Chap 122: War

Tee had never been stared at so intensely as she was while bringing Jack home, so she took a jet-cab to avoid more attention. The driver’s eyes flicked constantly between the road and the “zombie” beside her in the back seat. His knitted brows in the rearview mirror could have been worry for the poor guy—or annoyance at the blood dripping from his nose, potentially messing up the cab.

Jack’s parents and Tetra weren’t the only ones eager to know what had happened. But Tee refused to say anything until Jack woke up in the hospital. He had no memory of the attack, and the nurse said he had amnesia. With that news, Tee finally answered all the questioning faces.

She explained that Jack had followed her to a public restroom after the concert. When she returned, she saw several Priman officers chasing two crooks. Jack had been on the ground, beaten, after refusing to hand over his wallet.

The hard eyes watching her every word believed her completely. It was thanks to Tetra that Tee knew how to suppress lying triggers. Years ago, Tetra had let her apply concealer to her curse mark on her own. Every morning since then, Tee told herself she was not a Xeno-victim. Coupled with her research on lying cues, that was the foundation of her practice. But the event after the concert elevated it to another level.

Tee’s questions all led to the compacted Ether Tetra had injected into her. It must have been the reason for her super strength and that insane eye vision. But she couldn’t attract unwanted attention, especially with the mark on her neck she needed to keep hidden. But that was not all that changed about her that day.

After the hospital memory, Tee found herself in a corridor at her Academy. She couldn’t smell anything in the dream, but her younger self’s twitching nose hinted at a foul presence she had never noticed before. Every MG off who passed had black-filled eyes and creepy smiles. Though far from her actual memories, it felt fitting.

That was the day she first noticed the monsters roaming her Academy. Students tripping in the corridors weren’t accidents. Every one of them wore crests, and there was always a guard nearby when it happened. It didn’t take long for her to realize the guards were deliberately pushing their bats to trip the students. Worse, ninety percent of the time, it was the fat belly dog named Beater.

Young Tee stopped looking in the mirror in her locker to glare at the eyesore, Beater. She slammed the door with such force that a few students jumped. All eyes in the corridor shifted from the student who had crashed to the ground to her.

“Hey!” Beater shouted. “No noise in the corridor!”

Tee walked away with her back to him, just as she had back then. The walls faded, replaced by treetops with blue skies peeking through the leaves. Young Tee sat on a bench with her friends at lunch, feeding Jack, who had a cast on both arms. It was Jack’s first day back at the Academy after being released from the hospital.

“Are you sure that’s what happened?” Brenda asked. “I would have believed you if you said he fell on a multi-level highway and got run over by multiple vehicles.”

Jack darted his eyes from the fork Tee held to his mouth to Brenda. “You’re not funny,” he muttered.

Warren chuckled and lifted a box of milk toward Jack’s face. “Jack, you need more calcium for those weak bones of yours. Here, drink some milk.” He pushed his lips out, dragging the words. “Or does little baby Jack need a straw with that?”

Brenda and Warren tilted their faces to the blue sky, laughing and slapping their hands on the table. Several MG offs glanced their way, mumbling something under their breath.

Tee ignored the mockery as she fed Jack in his wheelchair. She wore a bright blue dress that day—his favorite color—but he never even glanced at it. Worse, his eyes seemed fixed on a faraway bench to her right. When she looked, the only thing there was a bench full of female ogres.

Within two weeks, Jack was walking with crutches and a cast on one hand. Tee spotted him one day in the corridors with one of the girls from that bench. Her ears strained as she overheard him asking the girl to write her name on his cast. Tee told herself it was nothing—until she saw his pearly white smile after the girl wrote her name and walked away. She hung her head and dashed to the nearest bathroom to cry.

The scene shifted again to another memory in the corridor, but Jack wasn’t there. Beater had smacked a girl on her back with his bat, calling her a litterbug.

The girl with a crest around her neck turned to see Beater. He pointed his bat at the blue paper on the ground. She picked it up, muttered a sharp apology, and rushed off with her head down.

Beater smiled and pulled out a stick of gum with the same blue wrapper. His eyes flashed black to match that smile, but Tee was no longer creeped out. She thought that unsettling look suited him. Just like young Tee that day, her lips twitched at every memory.

Before she knew it, Tee found herself marching past Beater. She swung her right leg into his as if she were wearing metal boots. The sound of Beater crashing onto his face behind her wiped out any trace of pain. She dashed around the corner with a bright smile, adrenaline pumping. She knew she was going to do that again.

Soon, every scene she saw no longer included the blond-haired, blue-eyed boy. Instead, it was always her and some MG official with black eyes and black teeth. She spent less time with Jack and her friends at lunch, choosing instead to spy on MG officials she could target. It got even worse when she didn’t score ninety percent or higher on a test and needed a place to release her anger.

In Stamina classes, she started rolling up her pants just to annoy the MG officials and coaches. But they couldn’t use her low scores against her anymore—she had become the top Stamina student in her class. Soon after, she became the top Stamina student in her entire year, and the jealous runners-up didn’t like it.

The sky was bright and blue when her hover-bike lifted for one second before crashing to the ground. Young Tee looked down at the screws scattered on the pavement, but a series of sharp smacks made her look up.

Standing in her path were several students holding metal pliers. Their fiery glares locked onto her like a pack of starving dogs spotting meat. They proudly explained how they had blocked the cameras so nothing would record the beatdown they were about to deliver. But that only motivated Tee to do exactly what she’d promised herself she wouldn’t.

She stepped off her broken bike and asked plainly, “Which of you a-holes am I riding home on to make up for my bike?”

After dodging the metal pliers thrown at her face, she yawned to mock them. One student charged at her, but he didn’t manage to shove her down and start kicking. Tee grabbed him by the arm, yanked him closer, and drove her fist into his face.

The events of that evening left all five of those students with broken noses. But it still didn’t land her in the Dean’s office. It was far too embarrassing for them to report, and besides, there was no proof she had done it.

If she had to choose a moment, that was the day she really changed. She shifted from an innocent sheep meant to be pushed around, into an Alpackha—no longer prey, but a dangerous predator of the icy Northern lands. Those creatures had a death stare that sank into your soul and claws made to maim their prey.

She accepted the nicknames the students started giving her. But anything lower than “Alpackha,” and that person would soon be tripping in the hallway—if she was too tired to break a nose, that is. And she had broken quite a few.

Her growing strength pushed her to work on her eye ability. There were no online resources to guide her, but that didn’t stop her. She stopped questioning everything and accepted the path fate was dragging her down.

The perfect practice for her eye ability became scanning the campus for MG offs during lunchtime. She didn’t mind the headaches—it was worth it every time she spotted an off without his buddies. Soon she knew the entire compound like a blueprint.

She always arrived late to her bench at lunch, right when her gang was leaving. It gave her the excuse to clean up the trash they left behind. That trash was what she crushed into balls and “accidentally” threw off-target from the bins. But her real targets were the MG offs, and she never missed.

The MG off who got hit usually figured out quickly who threw it—most students were already gone. Her excuse was always the same—the sunlight bothered her sensitive eyes. She even told them she was part-albino but refused to wear shades because they made her look scary.

There were countless ways to annoy an MG off, and Tee discovered all of them. She stuck gum on their bats as they walked by. She ate bananas in the corridors and tossed the peel in their path—not enough to make them slip, but enough to annoy them when they felt the soft squish under their boots.

On the rare occasions she saw an MG off heading down a staircase, she rushed ahead, hooked her leg out, and twisted it behind theirs. What followed was always the same—a blue blur rolling down the stairs.

The guards eventually started recognizing her by her white hair instead of her face. One guard, chewing on a stick, scrunched up his face at her as if smelling something foul. Tee confronted him and demanded he apologize.

“Apologize?” the guard snapped when the white-haired student blocked his path. “For what?”

Young Tee bared her teeth and fumed. “For looking at me too hard!”

The guard stared at her for a moment before bursting into laughter. The stick shot out of his mouth and hit her in the face. As he doubled over clutching his stomach, she jabbed herself with the sharp end of the stick.

“Aaah!” she screamed, throwing herself onto the floor in front of him. “This guard stabbed me!”

All the students in the corridor turned to see the MG off bent forward, and in front of him stood the female student with the toothpick he had supposedly lodged into her hand. But the surveillance cameras later revealed it was Tee who had stabbed herself.

She found herself in the Dean’s office the next day, then the day after that, and again the following week—until he finally told her she needed counseling.

The Dean’s office faded into the kitchen table where Tee sat with Tetra.

“Is something going on with you?” Tetra asked, scrolling through the pile of unread messages from the Dean on her tablet. “If it wasn’t for your top scores in academics and stamina, you’d be on the verge of expulsion!” She looked up and glared across the table.

Young Tee froze with her fork halfway to her mouth. “There’s nothing wrong,” she said. “I’ve just found a new passion.”

Tetra’s brows, hidden behind her medicated goggles, drew together into one long unibrow.

When a Xeno-victim broke a rule, they didn’t just get sent to the Dean or reported. First came the beating—and most of the time, Beater was the one delivering it. Beating students with bats violated every Academy value, but teachers always turned a blind eye. And for the severe beatings, the cameras were tampered with so there’d be no evidence at all.

Beater became Tee’s favorite target.

He was arguing with a student when the loud slamming noises started. He turned to see the student drinking water at the cooler, smacking her hand repeatedly against the metal base.

“Hey, you—stop!” he yelled, drawing the attention of nearly everyone in the corridor.

Young Tee kept pounding the base of the cooler until Beater stormed over. But before he could touch her, she spun around and spat the water straight into his mouth like a fountain.

Beater gagged as some of it went down his throat. He dropped his bat and fell to his knees, choking and coughing.

Tee wiped her mouth. “Oops, you startled me. Sorry for the noise—the water here is on another level. I couldn’t help myself.”

She strolled past rows of puffed cheeks and trembling lips fighting laughter. Beater choking was music to her ears, and she repeated that prank on as many guards as she could.

But there was one guard she could never get. Devast.

Whenever Tee got even an inch close to Devast, the guard would always turn around as if she’d sensed her coming. Sometimes all Tee managed was a single minute of glaring at the side of her shaved head before it snapped in her direction.

The day Devast first spoke to her was carved into her memory.

Young Tee turned away from her locker but stopped just in time before bumping into someone. She looked up into the dark brown eyes of the fierce woman towering over her.

“I don’t suppose you know why I keep seeing—” Devast’s eyes flicked up to Tee’s hair, then back down, “—the girl with white hair on surveillance footage… right after an incident with one of my comrades?”

Tee blinked once and answered plainly, “What? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Devast leaned in, glaring deep into her pale eyes, and Tee caught the sharp scent of mint on her breath.

“Wow, easy on the mint breath, lady,” Tee said. “I have a strong allergic reaction to mint.”

Devast’s left eye twitched as she studied every detail of Tee’s face. Then her expression stilled. Her gaze drifted past Tee, as if she were listening for something in the hallway. When she heard nothing, she nodded once and turned the shaved side of her head toward her.

“I’m on to you,” Devast growled, bumping her shoulder as she walked past.

Those words slid right over young Tee in the moment—but they came back to her later that day.

She had opened her locker and had to jump back before the garbage and a bag inside could spill onto her boots. The bag hit the floor, burst open, and splashed water all over her legs. The pungent smell hit her nostrils hard enough that she had to hold her breath. But she couldn’t tear her eyes away from her locker door.

Someone had sprayed the words Terror Tee across the metal, and the handwriting was disgusting. At first, she had no idea who did it—until she heard those same two words hissed from several MG offs.

They wanted a war.

And she was going to bring it to them.