Gravity never negotiates.
Soccer learned that when he was five years old, clinging to a wet rock face while a storm howled like a dying wolf. One slip meant a three-hundred-meter drop. One weak foothold meant game over. Not "match over" or "try again next week."
Life over.
So, he learned to step where the moss wasn't slippery. He learned to feel the wind's direction before it hit him. He learned to move in the spaces between the raindrops.
Eleven years later.
Soccer stared at the ground beneath his feet.
Green. Perfectly flat. Ridiculously, absurdly, suspiciously flat. He stomped on it with his worn-out sneaker. The grass gave way with a soft crunch, then bounced back up.
"It's... soft," Soccer whispered. He crouched down, pressing his hand against the turf. "It's like a pillow."
"Hey! Get off the pitch!"
The voice was sharp. High-pitched. Stress-filled.
Soccer looked up, blinking. The sun here in the city was different. Less biting. It didn't try to burn your retinas out; it just warmed the back of your neck.
A girl was marching toward him. Clip-board in hand, fierce ponytail swinging like a pendulum, and a look in her eyes that reminded him of a mountain goat defending its territory.
She stopped three feet away, wrinkling her nose.
"Tryouts are for students," she said, her eyes scanning his outfit.
Soccer looked down at himself. T-shirt with three holes near the hem. Shorts that used to be navy blue but were now a vague, dusty gray. And his legs.
Scars map-worked his shins. White, jagged lines. Not the neat, surgical scars of an athlete who had ACL surgery. These were chaotic. The story of sharp rocks, thorny underbrush, and terrifying falls.
"I am a student," Soccer said. He dug into his pocket, pulling out a crumpled piece of paper. "See?"
The girl took the paper delicately, as if it might bite her. "Northwood High transfer... Scholarship... Okay." She looked back at him, skepticism warring with confusion. "You're here for the football club?"
"Yep!" Soccer grinned. It wasn't a cool, city-slicker grin. It was a wild, face-splitting expression that showed too many teeth. "I wanna play."
"Have you... played before?"
"Every day since I was five."
The girl—her badge said Luna Reeves, Manager—sighed. A long, weary sound that spoke of too many losses and too many idiots.
"Fine. Fill this out." She shoved a form at him. "Do you have cleats?"
Soccer wiggled his toes in his sneakers. The sole on the left one was peeling off, flapping slightly like a hungry mouth. "Nope. Do I need 'em?"
Luna stared at him. "You want to play on a regulation turf field. In rotting sneakers?"
"Turf? Is that what this is called?" Soccer stomped the ground again. "I played on slick granite cliffs. This stuff? It's sticky. My sneakers will grip just fine."
Luna opened her mouth to argue, but the sound of a whistle cut through the air. Sharp. Demanding.
"EVERYONE ON THE LINE! NOW!"
The scream came from the field. About thirty boys, all dressed in flashy neon cleats and matching workout gear, were jogging toward the center circle. They looked like skittles spilled on a green carpet.
"Look," Luna said, rubbing her temples. "Just fill out the form. Stay out of the way until I call you. And for god's sake, don't trip."
"Roger that!" Soccer snatched a pen.
He wrote his name in big, blocky letters.
SOCCER.
Just Soccer. The name his mom gave him because she saw a ball rolling near the hut the day he was born. She said it was destiny.
He hoped she was right.
Marcus Kane hated tryouts.
He stood with his arms crossed, his captain's armband feeling like a lead weight around his bicep. The Northwood High High football team was a joke. A punchline. The team everyone scheduled for their homecoming game because it was a guaranteed 5-0 win.
And looking at the crop of freshmen this year, it wasn't going to change.
"Pathetic," Marcus muttered.
"Aw, c'mon Cap," Dylan Foster, the team's nervous-looking goalkeeper, adjusted his gloves. "That kid over there looks... fast?"
Marcus followed Dylan's gaze. "The skinny one? He'll get bodied off the ball in two seconds."
"What about the big guy?"
"Too slow. Turns like a cruise ship."
Marcus spat onto the grass. He was a defender, and a damn good one. He had offers from academies. But his grades kept him here. Stuck defending a goal that got peppered more often than a steak at a BBQ joint.
Then he saw him.
The homeless-looking kid standing next to Luna. The one stretching his hamstrings like he was about to jump off a building.
"Who the hell is that?" Marcus barked.
Luna jogged over, looking exasperated. "Transfer student. Says he's been playing since he was five."
Marcus laughed. It was a cold, jagged sound. "Backyard ball? Or maybe video games?"
"Says he played on 'cliffs,'" Luna deadpanned.
Dylan choked on his water. "Cliffs? Is he crazy?"
"He's staring at the goal," Marcus noticed.
And he was.
Soccer stood at the edge of the eighteen-yard box. He wasn't looking at the other players. He wasn't looking at the coach, a slumped-shouldered man named Raymond Cross who looked like he'd rather be doing his taxes.
Soccer was staring at the net.
His eyes weren't blinking. His chest rose and fell in a rhythm that was barely visible.
"Hey!" Marcus yelled, stepping forward. "Dirt-bag! You gonna try out or just stare?"
Soccer's head snapped toward him.
For a second, Marcus felt a chill crawl up his spine. It was the same feeling he got when he hiked in the woods and realized something was watching him from the brush.
Then Soccer smiled, and the feeling vanished. "I'm ready! What do I do?"
"One on one," Marcus growled. He kicked a ball toward the weird kid. "Get past me. Score. You get on the team. You lose the ball, you go home."
"Sounds fair!" Soccer trapped the ball.
No.
He didn't trap it.
Marcus narrowed his eyes. Usually, when a ball comes fast, there's a thud. A bounce. A split second of adjustment.
Soccer just... absorbed it. His foot met the ball and moved backward instantly, matching its velocity perfectly, killing the momentum dead. The ball simply stopped at his toe. Like it was magnetic.
Lucky touch, Marcus thought.
"Whenever you're ready, rookie," Marcus taunted, lowering into his defensive stance. Knees bent. Center of gravity low. Eyes on the hips. Hips don't lie.
Soccer didn't move.
The wind rustled the mesh of the net. A crow cawed from the bleachers.
"Are you gonna go?" Dylan shouted from the goal, looking confused.
"I'm waiting," Soccer said cheerfully.
"For what?"
"For him to blink."
Marcus frowned. Cocky little...
He didn't blink. He stared right at the kid's chest.
But human physiology is tricky. The eye needs moisture. The wind picked up, drying Marcus's contacts. His eyelid twitched. Just a micro-spasm. A fraction of a second where his vision blurred.
Blink.
And the world shifted.
There was no sound of cleats digging into dirt. No grunt of exertion.
One moment, Soccer was five meters away.
The next, Marcus felt a breeze brush his ear.
"What—"
Marcus spun around. His brain couldn't process the gap. The kid hadn't dribbled around him. He hadn't used a fancy step-over. He had simply driven straight forward at the exact micro-second Marcus's focus broke, moving in a line so straight and efficient it felt unnatural.
The Ghost Step.
On the mountain, if you hesitated, you fell. If you moved when the loose rocks were shifting, you fell. You waited for the stillness. You moved in the blind spots of nature itself.
Marcus scrambled, desperate. He was the best defender in the district. He lunged, his hand reaching out to grab a jersey, to foul, to do anything.
His fingers grasped... air.
Soccer wasn't running. He was gliding. His upper body didn't bob up and down. His center of gravity was weirdly low, his arms spread for balance like a tightrope walker.
Dylan in goal panicked. He saw Marcus—his captain, the wall—bypassed like a traffic cone.
"Oh god," Dylan squeaked. He rushed out to close the angle.
Soccer saw the keeper coming.
In the mountains, he didn't have a goalpost. He had targets painted on rocks. Or gaps between two trees fifty yards away. Sometimes, he aimed for a specific falling leaf.
A massive human being in a bright yellow jersey?
That was the biggest target he'd ever seen.
Soccer planted his left foot. The sneaker's peeling sole slapped the turf.
His right leg swung.
Thwack.
It wasn't a clean, booming sound like pro players made. It was a whip-crack. Violent and sharp.
The ball didn't curve. It didn't spin. It flew in a perfectly straight line, a laser beam about six inches off the grass.
Dylan dove. He stretched. He looked like a superhero.
The ball passed under his armpit.
PFFFHT.
The net bulged. The ball hit the back stanchion with a metallic clang that echoed across the silent school grounds. Then it rolled harmlessly onto the grass.
Silence.
Dead silence.
The thirty other kids watching were frozen, jaws unhinged. Luna dropped her clipboard. It clattered onto the track, but she didn't pick it up.
Marcus Kane was still facing the wrong way, staring at the empty space where the weird kid had been a second ago.
Soccer jogged over to the goal and picked up the ball. He hugged it against his chest, feeling the texture of the synthetic leather.
"Man!" he shouted, turning back to the frozen group. "This field is amazing! You can run so fast when you don't have to worry about the ground collapsing!"
He beamed at Marcus.
"Can we do it again? I think I can do it faster if I take my shoes off."
Coach Cross finally pushed himself off the metal bench. The slump in his shoulders was gone. His eyes, usually dull and glazed over with the boredom of failure, were wide. Focused. Terrified?
"Hey," Coach Cross's voice cracked. He cleared his throat. "You. What's your name?"
Soccer jogged back to the center line, not even winded. He pointed a thumb at his chest.
"I'm Soccer."
Marcus finally turned around. He looked at the peeling sneakers. The jagged scars on the shins. The complete lack of proper form. And then, he looked at the net, which was still trembling from the impact.
"He didn't make a sound," Marcus whispered to himself. "He was right next to me, and I didn't hear him."
Soccer looked at Luna, who was staring at him like he was an alien species.
"So?" Soccer asked, practically vibrating with energy. "Did I make the team? Do I get a jersey?"
He didn't notice the atmosphere. He didn't know that the simple act of putting the ball in the net had just shifted the gravity of the entire school.
He just wanted to play.
But Marcus knew. Luna knew.
A predator had just walked onto the field. An assassin disguised as a happy idiot.
And Northwood High would never be the same.