The hallway smelled of stale pepperoni pizza, floor wax, and the unique, hormonal desperation of a thousand teenagers trying to survive until the bell rang. Underneath it all hung the heavy, inescapable ghost of a silent classroom fart—that thick, warm miasma of digested cafeteria mystery meat that refused to dissipate, clinging to the stagnant air like a second skin.
I walked down the centre of the corridor, hugging my books to my chest. My backpack felt heavy, dragging on my shoulders. To my left, a group of jocks were shoving a freshman into a locker. To my right, a girl was crying about a breakup.
It was high school. It was hell. But it was familiar.
Clang.
A locker door swung open violently, aiming for my temple. I didn't flinch. I didn't even break stride. I just tilted my head three inches to the right. The metal door whistled past my ear, missing me by a hair's breadth.
I kept walking.
Ahead, a janitor with a mop bucket stumbled. He wasn't clumsy; he was pushed by an invisible hand. A wave of slick, soapy grey water surged across the linoleum, right where my next step should have been.
I skipped. A little hop-step, barely noticeable, clearing the puddle before my foot could find the frictionless death trap.
I didn't stop to wonder why the universe was trying to kill me. The Curse didn't need a reason. It just needed an angle. I was used to it. This was just a regular old Tuesday.
I reached the end of the hall. The double doors to the cafeteria loomed ahead. I reached for the handle.
Craaack.
The school PA system squealed to life. Usually, this was the prelude to an announcement about lost gym shorts or a bake sale.
But not today.
Dum-dum-dum-dum…
A drum beat. Heavy. Driving. Followed instantly by a guitar riff that sounded like a helicopter blade cutting through humid air.
Some folks are born made to wave the flag…Ooh, they're red, white and blue…
I froze, my hand hovering over the door handle.
That wasn't the school band. That was Creedence Clearwater Revival. That was Fortunate Son.
The realisation hit me like a slap.
'Ronan,' I thought.
The hallway flickered. The lockers warped. The students froze mid-shove.
This wasn't high school. This wasn't the past. This was a construct. A dream. And Ronan was playing the DJ, blasting the signal directly into my subconscious.
Wake up, the music screamed.
"No," I whispered, pulling my hand back from the cafeteria door. "Not yet."
I had time. The dream was destabilising, but I had a few minutes before the lucid state collapsed into waking.
I turned around. I scanned the hallway.
"Computer Lab," I muttered. "Room 304."
I sprinted.
I abandoned the cool, detached walk of the survivor. I ran like a madman. The lockers rattled as I passed. The lights overhead buzzed and popped, showering sparks that I swatted away.
I skidded around the corner, my sneakers squeaking on the linoleum. Room 304. The door was locked.
I didn't bother with a key. I kicked it. The cheap wood splintered near the lock, and the door swung open.
The room was dark, lit only by the green glow of thirty CRT monitors. I rushed to the teacher's desk. It was piled high with confiscated notes and apple cores. I swept them aside, my hands frantic.
"Where is it? Where is it?"
I found it buried under a stack of detention slips. A thick, heavy textbook with a blue cover. Introduction to C++: Third Edition.
I grabbed it. It felt solid. Heavy. Real.
I slammed it open on the desk.
"Syntax," I hissed, flipping pages. "Give me the syntax."
The text was blurry at first, shifting like oil on water. I forced my mind to focus. I channelled the obsessive focus of the Twelve-Mind Study Group.
Focus.
The letters sharpened.
if (condition) { // block of code to be executed if the condition is true } else { // block of code to be executed if the condition is false }
"Condition," I whispered, my eyes devouring the page. "Block. Brackets. It uses brackets to contain the logic."
I flipped the page. Loops. While. For.
I saw the structure. I saw the logic gates laid out in crisp, black text. It wasn't poetry. It was instruction.
The air in the room grew cold.
My Danger Sense, which had been a low hum in the dream, suddenly spiked into a scream.
I didn't look up. I kept reading. I needed the Variable definitions.
The shadows in the corner of the room began to move. They didn't stretch; they pooled. They flowed together, rising up from the floor like black tar.
A silhouette formed. It was humanoid, tall and lanky. It held something in its hand—a weapon formed of pure darkness.
The Curse. It had found me. It wasn't an accident anymore. It was an executioner.
flip. flip. flip.
"Integers," I muttered, memorising the declaration types. "Floats. Booleans."
The shadow stepped closer. It moved silently, gliding over the carpet. The temperature dropped so low that I could see my own breath fogging the air in front of the book.
I looked up, just for a second.
The shadow had a face.
It wasn't a skull. It wasn't a demon.
It was a man. He winked at me.
"Time's up, pencils down, Murphy," the shadow whispered.
He swung a scythe made of shadows.
I didn't dodge. I looked back down at the book. I had one second. One second to read the chapter on Functions.
I read. I burned the image into my brain.
Void Function. Return Type.
The blade hit my neck.
SLASH.
There was no pain. Just a sudden, violent disconnect. My vision spun as my head left my shoulders, the floor rushing up to meet me.
"GASHH!"
I woke up screaming, thrashing in the tangled sheets of the dorm bed. I sat bolt upright, my hands flying to my throat.
I was alive. My head was attached. The stone room of House Argent was quiet and cold.
"Murphy!" Ronan's voice rang out, alarmed. "Status! I felt a spike!"
I sat there, panting, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. I blinked, the afterimage of the shadow scythe fading from my vision.
Then, I started to laugh.
It wasn't a hysterical laugh. It was a laugh of pure, unadulterated triumph.
"I got it," I wheezed, grinning in the morning gloom.
'Got what?' Ronan asked, confused. 'You died. I felt the severance.'
"I got the book," I said, tapping my temple. "I saw the loops, Ronan. I saw the If/Else structure. I saw how to define a variable."
I looked at the empty air, visualising the rune I had tried to draw yesterday. The "Source Code."
"It's not just brackets," I whispered, the logic locking into place. "It's data types. We've been trying to pour water into a variable meant for fire. That's why it explodes."
I swung my legs out of bed, the energy buzzing under my skin.
Before I even left for class, the dorm room had become a physical hazard.
It was a matter of volume. The room was designed for two people—barely. It was currently housing ten.
There was me—Original Murphy—trying to put on my boots near the door. And then there were the nine Ronan-Clones. They sat in a tight, concentric circle on the floor, their knees touching, breathing in perfect, terrifying unison.
The air in the room was stiflingly hot, heavy with the ozone scent of high-density mana cycling through nine different conduits.
'We are at capacity,' Ronan noted, his mental voice sounding strained as he managed the inputs. 'The physical displacement is becoming an issue. We cannot fit a tenth meditator without stacking them like cordwood.'
'Then we stop at nine,' I muttered, stepping over a clone's leg to grab my bag. 'Nine batteries running the Solar Crucible, three Jesters working the street. That's the limit until we can knock down a wall.'
I looked at the Ronans. They were glowing faintly, their skins humming with the effort of pushing our Core toward the next threshold: Light Green. It was a grind. Even with the Echo Engine firing on all cylinders, the gap between Dark Blue and Light Green was a chasm. We needed every drop.
I sat in Doctor Aris's Imperial History class, trying to look like a student who was awake, rather than a landlord running a magical sweatshop.
Aris was droning on about the "Agricultural Reforms of the Second Era," a topic so dry it made the dust motes in the air look like thrilling action sequences. I tapped my quill against the desk, bored out of my mind, but my attention was focused entirely inward.
I didn't have a telepathic link to the clones—I couldn't see their faces or hear their conversations—but I didn't need to. We shared the Inventory. It was like watching a live feed of a high-speed stock ticker inside my head.
Pop. A mud-stained velvet cloak appeared in the void storage. Zip. I watched as the clone on the other end mentally sorted the filth from the fabric. Pop. The clean cloak vanished back into the real world. Clink. A gold crown appeared in the designated money sack.
It was a hypnotic, beautiful rhythm. Cloak, clean, gold. Boots, clean, gold. I could track their efficiency by the second, judging the workflow of my empire by the steady growth of the coin pile.
Then, the ticker stopped.
The steady influx of dirty laundry from Jester Alpha didn't just slow down; it flatlined. The inventory went static.
WHAM.
I jerked violently in my seat, my quill snapping in half with a loud crack. The memory hit me a split second later.
"Mr Sunstrider?" Aris paused, peering over his spectacles. "Is the Empire's taxation of grain disturbing you?"
I blinked, gasping for air. The classroom was still there. Aris was still there. I wanted to shush him, to tell him the adults were working, but I held myself back. Inside my head, a fresh, vivid memory was playing out with the clarity of a bell being struck next to my ear.
It was the memory of Jester Alpha.
I was standing near the Alchemy labs. It was raining. A group of three older students—House Stone-Hollow armbands, thick necks—stepped out of an alcove. They weren't customers.
"Nice bells, clown," the leader sneered.
They shoved me. I stumbled back. I couldn't speak.
"Who runs this circus?" the leader demanded.
They grabbed my arms. Their grip was crushing. They were trying to pull off the mask. I triggered the mana-release.
POP.
The memory ended.
I sat in the classroom, rubbing my shoulder where I could still feel the phantom shove.
'Alpha dispelled,' Ronan stated, analysing the influx of mana like a grim accountant. 'He didn't return to base. He self-terminated in the field.'
'He was jumped,' I whispered, my heart rate spiking. 'Stone-Hollow goons. They weren't robbing him; they were interrogating him.'
How very exciting.
'They probably wanted the identity of the owner,' Ronan agreed grimly. 'Intimidation tactics.'
I stared at the broken quill in my hand. One Jester down. Two left in the field.
Twenty minutes later, it happened again.
WHAM.
Another mental impact. This time, it was Jester Beta.
I was near the West Wing. A different group of students. Same aggression. They cornered me against a statue. "Tell us who you work for, and we won't break your legs." They lunged. I triggered the release. POP.
"Mother F…" I burst out loud involuntarily.
"Mr Sunstrider!" Aris sighed, dropping his chalk. "If you are ill, go to the infirmary. Your outbursts are distracting my class."
"I'm fine, I'm fine," I waved him off, sinking lower in my chair.
I wasn't fine. I was losing market presence. Which, to be fair, wasn't the end of the world, but I liked being a little dramatic sometimes. It kept things interesting.
'That's two,' I thought, the annoyance sharp in my gut. 'This isn't random bullying. This is a coordinated strike. Someone is systematically hunting ma boys!'
'They're probably trying to find me,' I added. 'They want the head of the snake.'
Feeling a bit smug, I added, 'Metaphorically, that is…'
'You don't have to say metaphorically, it's implied,' Ronan added distractedly, his focus on the mana levels.
'Still.'
I looked at the clock. Class was almost over.
'Let's recall Gamma,' I suggested to Ronan. 'Get the last Jester off the street before they castrate him or worse.'
'What could be worse?' Ronan asked, confused.
'It's just a metaphor, Ronan. Relax.'
'You relax!' Ronan started getting irritated.
I smiled internally. I liked teasing him sometimes. It was my passive-aggressive way of saying, 'No hard feelings for betraying me and lying straight to my face for years.'
'Wait!' I suddenly shouted in our shared mind.
'What?!' Ronan asked frantically, bracing for an attack.
'Why are we giving them stupid names like Alpha and Gamma? Come on, Ronan! Get your head out of your ass and come up with something better. I expect better names on my desk by tomorrow morning.'
Ronan started spluttering something about "military phonetic standards," but I just ignored him and packed my bag, my movements slow and deliberate.
The laundry business just got complicated. We needed a war council. And we needed to make sure that the next time someone grabbed a Jester, they got more than just a splash of water.
I walked out of the hall, my eyes scanning the crowd for Stone-Hollow armbands.
'They want to play rough?' I thought. 'Fine. Let's see how they handle… errr… I'm still figuring that part out, but it's gonna be bad!'