The fury was fading... Slowly.
Not gone, but no longer searing—just simmering beneath the surface like coals banked after a fire. The fight on the field had drained more than it had satisfied.
His fists had clenched too hard, his voice cracked at the wrong moment, and afterward, everything had gone too quiet. Doug's voice still rang in his ears, smug and insinuating, but it no longer consumed him. What lingered now was something heavier: shame, confusion, a sense of coming undone.
He hadn't been sent here. Not officially. But the moment Saul's fury had peaked—after the fight, after the threat, after Johnny had said nothing in his own defense—his father had stormed off in disgust.
Saul almost never did this.
The house had gone quiet. And in that silence, Johnny had drifted here, knowing no one would follow.
It was the only time he ever got to be alone in this room. When Saul was too angry to speak, too disgusted to look at him. A twisted kind of freedom, born not of permission but of rejection.
He closed the door behind him gently. Not like someone sneaking in—more like someone sealing himself inside. The latch clicked into place with a sound that echoed through his bones. He didn't really know why he was there.
The air inside the study was stale, touched with the ghost of cigar smoke and the sterile sheen of polished brass. It smelled like control.
He leaned back, his shoulders tight with tension, and studied the room around him. The high ceilings, the austere furniture, the way everything seemed to exist in perfect, clinical order.
Each step he took was muffled by the thick Persian rug. The bookshelves loomed tall, flanked by leather-bound volumes and gleaming accolades. Silver plaques and gilded medals caught what little light filtered through the drapes, glowing dimly like relics in a cathedral. A pantheon of Saul Ashford's accomplishments stared down at him.
Johnny's eyes skimmed over his father's framed degrees—Harvard, Yale, Stanford—the trinity. They looked less like diplomas and more like commandments.
The path they marked had never been his to choose. It had been laid out for him like a track he could not leave, each step monitored, measured, and expected.
It was a track with no exits. Just checkpoints. Just praise as performance.
His eyes drifted to a corner shelf, nearly hidden behind a curtain of law books and civic awards. There, half-buried in dust, sat an old track trophy. Johnny had never noticed it before. The small bronze figure was frozen mid-stride, muscles sculpted in motion, foot lifted in a runner's eternal push against gravity.
It looked nothing like the other awards. No polish. No plaque. No spotlight.
A relic of someone Saul used to be—or almost became—before he chose legacy over living.
Johnny stared at it for a long time. The dust on the runner's back looked like ash.
His gaze shifted—and froze.
On the desk, stark against the smooth oak surface, sat the Echofire Launcher.
It shouldn't have been there.
Its matte-black frame looked toyish and ridiculous against the backdrop of brass desk sets and precision-aligned papers. The red accents had dulled over time, and a thin crack ran along the barrel like a scar.
Still, it retained an air of mischief, of movement, of defiance.
It was too loud for this room. Too alive.
Johnny didn't move toward it. Not yet. Just stared.
It sat exactly where somebody would've placed something important—centered, deliberate, meant to be noticed.
As if it had been left as a message.
Or a test.
Johnny was confused by its presence.
He took a step closer, slow, like approaching an animal that might startle.
The launcher hadn't seen daylight in years. He'd half forgotten he even still had it. And yet here it was, suddenly conjured back into the narrative of his life. A relic from another version of himself.
One with scraped knees and louder laughter. One who hadn't yet learned how to be watched.
His breath came shallow. Memory stirred—but not fully. Not yet.
He didn't pick it up. He couldn't.
Instead, his fingers hovered—and memory surged.
"This is torture. Let's disappear."
A marble hallway. Laughter echoing off stone.
The two of them in a side office, lights too bright, Johnny pulling the launcher from his coat like a secret. David's grin—wide, reckless, unstoppable.
"Let's shoot your dad."
The poster. The darts. The boyish smile spreading across David's face like ink in warm water.
Johnny firing, David cheering. Johnny firing, David cheering. A dart punching Saul's grin dead center.
Joy like heat. Mischief like oxygen.
Back in the study, Johnny blinked.
The launcher hadn't moved.
But everything in him had.
He circled the desk. The launcher stayed in view, sharp as a thorn in a velvet cushion. He felt a flicker in his chest. Not warmth. Not pain. Something between.
Why now? he wondered.
Johnny's fingers twitched at his side.
Still, he didn't reach for it.
The desk sat at the center like an altar. Everything in the room pointed toward it—reverence by design.
His fingers still tingled from the memory when they drifted—almost without thinking—to the lower right-hand drawer.
It was locked, of course. But Johnny reached into his pocket and pulled out the key.
Tiny, brass, worn at the teeth. He'd taken it from Saul's valet box during an argument last year—just to prove he could. Just to possess something that wasn't authorized.
The lock turned with a soft click. The drawer slid open.
Inside: a stack of files. Smooth folders. No dust. Labeled in crisp block lettering:
FAITHCOIN—PATHLIGHT—Uplift Data (Confidential).
Subject compliance scoring, beta results.
Pilot program intake logs: YOUTH / NONCOMPLIANT.
Johnny blinked.
One paper showed a color-coded spreadsheet. Names, metrics. Tiers. Age brackets.
He saw words like:
NeuroCompliance Ratio.
Redirection Success Rate.
Unresolved Index.
Another line: Pre-adjusted value of compliant teen (ages 13–18) = 4.1 FaithCoins/month (avg).
The next line: Tier 2s cost less than juvenile court and return 3x in tax compliance. Keep intake age low.
Then: Projected surplus: 2.8 FC per subject after quarter two normalization. Viable for scale.
Johnny's stomach turned. They weren't rehabilitating anyone. They were monetizing obedience. Farming children.
One name hovered near the top of a highlighted column—faint, half-clipped by the fold:
Noel Castillo.
Status: Phase 3. Treatment Plan: Intensive compliance therapy via productive labor. Note: Subject's artistic tendencies unsuccessfully redirected. Recommend social removal.
He saw Noel again in the choir loft at the symphony—shoulders squared, voice clear, face blank. Mechanical. Not a boy singing, but a body obeying.
Then he remembered David, pressing against his knee - warm and steady - like he hadn't learned to be afraid yet.
Johnny flinched.
It was everything he hoped not to find.
Above the desk, a photo still lingered—Little League Johnny, gap-toothed and grinning, holding a trophy bigger than his head.
That smile looked real.
That boy looked free.
He shut the drawer and turned the key.
The collar of his jersey itched.
He hadn't noticed it until now. Maybe it had been there all day—tight around his neck like a leash.
Johnny tugged at the neckline. It clung to him, damp with sweat, the fabric stiff where grass and dust had dried in patches across his back. He peeled it upward slowly, methodically, like unbandaging something that still stung.
The cotton stuck at first—then came free with a soft hiss.
He let it fall.
The jersey landed in a heap at his feet, the Stricton Academy emblem catching his eye like a taunt. Crimson thread against white cotton, soaked in a day he wanted to forget.
He stood shirtless in the stillness of the study, skin flushed from the game, sweat cooling across his chest.
His muscles were drawn tight—shoulders corded, abs faintly outlined in the afternoon light filtering through the curtains. A grass-stain smeared down his arm. There were bruises across his ribs.
Not a soldier.
Not a son.
Just a boy in a fight.
A flicker of movement caught his eye.
The glass cabinet.
He turned—and froze.
There he was.
Not the golden boy from the brochures.
Not the image Saul paraded at fundraisers.
Not the poster child for Stricton Academy or Junior ROTC.
Just a bare-chested seventeen-year-old with sweat-slick skin and a jaw set too hard, staring out from a room full of ghosts.
No smile. No pose. Just the stripped-down truth of someone who didn't know who he was anymore.
He held the gaze.
The boy in the glass looked older. Less certain.
But maybe, finally, honest.
Then it seemed as though his chest began to expand. His muscles swelled.
He didn't look away.
The chair was right there.
Saul's chair. The one no one else sat in. Wide-backed. Too tall for the room. Stitched with the same overconfidence that marked everything Saul touched.
Johnny stared at it for a moment, heart thudding.
Then he reached for his glove and sat.
Not quickly. Not like he was sneaking something. Like he had the right. Like he'd always been meant to.
The upholstery was cold against his spine, then warm. The arms creaked faintly beneath his grip.
He didn't lean back. Not yet. Just sat there, breathing. Listening to the hush. To the tight drum of his own pulse.
The leather of his mitt gave softly under his fingers, worn smooth from years of use. It still held the faint shape of his hand, the bend of his palm. He brought it into his lap and cradled it there like something alive.
His thumb found the crease along the webbing, muscle memory sliding in like breath.
He didn't lean back. Not yet.
Just sat there, jersey gone, glove in his lap, listening to the hush. To the tight drum of his own pulse.
Somewhere nearby, the Echofire Launcher still gleamed on the desk.
He didn't look at it.
Not yet.
He didn't know how long he sat there. Just the sound of breath and blood, glove in hand, sweat drying across his shoulders like armor gone soft.
But eventually, his eyes returned to the launcher.
Still centered on the desk. Still waiting.
Not a toy. Not anymore.
He set the glove down gently on the arm of the chair.
Then stood. Walked to the desk.
No hesitation.
Just gravity.
His fingers closed around the grip like they remembered it. Like nothing had changed, even though everything had.
It was lighter than he expected.
The plastic still held the shape of his palm. The trigger rested beneath his finger like it had always belonged there.
He turned it over in his hands.
The red stripe along the barrel had faded to rust. A fracture near the muzzle split the surface like a healed wound. One of the old decals was still there—half-peeled, curling like it wanted to leave.
It wasn't innocent anymore. Not what it used to be.
But maybe that made it honest.
He raised it slightly—just enough to feel the weight in his arms, to see the shape of it in the mirror behind the desk.
The boy in the glass stared back. Bare-chested. Bruised. Holding a weapon made of childhood.
The launcher hummed faintly in his lap. Or maybe that was just him.
It looked ridiculous.
It looked perfect.
Johnny lowered the launcher slowly, cradling it in both hands like a baby.
Except this time, it wasn't about memory.
It was about choice.
He wasn't sure what he believed.
Not yet.
But he knew what he didn't.
This room. This silence. This future.
It wasn't his.
They were monetizing compliance.
They were breaking boys like Noel just to turn a quarterly profit.
And he'd smiled for them. Lined up for photos. Shouted the slogans. Marched in their drills.
But that version of him had started to bleed out on the pitcher's mound.
And here, in Saul's study, he felt the wound widening.
His thumb rested on the launcher's trigger, gently. Not enough to pull. Just enough to feel the tremor in his hand.
He turned back toward the chair.
Sat again.
The launcher in his lap.
The glove beside it.
One past. One future.
The room held its breath.
Somewhere beyond the walls, the house stirred. A floorboard creaked. A car passed. The SoulWatch pulsed once at his wrist. A heartbeat not his own.
He didn't move.
He didn't hide it.
Methodically, Johnny began to unfasten his watch.