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I jumped and stepped on him, cleats biting into his thigh, using his body as a launchpad, and landed running on the far side with the ball still sewn to my feet.

The crowd went insane.

Twenty yards out. The back line backpedaled, trying to close the gap, but they could see it in my eyes. I was focused on the net. Their keeper screamed at his defense, dragging bodies into a wall.

A defender got a fist into my jersey and yanked me backward, the fabric tearing off my shoulder, and I kept running, dragging him with me, his cleats skating uselessly across the turf. I was dense with hate.

I planted my left foot and the world slowed. The noise of sixty thousand people fell away to a hum, the floodlights smeared into long white streaks, and the trajectory was already there, a red line drawn in the air from my laces to the top corner.

I struck the ball and put everything into it. The fear, the shame, the image of Leander’s twisted ankle.

The ball exploded off my foot and went through the air screaming. The keeper was beaten and knew it. He didn’t even move.

A shadow rose off the turf.

Helier.

He should not have been able to. I had felt his ribs go under my elbow. He should have been down, and instead he was airborne, throwing his whole body into the path of the shot, using his face to stop the ball.

Crunch.

The ball met his forehead with a sickening impact, blood spraying from the ruin Leander had already made of his nose, and his head snapped back. He dropped out of the air like a shot bird and lay still.

The ball deflected straight up, spinning violently.

The crowd gasped. The keeper scrambled off his line, blinded by the floodlights.

The ball hung at the top of its arc.

I was already moving.

I turned side-on and left the ground, legs scissoring, one to lift, one to strike, and I caught the drop just as gravity took me, ankle locked, laces driving through the underside of the ball.

The volley ripped off my shoe, a white blur past the keeper’s dive.

It hit the back stanchion with a metallic clang that rang across the stadium like a bell.

GOAL

ACADEMY: 2 - RESERVES: 1.

MATCH COMPLETE.

The buzzer sounded, one long mournful note.

I landed on my back, sucking air in harsh bursts, my legs shaking as the adrenaline dumped out of my system in a toxic wash. I rolled over, the torn jersey hanging off my shoulder. Helier lay sprawled across the penalty spot, blood pooling under his cheek, eyes rolled back white. He had stopped the first shot, but he could not stop the inevitable.

Anatol stood in our goal, pale as a ghost. He could report the Bio-Gel. He could scream it from the rooftops, it would change nothing. All his leverage just evaporated in the roar of the crowd.

I had just saved the Academy on the national feed, and the Director did not prosecute the hero of the broadcast; he buried whoever tried to stain the victory.

The crowd was chanting my name, a deafening worship rolling down from every tier, but I did not give them the wave they wanted. The cold thing in my chest carried one instruction.

To reach Leander I would have to play the Board’s game off the field too, and I would have to play it fast.

I walked toward the dark mouth of the exit, twin to the tunnel that had swallowed him.

Leander was gone. They had taken him.