I have just witnessed a girl fall to her death.
My body is shook. Her skull is splattered across the road. The lady who's parked right beside her can't stop screaming and a muscular man is struggling to cover his son's eyes. Cars have stopped and people are getting out of their cars to take a view at this gruesome sight. Someone's drone has already started filming—the AI announcer in my earpiece is already pinging news alerts. She has just fallen from the 12th floor. How did this happen? What happened to the robot on that floor? Was she pushed down? Was it an accident? Was it suicide?
Just as I'm about to continue walking so that I don't miss school, a woman screaming and plops down to her knees. She's completely naked and other women are around her, trying to place what I assume, a clothing chip on her body.
" Mira! " The woman bawls her eyes out at the body of the dead girl. Maybe she was her daughter.
" No–No! No! Wh-Why did you do it? Why leave me? Baby please wake up, " her hands are visibly shaking. " My daughter. My sweet baby. Why did you do it? "
Yup. Definitely suicide. Damn, poor woman.
I glance at the time on my cracked retinal lens—it's already 08:43. I continue on my journey and don't even look behind me. A hovering ambulance buzzes above like a giant metal wasp, scanning the scene before it even lands.
Suicide is normal now anyways. I mean, it's 3070, people would rather kill themselves than be used as lab rats by the government.
December 15th, 2098. Something fell straight into the earth's core. They said it was a meteor. But nothing about it made sense. The ground shook, then everything went quiet. A quarter of the world's population vanished overnight. No bodies, no goodbyes. Just gone. Like they were never even born.
People called it the Event. Some thought it was divine punishment, others thought it was the beginning of evolution. Whatever it was, it rewrote the rules of human biology.
A few months later, people started… changing. Some could move objects with their minds, run at impossible speeds, do the unimaginable. The government called them "enhanced." At first, it was exciting. Hopeful, even. Like the next step for humanity.
But not everyone got the good stuff.
Some people got powers that could kill without warning. Burn skin. Twist metal. Stop hearts. The media started calling them "Cursed." The government followed suit.
That's when the split began—Blessings and Curses.
People with blessings got jobs, sponsorships, fame. People with curses got taken. If you were lucky, they locked you up and poked at you like a lab rat. If you weren't... well, you disappeared. Just like the ones from the Event.
No one really understood what made a power "lethal." The only thing they agreed on was the chemical: Procainamide. Yellow as sulfur. It leaks from the eyes when someone uses a cursed ability. Supposedly it helps keep their heart from exploding. That's how they identify you. That's how they decide if you're dangerous.
Sure, one would expect me talk about how "different" I am and how I'm one of the normals, considering the fact that I'm the one telling the story.
The truth is, this isn't the facts. I'm just like them. I have a blessing. I think. My Blessing is useless. My tears turn objects blue for just three seconds. What a joke, am I right?
As a kid I used to be such a cry baby. My mom said I cried so much till I turned my palms blue. She saw it for just a few seconds and then it was gone. She spent months trying to convince people that she wasn't crazy.
I have tasted my tears before though. Tastes like battery acid and nostalgia.
I get to the bus station and get my H.I.V.E scanned in order to pay for the bus ticket. It's a microchip installed at the back of my neck–at the back if everyone's neck. The government has made it mandatory for as long as I have lived. Forcing removing this deeply embedded chip is considered an offense. H.I.V.E stands for Human Integrated Value Exchange. Without it, you're not even a citizen of the United States.
The teleportation pod spits me out right into the middle of Neo-London Academy's atrium, and wow, shocker—it still looks like a futuristic shopping mall crossed with a prison. The ceiling's a domed projection of Earth from space, real-time, because apparently, we all need a constant reminder that the planet's still there. Big whoop.
Kids are everywhere, doing their usual "look how normal I am" routines. Jiro's already leaning against a floating bench, thumbing through some illegal mods for Nexus Wars 9 on his wrist-holo. The game's basically interstellar chess with genocide, and he's obsessed. He also happens to be my best friend.
"Sul! They patched the plasma-rush glitch," he says, like this matters. "Now if you nuke a planet, the civs actually scream before they vaporize. Total immersion."
I shrug. "Cool. Still pay-to-win. "
Lissa walks by, her hair a nest of frizzy black wires—probably because she still uses that busted quantum-styler her mom fished out of a dumpster behind their noodle shop. She's got a neuro-pen dangling from her ear, the cheap kind that leaks ink if you tilt it wrong. It's drawing little blue streaks down her neck.
" You've got… uh." I point at the ink dripping onto her uniform.
She swipes at it, smearing blue across her collar. "Ugh. Mom's gonna kill me." She yanks the pen out and chucks it at me. "Fix it with your weird crybaby thing."
I catch it. "My tears only turn stuff blue for three seconds. Not my fault you're colorblind."
She flips me off, but there's no heat. "Five credits says you cry during the algebra test."
"Deal. Five says you short-circuit the smartboard again."
Lissa's blessing lets her hack any low-tier tech (smartboards, drones, her mom's busted quantum-styler) by 'thinking at it' too hard. It gives her migraines if she uses it too much. Oh and sometimes, it causes unintentional arson. Like that one time she fried a cafeteria drone and it started serving spicy nutrient bars.
She named her blessing: Neural Overlock. I think her blessing is pretty useless, considering the fact that she can't hack military grade systems like H.I.V.E Chips. It mostly just annoys teachers when the holo-projectors glitch during her exams.
She also cheats on tests by making the answer key flicker on the smartboard for 0.3 seconds, reboots Jiro's game when it lags by screaming at it until the pixels obey. For some reason she also claims she could "overclock a toaster into sentience" but refuses to prove it.
Lissa's blessing is like her—loud, messy, and 80% likely to set something on fire.
Across the atrium, Dax is flexing his new bionic arm—a glossy obsidian thing with glowing orange joints. He's using it to crush a soda can into a perfect cube while a group of kids with the brightest streaks of golden hair in middle of their heads watch like he's a zoo exhibit. Sure, 98% of us are Blessed kids and all have a streak of golden hair right the middle of our heads but these kids have golden hair that practically scream that they should be looked at. One girl with holographic nails claps. Dax grins like he invented gravity.
"He's gonna accidentally launch that can into orbit," Jiro mutters.
" Or dislocate a joints by Christmas," says Lissa.
The class bell isn't a sound—it's a pulse. The H.I.V.E chips in our necks vibrate, and the walls ripple with light, guiding us toward first period. The floor's smart-tiles glow under my shoes, mapping my path like I'm too stupid to remember where Quantum Dynamics is.
I pass a holographic kiosk playing the morning announcements. Some government-approved AI cheerfully reminds us that "suicide rates are down 2% this quarter!" before segueing into an ad for "mandatory mental wellness scans."
" They're scraping our brains after lunch," Lissa groans into her palms.
Suddenly, her face brightens up like she's had an idea, " bet I can fry the system again."
" You fried it last week," I say.
"And I'll fry it harder." She cracks her knuckles. "Ten credits if I make it spark."
"Deal. Twenty if it catches fire."
Jiro snorts. "You two are gonna bankrupt each other."
We pass the cafeteria drones—floating orbs that spit out nutrient bars labeled "Taste the Future!"—and a group of freshmen huddled around a holo-pet. It's a pixelated fox that keeps glitching into a squid. One kid's crying.
"That thing's gonna eat his homework," Jiro says.
"Or his soul," I say.
Lissa fake-gasps. "Sulien being poetic? Did you cry on a dictionary?"
"Shut up."
First period's AI teacher, Mr. Vox, is already droning about quantum mitosis. His hologram flickers every time someone yawns.
"Today," he says in that monotone that could sedate a supernova, " we'll discuss self-replicating nanobots. Open your synapse-pads."
Lissa slumps into her seat. "Kill me now."
"Can't," I say. "Gotta win those credits first."
She kicks my chair. "Crybaby."
"Pyromaniac."
Jiro's already asleep.
****
The second the door to Bio-Eng slides open, the smell of synthetic frog guts and overheated holograms smacks me in the face.
"Ugh," Lissa gags, pinching her nose. "Smells like Dax's bionic arm after he tried to microwave it."
Dax, already lounging at our usual lab table, flips her off with his glowing orange fingers. "It was one time. And it worked."
"Your arm literally screamed," Jiro says, not looking up from his wrist-holo. "Like, actual error noises. You traumatized the lunch drones."
I drop into my seat just as the AI teacher, Kyle, flickers into existence at the front of the room. His hologram's got that weird pixelated beard today—probably another system glitch.
"Today," he announces, "you will extract DNA from a genetically enhanced banana."
A collective groan.
"Banana?" Lissa hisses. "Again? Last time mine grew teeth."
"That was your fault," Jiro says. "You overclocked the incubator."
" And it was awesome, " she throws her fist in the air.
Across the room, Zara—the girl with holographic nails—raises her hand. "Can we use our blessings? Mine's getting rusty."
Zara's blessing is "Glamour Shift"—she can change her hair color by blinking. Big wow.
Mr. Kyle sighs. "No, Miss Teo. Your ability to look like a malfunctioning neon sign is irrelevant to banana DNA."
The class snickers. Zara flips her now-purple hair and mouth: "Hater."
Our "enhanced banana" looks suspiciously like a regular banana with tiny circuit patterns under its peel.
"This is just a normal banana they drew on," I mutter.
"Shhh," Jiro says, eyes flickering blue as he pokes it. "It's got, like, 0.3% more potassium. That's basically superhero levels."
Lissa stabs her banana with a nanoblade. "If this thing sprouts legs, I'm keeping it."
"You're keeping it?" Dax scoffs. *"Last week you set a plant on fire because it 'looked at you wrong.'"
"It was judging me."
I peel my banana—and for a split second, the inside pulses blue, like it's made of liquid code.
I blink.
Normal banana. Weird.
Jiro leans over, his voice dripping with mock concern. "You good? You're staring at that banana like it owes you credits." His grin stretches too wide, eyes crinkling at the corners like he's already scripting the joke.
I swallow hard, tearing my gaze away. "Yeah. Just… thought I saw something." My throat feels tight, like I've swallowed static.
He snorts, elbowing me. "A vision?" His tone lilts, teasing. "Did the banana reveal the meaning of life?"
"Shut up." I snap, sharper than I mean to, my fingers digging into the edge of the lab table. But then—
A flicker.
My breath hitches. For half a second, I see Jiro's wrist-holo explode, sparks slicing through the air as he yelps—a sound too raw, too real. I jerk back, shoulders slamming into my chair.
"Dude?" Jiro's smile falters. His brow furrows, eyes narrowing as he studies me. "You look like you just watched me die."
I force a laugh, too loud, too brittle. "Nah," I lie, my voice cracking. "Just… remembered I forgot to feed my holo-pet." I pick at a chip in the table, avoiding his stare.
Lissa snorts, rolling her eyes so hard her whole head tilts. "You have a holo-pet?" She smirks, leaning back in her chair like this is the saddest thing she's ever heard.
"Had." I shrug, feigning indifference. "It glitched into a black hole."
"Mood," Dax says flatly, not even looking up from his bionic arm. He spins a screwdriver between his fingers, bored.
Then—
BZZT.
Jiro's wrist-holo overloads, sparks erupting in a shower of orange. He yelps, jerking his arm back like it's been bitten. "WHAT THE—" His voice pitches high, panic flashing across his face before he schools it into a scowl.
"Told you," I mutter, my heartbeat roaring in my ears. My palms sweat, cold and clammy.
Lissa blinks slowly, her smirk fading. She tilts her head, studying me with a flicker of suspicion. "Okay, that was weirdly specific."
"Lucky guess," I say, shrugging. My voice comes out hollow, like I'm reciting lines from a script. I stare at the scorch marks on Jiro's holo, my chest tight.
After class, we hit the floating cafeteria. The lunch drones spit out our usual: "Nutri-Bricks" (taste: despair) and "Vitamin Fizz"(carbonated regret).
Zara slides into our table, her hair now neon green. "So. Who's hacking the wellness scans later?"
"Obviously me," Lissa says. "I'm gonna make it say everyone's clinically insane."
"Do me first," Dax says. "I wanna see if my arm's got daddy issues."
Jiro's eyes glow as he inhales his Nutri-Brick. "Did you know these things are 10% sawdust? Government documents say it's 'for texture.'"
Jiro's Blessing is called Tactical Hyper-focus. It lets him absorb and process insane amounts of information—but only about useless or hyper-specific topics like Nexus Wars 9 patch notes, the chemical composition of nutrient bars, Dax's bionic arm specs and so much other dumb stuff.
If he overthinks, he short-circuits nearby tech (hence why his wrist-holo always crashes mid-game).
He also has no social filter and drops random facts like: "Did you know suicide rates spike after mandatory scans?" Like oh my God, Jiro! No one asked you.
His blessing is so useless because he can't focus on actual schoolwork—just game strategies and conspiracy theories about the H.I.V.E chips. The annoying thing about it is that he always memorizes every glitch in Nexus Wars 9 to annoy his teammates. Jiro literally recites the academy's entire floor plan when bored and it always makes Lissa threaten to duct-tape his mouth.
" Stop reading government documents," Lissa says.
"Stop breathing my air," Jiro counters.
Zara flicks a holographic grape at Dax. It phases through his head. "Your brain's as empty as my dating pool."
"Accurate," Dax says.
I poke my Nutri-Brick. It whimpers.
"That's new," I say.
" It's evolving," Jiro says. "Soon it'll unionize."
****
As we leave, I glance at the hallway security bot.
For a second, I see it unfold into a swarm of tiny drones, chasing someone.
I blink.
It's just a bot.
Weirder than usual.