As we walked toward the main building, I noticed something else unusual. Tommy wasnât waiting by his locker like he had every school day for the past three years. My fat friend was more reliable than atomic clocks when it came to morning routines.
Weird!! Really weird, something was off!
I pulled out my phone and called him.
"Peter!" Tommyâs voice sounded tired and slightly hoarse. "Dude, I was just thinking about you."
"Where are you? Youâre never late for school."
"Had this family thing yesterday, man. Cousinâs quinceañera that turned into some kind of endurance test. Got home at like 2 AM and felt like death warmed over this morning. Mom said I could stay home."
âTommy missing school for a family party. Thatâs actually normal Tommy behavior.â
"Fair enough," I said. "Rest up, man."
"Wait, wait, wait," Tommy said, the urgency in his voice climbing like a bad remix. "Before you hang upâwhat the hell, Pete? We live, like, fifty feet apart and Iâve barely seen you in days. Has Madison absorbed your entire existence? Blink twice if youâre being held hostage by good hair and expensive lip gloss."
âThere it is. The prodigal son returnsâwith emotional blackmail and dramatics. My favorite kind of friendship.â
"Itâs not like thatâ" I started, already knowing it was exactly like that.
"Bullshit itâs not like that! Iâve been trying to talk to you about Miaâyou know, that girl in Madisonâs clique who doesnât think my knowledge of cheese melting points is a cry for help? And youâve been in ghost mode like some glitchy NPC."
And he was right. Tommy, my oldest and only friend, had been trying to connect while I was busy constructing empire blueprints out of secrets, synthetic lust, and stolen government tech. Iâd ghosted him like I was prepping for an undercover op in the spirit realm.
Iâve been a shitty friend. A distracted, morally ambiguous, low-empathy shitty friend. But still... the best one heâs got.
"Tommy, Iâm sorry. Things have been... nuclear. But thatâs not an excuse forâ"
"AND WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH THE MERCEDES?!"
I jerked the phone away from my ear as his voice hit banshee frequency.
"I saw your mom driving a brand-new GLE this morning! Dude, did you win the lottery? Rob a crypto exchange? Inherit a diamond mine from some dead billionaire uncle?"
Tommy always did have the observational skills of a conspiracy theorist with ADHD. One whiff of inconsistency and heâs drawing red-string timelines like heâs auditioning for a true crime documentary.
"Itâs complicated," I said, which was technically true and also the understatement of the decade.
"Complicated how? You guys went from coupon royalty to driving something with an AMG badge. Thatâs not complicated, thatâs suspiciously magical."
Madison was already near the school entrance, shooting me the look girlfriends give when theyâre torn between concern and
please shut up before you ruin my social capital
. Emma had vanished inside like she was evading a sniper.
"Iâll explain everything later," I promised, with the confidence of a man who fully intended to lie or distract when âlaterâ arrived.
"You better. Because if youâve joined a cult, Carterâlike, one of those seductive vampire-house cultsâIâm staging an intervention with your mom and three frying pans."
If only he knew how close that guess actually was.
No cults. Just trauma-powered mysticism, memory hacking, and a few demigod contracts. Casual stuff.
"No cults, no drugs. Just... good luck, I guess."
"Good luck doesnât buy German engineering, Pete. But fine. Keep your secrets. Just donât forget who helped you pass algebra while you were having emotional crises about your jawline."
"Like hell you did!!!!!"
Click.
The line went dead, and I was left standing in a high school parking lot with three facts:
My best friend thought I was abandoning him.
My sister was silently terrified of something she wouldnât name.
I was now living a triple life with an ego-maniacal AI and a hidden empire, pretending to care about social studies.
ARIAâs voice slid into my earbuds like a smug whisper in a confession booth:"Sister Emma has entered her first-period classroom. Elevated stress remains within survivable levels. Shall I initiate deeper surveillance, perhaps a psychological scrape of her message threads, or a light neural poke?"
"Not yet," I said under my breath. "Just watch. Report if anything breaks pattern."
"Understood. Passive monitoring it is. For now. But if your sister has a panic attack next to a broken vending machine and you ignored me, I will haunt your sleep with grammar lectures and porn history analysis."
As I stepped through the front doors of Lincoln High, the most dangerous thing on my mind was whether Iâd have to sit next to someone who still said "YOLO" unironically.
I am just a sixteen-year-old boy going seventeen with a god-tier AI in his ear, a girlfriend he might love or destroy, a sister quietly unraveling, and a best friend who thought Iâd joined a diamond-smuggling cult.
Just another Monday.
And I had
absolutely no idea
how fast the chaos was coming for me.
Mrs. Henderson was halfway through her attempt to make her lesson sound less like colonial PR and more like divine purpose when the classroom door creaked open. The air shifted. Every rustle of notebook paper stopped.
And then she walked in.
Nurse Luna.
The chaos oracle in a white coat.
Tall, poised, and sculpted like a fever dream no teenage boy had any business having. Her heels clicked like countdowns. Ink-black hair flowed in controlled waves past her shoulders, a crimson streak curling along one side like a whisper of danger. Her lips were stained the color of fresh sin, and her eyesâcold, calculating, felineâscanned the room until they landed on me.
"Peter Carter," she said, voice smooth as anesthetic and twice as numbing. "Youâre needed. Now."
There was a collective inhale. A few kids let out low whistles. Others exchanged wide-eyed looks, already crafting rumors.
I stood slowly, trying not to look guilty, confused, or aroused.
But something in her gaze wasnât flirtatious. It was clinical. Urgent. Like I was a patient sheâd already diagnosedâjust hadnât told me the name of the disease yet.
"Is he okay?" Mrs. Henderson asked, blinking rapidly.