The alarms were louder outside.
Water streamed off the gym roof like a broken faucet, pooling across the concrete and turning the parking lot into a reflecting sheet of red emergency light. Kids poured out the doors in a rush, dressed-up chaos—heels clicking, suits soaked, mascara running. Teachers shouted instructions that no one heard. The air smelled like wet plastic and singed wires.
Sariya squeezed my hand and pulled me toward the curb.
"Over here!" she yelled. "They said to move to the front lot!"
I nodded, but I was only half here. My eyes kept dragging back to the side entrance where he'd stood. That grin behind the mask. The way he said my name like it belonged to him.
Young.
"Kaleb?" Sariya's voice cut through. "Hey—are you with me?"
"I'm here," I said, forcing it. "I'm fine."
We joined the stream of students funneling between cones that the staff had thrown down to make a path. Sirens grew closer—the real kind, not the recorded ones that loop for drills. Somewhere behind the bleachers, the fire panel stuttered a weak beep-beep-beep, as if even it was exhausted.
Delilah appeared out of the crowd, drenched and shivering. "What was that? Some kind of prank?"
"Not a prank," Malique said, jogging up beside us, hair plastered flat. "Pranks don't short out equipment from across the room."
Darrell pointed. "Security said, stay on the pavement. They're calling—"
He didn't finish. He didn't have to.
Three black drones knifed overhead, silent but for the thin whine of their rotors. They slowed in formation and pivoted in place, lenses dilating as they scanned the scene in a bright grid of blue. A heartbeat later: the twin howl of engines. Two armored SUVs swung around the circular drive and braked in unison, doors cracking open before they'd fully stopped.
Sentinel Solutions didn't just arrive. They materialized.
Agents in black uniforms with slim blue chevrons flooded out—calm, crisp, clipped movements like this were rehearsal. One team split to the gym doors with a mobile dampener case, locking it open and clicking a cylinder into place. Another team threw up a portable tower and extended a dish; the air got that chalky taste it gets when they turn on a field jammer.
Students went quiet in the way crowds do when authority shows up with gear that hums.
A woman with a half-shaved head and a matte comms headset paced forward, raising her voice just enough to carry.
"Everyone, remain in the front lot. Stay clear of the building. You are safe."
She didn't have to introduce herself. The logo on her shoulder—the sideways S with the ring—did it for her.
Sariya tightened her hold on my hand. "Sentinel's here. That's… good, right?"
I didn't answer. Good was not the word I'd use.
The drones dipped lower. One paused over the gym roof, washed it in a blue bloom of light, then chirped a tone and zipped higher again. The headset woman listened to something in her ear, nodded once, and gestured to her left. Two techs rolled a crate toward the doors. I caught the label as it passed: FIELD DAMPENER / MODEL: QUIET-12.
The music inside the gym had died, but I could still feel it in my chest somehow—the echo of bass that wasn't there.
Malique leaned in. "You think that guy's still inside?"
I pictured the green lines tracing the intruder's armor, the way he blinked out like e bad signal. "No. He's gone."
"How do you know?"
I didn't answer because I didn't know how to say I just knew.
A wave of murmurs turned all heads at once: the headset woman wasn't the only lead. A second SUV idled to a stop, and he stepped out.
Joe Wann.
Crisp suit. Tie like a ruler. Calm, that wasn't calm at all.
He scanned the lot the way the drones did—methodical, hungry—and walked straight to the headset woman. They spoke too quietly to catch, but she pointed toward the gym, then the sky, then the students. His eyes followed, then came back to the crowd and kept moving.
I looked away before his sweep could catch me. Sariya didn't let go of my hand.
"Are you sure you're okay?" she asked. "You're shaking."
I tried to laugh it off. It came out thin. "Cold."
She reached up and smoothed my collar down, the red fabric darker where it was soaked. "You did make it," she said, almost to herself, like that counted for something the night couldn't take from us.
A crackle spiked through the P.A. by the office doors. The principal's voice came out steady but too fast. "Students, please remain calm. You'll be released to your cars in groups. If you need assistance, raise your hand and stay where you are."
Groups formed without anyone admitting they were forming—little clusters of damp tuxes and dresses on the asphalt. Teachers called last names. A few kids cried quietly. Someone somewhere kept laughing because they didn't know what else to do.
My phone buzzed. Unknown number: a blank text, then a second—just a green dot. I killed the screen and slid it back into my pocket.
Not tonight.
A Sentinel tech jogged past, lugging a wheeled case. The latch rattled; inside, something clinked—metal knocking metal. He and another agent flanked one of the rear exits and peeled the door open an inch. Smoke billowed. The dampener cylinder thrummed; the smoke thinned like the air was swallowing it.
A boy in a ruined boutonnière shouldered past us, voice high with panic. "My sister's still by the gym, I have to—"
"Hey—hey," a woman in a black windbreaker said, catching his arm. "We'll help you find her. Stay with me." She turned him toward the lot and walked him to a paramedic staging area. The patch on her windbreaker sleeve read SCHOOL STAFF, but her posture read something else—eyes everywhere, steps measured.
Melanie. The new girl from history. Hair slicked from the rain of sprinklers, face composed. The "office job" Delilah teased about suddenly made a different kind of sense.
She didn't see me. Or she pretended not to. Either way, she blended back into a group of teachers like she'd always been one of them.
"Kaleb?" Sariya again. "Maybe we should get to the sidewalk. You look pale."
"Yeah," I started, and that was when the world tilted wrong.
Not visually. The space felt off—as if the lot were a rug someone tugged a fraction to the left. The hair on my arms lifted without wind. The drones above hiccuped in midair, correcting in place.
Across the lot, in the wedge of shadow between the gym and the science wing, a regular door creaked open a hand's width, then shut itself like it changed its mind.
He was near.
I swallowed. "I'll walk you to the sidewalk. Then I need to—uh—check on something."
Sariya gave me that look she gives when she's about to argue and decides not to. "Okay. But don't take forever."
We reached the sidewalk where a row of magnolia trees dripped steady rainwater onto the grass. The crowd thinned here. I squeezed her hand once and let go.
"I'll be right back," I said.
"Kaleb—"
"Promise."
I turned and moved with the kind of casual I hoped read as casual. Past the cones. Past the paramedic table. Past a Sentinel agent checking off a clipboard. When I was sure no eyes were on me, I cut behind the utility shed and slipped into the narrow service lane that ran between the gym and the back fence.
The noise of the lot dimmed. The lane smelled like wet concrete and old dust. One of the emergency lights on the wall buzzed miserably, trying its best. For a second, I let myself breathe.
"Too curious for your own good."
The voice brushed the back of my neck.
I spun. He stepped out from behind the dumpster like he'd been poured from the shadow.
Same black plating. Same green tracer lines. Same wrong grin under a half-mask that let you see just enough to wish you hadn't. Up close, the lines weren't paint—they were channels, light flowing like liquid.
He didn't point a weapon. He didn't have to. Power hummed around him the way heat hums off asphalt.
"You," I said.
"Me," he agreed. His eyes ticked up and down like he was measuring a blueprint I couldn't see. "Kaleb Young."
"You said my name in there," I said. "Why?"
He tilted his head. "Because it's yours."
"You don't know me."
"Not yet."
Silence stretched. The emergency light buzzed. Somewhere on the other side of the gym, a teacher shouted instructions, and a freshman cried into their sleeves.
He broke the quiet first. "They came fast."
"Sentinel?" I asked.
He nodded at the red glow bleeding over the roofline. "They monitor for this. A thousand kids post the same clip within thirty seconds, and a thousand alarms go off. Drones, dampeners, triage. All very efficient. I'm impressed."
"You sound like you approve."
He chuckled softly. "I appreciate a good machine. Even if I plan to break it."
"You part of the Harbingers?" I asked. "Round Table? Lieutenant of Doom? What's your title—Professional Party Crasher?"
"Titles are for people who need them," he said. "I work with people who don't."
Does that answer a yes or a no?"
"That answers 'I walk between.'" He took a half step closer, and the green channels brightened. "And you, Kaleb Young, stand in a doorway you pretend not to see."
I didn't move. "You came here for me."
"Not at first," he said. "At first, I came to ruin a tidy little press opportunity. Sentinel loves a camera. But then I felt it in the room—something humming off-key. Your file wouldn't say what, but your blood did."
Cold sliced under my skin. "My… file."
He smiled like a teacher pleased that a student had found the right page. "You know the name they put on it? The classification bucket they drop you in when their instruments don't know what to call you?"
"I'm not interested."
"Project Apex."
The concrete seemed to tilt again. The word clanged in the parts of me that still held the courtroom air.
He watched my face, patient. "You think those hearings are fair? They have paperwork to explain the cage. Apex subjects don't walk around forever. They get tagged. Then they get tested. Then they belong to someone."
"I don't belong to anyone," I said, voice low.
"Tell that to the people who issued you a five o'clock appointment designed to cut your life in half." He gestured toward the lot with two fingers. "Dance or hearing. World or lab. They think the choice proves something about you. It doesn't. It proves something about them."
"I didn't choose them."
"Not yet," he said. "But they chose you."
I swallowed the burn working up my throat. "What do you want?"
"To make your options ugly in a way that's honest," he said. "I'm not here to drag you somewhere at knifepoint. I'm here to tell you what the map looks like before someone else folds it and says that's all there is."
"And what does your map show?"
"That Sentinel will stop calling you a student and start calling you property the minute your power makes a mess they can't explain." He bent a bolt on the dumpster without touching it—metal squealed, then snapped clean. The piece pinged off the wall and skittered to a stop by my shoe. "It also shows there are people who don't think kids should be patented."
"Those people being… your people."
"My network," he said, and there was no humor in the word. "We intercept certain files when they try to leave certain servers. Imagine my curiosity when I see an Apex tag on a public-school medical submission."
"So you hacked a hospital," I said.
"I saved a child from a bar code," he said back.
I stared at him. "You don't even know what I am."
"I know enough." He tapped his temple. "I felt the pressure change the second you walked into the gym. You're quiet, and quiet is the loudest thing in the room when everything else is screaming."
The emergency light flickered, threatening to give up. The lane felt narrower.
On the roof, one of the drones drifted out of position, nose dipping as if it had lost interest. Then it corrected again and pointed straight down at the lane. A faint blue beam swept across us. I stepped aside on instinct. The beam followed me.
He laughed. "See? Fast."
Boots scraped at the far end of the lane; two Sentinel agents hustled past the fence gate, scanning with hand units. Their displays chattered with a soft, desperate static. The man in black didn't look worried. He looked amused.
"Time to choose a footnote," he said.
"To what?"
"To tonight's report." He counted on his fingers. "One: 'Unknown hostile disrupted student event; no casualties; threat evaded; probable tech-meta.' Two: 'Same, plus Apex Subject spotted near scene; subject to be relocated for evaluation.' A third is possible but less likely: 'Hostile neutralized by local asset.' That one ends badly for you."
"You want me to run," I said.
"I want you to stop letting other people write you into their forms," he said. "I want you to understand that every polite meeting ends under a different ceiling."
I looked past him toward the red spill of the lot. I could just make out Sariya's silhouette with Delilah under a magnolia, shoulders hunched against the damp, scanning the crowd for me.
"I can't leave them," I said.
He nodded. "That's the right answer."
He turned his palm over. The green channels brightened; for a second, the lane hummed like a struck wire. Above us, all three drones hiccuped at once and rose ten feet, then ten more, and held there, blind.
Footsteps hit concrete—not calm now. The two agents rounded the corner, weapons shouldered but pointed down.
"Hands where we can see them!" one barked.
The man in black didn't raise his hands. He smiled wider. "Tell your supervisors the Breaker says hello."
Both agents froze, not because of the name but because the door behind them—steel with a push bar—folded itself inward like paper. Their mouths opened. The dampener hum climbed a note into teeth-edge territory. One agent swore under his breath. The other tried his radio, got static, smacked it, got more.
"Stay very still," one of them told me, eyes never leaving Breaker.
He winked at me. "We'll finish our talk soon, Young."
"Don't—" I started.
But he had already gone, green light feathering at his edges, then a soft pop of displaced air, like a lightbulb giving up. The emergency lamp buzzed in the silence he left.
"Subject!" the first agent snapped into his dead mic. "We had eyes—they just—dammit!"
The second agent looked at me now, calculating. Not hostile. Not friendly. Just adding me to a column.
"You with him?" he asked.
"No," I said.
"What did he say to you?"
I shook my head. "Nothing that makes sense."
He studied me for ne second. Then he pointed toward the lot. "Back to the crowd. Now."
I went.
When I broke out of the service lane, the lot felt louder again—sirens, orders, nervous laughter. I didn't realize I'd been holding my breath until my lungs shuddered, greedy for the air that tasted like hot electrics and tree sap.
Sariya spotted me first and hurried over. "Where did you go?"
"Bathroom," I lied.
"In a blackout?" Delilah said, incredulous.
"Emergency one," I said. I managed a weak smile. "I'm not picky."
Malique bumped my shoulder like that made everything normal. "You missed the drones doing a cool little panic hover. Ten out of ten would watch again."
"Is it over?" Sariya asked, too quiet for the others to hear.
"Tonight?" I said. "Yeah. I think so."
Headset Woman's voice boomed from a portable speaker: "Parents are being notified. Students with cars, you'll be released by row. Everyone else, stay with your assigned group."
Joe stood under the awning by the office doors, speaking to a cluster of administrators. He looked up once and scanned the lot again. This time, he saw me. His face didn't change, but something behind it did—like a note struck true. He tapped his phone, said something to a nearby agent, then did not walk toward me.
Not yet.
A hand brushed my elbow. Melanie—still in the STAFF windbreaker—had drifted back to our patch of asphalt without anyone inviting her. Her voice was gentle, practiced.
"You okay?" she asked the group, eyes not leaving min, even when she asked it to all of us. "Everyone accounted for?"
"We're good," Malique said, because he always answered first.
"Good," she said, like she meant it. She stepped back into the crowd and disappeared again, like water soaking into dark cloth.
Sariya leaned her head against my shoulder. "I hate this," she said.
"Me too."
"Do you think they'll cancel the rest of the dance?"
I looked at the dark mouth of the gym and the ripped cables glistening under the eaves. "Yeah."
We stood like that while the night put itself back into order. Cars peeled away one by one. Friends compared ruined shoes and smudged eyeliner and half-laughed because it was better than crying. Teachers counted, re-counted, and checked lists again. The drones resumed their tidy lines, pretending their hiccup didn't happen.
When it was our turn to leave, the principal waved us through with a tremble she tried to hide.
As we walked, my phone buzzed once more. Unknown number. This time, a single word.
SOON.
I killed the screen and slid it away. Sariya didn't see. Joe probably did. Somewhere, Breaker certainly smiled.
Sentinel had responded the second the night went sideways. The machine worked. The crowd stayed safe. The report would sound clean. But there are things a report can't hold—like a grin that glows behind a mask, or a boy in a red shirt realizing he's not a student in their files anymore.
He's a category.
And categories get collected.
I squeezed Sariya's hand and told myself to keep walking. For tonight, that was the only map I could follow.