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I looked at the board. Then I looked at Anatol.

The giant keeper was staring at the screen, his face draining of color, and I watched him arrive at the math I had already finished. He couldn’t bully me anymore. He couldn’t lean on Felix with the threat of wasting resources on a grunt, because the board above his head had just reclassified me as equal. I smirked at him.

“Reset!” Gallus screamed, breaking the trance. “We go again!”

We ran it again. And again. We tore them apart, used his defensive line as practice dummies, and by the third goal Anatol was screaming at his own defenders, face red, voice fraying, watching his leverage evaporate with every ball that hit the net.

When the final whistle blew, the rest of the team stood gasping, hands on their knees. Felix and I stood tall.

We walked toward the tunnel together, and the adrenaline drained like after a cage match, in stages, leaving my joints heavy and my hearing too sharp. Under it sat the reality of what came next. We had beaten Anatol on the field, but it certainly wasn’t over.

He intercepted us in the corridor shadows, right on schedule, and I clocked the ground while he squared up.

He blocked the path to the showers, still in his keeper gloves, his face twisted into a mask of fury.

“You stupid little prick,” Anatol spat, looking straight past me at Felix. “We had a deal.”

Felix stood his ground, chin lifting in that haughty, regal way that drove me crazy.

“The deal changed,” Felix said, his voice cool.

I stepped in front of him, blocking Anatol’s view, broad enough to hide Felix completely.

“He doesn’t have a deal with you,” I said, my voice scraping against the concrete walls. “He has a deal with me.”

Anatol laughed, but the laugh came out a size too small. “Step aside, rat. The grown-ups are talking. Unless you want me to go to the Director right now and tell him about the little chemistry experiment you pulled on that ankle.”

“Go ahead,” I said.

Anatol blinked. “What?”

“Go to the Director,” I challenged him. “Tell him Felix used an Emergency kit to fix the Symbiosis. Tell him he prioritized the team over protocol.”

I leaned in, dropping my voice to a whisper only he could hear.

“And then I’ll tell him who loosened the studs.”

Anatol froze.

“You think I didn’t check the cleats?” I said. “You think I didn’t keep the broken screws? I grew up in Sector 9, Getha. We know how to spot sabotage. I have the evidence in my locker.”

That part was a bluff. The shoes were gone, dumped with the tape and the swelling, but Anatol didn’t know that, and men like him assumed everybody kept evidence, because it was what they would have done.

“If you report us,” I said, “I report you. Felix gets a slap on the wrist for misappropriation. You get liquidated for trying to destroy the Director’s pet project during a critical drill. Who do you think Tegula values more? The pairing that just scored a 99% rating on Symbiosis, or a goalie who can’t keep a clean sheet?”

Anatol’s face went pale. He looked at me, then over my shoulder at Felix, and did the math.

“You’re bluffing,” he whispered, but the conviction was gone.

“Try me.”

I stared him down. I let the wolf look out through my eyes, the one the cages had fed for years, and I gave him all the time he needed to recognize it.

Anatol swallowed and stepped back, clearing the path.

“Watch your back, Regillen,” he muttered. “Accidents happen.”

“I’m counting on it.”