Page 7

We transitioned to tactical drills, a 4-3-3, attack versus defense.

The numbers were the shape of the team, counted from the goalkeeper forward: four defenders across the back, three midfielders in front of them, three attackers at the top, ten men and a keeper with each man assigned a patch of grass so nobody had to think about it at a sprint. I played striker, the middle of those three attackers and the man whose whole job was putting the ball in the net, with a winger running each sideline to stretch the defense wide for me.

The ball snapped against my instep with a dull thud. I didn’t look down, because I knew exactly where the ball was; that certainty was most of what the Academy had spent two decades installing. The synthetic turf ran flawless and frictionless under my cleats, like sprinting on a tightly woven carpet of rubber.

I cut left, and the Tier 3 defender marking me stumbled as his cheap cleats slipped on the surface.

Worthless.

I sped up and drove the ball toward the penalty box. Anatol filled the goal, half a net’s worth of muscle grinning at me around a mouthguard. Against a wall like that power was irrelevant; precision was the goal. I dipped my shoulder to feint right, he bit on the fake, his weight shifted just far enough to open the lane, and a snap of my ankle sent the ball curling into the bottom left corner, past his outstretched glove by an inch.

The net rippled. I turned away before the ball stopped rolling, because celebration was for people who surprised themselves.

“Reset,” Coach Gallus barked. “Tier 1, tighten up. Keep the shape!”

I jogged back to the center circle, watching the new intake stumble over their own feet. They flinched every time the ball came near them, paralyzed by what a mistake in front of the cameras would mean.

“Cento.”

The voice cut through the hum of the drone rotors, unafraid, a quality that did not belong on this field in a gray bib.

Leander Regillen stood at the edge of the center circle.

I recognized him, the recruit from the intake yard, the one who had stood in the rain like weather was something that happened to other people. I had pulled his file that evening. Sector 9. No family on record. A juvenile history the file summarized as unsanctioned competitive activity, which was the Academy’s way of spelling cage courts without admitting they produced anything.

He wore the gray training bib of the Unranked over his standard uniform, sleeves rolled to the shoulder over thick, tanned biceps corded with functional muscle. Broader than a striker had any right to be, he carried the heavy density of a powerhouse runner, built to plow through a defensive line rather than dance around it. His brown hair was a mess, damp with sweat and falling into eyes hard as flint. He slouched with his weight on one hip, looking at me like I was a problem he needed to solve.

I knew that look. I had aimed it at him yesterday through tinted glass, and I did not enjoy learning what the other end of it felt like.

“You’re drifting,” he said.

I stopped, the audacity traveling through me like a static shock. “Excuse me?”

“Your defensive line.” He pointed a calloused finger. “They drift wide when you push. It leaves the middle open.”

I glanced back. He was talking about the expansion gap, the spacing my defenders created to overload the wings. To a street player raised on scrambling in the mud, an open channel looked like a risk, a counterattack waiting to happen. To me it was irrelevant, because the entire system was engineered around one assumption: I do not lose the ball.

I laughed, and it came out as a bitter sound. “Worry about yourself, meat.”

Coach Gallus blew the whistle. “Scrimmage. Next point wins. Regillen, sub in for Sylla.”

Leander stepped up to the line and pushed right up against me, shoulder to shoulder, close enough that I could feel the heat coming off him.

“Ball in,” the drone announced, and the launcher fired.

I trapped the ball with my chest and brought it down smoothly, and Leander lunged immediately. He was deceptively fast for his size, but I was Rank One for a reason. I dragged the ball back with my sole and spun away from his pressure, and his heavy momentum carried him past me as he overcommitted.

“Too slow,” I gloated.

I pushed the ball through his legs, a nutmeg, the ultimate disrespect, and the Tier 1 players on the sideline jeered on cue. I burst past him, collected the ball on the other side, the path to the goal wide open. I lined up the shot, planted my left foot, drew my leg back with the angle already solved.

A shadow moved in my peripheral vision.

He shouldn’t have been there. He’d been behind me, beaten. I didn’t hear footsteps, only the rush of air.

Leander didn’t play the ball. He ignored it completely, dropped his shoulder, and drove his entire body weight into my chest.

The world tilted. My back hit the turf hard, rubber pellets biting fire into my elbows, my head snapping back off the synthetic grass hard enough to burst stars across the floodlights in gray and black static.