Chinook’s confident posture deflated slightly. She looked away, a flicker of her usual frustrated intensity returning. “Look, Doyle. Subvector didn’t just ask. She made it clear that getting on your team and keeping you in one piece was my new extra-credit project. The tour guide act?” She gestured vaguely at herself. “That was her idea. ‘Be more approachable. Show him something he wants.’ So. Here I am. Being approachable. The junk vault is something you want, right?”

  She paused, looking around the cavernous space. “I know this isn’t really a bribe. Once your teachers found out you could manipulate materials, they’d have dragged you down here eventually. But the Whispernet says you’re going to be strongly encouraged to maximize your healing ability.”

  I snorted. “The Whispernet sounds like a glorified gossip chain. And ‘true healer’? I’m pretty good at fixing things, including traumatic blunt-force disassembly, but I don’t know what the ‘true’ part is supposed to mean.”

  She shrugged. “There are minor healing abilities. We have a third-year empath who can share damage among a team, and a bio-controller who can grow cloned biomatter for surgeons. Useful, but limited. The Whispernet is just what it sounds like—second- through fourth-years who gossip. A lot of them work with teachers, some are even paid by the school. They hear things. And the rumor is the Academy wants to funnel you to the BSA as a floating specialist.”

  “Encourage me?” I asked, the word tasting sour. “Like, an offer I can’t refuse, backed by men in dark suits and darker intentions?”

  She shook her head. “No. More like a dump truck full of money and a blank check for resources. That’s the ‘true healer’ part. A video of you working on Kelly got leaked. Three of the Farmer Families have already contacted the Academy, demanding you be shipped to them for ‘training.’ The only reason there aren’t more is because the leak was plugged. Farmer Families are good at keeping secrets, especially from each other.”

  A quick, depressing history lesson, as seen through my newly paranoid lens: After the Q-Bombs turned the world into a chaotic buffet for extradimensional horrors, civilization collapsed outside the cities. Some rural areas survived, thanks to preparation, luck, or a local Alpha strong enough to tell the mutant bears to get off their lawn. These areas now produce the food and resources the cities desperately need, making them stupidly, obscenely rich.

  These are the Farmer Families. They’re a law unto themselves, owning huge chunks of the cities they supply and operating with near-total impunity. Their golden rule is simple: he who has the gold makes the rules. And they are brutally pragmatic about protecting their advantages, which includes seducing, buying, or outright kidnapping the most useful Alphas, if not the most battle-ready. Why would they bother with a simple kidnapping? Because the BSA, for all its power, can’t mobilize a nationwide manhunt for one guy, no matter how good he is at putting people back together. The BSA knows it, the Families know it, and now I know it.

  And they have methods. It’s not just about force. If a powerful empath on their payroll decides you’re going to fall desperately in love with the family heir and be fanatically loyal, it’ll probably happen. They’re called ‘families’ for a reason—the best way to ensure loyalty is marriage and the promise of super-powered babies. Power tends to run in bloodlines, and they are very, very interested in cultivating their own.

  “Well, shit,” I said, the words inadequate for the pit of cold dread forming in my stomach. It was one thing to be a kidnapping risk for the BSA; it was another to be a prized breeding stallion for a bunch of agro-baron warlords.

  “Not exactly eloquent, but definitely to the point,” Chinook agreed. “Right now, you’re an unknown factor. A stream with flecks of gold—could be a rich vein, could be a money pit. But… Subvector asked me for a personal favor.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  I raised an eyebrow. “What personal favor did the Academy’s Master-at-Arms, a woman who probably drinks nail polish remover for breakfast, request from you?”

  She smiled slightly. “She asked me to get on your team and, if I can, to play bodyguard. To help you protect yourself by, and I quote, ‘any means necessary.’ Unquote.”

  We had moved past the organized sections into older, unfinished tunnels. The concrete floor was cracked, the lights were dim and spaced farther apart, flickering old LED tubes that had to be pre-Q-Bomb relics. The air grew still and thick.

  But I could feel it. A pull. An itch in my soul.

  “Here,” I said, pointing to a beaten-up, unmarked shaft covered by a rusted grate. It was a dark maw, with ancient electrical lines snaking down into the darkness.

  What was coming from that tunnel was a symphony to my new senses. I took a deep breath, and it was like stepping into a bakery of pure, unfiltered energy. Helium-2, excess high-speed protons and electrons, the occasional zippy neutron—the delightful aftermath of atomic decay. I mentally grabbed the excess momentum, the exact kind of chaotic energy my power thrived on, and started reforming the scattered particles into clean hydrogen, the easiest atomic puzzle to solve.

  For the first time, I felt my internal energy reservoir not just filling, but swelling. It would hurt like a bitch later, and I’d have to do a full metabolic purge to scrub out the beta radiation and poisonous chemical byproducts, but it was there. Everything I needed: carbon, iron, copper, silicon, traces of gold, silver, and yes, uranium. Phosphorus, fluorine, arsenic—all sheer, unadulterated poison, and the perfect building blocks for high-end fabrication, all laced with the energy I desperately needed to level up.

  “There?” Candace asked, her skepticism palpable. “Down there? That’s the old waste storage. Mine tailings, toxic chemical sludge—they stuffed everything down there for a century before this place was a school. There’s a respirator outlet and a sealed wall to keep the gases contained. You want to waltz down there?”

  I shook my head, a slow grin spreading across my face. “Of course not. That would be suicide. I want a military-grade hazard suit with a self-contained oxygen supply so I don’t have to waste energy filtering my own air. I want a full hazmat decontamination airlock installed. Then I want to sit down there in the toxic waste and mine tailings and have a picnic.”

  “And you think you’ll be safe?” she asked, aghast.

  I grinned wider. “Not even slightly. I hope I will be safe. I’m sure with your powers, you prefer a nice, clean mountaintop with healthy winds. I like fresh air too, but my power prefers an all-you-can-eat buffet of ionizing radiation. This is my version of a spa day.”

  “Hoping? That’s your plan?”

  “It’s the only plan I’ve got. If it’s too much, I won’t break the seal. So,” I said, turning to look at her directly. “What did Subvector offer you for this bodyguard duty? It must have been good.”

  She looked nervous, a crack in her stoic armor. “Umm, personal training. She has a similar powerset—physical enhancement, flight. Decades of experience. And… extra credits toward my teamwork requirement.”

  “The cheat!” I exclaimed, mock-offended. “That’s practically institutional blackmail! My virtue for your GPA.”

  She shrugged and then stretched, a motion so casually graceful it had to be practiced. I tried not to notice how the motion accentuated her athlete’s physique. I’m paranoid, not dead. “So? Does that mean I’m in? Now that you know I have a very personal, credit-based reason to keep you safe and be a good team anchor?”

  I sighed, the sound swallowed by the cavernous room. “You know I have to talk to Mindy about this. Team decisions aren’t solo acts.”

  She smiled slightly, a genuine one this time. “I let Mommy know what was going on before I ever knocked on your door. Did you know she’s convinced you’re a liar?”

  My sigh this time was one of pure exhaustion. “Did she tell you that?”

  “Not in so many words. But she did mention she thought you were some ‘Diablo’ guy that you said you weren’t.”

  “Let’s just say,” I said, rubbing the bridge of my nose, “that full disclosure wasn’t my initial strategy for survival. It’s becoming increasingly pointless, though, considering I’m now unofficially teamed with a human intelligence asset who has probably compiled a dossier on my childhood dental records. The answer is yes, I will recommend you for the team. But my safety?” I looked at her very seriously, all humor gone. “Is that really your job now?”

  She met my gaze, her own eyes unreadable. “Isn’t it?”