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A flash of anger heated my blood, but it mixed with something darker. The motherfucker tested me. He wanted to see if I would respect his timeline.

And I did. I ran right back to him like his little bitch.

“I didn’t come back for you,” I lied, leaning down until our faces were level. “I came back for the spot on the team.”

“It doesn’t matter why.” Felix’s hand slid up my thigh, just an inch, before he pulled back. The friction sent a jolt through me. “You’re here.”

He stood up, tossing the dirty towel into the hamper. The wall came back up behind his eyes, brick by practiced brick.

“Get some sleep, Regillen,” he said, his voice back to its normal volume. “We run at 06:00.”

He turned his back and got into his own bed.

I sat there for a moment, staring at the empty space where he knelt. My skin still burned where he touched me. I lay back in the dark and nursed that heat until exhaustion finally dragged me under, but sleep offered no real escape. It was a thin restless veil that dissolved the second the wake-up alarm blared at six, shattering the quiet.

I sat up, heart hammering, and immediately checked my right foot. The swelling was gone.

I rotated the ankle. Stiff, and the deep itch had graduated overnight into a low ache with a pulse in it, a hot wire running under the tape where the gel was still working through what it had numbed, but the fire was banked and the joint turned clean on its axis. I put a little weight through it, sitting there on the edge of the bed, and the pain answered honestly. Present, but nothing like yesterday’s foreclosure.

“Can you walk?”

Felix was already dressed. He stood by the door, bag slung over one shoulder, watching me.

I stood up, weight on the right foot. The ache climbed to the knee and filed its complaint, but it held.

“I can run.”

“Good. Let’s go.”

The hallway was crowded with recruits heading for the Nexus. We walked shoulder to shoulder, selling the Symbiosis. I built the walk before we hit the first camera, weight rolling even, shoulders loose, chin level. I hated putting on a show, but I could feel the strange gravitational pull of him next to me, and I hated that less than I should have.

We turned the corner toward the dining hall when a shadow emerged.

Anatol Getha stood in the center of the corridor, blocking the path like a riot wall, already strapped into his full keeper’s armor for the morning drill.

He smiled when he saw us, ready to gloat, but the expression died the moment he looked down.

His eyes locked onto my ankle.

I was standing evenly on both feet, no limp, no wince, because he was searching for the exact tell I had spent a lifetime learning not to show, and I gave him the same nothing I used to give the bettors.

Anatol’s brow furrowed, a genuine flicker of panic cracking his smug face. He knew what he did. He had loosened the studs himself, he knew the torque required to snap a ligament, and he knew injuries like that don’t vanish overnight. He looked from my ankle to my face, then back at my ankle, trying to make the math work.

“You snapped a ligament,” he said, his voice losing its bravado. “I heard it pop.”

“You heard what you wanted to hear, Getha,” I said, stepping forward to test him.

“Bullshit.”

Anatol blinked, the malice in his eyes flickering out as simple confusion took over. He looked from my leg to Felix, then back to the floor, shaking his head. The physics didn’t add up, and his blunt mind couldn’t make sense of it.

“I know what I heard,” he muttered, his voice lacking its usual weight.

“Too many headers fucked your brain up,” I said, shouldering past him. “Get out of my way.”

Anatol stepped back, pressing himself against the wall to let us pass, his eyes still glued to my right foot hitting the tiles.

We turned the corner, leaving him standing alone in the corridor.