The cafeteria at Aldridge Academy didn't look like one. It looked like a corporate dining hall that had been designed by someone who had only ever seen photos of Michelin-starred restaurants. Everything gleamed with an antiseptic sheen—the polished concrete floors, the sleek white tables, the brushed steel chairs. Even the food looked like it had been art-directed rather than cooked.
Liam sat with his tray untouched. Roasted salmon with a miso glaze, asparagus tips, and a quinoa blend that probably contained more nutrients than most people consumed in a day. The academy's nutrition program was calibrated for optimal brain function—another variable in the endless optimization of student performance.
Next to him, Ethan methodically demolished his identical meal, scrolling through his phone with his free hand. The Reddit thread had exploded overnight. Four thousand comments. seventeen thousand upvotes. People were debating the merits of Liam's essay, but not in the way they'd hoped.
Alina Novak sat across from them, her presence still a shock to the system. Her dark hair was pulled back in a severe ponytail, revealing sharp cheekbones and eyes that seemed to calculate everything they saw. Her tray held the same food as theirs, but she'd barely touched it.
"Someone's coming," she murmured, not looking up from her tablet.
Liam followed her gaze and felt his stomach tighten. Juliette Fontaine was walking toward their table, tray in hand, drawing stares from every corner of the cafeteria. It wasn't just that she was beautiful—though she was, with her copper hair falling in waves around a heart-shaped face—it was that she moved differently from everyone else at Aldridge. Where most students carried themselves with tense, coiled efficiency, Juliette seemed to flow, as if operating on a completely different wavelength.
"Mind if I join you?" she asked, her voice carrying a musical lilt that seemed out of place among Aldridge's clipped, precise tones.
Before Liam could answer, she was already setting her tray down next to Alina's, smiling as if this were the most natural thing in the world.
"This is quite the gathering," Juliette said, gesturing around the table. "Two Edge of Power students and..." she nodded at Ethan, "...Junior Year Class Four's most notorious underachiever. All at one table. People are noticing."
She wasn't wrong. Around the cafeteria, heads were turning. Whispers traveled like electric current. The rigid social hierarchy at Aldridge rarely allowed for such cross-pollination, especially involving two top-twenty students.
"What do you want, Juliette?" Liam asked, his voice maintaining its usual flat affect.
Juliette tilted her head, studying him with genuine curiosity. "I read your essay on Reddit. The one about the classified information and the experiments." She leaned forward, lowering her voice. "It read like science fiction. And not particularly good science fiction, I might add."
Ethan choked on his water. "Told you," he muttered to Liam.
"Admissions officers aren't idiots," Juliette continued, spearing a piece of asparagus with surgical precision. "They can spot manufactured drama from a mile away. If you want to get their attention, you need authenticity, not..." she waved her fork vaguely, "...government conspiracy theories."
Liam's jaw tightened. "I appreciate the critique, but I didn't ask for it."
"No, you asked all of Reddit instead," Juliette replied, her green eyes sparkling with amusement. "Bold strategy."
"Why are you here?" Alina interjected, her voice cool and measured. "Top twenty students don't usually socialize outside their competitive brackets."
Juliette set down her fork and turned to face Liam directly. "I'm here because I owe you a debt. Last semester, when the power grid failed and your fix redirected emergency power, you made sure the arts department was included. Everyone else would have let us go dark. We were already underfunded and unappreciated. You didn't have to include us, but you did."
Liam blinked, momentarily thrown off balance. He remembered the incident—a simple matter of electrical engineering and resource allocation—but he hadn't considered it a favor. It was just the most efficient solution to keep himself afloat in the sea of competition with extra credits.
"And..." Juliette added, a mischievous smile playing at her lips, "I want to know if what you wrote is actually true. Because if it is, that's far more interesting than any personal statement could ever be."
Ethan perked up immediately, leaning forward with an eagerness that Liam recognized all too well. His friend had nursed an obvious crush on Juliette for years, something that seemed to be common knowledge to everyone except Juliette herself.
"It's absolutely true," Ethan began, but Alina cut him off with a sharp look.
"Why the sudden interest in science fiction?" Alina asked Juliette, her dark eyes narrowing slightly.
Juliette shrugged, taking a sip of her sparkling water. "Let's just say I'm bored with the usual Aldridge drama. Top students jockeying for position, the weekly rankings shuffle, another patent filing from Connor Walsh. It's all so... predictable." She turned her gaze to Liam. "But you—rejected from an Ivy despite your perfect numbers and rank—that's the first genuinely interesting thing to happen here in months."
Something in her tone made Liam pay closer attention. Behind the carefree artist persona, there was a sharpness to Juliette that most people missed. It was one of the reasons she maintained her rank (which is 15) despite specializing in a field that Aldridge traditionally undervalued.
"Fine," Liam said after a pause. "The essay is apparently based on some truth. According to Alina we believe we were part of an experimental program when we were younger. I don't remember the details myself, but there are... gaps in my memory. Inconsistencies."
Juliette's eyebrows rose slightly. "So you're saying you were part of some super-secret project that made you into super-geniuses? One that altered your brain chemistry?"
When she said it out loud, it did sound absurd. Liam found himself questioning his own certainty.
"Something like that," he replied.
Juliette turned to Alina. "And you too?" She studied Alina with new interest. "Though you're not quite as..." she searched for the right word, "...robotic as Liam. No offense," she added quickly.
"None taken," Liam responded automatically, though he found himself wondering what she meant.
Alina hesitated, her fingers drumming a precise rhythm on the table. Everyone noticed her reluctance, the way her eyes darted briefly toward the exit.
"I was like Liam before," she finally said, her voice barely above a whisper. "More so, actually."
She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a small amber prescription bottle. It was the same one she used when distributing Concerta to desperate students before exams, but when she tilted it slightly, Liam could see that the pills inside were different—smaller, with a distinctive blue coating.
"What are those?" Ethan asked, leaning forward.
"My own cocktail," Alina replied. "Part mood stabilizer, part neuroplasticity enhancer. It helps counteract the... modifications." She tucked the bottle away quickly as a faculty member walked past their table.
Juliette's expression had shifted from curiosity to genuine concern. "Why did you reveal yourself to Liam? What does it get you?"
Alina's gaze locked with Liam's. "Because for fifteen years, I thought I was the only one who survived. I want to know who was behind the experiments." Her voice hardened. "They killed my parents shortly before taking me from my home in the middle of the night."
A chill settled over the table. Liam felt something unfamiliar stir in his chest—an emotion he couldn't immediately classify.
"What do you know about who ran the program?" he asked.
"It was a joint initiative," Alina replied, leaning forward. "Government agencies, tech companies, pharmaceutical giants. All working together with plausible deniability built into the structure. But I've traced some connections." Her eyes narrowed. "VossTechnology was a major player."
At the mention of the name, Liam's gaze automatically shifted across the cafeteria to where Jasper Voss sat at the center of a table of charmed students. Tall, with perfectly styled blond hair and a perpetual look of calculated amusement, Jasper was the heir to the VossTechnology empire and now Rank 9 at Aldridge. As if sensing their attention, Jasper looked up through his glasses, his pale blue eyes locking onto their table with undisguised suspicion.
"He's been watching us since Juliette sat down," Ethan muttered.
"Of course he has," Juliette replied. "This isn't exactly a normal social configuration."
"We should talk to him," Liam said suddenly, surprising even himself with the suggestion.
"Are you insane?" Ethan hissed. "His father's company might be responsible for whatever they did to you!"
"Exactly," Liam replied, his logical mind already mapping out the possibilities. "Which means Jasper might have access to information we need."
"Or he might report back to daddy that two of their test subjects are asking questions," Alina countered.
Juliette studied Jasper across the room, her expression thoughtful. "He might not know anything. The children of powerful people are often kept in the dark about the ugliest parts of their family businesses."
"There's only one way to find out," Liam said, already rising from his seat.
Ethan grabbed his arm. "Liam, think this through. This isn't just about rankings anymore. If what Alina says is true, these people have killed to keep their secrets."
For a moment, the four of them sat in tense silence, the bustling cafeteria continuing its normal rhythms around them, oblivious to the conversation that had just shifted their world.
"We don't approach him now," Alina finally said. "We need more information first. We need leverage."
"We need a plan," Juliette added, her artistic instincts translating seamlessly to strategy.
Liam nodded slowly, his mind already calculating variables, mapping pathways, considering outcomes. For the first time in years, he was facing a problem he couldn't solve through pure academic excellence. A problem where the stakes weren't just his rank or his scholarship, but potentially his life.
Across the cafeteria, Jasper Voss was still watching them, his expression unreadable. But something in his gaze—a cold, clinical interest—suggested he knew exactly why this unusual group had suddenly formed.
And he was already making plans of his own.