Viktor's feet hit the dining room floor with the grace of a dead man walking. Each step sent tremors through his skull, a rhythmic pounding that matched the exhaustion weighing down his limbs like lead. The morning light streaming through their small kitchen window felt like needles driven directly into his retinas, and the familiar sounds of breakfast preparation—Drake's babbling, the clink of spoons against bowls, his mother's hurried movements—all seemed amplified to torturous levels.
Drake sat in his high chair, black hair still tousled from sleep, wide eyes bright with the kind of energy that only belonged to the very young or the very caffeinated. The kid was everything Viktor wasn't—cheerful in the morning, eager to engage with the world, untouched by the cynicism that had settled over his older brother like a permanent shadow.
"Morning, little man," Viktor mumbled, leaning down to plant a kiss on Drake's forehead. The toddler giggled and reached up with sticky fingers, managing to grab a handful of Viktor's already disheveled hair.
"Vik!" Drake squealed, the word coming out more like "Veek" through his developing vocabulary.
Their mother looked up from where she was frantically packing Drake's daycare bag, her brown hair pulled back in a ponytail that had seen better days. The freckles across her cheeks stood out more prominently in the morning light, and Viktor could see the exhaustion in her eyes that matched his own—though hers came from responsibility rather than digital escapism.
"Did you get any sleep at all?" she asked, though her tone suggested she already knew the answer.
Viktor slumped into his chair, the wood creaking under his weight. A bowl of cereal sat waiting for him, milk still cold enough to fog the glass. "Not really," he admitted, his voice carrying the gravelly quality of someone who'd spent the night talking to himself about gravity wells and orbital strikes.
"Viktor." The single word carried the weight of months of similar conversations. "You had a test today. You should have remembered that before you decided to play games all night."
He wanted to argue, to explain that he had remembered, that the panic had hit him like a freight train in those dark hours before dawn. But the words felt too heavy to lift, and besides, she was right. The test had been on the schedule for weeks. He'd known about it, had even marked it in his planner with the kind of careful precision that suggested good intentions.
"I know," he said instead, spooning cereal into his mouth without really tasting it. "I screwed up."
The milk was cold against his teeth, and the rhythmic motion of chewing became almost hypnotic. The exhaustion that had been lurking at the edges of his consciousness began to creep inward, turning his limbs to concrete and his thoughts to molasses. The sounds of the kitchen—Drake's happy babbling, his mother's frantic preparations, the tick of the wall clock—began to fade into white noise.
Viktor's head grew heavier, gravity pulling it down despite his best efforts to stay upright. His eyelids fluttered once, twice, then surrendered to the inevitable. His face hit the bowl with a soft splash, milk splashing across the table and soaking into his hair.
"Viktor!" His mother's voice cut through the fog of approaching sleep like a fire alarm. "Wake up!"
He jerked upright, milk dripping from his face and staining his already wrinkled t-shirt. Drake was laughing with the kind of pure joy that only children could muster at their siblings' misfortune, clapping his hands as if Viktor had just performed an elaborate magic trick.
"I'm awake," Viktor mumbled, wiping milk from his eyes with the back of his hand.
"We need to leave in five minutes," his mother said, checking her watch with the kind of precision that came from a life lived by other people's schedules. "I have to drop Drake off before I'm late for my shift."
Viktor abandoned his soggy cereal and grabbed his backpack, its contents a jumbled mess of notebooks, loose papers, and the physics textbook he should have opened twelve hours ago. The morning air hit his face like a slap as they stepped outside, and he was still adjusting to the brightness when his foot caught on the edge of the concrete step.
The fall was spectacular in its completeness. Viktor's arms windmilled uselessly as gravity—the same force he commanded so expertly in the digital realm—betrayed him in the physical world. He hit the sidewalk hard, his backpack spilling its contents across the cracked concrete like the aftermath of an academic explosion.
"Smooth," his mother called from the car, though there was more concern than mockery in her voice. "You okay?"
Viktor picked himself up, brushing dirt from his palms and gathering his scattered belongings. A few neighbors had witnessed his spectacular dismount, and he could feel their eyes on him as he limped toward the car. At sixteen, he was old enough that falling down stairs felt less like a childhood mishap and more like a preview of the adult dysfunction that awaited him.
The ride to school passed in a blur of suburban streets and his mother's gentle lecturing about sleep schedules and priorities. Drake provided commentary from his car seat, pointing out windows and dogs and anything else that caught his attention with the enthusiasm of someone discovering the world for the first time.
---
The physics test was a massacre. Viktor sat in the classroom afterward, staring at the paper he'd just handed in, knowing with absolute certainty that he'd failed spectacularly. The equations had looked like hieroglyphics, the word problems like riddles written in a foreign language. He'd managed to fill in most of the answers, but they were the academic equivalent of random button mashing—desperate attempts to find the right combination through pure chance.
"Dude, you look like you're about to collapse," Sonny said, sliding into the seat beside him. At seventeen, Sonny carried himself with the casual confidence of someone who'd figured out how to balance gaming with the rest of life. His dark hair was perfectly styled despite the early hour, and his clothes suggested parents who both cared about his appearance and had the money to maintain it.
"I feel like it," Viktor admitted, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his palm. "Barely got any sleep."
"Let me guess—Tower of Heroes?"
Viktor nodded, and Sonny's grin widened with the satisfaction of someone who knew his friend too well.
"Funny thing about that," Sonny said, leaning back in his chair with practiced nonchalance. "I'm already on the thirty-sixth floor."
The words hit Viktor like a physical blow. He'd been grinding for weeks to reach the thirty-second floor, had sacrificed sleep and grades and any semblance of a social life to climb that high. And here was Sonny, casually mentioning he was four floors ahead like it was nothing.
"WHAT?" Viktor's voice exploded across the classroom, causing every head to turn in their direction. The sudden silence was deafening, broken only by the soft scratch of pencils and the distant hum of the ventilation system.
After a moment that stretched like taffy, conversations resumed, but Viktor could feel the lingering stares like insects crawling across his skin. From across the room, he caught sight of Olivia Chen whispering to her friends, her voice just loud enough for him to catch the word "weirdo" before she turned away with practiced disdain.
"Ignore her," Sonny said, following Viktor's gaze. "Olivia's the real weirdo. I swear she's got a thing for Principal Morrison."
The image of the strait-laced Olivia harboring a secret crush on their balding, coffee-stained principal was absurd enough to crack Viktor's mood. Both boys burst into laughter, the kind that comes from sleep deprivation and shared absurdity.
"Speaking of which," Sonny said once they'd recovered, "me and some guys are hitting the mall later. New game releases, maybe grab some food. You in?"
Viktor's first instinct was to decline. The mall meant crowds, meant social interaction beyond his carefully curated online persona. It meant standing in GameStop making small talk with Sonny's other friends, guys who probably had their lives together in ways that would make Viktor's own dysfunction even more obvious.
"Nah," he said, waving a dismissive hand. "Sounds like a pain in the ass."
"Come on, man. When's the last time you left your room for something that wasn't school?"
"I leave my room," Viktor protested, though even he could hear how weak it sounded.
"To go to the bathroom doesn't count," Sonny said with a grin. "Besides, who does your game shopping anyway?"
"My mom," Viktor admitted, the words carrying more shame than they should have.
Sonny's laughter was immediate and infectious, the kind that came from genuine friendship rather than mockery, but it still stung. Viktor was about to fire back with some cutting remark when shadows fell across their desk.
Two figures loomed over them, and Viktor's stomach dropped as he recognized the type if not the specific individuals. The first wore a thick gold chain that caught the fluorescent light, his baseball cap turned backward in a way that suggested he'd stopped caring about school dress codes sometime around middle school. The second sported a tattoo that snaked up the side of his neck, disappearing beneath his collar like a promise of more ink hidden beneath his clothes.
Viktor sighed, the sound carrying the weight of someone who'd been through this dance before.
"Which one of you broke forty-three bones on Dylan's body?" the tattooed one asked.