Leander didn't particularly care for the posturing of the two teenagers blocking his path. In the grand scheme of his life—somewhere between fighting a gamma-irradiated monster and redesigning the power core of a skyscraper—a fifteen-year-old bully named Mike was less than a footnote.
"Don't worry," Leander said, his voice dropping into a low, chilling register that made the hair on the back of Mike's neck stand up. "I have zero interest in being the class monitor. It's a title for people who crave attention they haven't earned. Now, move aside."
He didn't wait for them to step out of the way. Leander simply walked forward, his shoulders squared. Though Mike and Walker were both over 1.7 meters tall and built like junior varsity linebackers, it was like they were made of cardboard. When Leander pushed between them, his steps were so heavy and anchored that both boys stumbled back, their sneakers squeaking awkwardly against the linoleum.
Mike's face twisted in a snarl, his ego bruised in front of the girls in the front row. He was just about to lunged at Leander's back when the heavy door swung open.
"Hey! Mike, Walker—unless you're planning on teaching the next unit on the French Revolution, I suggest you find your chairs," Mr. Heck barked, walking back in with a steaming paper cup.
The two exchanged a look of pure venom, but they weren't stupid enough to swing on the first day of school with a teacher watching. They slunk back to their desks, muttering curses under their breath.
Leander dropped back into his seat, the metallic legs of his desk letting out a faint, vibrating hum as they settled. Karin, who had watched the whole exchange with wide, fearful eyes, poked her head over the gap between their desks.
"Leander, are you okay?" she whispered, her voice trembling slightly. "The air in here just got... really heavy. It felt like when my dad gets into a shouting match with a contractor. It was scary."
"It's nothing," Leander said, pulling out a notebook he had no intention of using. "Just a bunch of kids playing king of the hill. They don't know any better."
He leaned back, his mind already drifting. He needed a way to exit this school system. If he could get Tony to expedite that "internship," he could be in the workshop by next Tuesday. He just had to make sure Aunt Jenny thought he was getting a "specialized education" rather than just skipping class to play with lasers.
"Leander? Why are you so quiet?" Karin leaned closer, her golden hair brushing against his shoulder. "Can you tell me about China? I've never even been outside of New York, but I've read so much. Is it true the mountains look like they're painted? And my tutor once brought me dumplings, but they were cold. Can you make the real ones?"
Leander looked at her, then caught the side-eye of half the boys in the room. They were watching him talk to the "pretty new girl in the uniform" with a mixture of envy and irritation. He sighed, realizing that being friendly with Karin was only going to make his "quiet life" harder.
"China is a lot of things, Karin," he said, offering a small, patient smile. "It's beautiful, it's crowded, and the food is a thousand times better than what you've had in New York. Dumplings are just the beginning."
He paused, his gaze returning to her pale, fragile-looking wrists. "But seriously, with your condition, are your parents actually okay with you being here? A high school hallway isn't exactly a safe environment for someone with... your history."
Karin's smile faltered. Her blue eyes dimmed, and she looked down at her neatly manicured nails. After a long hesitation, she leaned in until she was barely a breath away.
"I have severe congenital anemia," she confessed in a tiny voice. "When I was little, the hospital was my only home. I wasn't allowed to run, or play, or even go to the park because a simple cold could have... well, it could have been the end. I've lived in a bubble for fourteen years."
She looked up at him, a spark of defiance in her eyes. "But there's a new experimental treatment. It's a series of injections that stabilize my red blood cells. My dad didn't want me to go, but I told him I'd rather have one year of being real than a hundred years of being a ghost. This morning, when you caught me... if I had fallen, he would have dragged me back to the penthouse and locked the door forever. So, thank you. You're the reason I'm still 'out' today."
Ding-a-ling!
The dismissal bell rang, and the room exploded. The suppressed energy of thirty teenagers was suddenly unleashed as they stood up, shouting and laughing, forming small cliques.
Karin looked at the chaos and beamed. "It's so loud. I love it. Is this what the essence of school is? The energy?"
Leander leaned back, watching Mike and his group huddle up in the middle of the room. "Not quite. That's just the surface noise."
"Then what's the essence?" Karin asked, tilting her head.
"The essence," Leander said, his eyes narrowing as Mike began walking toward them with five other boys in tow, "is right there. Tilted head, fake swagger, and a need to feel big by making others feel small."
"What are they doing?" Karin asked, instinctively sliding her chair behind Leander's.
"Campus bullying. It's the universal language of the insecure," Leander said, not moving an inch as Mike arrived.
Mike didn't just stand there; he took the chair from the desk in front of Leander, turned it around, and sat on it backwards, leaning his heavy arms on Leander's desk.
"Hey, Hayes. That's your name, right? Leander Hayes?" Mike smirked, his cronies flanking him like a pack of hyenas. "I heard you Asians are all math wizards. That's great, actually. My dad's got four of your cousins working the registers at his stores. Maybe if you're lucky, I can get you a job counting napkins after school."
The boys behind him laughed, a harsh, practiced sound.
"So, what did Baldy Heck want with you in the hall? Was he asking you for dating advice? Or was he promising to make you his little pet monitor?" Mike pushed against the edge of the desk, trying to shove it into Leander's chest to intimidate him.
But the desk didn't budge.
The furniture was standard New York DOE—hollow metal tubes and a heavy laminate top. Normally, it would have skidded across the floor. But Leander had placed his hand on the metal frame, and his magnetic field had essentially "locked" the atoms of the desk to the structural rebar beneath the floorboards. To Mike, it felt like he was trying to push a mountain.
Leander looked at him, his expression bored. "Mike, you're trying very hard. Are you trying to move the furniture, or are you just having a muscle spasm?"
Mike's face turned a violent shade of red. He stood up, gripped the bottom of the metal frame with both hands, and tried to lift the whole thing in a display of "Alpha" strength. His veins popped in his neck, and his face went from red to purple. The table remained perfectly, unnaturally still.
"What the... is this thing nailed down?" Mike spat, letting go and slamming his fist onto the tabletop.
Leander caught Mike's fist mid-air. His hand was smaller than Mike's, but his grip was like a vice made of industrial-grade tungsten.
"Mike," Leander said softly, "given your rude behavior and your lack of manners, don't you think an apology is in order?"
Mike's eyes bulged. He was the undisputed king of his middle school; no one had ever talked to him like this, let alone touched him. "Let go of me, you freak!"
He tried to pull his hand away, but Leander didn't budge. In a fit of rage, Mike swung a heavy kick toward Leander's shin. Leander didn't flinch. He simply raised his own foot and met Mike's shin halfway with a precise, lightning-fast strike.
The sound of the collision was a dull thud. Mike let out a strangled cry as his leg buckled, sending him stumbling backward. But because Leander still had a hold of his right hand, Mike didn't fall to the ground. Instead, he ended up suspended in a grotesque, forward-leaning lunge, his entire body weight hanging from his caught wrist.
"Ahhh! Dammit! Let go! It's breaking! It's breaking!" Mike screamed, his face contorted in a mix of pain and pure humiliation.
The surrounding students stopped talking. Even Walker, who had been laughing, shut his mouth as he saw Mike—the strongest kid in the class—dangling from the grip of the "quiet Asian kid" like a hooked fish.
"Help me!" Mike yelled to his cronies. "Get him!"
The five boys looked at each other, then at Leander's cold, unblinking eyes. They hesitated, but the peer pressure was too much. They began to close in, fists clenched.
Behind Leander, Karin had gone completely pale. The stress of the situation was too much for her fragile system. Her heart was racing at an alarming rate, her blood trying to pump oxygen that wasn't there. An abnormal, feverish flush appeared on her cheeks, and her breathing became shallow and panicked.
Leander felt the change in Karin's bio-signature immediately. His patience evaporated.
"I told you to apologize, Mike," Leander said, his voice dropping to a whisper that echoed in the silence of the room. He tightened his grip just a fraction.
"Ah! No! Stop! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" Mike shrieked, tears of pain actually pricking his eyes.
Leander let go. Mike collapsed into the arms of his friends, clutching his wrist and sobbing openly. The "Alpha" of the class had been dismantled in less than sixty seconds without Leander even standing up.
But Leander wasn't looking at Mike anymore. He turned around just in time to see Karin stumble, her hand clutching the wall for support. Her eyes were rolling back, and her skin had gone from flushed to a terrifying, translucent blue.