The hospital room was wide and open, large enough to hold six beds with plenty of space between. One wall was taken up by floor-to-ceiling windows, allowing the setting sun to peek over the huge dome of the gym and bathe half the room in warm, orange light. Only two beds were occupied, the others stripped bare of any equipment. Even the walls were mostly blank, white.

A turquoise sphere of light about the size of my head hung in the air in the centre of the room, above a woman who was lounging in a plastic chair. She’d introduced herself as Claire, declaring she had no superhero name. She looked to be somewhere in her mid 20s, with peach-coloured hair, bags under her eyes, thin lips, and a set of pink scrubs hanging off her tall, slim build. Her eyes glowed the same colour as her healing orb.

Humming a soft note, the orb was in the process of sucking up motes of light from my body. My bruises and scrapes were steadily peeling away, dissolving into sparkles for the sphere to hoover up, and even more fragments of turquoise were drifting out from beneath my skin. There was no sensation to the phenomenon beyond the gradual easing of the aches and pains I’d accumulated throughout the day.

I hadn’t realised how bad my lungs had been hurting until I’d been placed under the orb’s tender ministrations.

A large TV on one wall was playing highlights of some cape gladiator combat show. I didn’t know which one, but it hardly mattered. They were all the same anyway. A deep, bassy voice narrated with exaggerated enthusiasm to the backdrop of epic orchestral music, accompanied by a choir shrieking their excitement about the images on screen. The cape combat displayed might have interested me if I had any guarantee it wasn’t scripted.

Alas, the other occupants of the room made up for my lack of enthusiasm.

“It still can’t get used to seeing Natalya on TV like this,” Harlequin said, squinting at the screen from her vigil by the door.

“I know, right?” Claire chuckled. “And calling herself Scarlet Haze, too! I wonder what convinced her to switch from… oh, I can’t remember it now. She had a Russian name in mind. Said it translated to red halo.”

“I don’t remember, to be honest. Never talked to her much.”

“Whatever it was, she always seemed so set on it, especially when that guest lecturer in PR class tried to tell her it wouldn’t go down well with the public. You remember that? Makes me a little sad that she changed it, to be honest.”

Julia spoke up, sitting on the edge of her bed. Specks of turquoise light rose from her body, but with nowhere near the frequency of mine. “Sorry, you both know Scarlet Haze?”

“Well, more like knew, past tense,” Claire said, pouting a little. “We were in the same class at Halcyon, but not really in the same friend group. Lost contact with her after graduation, then someone with a very familiar power popped up on Super Showdown.”

“Was Natalya in any friend group?” Harlequin mused.

“Well, no. She was a bit of a loner in our class. Always disappeared off to find her sister, I think.”

Julia cleared her throat. “You both attended Halcyon? What was that like?”

“Oh, it was awesome. A lot of the teachers there have connections to the TV industry,” Claire said. She gained a wistful look. “They said I wasn’t meant for that kind of thing. More fool them. I could totally kick ass in a showmatch. Maybe I’d have my own rivalry, like Swashbuckler and Heartie…”

“They don’t want capes who can kick ass, they want capes who can make it look good,” Harlequin said wryly.

Julia glanced between them. “How did a pair of Halcyon students end up working at AA, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“I got scouted. Hero schools always need healers,” Claire said with a smirk. “Halcyon made an offer too, but meh, I wanted a change of scenery. Of course, Harly likes to follow me around everywhere.”

Harlequin snorted. “Here’s a tip for after you get your licence, kiddies: if you don’t want to join a team, get a job at a hero school. Plenty of resources without having to sign away your soul to sponsors.”

“But you do have to work with hormonal teenagers,” Claire said. Her eyes went wide. “Which, uh. Isn’t a bad thing. Teenagers are wonderful. Sometimes. But also frequently awful. No offence.”

“None taken,” Julia said.

Claire hastily changed the subject, and I let the idle chatter wash over me, staring out the window at the grounds of Aegis Academy. It felt out of place, given everything that had happened. People had nearly died, and they were sitting around chatting about reality TV capes and school rivalries. It rankled, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. They’d been this way ever since we arrived.

After rising through the hidden tunnel in the roof of the UCTZ, we’d emerged from an exit hidden between a bunch of buildings, then wasted no time heading for the medical department that sat right beside the gymnasium. All along the way, Harlequin insisted on getting us some healing before she’d give us the answers we deserved.

Once we’d been introduced to Claire and her orb, I’d settled on being polite and waiting. Harlequin had promised answers, and she was a hero. She’d keep her word.

But Claire and Harlequin had launched into a conversation that only Julia seemed capable of intruding on, leaving me to stew with unanswered questions that were getting progressively harder and harder to hold back. Patience was a virtue, but right now it felt like a burden.

My feelings were in chaos; it was a struggle to get a read on the emotions I was experiencing, jumbled together and contradictory as they were. The turquoise orb was a balm on my wounds, so to speak, but it could do little for the turmoil inside me.

Too many things about today’s events didn’t add up.

Morphosis had directly given rules about cheating in the practice test, yet Sooyoung had acted with impunity. No one had intervened when sabotage was happening in the medical examination, and I refused to believe they had no way of detecting that sort of thing—beyond being a school for heroes, Aegis was supposed to be one of the leading superpower research institutions. Dr Shimada himself worked here.

Taking just those two tests, it seemed like don’t cheat actually meant don’t get caught cheating.

And then there was the practical.

It was a contradiction.

On one hand, the higher-ranked tests were clearly designed to be much easier if you cooperated with fellow examinees. The message had been a simple one: it’s possible to work alone, but you’ll do much better with allies.

On the other hand, the existence of any kind of points system implied rankings, which was of course going to lead to infighting among the examinees. The message here was more implicit: you’re in competition with each other, so hurting your rivals’ point tallies is a viable strategy.

Work together, but sabotage each other.

It made no sense. It was like there were two different tests going on here, a whole separate grading scale.

That idea only got all the more disturbing when I thought of the end of the test, the way the heroes had confronted each other, like they were from two different factions entirely. What had Harlequin said? A disagreement between faculty?

Only one thing was clear: Aegis Academy was not the same as I remembered it.

“Is there some kind of civil war going on in the school?” I asked aloud, because the question refused to be suppressed once it had surfaced.

It served to silence the conversation most effectively.

Harlequin sighed. “Civil war is a strong way of putting it. No one’s fighting.”

“It felt like they were a step away from it, back there,” I said.

“Tensions were high.” Harlequin gave me a serious look. “A lot of us were really not happy with the way things were going in your test. It doesn’t usually get anywhere near that bad. Like, seriously. Not even close. Today was far beyond the pale. Honestly, I think even Emeraldia and the others were taken off guard by it, didn’t know what to do, so they stuck to the rules they were given. Most of the time it’s small, petty stuff, like those other kids you and your little task force captured. Good job, by the way. You won yourself a lot of fans among the staff for that.”

Praise from a pro hero should’ve been one of the highlights of my life. Even despite everything, warmth blossomed inside my chest at her words.

But there was still something burning in my veins, overpowering any other emotion.

“If you knew people were cheating, why didn’t you step in earlier?” I snapped.

A voice inside me screamed, horrified at taking such a tone against a superhero. The fire drowned it out.

“I know this is a shitty excuse, but those are the rules we’re given. In the words of our illustrious vice-principal, we’re ‘forbidden from holding candidates’ hands’. Prospective heroes should take the initiative and blah blah blah.”

“The idea is a superhero should be able to handle their own problems,” Claire muttered, frowning. Her orb had turned a darker shade of green.

Harlequin nodded. She pushed off from the wall, stalking across the room until she was looking out the window. “Some of the faculty buys into it, but a lot of us don’t. After that boy almost brought a building down on someone, we were just waiting for another excuse. Effervescence might get in a bit of trouble for stepping in, and who knows how it’ll go for the rest of us for following her lead, but she was just the one who actually worked up the courage to do what I, and many others, were desperate to do. You didn’t deserve to have your future derailed when those two little… so-and-sos had backed you into a corner like that. Fuck it, we should’ve put a stop to things way earlier than that.”

If you were so desperate to stop them, you should’ve just done it.

“We weren’t the first candidates Sooyoung and Taeyong screwed over, from the way they were talking.”

“No, you weren’t. You don’t need to worry about those two. By the vice-principal’s own rules, cheaters who’re caught by other students have no recourse. I don’t know what they’ll be charged with, but USHA will hit them with something for the shit they’ve pulled today.”

Outside the window, people were streaming out of the gymnasium. Among the crowd, I saw a familiar head of blond hair, walking with his hands in his pockets, shouldering past anyone who dared linger too long in his path. His gaze panned around him, scanning the buildings as if he was in hostile territory.

For a moment, I was sure Lucas’ gaze met mine.

Then he walked on, out of view.

“What’s happened to Aegis?” I asked. “Was it always like this, and I was just a naive little kid? Or has something changed?”

There was a long moment of silence.

Eventually, Harlequin spoke with a weary voice. “I feel obligated to point out that the number of cheaters who manage to get away with it probably isn’t as high as you’re thinking, and that the school is still a world-class institution. We still know they cheated, and deduct points accordingly, but they only get an instant DQ if they get caught by another examinee. Even if a problematic kid makes it in, I’m fully confident they’ll come out a fantastic hero on the other end. We have top people in every position, dedicated to ensuring it. ”

“Harlequin,” Claire warned.

“But?” I prompted.

“But… Herakles is one of the most important superheroes on Earth. He and his Olympians are constantly being called away to deal with various crises. The fact of the matter is, he doesn’t have time to run the school himself, as much as he obviously loves the place and wants to see it work. I admire him, I really do.” She turned to me then, and there was something raw in her eyes. “But being an invincible paragon who believes in and trusts people has its downsides.”

“And you think he’s put his trust in the wrong person?”

“Sophie,” Claire warned once more, almost hissing the name.

“What? She’s not Voldemort. She’s not going to hear us shit-talking her from halfway across campus.”

“It doesn’t need to be her that hears us.”

“Point taken.” Harlequin grimaced, then took a deep breath. “Screw it, I don’t care. If she wants to fire me, she can fire me. Marquise is a scumbag, and she encourages all this shit for some godforsaken reason. She plants her little pets among the examinees to rile the groups up, she has teachers create obstacles at the end of the practical, I’ve been told she even offers out secret tasks to candidates she thinks will take her up on it. She wants people to cheat, because she wants to see who can get away with it. People speculate that she’s still a villain, and I struggle to find a reason to disagree with them.”

I’d read many of those same rumours, but dismissed them as ridiculous. She’d been a hero for a decade, trusted by Herakles himself to act as his right hand both in his beloved school and USHA. All the greatest teams came to her as a consultant

The idea of her being some kind of undercover villain was absurd. Those people posting online about her surely had to be failed examinees, or villains she’d caught, or mediocre heroes who were jealous of her success.

Even now, I couldn’t quite believe it. There had to be something more to it all. Hundreds of heroes vouched for her; they couldn’t all be wrong. There had to be something else to all this. A reasonable explanation.

“Why would she do all that?” I asked.

“I’d love to know the answer to that question too. If you ever gain some insight into that woman’s mind without being driven insane, feel free to share. If I had to guess, I’d say she probably believes some bullshit about letting people show their true character.”

“Herakles allows all this?” Julia said. Her brows were furrowed as she stared at her hands where they were clenched in her lap.

“Another brilliant question I’m dying to hear the answer to, but I don’t exactly have the clout to just walk into his office,” Harlequin said bitterly.

“He can’t,” Claire said. “There’s no way. He must be too busy to put a stop to it.”

“I really do believe in this place. We have more good people than bad, I promise you that, cross my heart and hope to die, et cetera. But… things aren’t perfect. Nothing is. Don’t let what’s happened today put you off. Aegis is still one of the best schools in the world, and I say that as a bloody Halcyon alumni.”

“And yet, enough people agree with her that she hasn’t been thrown out on her ass.” Julia leaned back on her bed, seeming to deflate. “Why did I ever hope this place would be different?” She turned to me. “It feels like I’ve found only one good person today.”

I looked away, feeling myself flush.

Harlequin chuckled without mirth. “Hey now. No appreciation for the heroes who got you out of there?”

“Not one bit,” Julia replied immediately. “Any gratitude I might feel for your help has been completely overridden by my disdain for your cowardice.”

“... you’re a real ray of sunshine, huh?”

“That’s what endless disappointment does to a person.”

The room lapsed into silence, and I stared out the window. The sun burned red as it dipped below the horizon, bathing the clouds in pink and crimson. In the distance, Foresight Tower lorded over the cityscape, the sloped pyramid looking like a phoenix’s nest as it reflected the colours of the sky.

Even from so far away, it looked huge, like it was far nearer than I knew it actually was. Close enough I could reach out and touch it.

But in reality, I couldn’t hope to make out any details of what was going on inside. The Olympians and their staff could be doing absolutely anything, and I’d have no way of knowing.

That, I thought with mounting trepidation, probably went both ways.