At 8:40 on Saturday morning the main ground of NK College smelled of marigolds, sweat and the frying oil from the samosa stall. Somebody's speaker was playing a Bollywood song so loudly that the bass shook the steel benches.
Alex sat on the second bench with his running shoes untied and looked like a boy who had not slept.
That part was true. He had spent the night here.
At 2 AM, invisible, he had walked the whole ground with a piece of chalk from his Zaroth inventory, the kind that leaves marks only mana can see. Twelve small runes at twelve points around the field, under the grass, near the poles, behind the scoreboard. If anything came out of the ground today, the runes would hold it inside the field for a few minutes. It wasn't a strong barrier. At Tier 5 he couldn't afford a strong one and still have something left for a fight. But it would buy him time.
Then he had gone to the east gate and looked at the spot where, according to the old man, a white van would wait at 9:30. He had left something there too.
After that he had sat on the roof of the library until the sky went grey, listening. Twice the ground under the field had pulsed, slow and heavy, and both times the twelve runes had flickered in answer, like dogs lifting their heads in sleep. At five the sweepers had come with their long brooms. At six, the sports teacher had arrived in a tracksuit and started drawing lines on the track with a lime machine, whistling an old Kishore Kumar song. Alex had watched the man walk right over two of the runes without knowing, and thought that this was the strangest battlefield he had ever prepared.
Sara- " You're not even stretching. "
Alex- " I'm stretching mentally. "
Sara- " John's going to die of tension. Look at him. "
John was on the track, warming up, jumping on the spot, and checking every two minutes where Alex was, like a father at a railway station. Marina sat on the other side of Alex with a bottle of Glucon-D.
And between Sara and Marina sat Riya.
That had been Alex's only real request. He had called Sara the night before and said, just one thing, tomorrow keep Riya with you. Don't let her go anywhere alone, not even to the washroom. Sara had asked why, of course. He had said that the people from the car might come back. It was close enough to the truth. Sara had gone serious at once and said, okay. Done. She hadn't let go of Riya's hand since eight.
Riya leaned across Sara so she could talk without shouting.
Riya- " It's loud today. "
Alex- " How loud? "
Riya- " Like it's about to… start a sentence. "
She was pale, and her fingers kept going to the hearing aid and taking them away again.
The announcer called the 4×100 metres men's relay. Alex tied his shoes.
His phone buzzed. Serena.
Serena- " ALL THE BEST!!! If you lose, I'm still proud. If you win, KFC on me 🏃♂️🔥 "
He smiled and typed back.
Alex- " Everybody is buying me KFC this week. I'll become a chicken. "
Serena- " You're already a chicken. Go run!! "
At the exchange zone the other Team B boys were waiting, both looking like they were about to give an exam they had not studied for. Pawan from the hostel was praying with his eyes closed. Imran kept retying the same shoe. John walked between them like a coach in a movie, slapping their backs.
Pawan was a thin boy from Siliguri who lived in the college hostel and sent half his scholarship money home every month. Imran was his opposite, tall and loud, a Park Circus boy whose father ran a bakery, and he had joined the relay only because John promised him free biryani. Neither of them had said ten words to Alex before this week. Now they were his teammates, and they looked at him like he was the last bus home.
John- " Listen. We don't need to win. We need to not drop the baton. That's it. If we don't drop the baton, that's already a moral victory. "
Imran- " What's a moral victory? "
John- " It's when you lose but feel good. "
Pawan- " I don't want to feel good, bro. I want to sit down. "
Alex knelt at his mark and put his palm flat on the track, as if he was checking the surface like a real athlete. Under the hard red rubber, deep down, the pulse came again. Faster than at dawn. Much faster. The gap between beats had gone from ten seconds to four.
He looked at the east gate, and then at the big clock over the pavilion.
Team B was John, two boys from the hostel, and Alex as the anchor, the last runner. Vikram's team had three cricket players and Vikram himself as anchor too, of course, so he could finish the race in front of everyone. When Alex walked to his spot at the last exchange zone, Vikram was already there, bouncing on his toes, wearing proper spiked shoes.
Vikram- " Last chance to fake an injury, hero. "
He looked down at Alex's shoes, cheap white ones with a blue stripe from the shop near the bus stand, and laughed loud enough for his teammates to hear.
Vikram- " Four hundred rupees? Five hundred? My socks cost more than that. "
One of the cricket boys laughed with him. The other one didn't, and looked away, like he was a little ashamed. Alex noted that. In every army there was one soldier who knew his general was a fool.
Alex didn't answer. He was looking at the east gate. 9:22. A white Eeco van had just parked outside it.
The gun went off.
The first runners came round the bend almost together. Then Vikram's second runner pulled ahead, and by the third leg John was two full metres behind, his face red, his arms pumping like he was trying to swim. Alex watched him come and something warm went through his chest. John had thrown himself in front of Alex's bullies more times in school than Alex could count. He was not fast. But he was running like his life depended on it.
Vikram got the baton first and launched.
John slapped the baton into Alex's hand and gasped.
John- " Go. "
Alex went.
He kept his body at a normal human level. Strong human, maybe. A good athlete, the kind any college has two or three of. No magic, no Tier anything. In Zaroth he had been the strongest being alive. But he had also spent years with Robert's swordsmen, and he knew something every good fighter knows. Distance is not about speed. It's about not wasting anything.
He didn't swing his arms wildly like Vikram. He didn't look back. He ran low through the bend, on the inside of the line, so close that his left shoe almost touched the chalk.
Halfway down the straight, Vikram looked over his shoulder and saw him coming. His face changed. And then, very quickly, so quickly that most people would never see it, he drifted half a lane to the left. Into Alex's lane. With his spiked shoe aimed at Alex's ankle.
It was the same trick he had used in Class 8, when Alex had fallen and broken his wrist and everyone had laughed.
This time Alex saw it coming from five metres away.
He didn't jump. He didn't push. He changed his step, one short step instead of a long one, so that Vikram's foot hit empty air where his ankle should have been. Vikram had put all his weight into that kick. His own spikes caught the track. For a moment he ran on in a strange, leaning way, like a man trying to catch a falling plate.
Then he went down face first, in front of the whole college.
Alex crossed the line alone.
The ground exploded. People were screaming. John was running towards him with both arms up. Somewhere behind, a teacher with a whistle was shouting at Vikram, who was sitting on the track holding his bleeding nose. And three phones from the front bench had already caught the slow-motion replay of him sticking his leg out into the other lane. By evening, it would be everywhere.
Alex let John crash into him. He even laughed.
John- " YOU BEAT HIM! YOU BEAT VIKRAM! BRO! BRO! "
He was crying a little, and pretending it was sweat. Pawan and Imran piled on top, and for a few seconds Alex was at the bottom of a heap of sweaty first-year boys, with somebody's elbow in his ear and somebody's knee in his stomach. Marina was standing on the bench whistling with two fingers. Across the track, Vikram's teammates were not helping him up. They were standing a little apart from him, looking at their phones, already watching the replay.
Alex had dreamed of this moment in Class 8, lying in bed with a blue cast on his arm. Somehow, now that it was here, it felt small. Nice, but small. Like finding a coin on the road after you already became rich.
Still. John's face was worth it.
Then he turned his head towards the bench, and the laugh died.
Riya had both hands pressed over her ears, eyes shut tight. Sara was holding her shoulders. A man was walking towards them through the crowd. Short, round, wearing a white shirt, with a kind uncle's smile and a handkerchief in his hand.
Mohan.
And under Alex's feet, in the middle of the football field, the grass began to move.
It went in a straight line, as if something was pulling a zip under the soil. Clods of earth jumped up. A low sound came from below, not loud, but so deep that the steel benches started to hum with it and the Bollywood song on the speaker cut out with a crackle.
Riya opened her eyes and screamed.
The ground split open, and from the crack came a cold red light.