The words hit the teachers' section like a stone dropped into still water.
Let this boy take Derek's spot in the City League.
Nobody reacted. Nobody moved. Every teacher in that row understood, with the immediate clarity of people who had spent years navigating Victor Hartwell's particular brand of cruelty, exactly what had just been proposed.
The City League Competition wasn't a school tournament. It wasn't an assessment or a practice bout or a friendly exhibition. It was the proving ground — the crucible where Langston's strongest students were tested against the strongest from every other academy in the city. The fighters there had been training since their abilities first manifested. They'd been coached, conditioned, and in some cases deliberately brutalized to prepare them for the kind of combat where the only rules were the ones written on a liability waiver that specifically absolved both parties in the event of permanent injury or death.
Volunteer participation. Life-and-death waiver. No legal recourse.
Getting a spot in the City League was the dream of every student in Awakening Class One. They fought each other for the privilege. The slots were limited, the competition was vicious, and even the winners came back with stories that made the losers grateful they hadn't qualified.
And Victor Hartwell wanted to hand a slot to an eighteen-year-old from Normal Class.
Palmer understood instantly. This was not an opportunity. This was a disposal.
Send Ryan into the League. Let him face opponents who'd spent years sharpening themselves into weapons. Let one of them — or several of them, or someone who'd been specifically instructed — break him so thoroughly that whatever was left wouldn't be worth putting back together.
And when it happened — when Ryan Blake was carried out on a stretcher or wheeled out in a chair or not carried out at all — there would be nothing to pin on Victor. No evidence. No conspiracy. Just a student who'd volunteered for a competition he wasn't ready for and paid the price that everyone knew he would pay.
The beauty of it was in the legality. The City League required voluntary sign-up. A waiver. A signature. If Ryan said yes, he was agreeing to every outcome, including the worst.
"Principal, perhaps this is—"
One look from Victor and the words froze in Palmer's throat like water hitting cold air. The principal's face hadn't changed. It was still that same composed, professional mask — the face of a school administrator discussing curriculum adjustments. But his eyes, for just a moment, had gone completely flat. Empty. The eyes of something that didn't regard the person across from it as a person.
"Is there a problem with my decision, Mr. Palmer?"
The voice was gentle. The gentleness was a warning.
Palmer shut his mouth. Swallowed once. And raised his hand to wave Ryan over.
Ryan saw the gesture from across the field. He'd been walking toward the exit — the match was done, the crowd was still buzzing, and he had no interest in sticking around for whatever came next.
But a teacher's summons during a school event wasn't optional, and something about the way Palmer's hand moved — stiff, reluctant, like he was pulling a trigger he didn't want to pull — made Ryan pay attention.
He crossed the field. Climbed the steps to the teachers' section. Stopped in front of the row of instructors, still radiating residual heat from the Heatblast transformation, and waited.
Victor Hartwell looked at him.
Ryan looked at Victor Hartwell.
The silence between them lasted three seconds. It felt like thirty. Every teacher in the row was suddenly very interested in their own shoes.
"Young man." Victor's voice was warm. Avuncular. The voice of a kindly principal congratulating a promising student. "That was quite the performance. Truly impressive."
Ryan said nothing.
"As you may know, my son Derek was scheduled to represent our school in the City League Competition next month. Given his current... condition" — a pause so brief it was almost invisible, loaded with something that wasn't grief — "we find ourselves in need of a replacement."
Another pause. This one was longer, and it was aimed directly at Ryan.
"I'd like you to take his place."
The words hung in the air like smoke.
Ryan read the offer. He read the room — the frozen teachers, Palmer's white-knuckled hands, the careful blankness on every face. He read the thinly veiled murder in Victor Hartwell's eyes, so close now that he could see the fine lines around them, the way the muscles didn't match the smile, the way the warmth in the voice stopped dead at the surface and never reached anything underneath.
You want me dead, Ryan thought. You want me dead, and you're using the League to do it, and you're smiling.
He thought about saying no. The word was right there — one syllable, two letters, and he'd walk away clean. Nobody could force him into the League. That was the whole point of the volunteer clause.
But walking away wouldn't make Victor Hartwell stop.
The man had already demonstrated what he was willing to do to settle a grudge — rigging a school match, manipulating brackets, putting a Passive student in front of an Active prodigy for the sole purpose of public humiliation. If Ryan refused the League, something else would follow. Something quieter. Something that wouldn't require a signature or a waiver.
And there was another calculation — colder, harder, buried beneath the fear like iron under soil.
He had the Omnitrix.
He had Heatblast. He had the passive enhancements that were already reshaping his body. He had a gene collection system that would only get stronger with time. The opponents in the City League were dangerous, yes. Experienced, yes. But they were human. They had human abilities operating under human rules.
Ryan's abilities weren't human. They weren't even from this planet.
He met Victor's gaze. Held it. Let the silence stretch until it became uncomfortable for everyone except the two of them.
"I'll go."
Two words. Quiet. Final. Like dirt hitting a coffin lid.
The ripple that went through the stadium was visible — a physical wave of turning heads and opened mouths.
"He said yes?"
"Is he insane? The League has a body count!"
"The principal is obviously setting him up — can't he see that?!"
Palmer was still trying to catch Ryan's eye, telegraphing a refuse, refuse, for God's sake refuse so hard that his eyebrows were practically semaphoring. But Ryan had already stopped looking at him.
"Wonderful." Victor Hartwell's smile widened. It was a genuine smile — the first honest expression he'd worn all day. "Truly wonderful. Heroes emerge from the youth."
He said it loudly. Warmly. And the microphone on the table in front of him — which had been coincidentally patched into the stadium's PA system since before the conversation began — carried every word to every ear in the stadium.
Every phone pivoted toward Ryan. Every camera. Every livestream.
Ryan smiled back.
Inside, he was mapping every exit in the stadium and mentally composing a detailed biography of Victor Hartwell's ancestry.
The trap was closed. Recorded. Broadcast. If he tried to withdraw now, the footage would follow him like a shadow — the boy who volunteered and then ran. In a city as connected as Langston, his name would be a punchline by sunset. And Victor knew it. Victor had designed it.
The principal stood, took the microphone, and delivered a brief, polished speech about courage and youth and the honor of representing Langston Academy in the City League. Every word was a nail in the coffin. Every sentence tightened the noose.
The crowd watched Ryan the way you'd watch a man juggling grenades — fascinated, horrified, and very glad not to be standing close.
In the bleachers, Amber Lawson's expression cycled through phases like a broken traffic light. Satisfaction first — he's walking into a death trap, he deserves it — and then, unbidden, a flutter of something else. Something she crushed the moment she felt it.
What if he wins?
What if he actually—
No. Impossible. Even if he had a real ability, he couldn't compete with fighters who'd been training for years. The League would eat him alive.
She settled back into her seat, mollified, already anticipating the day Ryan Blake came crawling back with nothing.
The matches continued, but nobody's attention was on them.
Ryan left the stadium without looking back. He had one more thing to deal with today, and it had been waiting for eighteen years.
On the platform above the field, Victor Hartwell watched him go. The smile was gone now. What replaced it was something rawer — a satisfaction so deep it was almost physical, settling into his chest like a warm drink on a cold night.
He pulled out his phone.
The contact was listed under a name: Old Ghost.
No photo. No additional information. Just two words and a number that had been in Victor's phone for a very long time.
He typed:
City League. Student named Ryan Blake. Make it memorable.
Sent.
Pocketed the phone.
Looked back at the field, where the remaining matches played out to an audience that had already mentally left the building.
"Sir, the League is only a month out." Palmer had materialized again, persistent as a conscience. "Giving Ryan a slot this late will cause issues with the Awakening Class students. They'll—"
"They're geniuses, Palmer. A little healthy competition among themselves will be beneficial."
"...Yes, sir."
Palmer withdrew. It wasn't until a colleague pulled him aside in the corridor and whispered in his ear that the full scope of Victor Hartwell's plan finally, terribly, completely landed.
Ryan walked home.
The streets were quiet — most of the neighborhood was at work or watching the tournament livestream. The evening light was the color of old copper, and the shadows were long, and the only sound was Ryan's footsteps on concrete and the muffled thump of his heartbeat in his ears.
He was still getting used to the body. The enhanced version of it. His stride was longer now, his center of gravity lower, and every step felt like it had more purchase than it should, like his feet were gripping the earth harder than physics typically allowed.
He reached his building. Climbed the stairs. Put his key in the lock.
The door opened, and two voices hit him simultaneously.
"Ryan Blake! Get the hell out here! Do you have ANY idea what you've done to Tyler?!"
"Get OUT! Don't make us say it again! Haven't you made Tyler's life MISERABLE enough?!"
Dale and Karen Briggs. Standing in the living room like a pair of rabid dogs, their faces twisted into matching masks of fury that they wore so naturally it was clear they'd been born wearing them.
The memories rose up in Ryan's mind — not the distant, factual kind that had come during the initial download, but the visceral kind. Sense memory. The smell of bourbon on Dale's breath. The sound of Karen's voice at two in the morning, screaming at him for something Tyler had broken. The cold of the balcony in January. The specific, practiced cruelty of people who knew exactly how to hurt a child without leaving marks that a teacher would notice.
Ryan looked at them.
They were smaller than the memories.
"What happened?" he asked.
"You have the nerve to ask?! This is YOUR fault! Get OUT!"
Karen hurled a coffee mug at his head. It was a ceramic one — heavy, probably a gift, decorated with a cartoon bear that Tyler had liked when he was six.
Ryan caught it out of the air, transferred it to his right hand, and broke it across Dale's skull.
Dale's legs buckled. He staggered sideways, hit the wall, and slid down it with a glazed expression and a trickle of blood running down his temple.
Karen screamed. Jumped to her feet. Jabbed a finger at Ryan, her mouth open, the first syllable of what promised to be an extensive and creative tirade already forming—
Ryan looked at her.
Just looked.
The sound died in her throat like a candle being pinched.
"One more time," Ryan said. His voice was level. Unhurried. "If you have something to say, say it now. If not, start packing."
"Pack— packing for what?"
"To get out of my house."
The words landed like a physical blow. Both of them froze — Dale on the floor, Karen standing over him, their mouths open, their brains unable to process a version of Ryan Blake that gave orders instead of taking them.
The silence that followed was very, very loud.