The same black car sat there waiting like some kind of predator, engine humming that low, expensive purr that said money and secrets. I was pretty sure it had been circling the block all night, which honestly wouldn't surprise me at this point.
I collapsed into the backseat next to Penn, who had already kicked off one of her stilettos and was rubbing her foot like she'd been walking across hot coals in those death traps.
"Finally," she muttered without looking up. "I was starting to think you'd decided to move into that sketchy warehouse and become some kind of underground fight club legend."
"Trust me, the thought crossed my mind." I slammed the door with more force than necessary, immediately regretting it when the jarring motion sent lightning bolts of pain through my definitely bruised ribs.
The car started rolling before I even had my seatbelt on, because apparently when you're rich enough to hire mystery drivers, traffic laws become more like gentle suggestions.
Penn finally turned to get a good look at me, and I watched her face go through several expressions, settling somewhere between concern and barely contained laughter.
"Holy shit, Cam. You look like you had a boxing match with a blender and lost spectacularly."
"Thanks. Really feeling the love here."
"No, I'm serious. Your lip is split, you've got what looks like the beginning of a black eye, and is that dried blood in your hair?" She leaned closer, squinting. "At what cost did you win this thing? Your face?"
I touched my lip gingerly and winced. "What face? I thought I looked mysterious and badass."
"You look like you need an ice pack and possibly a small medical intervention."
Despite everything hurting like hell, I actually cracked a smile. Penn had this talent for making even the most traumatic situations feel less like the end of the world and more like an unfortunate but survivable Tuesday.
The leather seats were soft and expensive, still carrying that new car smell mixed with something that might have been actual sandalwood. Outside the tinted windows, the city blurred past in streaks of neon and shadow.
"So," Penn said, settling back and studying me with those sharp green eyes that never missed anything, "want to tell me what really went down back there? Because from my vantage point, it looked like you were about five seconds away from committing homicide with your bare hands."
"Just good old fashioned violence."
"Uh huh. And what about Chase swooping in like some kind of dark knight when Reed was getting too handsy with your face? That seemed pretty intense."
I turned to stare out the window, watching streetlights streak by like falling stars. "It was nothing."
"Nothing. Right. That's why he looked like he wanted to tear Reed's head clean off and punt it into next week."
"Can we maybe not do this whole post game analysis thing right now?"
"Do what?"
"The thing where you dissect every single interaction and try to read deeper meaning into everything. I'm tired, everything hurts, and I just want to go back to our room and pretend this entire night was some kind of fever dream."
Penn went quiet for a moment, which was unusual enough to make me glance over at her. She was picking at her nail polish, a sure sign she was thinking.
"You know you can't actually pretend it didn't happen, right?" she said finally. "Half the school probably knows by now. Hell, knowing this place, they probably live streamed it."
She wasn't wrong. Avard High ran on gossip like cars ran on gasoline, and news like this would spread faster than wildfire in a drought. By tomorrow morning, everyone would know that little nobody Number Fifteen had somehow managed to take down Reed Morrison and steal his chain.
"Perfect," I groaned. "Just what my life was missing. More unwanted attention."
The car glided to a stop behind Dorm D, in the shadows where the security cameras had convenient blind spots. Our mystery driver didn't say a word, didn't even turn around. Just sat there like a statue while we climbed out.
"I'm betting twenty dollars someone on our floor is still awake," Penn whispered as we crept toward the side entrance.
"God, I hope not. I can't handle any more human interaction tonight."
But when we finally made it to our room, the door was sitting slightly ajar. Just a crack, but enough to make both of us freeze in the hallway like deer in headlights.
"Please tell me we didn't leave it like that," Penn breathed.
"We definitely didn't leave it like that."
A voice drifted out from inside, calm and familiar. "Relax. It's just me."
Penn and I exchanged a look that said several things, none of them good. She shrugged and pushed the door open anyway.
Archer was sprawled in my desk chair like he owned the place, long legs stretched out, black hoodie pulled up so his face was half hidden in shadow. He had his ever present sketchbook balanced on one knee, but what caught my attention was the small pile of supplies on my desk—a bottle of ibuprofen, an ice pack wrapped in a thin towel, and some kind of antiseptic cream.
"You're back," he said simply, looking up as we stumbled inside. His eyes immediately went to my face, cataloguing the damage with that careful way he had of observing everything.
"And you're breaking and entering with a first aid kit," Penn pointed out, immediately kicking off her other shoe and face planting onto her bed. "Seriously, how did you even get in here? And where did you get medical supplies?"
"Your door was unlocked. And I raided the nurse's office." He said it so casually, like petty theft was just another Tuesday night activity.
Penn groaned into her pillow. "I'm too exhausted to figure out whether that's sweet or criminal."
I stood in the middle of the room feeling suddenly awkward and hyperaware of how I must look. My lip was still bleeding intermittently, and I could feel my left eye starting to swell.
"Sit down," Archer said quietly, gesturing to Penn's desk chair. "You look like you're about to fall over."
"I'm fine."
"You're not fine. You're bleeding and probably concussed. Sit."
There was something in his tone that brooked no argument, so I sat. Archer moved with surprising gentleness, unwrapping the ice pack and holding it out to me.
"For your eye. It'll help with the swelling."
I took it gratefully, hissing when the cold hit my tender skin. "Thanks."
He opened the ibuprofen bottle and shook out three pills. "For the pain. Trust me, you're going to need them tomorrow."
I dry swallowed the pills, then looked up at him. "Why are you doing this?"
Instead of answering, he pulled out his phone and scrolled through something. His expression was hard to read in the dim light.
"I saw the video," he said quietly.
"What video?"
He turned his phone toward me, and my stomach dropped. There I was, on someone's grainy cell phone footage, locked in combat with Reed on that makeshift platform. The audio was terrible, but you could hear the crowd screaming, could see the moment I knocked him off the edge.
"Holy shit," Penn said, suddenly very awake. She scrambled over to look at the screen. "Someone filmed it?"
"Multiple someones, from the looks of it." Archer scrolled through what appeared to be several different angles. "It's all over social media. You're trending on TikTok."
I felt sick. "Great. Just what I needed."
Archer studied my face, and when he spoke again, his voice was careful. "I had no idea parties like that even existed. Underground fight clubs with chain rankings?" He shook his head. "Why would you put yourself through that? What were you trying to prove?"
"I wasn't trying to prove anything."
"Bullshit." The word came out sharper than usual for Archer. "Nobody walks into something like that without a reason. Especially not someone who's smart enough to know how dangerous it could get."
Penn was watching us both with interest now, apparently forgetting her exhaustion.
"You could have been seriously hurt," Archer continued. "Like, hospitalized hurt. That guy was twice your size."
"But I wasn't. I won."
"This time. What about next time? Because there's always a next time with stuff like this."
I pressed the ice pack harder against my eye, using the cold to focus through the throbbing pain. "There won't be a next time."
"You say that now, but I've seen how this works. You get a taste of that adrenaline, that power, and suddenly nothing else feels real anymore."
His voice was quiet, almost sad, and I realized he wasn't just talking about me.
"Archer," I said softly. "What aren't you telling me?"
He was quiet for a long moment, turning his phone over in his hands. "My brother used to do stuff like this. Underground fights, illegal races, anything that could get him killed or arrested. He said it made him feel alive."
"Used to?"
"Overdosed two years ago. Turns out when nothing feels real anymore, drugs start looking like a solution."
The room went dead silent. Penn had gone very still on her bed, and I could feel the weight of Archer's words settling between us like lead.
"I'm sorry," I whispered.
He shrugged, but I could see the pain he was trying to hide. "My point is, I recognize the signs. The need to push boundaries, to feel something real, to prove you're not as breakable as everyone thinks you are."
I wanted to argue, to tell him he was wrong, but the words stuck in my throat. Because maybe he wasn't wrong. Maybe there was something inside me that was drawn to the edge, that needed to know I could survive falling off it.
"I'm not your brother," I said finally.
"No, you're not. You're smarter than he was. Which is why I'm hoping you'll listen to me when I say this path doesn't lead anywhere good."
Archer leaned forward in his chair, his gray eyes intense in the lamplight. "Whatever you're running from, whatever you're trying to prove, there are other ways. Safer ways."
"What if safe isn't what I need right now?"
"Then maybe you need to figure out why that is before you end up like him."
The ice pack was starting to numb my face, but it couldn't numb the ache in my chest. Because Archer was right, and I hated that he was right.
"I can take care of myself," I said weakly.
"I know you can. That's not the point." He stood up and moved to my dresser, coming back with a clean washcloth. "The point is you shouldn't have to. Not like this."
He ran the washcloth under cold water from my water bottle and gently cleaned the dried blood from my lip. His touch was careful, clinical, but there was something almost protective about it.
"You're going to have to tell me eventually," he said quietly. "What you're really doing here. What you're looking for."
I met his eyes, seeing the concern there, the genuine worry for someone who was basically still a stranger to him.
"Not tonight," I said.
"Not tonight," he agreed. "But soon. Because whatever game you're playing, it's bigger than you think it is. And I don't want to watch another person I care about destroy themselves because they thought they had to face it alone."
He packed up his makeshift medical supplies and headed for the door, pausing with his hand on the handle.
"Ice that eye for twenty minutes every hour. Take the ibuprofen every six hours, not more. And if you start having vision problems or severe headaches, go to the nurse immediately."
"Archer," I called softly.
He turned back.
"Thank you. For the medical supplies. For caring. For..." I gestured vaguely. "All of it."
His expression softened slightly. "Just promise me you'll be careful. Whatever you're doing, whatever you're planning, just... be smart about it."
"I promise."
He studied my face for a moment longer, then nodded and slipped out into the hallway.
Penn waited until his footsteps faded completely before sitting up and giving me a look.
"Okay, so we're just going to ignore the fact that Archer just delivered the most emotionally devastating health and safety lecture in the history of dorm room visits?"
I adjusted the ice pack, wincing. "He's been through a lot."
"Yeah, and now he's worried you're going down the same path as his brother. Are you?"
"No," I said quickly. Too quickly.
Penn's expression said she didn't believe me, but she didn't push it. "Just... maybe listen to him, okay? He's not wrong about this stuff being dangerous."
I nodded, but my mind was already racing ahead to tomorrow, to the consequences of tonight's actions, to all the ways this was just the beginning of something much bigger and more dangerous than any of us realized.
"You know you don't have to babysit us, right?" I said, moving to my dresser to dig out pajamas that didn't smell like smoke and violence. "I'm sure you have better things to do at this hour."
"Like what?"
"Sleep? Homework? Normal teenage activities?"
"Already finished my homework. Sleep is overrated. And I gave up on normal teenage activities about three years ago."
Penn snorted from her bed. "Look who's got jokes tonight."
"I always have jokes. You just usually don't listen to them."
I found myself actually smiling despite everything. There was something oddly comforting about this, about the three of us in our little bubble while chaos raged outside.
Archer closed his sketchbook and stood up, stretching like he'd been sitting there for hours. Which, knowing him, he probably had.
"I should probably head back before they do bed checks," he said.
"Since when do they do bed checks?" Penn asked, finally lifting her head.
"Since tonight, probably. You two weren't exactly subtle about your great escape."
My stomach dropped. "Do you think we're in trouble?"
"Nah. But I wouldn't push your luck by having unauthorized guests in your room after hours."
He headed for the door, then paused with his hand on the handle. "Oh, and Camille?"
"Yeah?"
"Next time you decide to take on someone twice your size in front of half the school, maybe give the rest of us fair warning? Some of us would like to place bets."
I grabbed my pajama top and launched it at his head. He ducked, flashing that rare genuine grin, and slipped out into the hallway.
Penn waited until his footsteps faded before sitting up and giving me a look. "Okay, so we're just going to ignore the fact that Archer was sitting here waiting for us like some kind of concerned parent?"
"He was probably just bored."
"Right. Bored. That's why he looked like he was about to have a full scale panic attack when he saw your face."
I really didn't want to think about what it meant that Archer had been worried enough to break into our room and wait for us to come back safely. That suggested a level of caring that I wasn't equipped to deal with right now.
"I need a shower," I announced, grabbing my toiletry bag. "I smell like a combination of smoke, sweat, and poor life choices."
"That's definitely an aroma," Penn agreed. "Try not to fall asleep standing up in there."
The shower was exactly what I needed. Hot water that washed away the grime and smoke and lingering adrenaline from the fight. I stood under the spray until my skin turned pink and the small bathroom filled with steam, letting the heat work out some of the tension in my shoulders.
When I finally emerged, Penn was already dead to the world, still in her party dress but with a silk sleep mask over her eyes. I changed into my softest pajamas and climbed into bed as quietly as possible.
But sleep was apparently not on tonight's agenda. Every time I closed my eyes, I was back on that platform with Reed's fist coming at my face. Or standing in that strange moment with Chase when time seemed to stop. Or thinking about Lea's calculating smile and whatever game she was playing.
I pulled out my phone and stared at the blank screen. No messages, no missed calls. Not that I'd expected any, but still.
Reed's number six chain sat on my nightstand, catching moonlight from our small window. Such a simple thing to represent such a massive shift in my world.
I was Number Six now. In this twisted hierarchy, that actually meant something. It meant respect, fear, a kind of power I'd never had before.
It also meant I was no longer invisible. No longer safe in anonymity.
Tomorrow, everyone would know what I'd done. They'd look at me differently, treat me differently. Some would hate me for disrupting their carefully ordered world. Others might grudgingly respect what I'd accomplished.
But there was no going back to being nobody.
The question was: what came next?