เข้าสู่ระบบRydan’s POVThe car came from nowhere and from everywhere at the same time.That was how it felt in the half-second between Franklin’s warning and the moment my hands found the wheel properly… the headlights filling the windscreen from the right, the particular too-fast approach of something that had either not seen us or had decided not to stop, and then my foot on the brake and my arms turning hard and the car responding with the reluctant obedience of two tonnes of metal being asked to do something it wasn’t naturally inclined toward.The old lady on the road’s edge had not moved.She was at the crosswalk with a shopping bag in each hand, frozen in the lights, and the car went close enough that I felt the air displacement on my side of the window as we passed. The tyres complained against the road surface and then we were stopped, engine running, angled across the lane we had been in with the nose pointing somewhere between our original direction and the pavement.The old lady was
Rydan’s POVI stood in the doorway and looked at twelve people on their knees and waited for the room to explain itself to me.Joel was the one who spoke first, which made sense… Joel was usually the one who spoke first when the team had collectively arrived at something and needed a person to carry it out loud.“We were wrong,” he said. “About a lot of things. This season.” He paused, and the pause had the quality of something rehearsed briefly and imperfectly. “You’ve been carrying this team when most of us were making it harder. We know that now.”Around him, the others were looking at the floor or at me, depending on how much they had made peace with what they were doing.I looked at them for a moment. At the floor, at the particular quality of twelve people doing something uncomfortable because they had decided it was necessary.“Get up,” I said.They got up.I accepted the apology in the way I accepted most things… simply, without making it the centrepiece of more time than it r
Rydan’s POVThe crowd noise changed the moment I crossed onto the field.Not the recognition sound, not the energy that came from a play developing… the specific surprised noise of an audience processing something unexpected. I heard it as information and filed it and kept moving, because the only thing that mattered in the immediate present was the rival captain and Franklin and the distance between where Franklin had gone down and where I currently was.Franklin’s voice came through all of it.“Rydan.”Not calling for help. Saying my name the way he said it when he was trying to contain a situation rather than escalate it, the particular warning register I had learned to read accurately over months of learning to read him.I stopped in front of the rival captain.He was bigger than me in the way some people were bigger, the kind of physical presence that was intended to communicate something. He looked at me with the assessment of someone deciding what I was.I looked back at him an
Franklin’s POVI walked out before the coach finished the sentence.Not because I hadn’t heard it… I had heard every word, including the ones between the words, the implication that months of work and a season of training were now sitting on a surface that could tilt in any direction. I walked out because staying in that office one more second with that specific information settling into me required a composure I didn’t currently have access to.The corridor outside was empty and I walked it fast, not looking back.“Franklin.” Rydan’s voice behind me, closer than I expected.“Don’t,” I said, without turning. “Just… don’t. Not right now.”“Let me explain…”I stopped. Turned. Looked at him directly.“There’s nothing to explain,” I said. “I know what happened. I know why it happened. I’ve been standing next to all of it for months.” I kept my voice low because the corridor didn’t need to be involved in this. “But I told you in the back of the building. I told you clearly. And then we wal
Franklin’s POVI saw it coming and couldn’t stop it.Rydan moved the way he moved when the thing underneath him took over before the rational part caught up… fast and direct, and the teammate in the doorway barely had time to register that the smirk had been a mistake before Rydan reached him.They went down together.The teammate hit the changing room floor and Rydan was on him and the sound of it brought everyone who had been leaving back into the room with the immediate, involuntary response of people hearing something they didn’t expect to hear. The fight was not even in the way that fights between two people of comparable strength are even. Rydan was operating from somewhere that wasn’t entirely him, and the teammate was on the floor receiving all of it, and the other players were grabbing at Rydan’s arms and his jacket and his shoulders and making no progress at all.I watched four of them fail to move him and understood that this was going to go badly in multiple directions sim
Rydan’s POVI didn’t say anything about the mark.I looked at it in the lamplight and registered it with the part of me that catalogued things requiring attention, and then Franklin shifted and the collar of his shirt moved and it was covered again, and I made the decision I had been making more frequently than was good for either of us… to hold the information until I had something useful to do with it rather than introduce it into an evening that had already been enough.He needed rest. He needed to be treated like a person rather than a situation. I sat with the mark in the back of my awareness and let the evening be the evening.Morning arrived and with it the specific weight of a match day, which had its own gravity regardless of what else was happening.Franklin moved through the preparation with the focused quiet of someone who had decided what the day required of him and was aligning himself to it. I watched him from the edge of the room and continued not mentioning the mark,
Calen’s POVI woke up to an empty bed again, but this time instead of panic, I felt the pleasant ache in my muscles that reminded me exactly why I was alone.Last night. The shower. The way Karl had…Heat flooded my face just thinking about it. I buried my face in the pillow, grinning like an idiot
Karl’s POVThe question hit me like cold water.“What do you mean?” I asked, turning to face Calen.“You weren’t at school yesterday.” Calen’s expression was carefully neutral, but I could see something else underneath. Suspicion, maybe. Or hurt. “So I’m wondering if you’re actually planning to go
Calen’s POVI woke up to an empty bed and cold sheets.“Karl?” I called out, but silence answered.Panic fluttered in my chest until I saw the note on the pillow beside me, written in Karl’s sharp handwriting.‘Had to take care of something early. Don’t worry. See you at school. - K’I read it thre
Karl’s POVI’d been with Rowan since before dawn.We’d met at the abandoned warehouse as planned, and I’d spent hours watching him pace and fidget, clearly terrified of both me and whoever was using him.“They’re going to attack you,” I said, breaking the silence. “The people investigating these mu







