumping her sneakers into the misplaced floor tiles, though, because they were the same speckled, off-white beige as the rest of the floor.

  It was just the two of them walking in silence, hand-in-hand. A reminder that they'd been friends since fifth grade, that he would let her do this, when he had recently stomped Oliver into a three-day coma over an insult.

  She understood, in an odd, twisted way. 'You'll always be a cripple and a fraud' – those were the words that had set him off, possibly the worst thing you could say to someone like John, who'd fought and bled for everything he had. Now he was finally getting his lucky break. Was it really the right decision, then, to try to get in his way?

  "What is it?" John eventually asked.

  He stopped walking and gave her an annoyed look, probably because he was eager to experiment with his ability. It felt like she had to take the chance and tell him quickly, before he raised his level more and started owing favors as a result.

  She bit the bullet. "I had a vision yesterday."

  "About what?" John asked. He'd been slightly desensitized to the announcement. "Like, was it important?"

  "I think so. You're in it, and so is the girl you've been talking about. Meili."

  Claire fidgeted with her shirt.

  "It happens in a lab… Or I think it's a lab, anyway, but it's dark, and it doesn't look anything like a hospital room. You're out cold, strapped into this chair with a bunch of wires everywhere. She's pumping your blood into a massive syringe and smiling."

  John started grimacing as she talked, which grew into a frown. He let go of her hand.

  "What do you mean, 'out cold?' Like I'm sleeping? Or am I unconscious from something else?"

  "I don't know," she said. "You might be sleeping, you might be drugged, but I had no way to check… You know I can't physically interact with my visions. You didn't look injured, at least, but I didn't get to look at the back of your head or torso."

  "There's also an older guy," she continued. "Middle-aged, blue hair, wearing a lab coat, unshaved beard… I didn't recognize him. I mean, do you know anyone like that? Who would want to look at your blood?"

  "I don't think so." He shook his head.

  Again, they both went silent for a while, but something about the silence felt different from before.

  Even though John was standing right next to her, it seemed like he was far away. Like there was some sort of gap separating them, now, and she'd fail if she tried to reach out and touch him.

  Finally, he sighed. "Thanks for the warning, I guess, but I'm not that worried."

  "I think you should be," she said quietly. "I am."

  "That's just being overly paranoid," he declared. "There are probably a lot of good reasons I'd be asleep, and people get their blood drawn all the time."

  He started nodding to himself. A look of discomfort flashed across his face. Then he turned to face the doors, instead of her, and started walking again.

  "It doesn't matter, anyway, because I have to leave. We can talk about this tomorrow."

  "You're not going to see her again today, are you?" When he didn't answer, Claire took quick steps to catch up with him. "I think that's a bad idea," she said. "Seriously, John! It already felt off to me before, someone with a level that high helping you so much. What if she's trying to make you let down your guard, make you relax, so she can-"

  "That doesn't make any sense," he interrupted. "She's already stronger than me, so there'd be no need to wait or sneak around. And you haven't even met her; Meili's been nicer than every person at this school. I don't think one vision means you can say that."

  "Then let me come along," Claire said. "So I can meet her and realize I'm wrong. Then I won't be worried at all."

  They stopped at the school building's front entrance, and John went silent. He seemed to balk at the suggestion. Which didn't make any sense to her, because it was the easiest way to resolve the argument – and if Meili were really as non-arrogant and reasonable as he'd made her out to be, then it wouldn't be a problem.

  Oh, Claire suddenly thought. Ability level 4.2.

  She flushed, feeling the anger and humiliation spread through her face. But John only shrugged, seeming glad he didn't have to spell it out.

  "Look," he began. "I just don't want Meili to think I'm a total loser, alright? I wouldn't bring Adrion either if he asked me to."

  2.3 for Adrion, 2.1 for Claire. Too low. Embarrassing to mention, even, in the company of a 4.2.

  "I already got lucky," he said, "having her willing to help someone at my level. And that might just be because she knows I have potential. Why push it further and risk losing something good?"

  John swung a door open, not bothering to explain any further what they both already knew. Instead, he walked outside to a waiting bus, and he was already halfway there by the time she found her words.

  "This is your safety that we're talking about!" she shouted at him, hoarse in the throat. "Why does it have to be about my level?"

  There was no answer, and Claire didn't think he heard her. But a little later, once the bus was gone, her phone buzzed with a text from John.

  It read: "Can you name a single thing that isn't?"