Something comes over our principal's earpiece, and he quickly moves out of the room. Katenka quickly runs up to me. “Are you hurt?! And why have you said you were powerless this whole time?! This is a crazy power!”

  I brush myself off, the sting of the impact on the wall still present. “I’m fine for the most part...”

  My attention turns to my new companion, now still circling around me. “And this, I have no idea where this came from.”

  Katenka studies it for a second while the rest of Blue Team walks up. Olinda is talking to Saurabh, saying, “See! I told you he wasn't going to be useless!”

  He slightly turns to her. “Yeah, shut up, I get it.”

  Then he turns to me. “Sorry for being rude to you earlier. I thank you for taking out those drones. I think we would have done a lot worse if we didn’t have you.”

  I nod, accepting his apology, and start to think—now that I have a power, does this change things?

  We all exit Room AC-4. I start walking through the halls of Building A-1. I notice on the screen people with ranks are now up there. There aren't a lot, but I notice that I’m at the bottom—great... but Saurabh is 3rd pce, behind someone with a B rank and then someone with an A-.

  I'm taken aback by such the high rank. My mind begins to race—what they did to deserve such a rank.

  As we walk, more names appear, but another thing I notice is that there is this node underneath each TV, and it looks like you can scan things there.

  Finally, we find the room beled SENTRY, and as we approach, the door slides open. The room is filled with state-of-the-art, never-seen-before equipment, and the main show is rows upon rows of these slick, clean, high-tech watches.

  Collective “Woah’s...” could be heard from all of us, but when we look around the room, it's empty and we don’t know what to do when—

  “Helloooooo~!”

  A woman in a b coat comes rolling out from a back room on a rolling chair. “Hmmmm...?”

  She looks curiously at me... well, more at the disc orbiting me than me, but she quickly refocuses.

  “Hello students! I am Zaina Kline, your head researcher and scientist at VARGAURD. You are all here... for the SENTRYs, right!”

  We all nod, and she quickly stands up and grabs a watch and comes before us.

  “SENTRY stands for Surveilnce, Evaluation, Navigation, Tracking, and Response for Youth. It's personally my finest piece of work, so I’m really excited to finally put it on one of you! So, who wants to try it first?”

  There's a little hesitation in the group because we might be signing over more of our freedom if we put it on. But I slowly raise my hand, and she seems super pleased that I was the test subject.

  “Ohhhh~ Great! You're already my favorite student—Oops, I shouldn't say that!”

  She moves over and puts the watch on me. I wait for a second, and nothing happens, but then I feel a prick and slight pain from behind the watch face, and then it lights up.

  “It draws a little blood to make sure it gives the most accurate readings and properly builds the structure to best build the students.”

  The interface lights up, and it’s best described as a video game menu screen. There are multiple tabs: Profile, Apps, Leaderboard, Assignments, Map, Vitals. I can swipe and control it like a screen, even though it has no physical properties.

  “Truly a fine piece of work, isn’t it? Then I guess I should tell you what each one does, then.”

  She clicks on the Profile, and a picture of me and a bunch of other info pops up. “This is your Profile. It shows who you are, and your rank, and what your power is, and your physical property’s.”

  I look and see that my power is listed: Body Energy Control and Sor Weapon Control. Then my eyes are drawn down to the physical property's: Strength: 11. Agility: 9. Vitality: 10. Power Output: 18. Control: 5.

  But I can’t look at my profile long as Zaina continues the presentation.

  “The Apps are all of your other needs, like social media or pnning or putting reservations for around the school.”

  She taps the Leaderboard, and a huge list of names appears. “This is the Leaderboard. Right now the only thing influencing it is your rank, but things you do in this school can change your pcing on a dime—either it be good or bad.”

  My ranking shows up as #188, and I can feel the room and eyes on me, knowing that’s pretty bad.

  But she quickly taps Assignments. “This is where you will get school-mandated lessons, but also you could be given tasks by a teacher, and completing them could help you in multiple areas.”

  We all nod, and she clicks on the Map, and a huge yout of all the school grounds is id out. “This is a map of the school, so none of you should get lost. And to see inside a building, just click on it, and it will show the map and insides of the building.”

  Then Vitals—a screen of a bunch of health-reted things appears.

  “This is Vitals. This gives us researchers more about what's going on inside of you and also tells referees when to stop fights if it gets too far.”

  She clicks a button on the side of the watch, and the hologram goes back into the watch. “And that's about it. You are now free to go about the school... Oh wait, one more thing.”

  She walks over to another part of the b. We all follow, and we see the node things I noticed earlier—the slick metal square obelisks under the TVs. Then she begins to expin.

  “The rankings in this school decide what you have here and where you can go. If you haven’t figured it out yet, the ranks go: F, E, D, C, B, A, S. And they have a plus or minus added to them to show if one is a better one in that rank or a worse one.

  Your watches allow you to scan them on these nodes. Each node has a certain rank you need to be to access that zone. The higher the rank, the more access you're allowed.”

  We all nod, and we head back to where all of the watches are. Zaina gives the rest of the kids watches. Their faces pain slightly as the watch breaks the skin, but their watches all light up and they soon rex.

  “Alllright! You five are all good to go. Come see me if you have any problems with the watches, or... just come see me. I get lonely in here...”

  Her face darkens but quickly gets back on track. “Oh, sorry! Anyways... the school wants me to tell you one st thing. At Vanguard, the school holds the students' self-determination above all else. You will have help here, but it's on you to thrive here.”

  With that, our group turns around, and automatic doors slide open. We are met by a crowd of the rest of the students all waiting outside the door. And I hear Zaina yell from behind, “Oh great, my b is soundproof and I didn’t hear all of them. I have to expin all that againnnnnn...”

  I’m amused by how Zaina acts. It's like Melody, who draws out her words.

  We push past the crowd. I see Preston near the front—I guess his group finished pretty fast. But I don’t see anyone else I know and decide not to stop to talk, and I go and explore the school.

  That night I’m lying in my dorm room, messing around, checking out the apps on my watch. There’s the wallet app, which I had 50,000 dolrs in it when, after I left the SENTRY room and was wandering around the school, I realized I was starving—the snacks from the pne wore off.

  When looking for the cafeteria on the map, I saw each rank has their own cafeterias and dorms and training grounds. I make my way through the, right now, empty school grounds and enter Building B-2. It’s eerie how big the school is for the amount of students that are here.

  When I reached the door beled DrC for the cafeteria, there was a node there, and I scanned my watch, and it slid open. It was almost completely empty, but she stuck out like a sore thumb because of that fact—Katenka was sitting all alone, eating what seemed to be a nice tray of food. She quickly notices me entering, because the sliding doors aren’t exactly quiet.

  She seems embarrassed by being found sitting alone, but I walk up to her and ask, “Hey Katenka! Do you know how to get food?”

  She hides her face and shows me something on her watch. “You can call me... Kat~” “Huh?” “You can call me Kat!”

  I look at what she is showing me on her watch, and it’s an app called Contacts. And she’s on a page where it shows a number input spot. “Do you mind if I have your number?!” she stammers, still hiding her face.

  I turn on my watch and go to the Contacts app. I have no one there yet. So, I find my number, and it’s #13. “Yeah, of course. You're my friend, after all, Katen—... Kat...”

  She uncovers her face and seems happy I called her by that name. I put 13 onto her app, and I get a notification on my watch that Katenka wants to chat, and I accept, and I send her a “Hi!” and she smiles.

  We eat together, and by the time we are done, more people have entered the cafeteria. Me and Kat go our separate ways for the time being, and my mind lingers on the Contacts app.

  I should go get Simon, Melody, Ivan’s, and maybe even Preston’s numbers. But how could I find them? This school is huge, and I haven’t even seen them since we were in Germany.

  I get an idea—they will most likely be in the area in the zone of their rank. I turn on my watch and bring up the leaderboard. One of the first things I notice: Preston is near the top with an A- rank. I then search for Simon, Ivan, and Melody. Simon is C, Ivan is B-, and Melody is C-.

  I let out a sigh. “This is going to be kind of difficult.”

  I spent the whole rest of my day trying to find my friends. Around 6 PM, I find Melody and Simon together in Building B-3. They said they were looking for me too, and we all exchanged contacts. They then joined me for the search to find Ivan.

  We went to Building S-1 at the other side of the grounds and found Ivan sitting alone in a recreational area, right before the B-rank lunchroom. I couldn’t help but notice him slightly light up at our presence, and we all exchanged contact info.

  We had a conversation on how our trials went with our teams and our ranks and, most importantly, the disc that slowly hovers by my side.

  “Can I touch it?” Melody asks with wide, crazed eyes while being held back by Ivan. “I think you will get sliced in half if you do,” Simon says, looking at Melody, thinking she has a death wish.

  We were having a good time in that small recreational space—until that all-too-familiar, sassy voice cut through the mood like a knife.

  “What’s a D-rank like you doing here?!”

  We all turned, and—just as expected—the ptinum-haired girl stood there, fnked by the same two girls. Her expression twisted the moment her eyes nded on my Disc.

  “Oh, so you do have powers,” she sneered. “But I guess they’re not that impressive if you’re still a D-rank. Still... I suppose passing the Trial counts for something.”

  “Back off, Charlotte! Christian has nothing to do with someone like you!” Melody stepped in front of me, her voice firm, shielding me from her gre.

  “Seriously, what is your problem with me?!”

  That made Charlotte hesitate—just a flicker, the first crack in her ice-cold exterior I’d ever seen.

  “Like you deserve an answer,” she muttered, quickly recovering. “But I didn’t come here to waste time.”

  She tapped her SENTRY watch, navigating through the interface. A moment ter, my watch lit up.

  “Charlotte wants to chat with you. Accept. Decline.”

  “You’d better accept that,” she added, her tone dark and threatening.

  Then, without waiting for a response, she turned on her heel and walked away again leaving with the st word and leaving us with that same bitter aftertaste in our mouths.

  “How did she even get my number...?” but with that I’d like to see where this goes, I click Accept.

  “I swear, she’s like a fly—just coming in, bugging everything, and then at the first sign of trouble, leaving without being caught,” I say, as I’m still checking every single app, thinking about what happened an hour ago.

  “Christian, you should challenge her to a duel,” Ivan says, like it’s the only option.

  “A duel?!” Me, Simon, and Melody turn around to Ivan, wondering if we heard him correctly.

  “I don’t know about you guys, but once I got this watch, I wanted to learn every single thing about this school I could, and that led me to the dueling section, which states: people of a lower rank can challenge people to a duel that have a higher rank. Depending on what happens in that duel, both people’s rank will be reevaluated.”

  We all consider it for a moment before Ivan says, “Then again, there are a bunch of other parts to it, and I haven’t even read all of it myself yet, so take what I say with a grain of salt.”

  After that, we all got a notification on our watches. “Mandatory intro lesson for D-ranks at 8 AM.”

  Simon and Melody got one for C-ranks, and Ivan, B. We all said our goodbyes, and I checked the map for D-rank dorms. “Building F-5. It's not that far,” I say, and I begin to walk.

  That’s where I’m at now ying in my dorm after a shower, and a change from the bloodied ones I had on all day, checking through all the apps. The wallet and contact ones were the most important, and unnoteworthy ones like a Clock or weather app.

  Until I reach an app called Skills. I open it up, and it showed something that completely stunned me. It was my disc, and I clicked on it, and it had a pop-up. “Most kids have it built into them. You? You’re different.”

  I stare wide-eyed at this app. It was showing a bunch of complex and hard-to-understand interfaces, and I mutter to myself, “There are duels allowed in this school, I have a custom app for my disc, self-determination is above all else, so... so, what are the rules to this pce?”