"I think I'm going to be sick." said Theo Mercer
Nobody reacted. Which, honestly, fair enough — half the carriage looked like they were two bad thoughts away from the same situation. Thirty seventeen-year-olds crammed into the fifth car of the hyper train, most of them trying very hard to look like they weren't terrified, none of them pulling it off. Outside the windows the world had given up being scenery and turned into a smear of color. Twelve carriages. Nearly four hundred students. One destination.
The brown haired boy pressed his hand flat against his stomach and made peace with his choices.
The stress eating had made sense at the time. It always made sense. He was a speedster — his metabolism had never once turned anything away. But there was a difference between running and sitting, apparently, and his body had opinions about that distinction that it was now sharing in detail.
"Nobody wants to see that, man." The voice came from the back — broad shoulders, dark hair, leaning into the aisle with the expression of someone watching a car crash in slow motion. "Hold it together."
"I'm trying," Theo said.
"You couldn't eat after we got off? Like a normal person?"
"When I'm stressed I eat, I'm a B-ranked speedster, food has literally never been a problem before—"
"So you're an idiot."
Different voice. In front of him this time.
Theo looked up and immediately wished he hadn't, or at least wished he'd had a second to prepare himself, because the girl watching him from two rows ahead had the kind of eyes that made you feel like you were being read. Black hair, pale skin, expression completely neutral in a way that was somehow more unsettling than if she'd looked annoyed.
"What? Why would you say tha?" he started.
"Setting aside the food," she said, "which I'll leave alone — you just announced your rank and ability type to thirty strangers. Before the exam. Voluntarily."
"I was just talking—"
"'I'm a B-ranked speedster.'" She said it back to him exactly. Same words, different weight. "You're about to compete against people you've never met, doing something none of us have been told the full details of, and the first thing you did was hand out the most useful information about yourself."
"I didn't think—"
"I know."
Theo closed his mouth.
"Oh come on, leave him alone."
New voice. Theo turned, grateful for literally anyone else.
Blonde. Effortlessly relaxed. Leaning back with one arm over the headrest, grinning at them like this was all mildly amusing .
"It's a showcase," the boy said. "Not a battle to the death. Might not even involve the students going up against each other. And with a B rank he's fine — decent academy, military if he wants it, he's not in trouble."
"Sure," the dark-haired girl said. She'd already shifted her attention, Theo noticed. Like he'd been a problem she'd solved and moved on from. "But this is the special assessment. B rank minimum entry. So unless he's aiming low—" she glanced back at Theo "—you're going for Helios, aren't you."
Not really a question.
"…yeah," Theo said.
"Right." Back to the blonde boy. "So he's going for the hardest placement there is and he's already burned his best advantage. You were saying?"
"I was saying people who need schemes use them." The grin stayed exactly where it was but something shifted underneath it, barely, just for a second. "I don't."
The carriage got quiet. The specific kind of quiet where everyone's still breathing but nobody's doing anything else.
"So you'll take the exam for him?" the girl asked. "If he fails, that's on you?"
"No," the boy said easily. He looked at Theo properly for the first time. "But I do need a speedster.
"Stick with me, and you're in."
"In what?" Theo asked.
"Teams of five this time. You pick your own group." "That's how it is this time."
"How do you know that?" someone asked. Theo didn't see who.
"Same way I know who's worth paying attention to in this exam." His eyes moved to the dark-haired girl and stayed there a moment. "You're on my list, by the way." Then, almost lazily, toward the broad-shouldered boy at the back. "You're not."
"My father puts together good information. He tends to know things before other people do."
Silence.
Then from the front of the carriage, a sharp inhale — the kind that skips past the filter entirely.
"Wait — wait, hold on—" A girl's voice, climbing fast. "It is you — no. No way. You're Kael Stroud. Oh my god you are actually Kael Stroud—"
And that was it for the quiet.
Heads turned. Rows that had been keeping to themselves suddenly weren't. Twenty nine pairs of eyes found the blonde boy.
"Doesn't he get to skip this?" someone said. "People like him don't do assessments."
"Ordinarily yes."said Kael " But someone decided to turn this into a competition. So." He shrugged again . "Here I am".
The carriage lost it a little.
That's not fair. We can't compete with that. It's rigged, I knew Helios was rigged, I knew it—
"Hey." Not loud. Didn't need to be. "You can't all come with me. But I've got friends competing and some of you might interest them." He let that sit for a second.
"In simple terms, find someone to carry you"
He looked at Theo. "You're with me. We'll find the rest on the ground."
"Yeah," Theo said. Stomach apparently fine now. "Yeah, okay."
The train stopped.
A voice came through all twelve carriages at once, completely flat, like whoever was speaking had done this enough times that it had stopped being interesting.
"Welcome, future heroes. Welcome to hell."
Kael was already standing. Already moving. "Let's go, Theo."
And then they were gone, and the doors shut, and the carriage sat there for a second in the specific aftermath of something.
Then quietly, from somewhere, one voice:
"That was Kael Stroud."
One of sixteen people in all of recorded history with a spark ranked above S.