Leo

Open.

I’m sure you’ll pass.

You’re way brighter than me.

I wouldn’t have even tried to get into King’s if I hadn’t met you.

Close.

Open.

Stop worrying about everything!

Next year we’ll be in the same school.

We can make up for lost time.

Close.

Op—

Leo’s hand hovered over the unlock button as a new light, one different from the incessant flashing of morse code from below, lit the back wall. He didn’t want to lift himself off the glass wall, but with that light came the faintest spark of hope. Sluggishly, he pried himself off the glass and crept around to the other side of the desk. When the terminal came into view, his meus slipped from his hand.

You are an administrator.

“Don’t tell me,” he muttered, scraping his meus off the floor.

Heart racing, blood pumping, he slammed his meus into the dock then scanned the instruction page. One rule was missing: the one regarding the limitation on how many students he could release.

His surprise lasted all of a zeptosecond. His hands moved of their own accord. A student was picked at random and Leo slammed the screen with a finger, hitting the button to release them. A smile crept onto his lips, then laughter escaped him, but it died down quickly. The ten second wait began.

He was anxious. He mumbled to himself, “Come on,” and, “Why didn’t you get rid of that stupid lockout?” But as he mellowed a new question arose.

“What am I doing?”

He peered over the desk only to see darkness through the glass wall, broken up by spots of light. Every now and then a bright flash covered the glass and dispersed across it, obscuring his vision in white. Someone was still calling him, and it was time he answered.

He might have come here for Milli, but there was a whole class down there that needed him and the weight of that responsibility was too great to shrug off. Milli needed him too, but she wasn’t here. The class was. Making up his mind, he found his way to the switchboard. One by one, he flicked the switches. One by one, he offered a silent apology to the classmates below.

As the lights in the control room blinked on, Leo made his conviction.

No one deserves to fail. I’ll make sure you don’t.

Morgan

She climbed up into darkness. It should not have been dark—what was that cat doing?

Too late to worry. Too late to change things. The rules were set and they had to work with what they had. She hopped off the stage and issued orders.

“Go back to your desks. We need to finish the test.” No response.

“We can do this. We only need a few more people to pass.” Laughed at.

“If you do not help the others right now, then you will definitely fail.” Ignored.

Her brow was damp with sweat. Her throat burned—she had been talking too much. As students manipulated their mueses, torchlight flashed her eyes and she had to blink spots away.

Someone approached her, someone tall, and she couldn’t make them out in the dark—Morgan’s meus was still in her pocket and she hadn’t thought to use it since the lights should have come back on and it should not have been necessary. They said something to her.

“Just wait, I’ll help you shortly,” Morgan answered automatically.

They kept speaking. Something about data. The lights were flashing frantically—they were so annoying! One in particular was bothering her too much, all the way at the back of the theatre. It was Lumia.

Morgan rushed over with abandon. She weaved around the lazing students, tripped on the leg of a chair, caught herself before falling, and finally made it to that annoying light.

“Enough,” Morgan said.

Lumia spun and white flared through Morgan’s vision. She covered her eyes and let out a groan.

“Oh, I’m so sorry.” Lumia pocketed her meus with the light still flashing.

Morgan blinked to ward off the spots in her vision, then squinted up at Lumia. “What’s happening with the lights?” After asking, she realised that it was a stupid question. She was wasting time.

“I’m sorry, I can’t—”

“Stop apologising,” Morgan said, cutting her off.

Lumia’s eyes widened, then she dipped her head silently.

Morgan squeezed her eyes shut. The spots were not fading. “I changed the rules. We need to finish the test.”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“Finish the test. Get everyone back to their desks. If we can at least get ten, no twenty—”

Above her there was a sonorous clunk. Glorious white hallowed the room, eliciting cries of wonder and confusion and excitement. Like an idiot, Morgan stared up at the lights, then everything spun. She felt herself stumble, and her vision went dark again.

Tock

“Just shut up! I’m going as fast as I can.”

Alan slapped a hand down on the desk. “No, you’re going too fast.”

“Good!” Tock howled.

Without pause, she selected another question and tapped the “swap” button. A list of randomly sorted tables popped up as options. She scrolled down until she found table E and selected it. “Question!” she demanded.

“No, you have to go back.”

Tock didn’t need Alan to provide the question number, actually. She remembered it. She had given him a test, and he failed. She selected question three and moved on.

Alan thrust a finger at the terminal. “Stop! Stop! You made a mistake.”

Tock felt heat rising in her cheeks. She wanted to kick him. He was being so annoying now that he was relegated to question recital, and in his boredom he had been getting chatty. On any other day she would have been happy to talk, but naturally the only time he ever acted like a human was when she really needed him to be a robot. She pointedly ignored him and kept working.

“Listen to me,” Alan cried, waving his meus about. “I’m trying to help you.”

Having enough of his nonsense, Tock whipped around and bared her fangs. “You call this help?” She knew her face was bright red by now but was too angry to care about how stupid she looked.

This time it was Alan that ignored her. “Z comes before H, remember?”

Tock blinked at him, letting his words seep in. It clicked and she finally realised her blunder. “Shit,” she hissed. She pulled up the faulty question.

“No, not just there,” Alan went on. “You chose the wrong question for I-X. Now every question from I-X upwards is wrong.”

“Shit shit shit.” She cancelled out of the current menu and pulled up desk I-X. “Which question?”

Alan made a soothing motion with his hand, the one gripping his meus. “Just. Slow. Down. We have plenty of time, but if you keep making mistakes we’ll never finish.”

That last part was true, and this wasn’t Tock’s first mistake. She had bugged up a couple of times right at the beginning before Alan had come up with a formulaic way to sort through the questions. That had caused its own set of arguments. Then she had messed up all of column Z which had taken them almost three minutes to fix. Half of that time was spent arguing. Tock was certain it was because Alan gave the wrong question number, but he insisted she had misheard him. Well, he was wrong then, and he was wrong now.

“We have enough time,” Tock shouted. “But everyone else still needs to answer the questions. We need to give them as much time as possible, so I have to go fast and you need to stop complaining.” She poked him in the chest to emphasise her point.

Alan’s mouth opened, then snapped shut again. He scratched the back of his head. “Alright, go fast, but if I tell you to stop then you have to stop.”

Without answering, Tock faced the terminal again. “I-X. Which question?”

Lumia

Lumia’s knees buckled. The outrageous girl she carried in her arms was far heavier than she seemed. Aside from the flickering of eyelids, Morgan was deadweight, gone from the world.

This is my first day of school, Lumia lamented. And definitely not the last, not at all.

Sighing, Lumia gave the unconscious girl a shake. “Wake up, jitter head. It isn’t time to go to bed.”

To Lumia’s great fortune, Morgan did stir. She blinked slowly, her eyes puffy and squinting out the harsh artificial light.

“Welcome back,” Lumia trilled. “Do you know where you are?”

Groggily, Morgan peered across the room. “Test,” she mumbled. She tried to pry herself out of Lumia’s arms but to no avail. In her frustration, Morgan groaned long and low. “How long?”

“Don’t worry, we still have about fifteen minutes.” That was a lie. There were about eleven minutes left, but there was something special in round numbers. If she told Morgan there were less than fifteen minutes remaining, she would have panicked.

Lumia lowered her head. Morgan had done so well. They all had. But this looked like the end of it. If nothing changed, then their failure was guaranteed. Well, Morgan had said something about changing rules, and even if that had provided them with some miracle, well, every cub needs its rest.

That was wishful thinking, however. Morgan continued to stir, fighting against the inevitable. And more awkwardly, Raphael decided now would be the best time to show up and deliver news.

“The questions,” he huffed, exhausted from trying to put down the most recent wave of unrest. “The data has been fixed. We can answer them. And students are being released as well.”

Raphael’s eyes settled on the exhausted girl nestled in Lumia’s embrace. Concern crossed his face. Lumia gave a tranquil smile.

“She’s tired, so much so that she fainted. Please leave her be; give her a chance to rest.”

Raphael nodded an acknowledgement, though his expression was dire. It was understandable: Morgan had been the cornerstone of their strategy, the lynchpin to their aspirations.

“She needs fresh air and water,” Raphael said.

He motioned to take Morgan from her, but Lumia shook her head. It was always at the worst of times that inspiration struck Lumia, but here she had her audience, her friends, the only ones whose opinions mattered. She closed her eyes and recited.

“Go. The class needs you. We all have our roles to play. So often we see ourselves as lead; it’s hard to tell amongst the fray. We recite all our lines, sometimes more than what we’re given. The audience enthrals, the stage calls, and wearily we’re striven. But the crowd is unforgiving, our hearts and minds so fragile. And when the curtains fall amidst the squall, so must we end our vigil—”

She cut her last word short as Morgan’s hand smothered her mouth. The shorter girl looked up at Lumia, snarling like a wild beast.

“Stop,” Morgan growled. “I get it, I’m tired, but I will deal with it later. Let’s not waste any more time.” She regained her balance, lowered her hand, and raised her chin. Standing tall, she fixed her gaze on Raphael. “The questions are fixed? Then get students answering them.”

Raphael’s mouth worked and he clearly wanted to put his foot down, but so commanding was Morgan’s aura that he could only nod and comply. He rushed back into the crowd, leaving the two of them alone, with Morgan still partially supported by Lumia.

Morgan peered over to the stage. “I am still a little dizzy. Can you walk with me?”

Lumia nodded. She withdrew her hands allowing Morgan to walk on her own. Though Lumia worried for her, she couldn’t help but feel proud of this tenacious little cub.

On shaky legs, Morgan trudged to the stage and Lumia tailed her at a respectful distance. As Morgan climbed the stairs she supported herself using the stage floor, which prompted Lumia to hold out her hands fearing that Morgan would fall. That, however, caught her a sharp glare from Morgan.

“Sorry,” Lumia whispered.

Once they were upon the stage, Morgan took a spot near the front and centre while Lumia placed herself behind her, tactically positioned so that she was close enough to catch her if she fell yet far enough to not be so present. Morgan took a deep breath and raised her hands, signalling calm to the audience.

“Everyone, please settle,” she said. However, her voice was frail and shaky, and the students were too enraptured in their conversations to show even a shred of concern. There were a number of people that Lumia recognised as the assistants—those helping others answer their questions—who all gave their immediate attention to Morgan, as did Raphael.

“Class, we can pass the test now. The lights are on and I was able to—class! Please, listen to me.”

All the world was coming undone.

Another student was released and began shouting his rapture. Though such an event may have sent ripples through the room earlier, now they elicited but a brief turning of heads and a fleeting moment of relative silence. And Raphael—

No, don’t!

Raphael distant gaze was harsh. His hands were relaxed, but his shoulders were tense. Lumia had seen this before: it was the pose that one attuned to violence would take before a fist was thrown. Oh, he was justified in doing so, but the thought of witnessing more violence after she had worked her whole life to escape it made her stomach turn. She wanted to speak, to beg him into calmness—it was the only tool she had to protect herself, as her body was too frail—but she hesitated.

Then it was too late.

Raphael

They’re not listening (behaving).

Morgan tried her hardest to be heard over the crowd, but despite having a tone fit for a drill leader, her voice simply was not powerful enough.

A lot of things had bothered Raphael today: the disobedience, the entitled behaviour of those students from more prestigious schools, the arguments. The fighting. So much fighting over a choking test!

Mostly, he hated how his body had just acted on his own. He’d seen an acquaintance (ally) in distress and his body just moved. Before he realised what he was doing, he was threatening a student. He knew he shouldn’t have. They were civilians, after all. But at that time he hadn’t thought of them that way. When they were mocking (hurting) Morgan, they were enemies. He wanted to hurt them back.

He’d acted as he had been taught, and once it was done he regretted everything. Just as he thought that, however, the quiet conversation with Lumia he’d had shortly after meeting her came to mind.

Yes, it’s true that you may regret your past. I’m much the same. But it’s due to those difficult times that I am the person I am today.

A smile etched onto Raphael’s face. No, I don’t regret everything. I’ll never regret helping.

Morgan, Lumia, Leo, Tock, Alan; the dutiful helpers and all the students still desperately struggling against this choking test—it was fine to help them. They’d earned that with their efforts. If that meant he had to be a soldier for ten more minutes, then he would bear that duty (burden).

He flexed his hands, preparing them for work (war). He grabbed the back of the nearest chair, lifted it with one hand, then sprinted over to the wall, trailing the chair behind him. He emerged from the rows of desks and then screaming he hurled the chair with all his might. It smashed against the wall in a terrible clatter then bounced back from the sheer force of impact, landing almost a meter away. When it came to a halt, and the echoing crash and cry died away, the chair lay in a bent heap on the floor.

As expected, everyone had gone dead silent. There was fear and uncertainty in their eyes, the same fear that Raphael had experienced when he was so young when he had been put on the drilling line, adults standing over him, screaming in his face. Training took over.

“What the Hell do you savages think you’re doing?” he bellowed, marching along the line of desks. “I haven’t seen a more incompetent group of so-called ‘elite’ students in my life.”

He stomped up to a boy in green uniform who Raphael had caught speaking with his schoolmates earlier. The boy’s eyes widened as Raphael towered over him. “You! Where are you?”

The boy looked to his schoolmates for reassurance, but they all pretended he didn’t exist. Swallowing, he answered, “King’s College.”

“What are you doing in King’s College?”

“Um, taking a test?”

“Taking a test?” Raphael got within a centimeter of his face. “Taking a test! Is this how you take a test?”

“Er—”

“Have you taken a test before?”

“Er—”

“The answer is yes!”

“Yes,” the boy sputtered.

He tried to reel back, but Raphael pressed down on him so that the boy bent over backwards. Raphael stood a full head above him.

“Where should you be?”

“I—er—”

“You should be at your desk! Move!”

With a whimper the boy darted to his desk. Raphael was about to order the class to follow suit, when he caught a whiff of laughter. His head cranked around and he locked on to a skinny boy with a buzzed head. Yes, that boy: the one who was harassing Morgan.

He knew he needed to stay calm, to approach the situation more tactfully, but this student—this one student—needed to be stopped (punished). Now. Before Raphael could get a grip on himself, he was marching over.

That boy’s classmates went silent as Raphael approached. That boy, however, continued to smile. That boy was intentionally ignoring Raphael, treating him like he was beneath him. What made it more infuriating was that that boy was seated atop his desk like it was a throne, with his shirt untucked, and with one foot atop a chair—completely disrespectful!

Raphael was being ignored, but he could wait. He would wait as long as he needed to. There were always people like that boy, always acting like everyone else needed to wait for them. So Raphael would wait. But for each second he waited, his hands clenched tighter and tighter.

As that boy’s classmates grew more uncomfortable and stopped responding to that boy’s jokes, finally he sighed and looked up at Raphael.

“What?” that boy said, giving this look like Raphael was the one in the wrong.

Raphael leaned in. “You have your orders,” he spoke slow and low. “Sit down, and shut the fuck up.”

That boy grinned at him. “I am sitting down.” That got a few chuckles from the students around them.

“Last time,” Raphael said, his voice quivering. “Sit down.”

“What are you going to do? You’re a Guardian. You’re not allowed to hit—”

Like a bullet, Raphael’s hands struck out and grabbed that boy by the lapels. He kicked his chair out and threw that boy onto it. When he tried to get up, Raphael gripped his scalp, landed a fist in his gut, then using the momentum from his lurch slammed that boy’s head onto his keyboard.

Slowly, the boy sloughed off the desk and collapsed onto the synthetic wooden floor. Blood trickled out from his nose, and Raphael realised now that he’d felt a crack when the boy’s face collided with the keyboard. A broken nose, or worse. He hadn’t meant to do that. This was a student. He wasn’t supposed to dole out punishment to students. That wasn’t a Guardian’s responsibility. So why had he—

The desk’s dock slid open, and Raphael mechanically slapped it out of the dock. It clattered to the floor beside the boy he’d just struck. Raphael stared at the boy, at the product of his actions. He knew what he did was wrong and he hated it (himself), but it was done. He had to keep moving. He exhaled and held his breath on empty for a few seconds, until his mind cleared. His hands relaxed.

Raphael glared over his shoulder and raised his voice. “Back to your seats. Now!”

The whole class shuffled and scraped into positions, including his victim’s acquaintances. He could see it in their eyes. They were afraid. That was one of the few quirks about being trained to be a Guardian. As the sole distributors of violence in a peaceful city, people (rightfully) feared you. And therefore, they obeyed.

Morgan

Finally, there was silence. All it took was a broken chair and a broken nose. It frustrated her so much that this was the state of things, that the only proper way to control the class was through violence, but she did not object to it. If violence was what was needed to pass, then Morgan would allow it. After all, there was no reason why so many students, herself included, should be hamstrung because a few selfish individuals could not keep their mouths shut!

Her head was filled with fuzz. Her legs—her whole body, in fact—would not stop trembling. Every fibre of her being was screaming for rest, for sleep, to be curled up under a blanket in the safety of her room. But a deeper part of her, buried beneath the layers of dead skin and scar tissue, hummed a steady and intoxicating chant: do not fail.

All eyes were on her. She took a deep breath, then laid out her final rushed plan.

“Students, I know you have all given up on this test, but I have not given up on you. Though we did not inform you, so as to prevent you from taking matters into your own hands, there are a number of terminals throughout the testing area which grant certain administrator privileges. One of them, you are already familiar with.”

She thrust a finger towards the large window overlooking the theatre. Heads turned in witness. “In that control room is one of these terminals, and it is being used by a student of this class. It allows for the release of any student they choose.”

Then as though to accentuate her point, a student near the front of the room was released. An excited buzz rose around the room, but was quickly stomped out by Raphael who shouted them into silence. Morgan gave him a thankful nod.

“But we cannot unlock everyone because there is a delay between those unlocks. As such, we need a strategy! Students who have not spoken but are released, you can help. Place your meuses back in your docks right now.”

“Meuses in your docks!” Raphael bellowed, stomping between the desks.

“You’re to answer the questions of any student who has not spoken yet.”

“Select their desks,” Raphael yelled. “Start from question twenty and work upwards.”

“Students who have not been released and are struggling with a question, raise your left hand with your fingers spread apart.” She thrust her left hand to the skydome to demonstrate.

“Stuck on question. Raise your left hand. Fingers open.”

“And if you are still locked in and have spoken, do not bother answering questions. Raise your right hand in a fist.” Morgan lowered her left hand then raised her right, clenching her fist tightly to stop it from shaking.

“If you spoke, raise your right hand!”

Morgan kept her right fist up. “Do not answer questions for those with their right fist raised. That is a waste of time. And the moment you have finished, help others in whatever way you can.”

She paused and scanned over the crowd. Hands were slowly raising. Eyes were on her. She could feel their anxiety—Morgan experienced it herself, perhaps more so than anyone else. It was almost over. They just needed to push a little more. Lowering her gaze, with her fist held firmly above her, she decided to say one last thing, knowing full well that the clock was ticking. It felt right. It was right. It needed to be said.

“I do not know if we can all pass, and I know it seems pointless to do something that will never benefit you. In here is a test that is cruel and unjust. But out there…” Morgan looked up and heat rushed into her cheeks. Adrenaline pumping. Adrenaline, the only thing keeping her standing. “Out there is the test for humanity’s very survival. If we fail our greatest test, then there will be no second chances, and no other schools left to take us in. So we push onwards, knowing that there may be no hope.

“We will not let uncertain odds deter us. We will not lose hope in the face of extinction. We will fight as long as there is clean air to breathe, and when the air becomes toxic we’ll make our own and fight on—fight on until our engines fail and we fall to Earth. That is what we are. That is what we choose to be. We are Platonians—the last hope for humanity’s future.

“Guardians of humanity, keepers of the future; burn bright, students. Burn so bright that the stars will not forget us.”

Her heart exposed, her hopes transmitted, Morgan had only a single objective remaining: a message for the one student whom her words would never reach. She pivoted to the front, facing forwards, offering her back for the world to follow.

But when she turned her eyes locked with Lumia’s. The lively girl had her fist raised just as Morgan’s was, but with none of the same vigour. Her mouth hung slack, and a tear trickled down her cheek. Their gazes met for a few endless seconds before Lumia’s expression hardened. The Prospect wiped her cheeks with the sleeve of her tabula rasa and spun in imitation of Morgan.

That was it: her last order. The room behind her was still deathly silent, as compared to the riot before. She could hear them working, hear them whispering and tapping and typing, but now with purpose. Morgan waited, blood thumping in her head. She waited with that single fist raised—a beacon shining through the clouds of despair—putting all of her hopes in a boy who had already abandoned his own.

A student’s desk unlocked with a snap. Morgan peeked over her shoulder, and saw a girl directly in front of the stage lower her fist, grab her meus, and dash over to the desk beside her. Message received.

“Go!” Morgan cried.

Lumia nodded and bolted for the stairs. Not wasting time, Morgan took a step towards the crowd and leapt off the stage. She landed hard and her knees buckled, but that pain was the least of what she had felt today. She brushed it aside and kicked off the ground.

The room was electric. The buzz was contagious. Students that completed tests grabbed their meuses and slammed them back into docks in an instant. Those unlocked by Leo snatched their meuses up just as rapidly and sought out anyone still seated. The dedicated few that threw themselves back into their desks typed rapidly, breathing heavy from exertion. And the helpers danced between desks, sweat dripping off their foreheads and painting their jackets in dark pools.

The class was alive. They were alive. Today they would achieve the improbable.

Leo

The ninth second passed. Leo’s hand was poised over the terminal screen. Though he hardly moved, he breathed heavily. His attention was honed and rifled, his arm primed to burst into motion.

The tenth second passed. Leo’s hand shot forward like a bullet and tapped a sequence of buttons. The timeout started anew and he exhaled. Now he waited again.

He raised his head and looked down at the class so he could find the next student to release. The students he selected all held up their fists—that’s what Morgan had asked Leo to do. He didn’t know why she wanted them released first, and it was irrelevant. He didn’t know how the rules that let him release students had been changed either, and that too was irrelevant. As long as he released as many students as he could—no, as long as nobody failed—he didn’t care about the details.

Sighing, Leo went to sit down, then remembered that the chair lay in a twisted heap beneath the switchboard. Okay, definitely not his smartest idea. He wanted to move, or shift positions, or do something to break up the monotony, but anxiety bolted his feet to the floor. If he took even a zeptosecond longer to release a student because he was too busy dawdling, he would never forgive himself. Leo might have been trapped in this room, but his imprisonment in front of this desk was of his own choosing.

He peeked over the terminal again for the next desk to unlock, and to his surprise found no more raised fists. He hadn’t even been aware that he’d gone through so many students. But then that meant… he checked the time. Two minutes remaining. Hell!

He looked up again. A number of students were at their desks. Some had put themselves there intentionally, though Leo was not sure why. He assumed those students could leave otherwise they wouldn’t have locked themselves in again. He didn’t want to risk unlocking them unnecessarily, but which ones were they?

On his terminal, he flicked through some of the locked-in desks, but there were no features distinguishing the intentional lock-ins from the forced ones. The only details that were given were desk numbers and a circle that indicated whether their meuses were docked or not.

The ten second timeout was coming to a close. Leo clicked his tongue and chose a desk at random. But before he released it, something caught his eye. One of the desks was listed as locked down, but he was certain he had just seen that desk vacant. He checked the theatre and recognised it immediately: that was Raphael’s desk.

“You damned cat,” Leo sighed. “You almost failed because you’re too nice.” Well, aside from knocking out that one student. That kid probably deserved it, though.

He unlocked Raphael’s desk and checked to see if anyone noticed. Fortunately, Lumia happened to be helping a boy a couple desks away. She glanced up at Leo, and for a second he felt as though their eyes had met, an understanding shared between. That was ridiculous, though, because the glass was one way and all Lumia would have seen was a silvery tint. Regardless, Lumia understood what was happening and picked up Raphael’s meus.

Smirking to himself, Leo checked the theatre for the next student to unlock. To his astonishment, Morgan was organising students to raise their fists, delegating work to Leo. It was like they could read his thoughts. Or maybe they were in harmony, in pursuit of a common goal. Not wanting to be outdone, he fixed his attention on his terminal, and waited.

The seconds ticked away. He unlocked one student at a time, one student at a time. By some mystery, the class had managed to blaze through the questions in a few short minutes, and students were rapidly unlocking without Leo’s help. They were cutting it close, though. Really close.

It was in the last thirty seconds that Leo realised a problem: Leo had released a student at just a fraction of a second before the clock ticked over to the thirty second mark. So in thirty seconds, he would have well under a second to unlock a student, unlock himself, and rip his meus from the dock. The easier solution was to choose between himself and a student.

Leo did not make the easy decision.

This wasn’t about the test anymore. It wasn’t even about Milli. No, it went far beyond that in a way that was wholly incomprehensible to Leo. Everyone had to pass, because if they didn’t Leo would never forgive himself.

Everything was at stake, and yet, in the strangest of ways, that everything felt as light as air, like nothing at all.

Morgan

Thirty seconds left. Everyone was scrambling. There was motion everywhere, noise echoing from every direction. Desks were unlocking rapid-fire and with each newly released student the excitement of the class increased. Morgan blocked it all out and focused on this one last question.

The boy seated at the desk stared intensely at the screen. He had no idea how to answer it and in fact had just come out of a five minute lockout. Morgan had considered getting Leo to unlock him, but he was on question twenty and it was a math question. She was good at math. In hindsight, that decision had been made in hubris.

Her answer did not look right. There was no way it was such a round number. But Morgan had no time to check. Either she did nothing and the boy beside her was guaranteed to fail, or she submitted it and he would maybe fail. The nervous boy cupped his hands over his mouth and stared at the screen. One second remaining.

A scream ripped from Morgan’s throat. She slammed the submit button. The screen froze, then turned green. The dock cover snapped open. Her hand shot for the meus and—

A tone sounded from on high, and the students all froze, holding their breath. Long, painful seconds ticked past as they awaited… something. Then they heard the crackling of a speaker and a gruff voice boomed over the class.

“The test has concluded. The number of students that have failed… is zero. Congratulations.”

Morgan, panting, gripped the student’s meus between her fingertips. She had managed to pull it only a centimetre from the dock, but that was all that was needed. As relief overwhelmed her and fatigue finally caught up, the room erupted into celebration.

Students leapt out of chairs and danced on the spot, or collapsed onto the floor in relief. One of the acquaintances of the student who Raphael had knocked unconscious offered the giant boy a respectful nod. Lumia had completely deflated and held a trembling hand over her heart, and a student in the uniform of Morgan’s previous school approached Lumia and patted her on the back.

Morgan, however, was completely spent. She stumbled back, hooked a chair leg with her foot, then collapsed into it. She tipped her head back and gazed into the lights.

We did it. Einstein and Newton, we actually did it!

Then a door slammed open and everyone turned towards the stage. Two students came tumbling out and landed in a heap on the floor.

“What is wrong with you?” Alan said, lifting his head off the floor.

Tock, who had fallen on top of him, used Alan’s head to prop herself up, causing him to cry out as his head collided with the stage.

“Did we pass?”