It was James’ decision to keep going to school. He felt that the easiest way to hide what they knew was just to act normal. Kabletech likely couldn’t monitor them in game: if they could they would have been captured already. Outside, however, CCTV was everywhere in the city Avalon. Skipping school every single day to play Sable Online might be suspicious, especially with final exams less than a week away, and they were probably expecting them to try and run. Best to keep a low profile, he thought.

  He didn’t know if the others agreed. His classes didn’t intersect with Patrick or Amelia the entire day, and were almost entirely focused on consolidating topics from earlier in the year, making sure he could recite everything he had learnt by rote. James had always just about scrapped by in tests. Even though he could blitz questions in class, he often struggled with memorising everything and answering under pressure. He was also infamously bad at revising on his own, and often needed Grey to tutor him. Than again, all of them usually asked for Grey’s help right before a test.

  “Well, James?” The teacher called out to him.

  “33!” James replied, confidently.

  The teacher sighed. “James, this is biology, keep up.”

  The people around him chuckled a little before the class mercifully moved on, and the bell soon followed it.

  At lunch, he met up with Patrick and Amelia again, sitting down at the table they always had. Neither of them looked him in the eye. Amelia was bouncing her leg up and down, while Patrick was just looking down at the slightly grey chicken nuggets the school had presented him with.

  “Good day?” James asked. Neither answered. “Where’s Grey anyway?”

  “I haven’t seen them,” Patrick responded, barely looking up from his meal. “Tried texting them all day. They’re not responding.”

  “Probably just a cold.”

  “In May?”

  “I remember when they first joined they were constantly ill. It’s like their immune system took a year off.”

  “What are we even doing here?” Amelia asked. “There must be something we can do instead of school. Even if we can’t play the game, there’s gotta be something.”

  “We’ve been over this,” James replied.

  “Yeah, and you didn’t convince us,” Patrick retorted.

  “Then why are you still here?”

  “Because I can’t get far on my own and I’ve got nothing else to do. Maybe I could have grinded a bit, but I don’t think it would have been worth it alone in the middle of nowhere. Doesn’t stop me from feeling useless.”

  “I’ve got things to do after I leave,” Amelia added. “And I can spend the rest of the time learning to use this magic sword thing.”

  “Haven’t got anywhere with it?” James asked.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know what caused it before, I don’t know what causes it now.”

  “Keep at it. It seems worth learning. Keep reflecting on what happened that night, something’s gotta come up. I’ve got extra math classes after school, so I might not be on until later tonight.”

  “I’ve got after school stuff too.” Amelia added “And we don’t know if Grey will be around at all, so don’t sweat it.”

  She smiled at him for the first time today. He smiled back, and they went about picking at their school lunches for a while. After a few minutes of silence, James spoke up again, knowing they needed a bit of normalcy.

  “Have you guys decided what you’ll do after you leave high school?”

  Patrick and Amelia both groaned.

  “Come on, man,” Patrick replied “I’ve heard that enough from my parents.”

  “Same here,” Amelia added “And the answer is: I don’t have a damn clue.”

  “If you’d asked me before all of this went down, I could have given you a straight answer.”

  Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

  “If you’d asked me, the answer would have been the same.”

  James laughed. “That’s fine, most people don’t. I know for a fact Grey wanted to become a lawyer.”

  “Of course they know where they’re going in life,” Patrick said “They’re always so…together.”

  “I thought they wanted to be an artist,” James said.

  Patrick shrugged. “I think it was more of a hobby for them. Do you know what you want to do?”

  James sat up and smiled proudly. “I’m going to be a baker.”

  Patrick and Amelia both looked incredibly confused, “I’m sorry?”

  “Yeah, a baker. I always thought it was weird there weren’t many bakeries in Avalon. Like, we’ve got coffee shops and whatever, but no artisan stuff. So, I want to start my own.”

  “Never knew that about you,” Amelia admitted.

  “What did you think I’d be?”

  “I dunno. Some kind of football player. Fitness instructor. Something sporty.”

  “I hate doing sports. You know that.”

  “Yeah, you never try doing any sports because all of us hate it. You can do stuff outside of what we want, right? Like baking!”

  “Baking’s fun on my own. Playing sports with strangers is…weird.”

  “Ok, but we’re missing the main problem here:” Patrick interjected “You can bake and you never let us taste test?”

  “Sorry. I’ll keep that in mind for the next batch.”

  The two of them groaned as they went back to their mediocre lunch. The rest of the school day flew by, and although he had to stay back a while due to a detention, it wasn’t long before he was working past the construction site where he’d recently blown up a zombie dragon. The site was back to being mostly deserted, the police investigation having seemingly turned up nothing about the explosion. James doubted they’d been allowed to do that much investigating to start with. They’d been stopped by the man who was currently looking at it.

  Maximilian Kable turned around and smiled at him.

  “Hey, kid. You know what happened here?” He pointed at the construction site.

  James tried his best not to show his surprise and fear. A wrong word and he was dead.

  “I heard there was an explosion a week ago.” James replied quickly.

  Kable nodded, a hand stroking a nonexistent beard. “So I heard. Any idea what caused it?”

  James shook his head “N-no clue.”

  Kable just nodded again. “Alright. Sorry for the odd questions.”

  “No, it’s fine. It’s just…” James paused for a second. Now would be a good time to find out more about what was going on, but he couldn’t afford to push it too far. For all he knew, they could be living on borrowed time as is, and this wasn’t a chance encounter at all. “Why are you so interested in this specifically?”

  Kable glanced around a little and lowered his voice. “I think there’s someone close to me who’s lying about a few things. I don’t think this investigation has been done well, and if I want something done well, I do it myself. I like this city a lot, and I want to make sure its police force functions as intended.”

  “Well, I imagine even someone like you wants to get out often. I’m…glad you care for this city as much as you do.”

  Patrick would kill James on the spot if he heard that. Kable just smiled.

  “Hey, rich or not, I’m a human being just like you. I can’t just sit at the top of the tower all the time, can I? Gotta get my hands dirty. Oh, before we get off topic…we have a bit of CCTV footage of the explosion too.”

  James’ heart sank like a stone.

  Kable pointed to a shop across the street. “It was a camera in there. We saw four kids jumping the fence, like they were running away from something. Unfortunately, the camera’s so far away we couldn’t make them out. Then it got super blurry. Something was messing with the footage.”

  “That’s…odd. Do you know what caused it?” James thought it might have been Draconautis again, and he was hoping Kable didn’t know that already.

  “No idea. Might well just be faulty hardware. Come to think of it, the kids looked about your age. Do you think they come from your school?”

  James chuckled nervously “I can’t imagine anyone in my class doing that.”

  “What, you don’t have any explosives experts in your class?”

  “I sure hope I don’t!”

  Kable laughed, but it was stilted. A performance.

  Kable put his hand on James’ shoulder. “Well, if you see anything, let me know.” He handed James a business card with his number on. “Bit old fashioned, but it will do. Just text and I’ll pick it up when I can. I’m going to be very busy over the next few days. Oh, sorry, manners. What’s your name?”

  “James.” Telling him anything more than that likely would have been very risky.

  “Well, James. I’ll see you soon.”

  “You too. Have a nice day, Mr. Kable.”

  The two walked away. James sighed in relief. Even though he’d gotten Kable off his back for now, if he was investigating the explosion, how long would it be until he found out the truth? And more importantly, how did he not know what happened already? They didn’t exactly have time to be subtle about disposing of Draconautis. Maybe someone on the inside was keeping Kable off their backs. Maybe things would be looking up for them.

  Kable looked over his shoulder as James walked away.

  “I’ll be seeing you sooner than you think,” He said “Because you’re a shit liar.”

  He swiped his Holobracer and held it up to his mouth.

  “Kable here. Get me the Avalon High student records. I think I’ve got a surveillance job for you guys.”