The morning sun was a liar.
It streamed through the Ames family kitchen window, cheerful and bright, painting the dust motes gold. To Ace, it felt like an interrogation lamp. He hadn't slept. Every time he'd closed his eyes, he'd seen the neat lines of the note against the back of his eyelids, heard the definitive click of Carl's lock. His body hummed with a weary, wired energy—the kind that came after a long, unsuccessful stakeout.
Upstairs, Carl's room was a silent tomb. He hadn't emerged.
In the kitchen, the adults huddled over coffee, their voices low and frantic with the kind of problem-solving that only works on paper.
"We find a good child psychologist," Simon was saying, tapping his phone. "One with experience in… in this."
"But will he talk to a stranger?" Sophie's voice was frayed. She held her mug with both hands as if for warmth. "Maybe we should… I don't know. Talk to Sunny?"
A bitter, silent scoff rose in Ace's throat. Talk to Sunny. The idea was so profoundly absurd it circled back to being tragic. They wanted to medicate the symptom. The disease was named Sunny, and he was probably still in a ditch.
Samuel, ever the pragmatist, shook his head. "Sunny's not… reachable. A professional is the right call. They have methods."
Methods, Ace thought, shoving a textbook into his bag with more force than necessary. They had methods for talking about feelings. They didn't have methods for a countdown. They didn't understand that the enemy wasn't a mood; it was a decision, scheduled for 3:15 PM. A therapist's office at 4 PM would be an autopsy.
He didn't say goodbye. He just shouldered his bag and walked out, leaving the murmur of their helpless planning behind. The bright sun hit his face, and he flinched.
The walk to school was a blur of harsh light and sharper shadows. His mind wasn't on the route; it was running scenarios, mapping the school's exits, the blind spots, the places where six guys could corner one. He was preparing for a hunt, but the rules were all wrong. The prey was supposed to be him.
Pushing open the classroom door was like stepping onto a stage. The chatter died, sliced through by a sudden, electric silence. Twenty pairs of eyes swiveled to him. The shock on their faces was almost comical.
A girl near the front whispered too loud, "Oh my god, he actually came."
"Is he brave or stupid?" a guy muttered behind his hand.
"This is gonna be fun," someone else breathed, the glee barely contained.
The air thickened with the scent of cheap perfume and anticipation. Ace ignored it all, his gaze scanning for one person. He found him, two rows over, face pale.
Marco looked like he'd seen a ghost. His ghost. In two seconds, he was out of his seat, crossing the room, grabbing Ace's arm in a death grip. "Outside. Now."
He didn't wait for an answer. He pulled, and Ace let himself be led, a silent concession to his friend's panic. They moved down the hall, around a corner, into a relatively empty alcove near the janitor's closet. Marco finally released him, whirling around.
"What the fuck, dude?" Marco's voice was a strained hiss. "I thought I made it crystal clear! Do not come! Red alert! Abort mission! What part of 'Zach will literally murder you' did you not understand?"
Ace didn't look at him. He looked at the scuffed floor tiles, counting the cracks. He had no good answer. Not one Marco would accept.
Marco ran a hand through his hair, exasperated. "It's not too late. Say you're sick. Vomit in the trash can right now, I'll back you up. Just go home."
"I can't do that." Ace's voice was flat, final.
Marco let out a short, sarcastic laugh that held no humor. "Are you serious? What do you mean you can't? Is there a law? Did your probation officer say you need perfect attendance?"
"I mean it." Ace finally met his eyes. The weariness and something harder—a grim, unshakable resolve—were right there on the surface. It was the look that made Marco's next sarcastic retort die in his throat.
Footsteps approached, calm and measured. Cedric appeared, his expression neutral, but his eyes were taking in the scene: Marco's panic, Ace's hollow determination.
"Heard you two were causing a scene," Cedric said, his voice a low anchor in the tense hallway.
Marco seized on the new arrival. "Tell him! He's saying he can't go home. He has a death wish. A literal, actual death wish!"
Cedric looked at Ace, not Marco. He was reading the situation, the way he assessed a unstable ritual site. He waited.
Ace took a breath. The note was a secret, but it was too heavy to carry alone anymore. And these two… they were in the trench with him, whether they knew it or not.
"The kid," Ace said, the words blunt and heavy. "Carl. He wrote a note. Saying he was going to end everything. Today."
The air in the alcove changed. Marco's angry confusion evaporated, replaced by a dawning, sick understanding. He gulped. "Seriously? Like… seriously seriously?"
Ace just nodded.
Cedric was silent for a long moment. His usual calm didn't waver, but it deepened, solidifying into something graver. "That's messed up," he finally said, the simple words holding volumes.
"Yeah," Ace agreed, the single syllable exhausted.
Marco shook his head, looking suddenly young and out of his depth. The calculus had changed. This wasn't just about a schoolyard beatdown anymore. He had no script for this.
Ace looked at his friend, the fear now mixed with helpless concern. "You should go, Marco. Class is gonna start soon. I'll catch up."
Marco opened his mouth to protest, then closed it. He gave a jerky, helpless nod, cast one last lost look between Ace and Cedric, and walked back toward the classroom, his shoulders slumped under the weight of a crisis he couldn't fight.
Leaving Ace and Cedric alone in the silent, sunlit hallway.
Marco's retreating footsteps faded, swallowed by the distant bell. The hallway was empty now, just Ace and Cedric standing in a pool of too-clean morning light. The air felt thin.
Ace turned to go, the weight of the day already settling on his neck.
A hand closed around his bicep. Not a grab, but a lock. Cedric's grip was firm, unyielding. Ace stopped.
He looked back. Cedric's face had shed its neutral mask. His eyes were the flat, polished stone of a riverbed—calm, but hardened by deep, cold currents. All traces of the easy-going student were gone. This was the look he got when checking a weapon, or studying a sigil that meant something had already died.
"Ace."
The name was a command. Ace held still.
Cedric's voice dropped, low and stripped of all inflection. It was the voice of stating an immutable law of physics. "You know you can't kill them, right?"
It wasn't a question. It was a boundary, drawn in steel.
He wasn't joking. He meant every syllable. He leaned in slightly, his gaze pinning Ace in place. "Listen. You can break bones. You can make them hurt so bad they wish they were dead. You can give them nightmares." He paused, letting the violent permission hang for a beat before slamming down the restriction. "But you cannot leave a corpse. The Veil doesn't cover murder. You cross that line, and you stop being the hunter. You become the monster we hunt. You understand?"
The words landed with the weight of an anvil. They were the rules of Ace's hidden world, brutally applied to this painfully human one. It was a reminder that his power was a cage. He could defend, but not destroy. He could wound, but not execute.
Ace met Cedric's gaze. He saw no judgment there, only the grim necessity of a sergeant briefing a soldier on the rules of engagement. This was the backup he'd asked for—not muscle, but a conscience with a colder, clearer view of the abyss.
For a long moment, Ace said nothing. The sounds of the school—slamming lockers, distant laughter—felt like they were coming from another planet.
Finally, he gave a single, slow nod. His voice, when it came, was just as quiet, just as sure. "Of course I know. I'm not gonna kill them." He held Cedric's stare, letting him see the truth of it. "You can trust me."
Cedric searched his face for another second, then released his arm with a slight nod of his own. The lock was undone. The warning had been issued and received. He didn't say "be careful." It was implied. He just turned and walked away, leaving Ace alone with the newly drawn lines he had to fight within.
---
The classroom felt different when Ace re-entered. The speculative murmurs had died, replaced by a watchful, hungry silence. They'd all heard about the hallway conference. They were waiting for the main event.
They didn't have to wait long.
Zach was already there, a king holding court from a desk in the back. Four of his usual hangers-on formed a loose perimeter around him. As Ace walked to his seat, Zach uncoiled himself from his chair. The room's attention sharpened to a point.
He sauntered over, blocking the aisle. His boys fanned out slightly behind him, a wall of sneers and crossed arms.
"You got balls," Zach said, his voice carrying in the quiet. A mean smile played on his lips. "I have to give you that."
Ace stopped. He didn't look at the lackeys. He met Zach's gaze head-on, his own devoid of fear, of anger, of anything at all. It was the look of someone assessing a problem. "Shut up," Ace said, the words bored, dismissive.
Zach's smile tightened. He leaned in, invading Ace's space, trying to force a flinch, to smell the fear. His breath was sour with cheap energy drink. "What was that?"
This was the move. The classic intimidation play. Get in their face, make it personal, make them small.
Ace didn't back up. Instead, he took a deliberate, exaggerated step back, his hands coming up in a parody of shock. And then he raised his voice, clear and cutting, so every single person in the room could hear.
"Seriously, how gay are you?" Ace's voice wasn't a shout; it was a stage whisper that carried. "You want a kiss or what? Getting real close, bitch."
A stunned beat of silence, then a wave of choked laughter rippled through the classroom. Someone snickered. Another coughed to hide a guffaw. Zach's carefully constructed aura of menacing control shimmered and cracked under the bright, cruel light of public mockery. His face flushed a mottled red. His lackeys looked uncertain, their sneers faltering.
Zach didn't laugh. The humor in his eyes died, replaced by something pure and venomous. He leaned close again, but the power dynamic had shifted. Now it just looked desperate.
"You better watch your back, Ace," he hissed, the words meant for Ace alone, a snake's promise. "I'm gonna fuck you up."
Ace didn't lower his voice. He leaned in, mirroring Zach, and said loudly enough for the front row to hear, "Dude, that's gay as fuck. You need to work on your threats."
Another wave of laughter, louder this time, less restrained. Zach had become the joke. He'd come for a confrontation and gotten a comedy roast. With a final, searing glare that promised molten violence, he turned and shoved his way back to his seat, his followers scrambling after him.
Ace sat down. The performance was over. He'd won the public round. He'd stolen Zach's stage.
But as the teacher walked in and the lesson began, Ace felt no victory. He felt the target on his back solidify from wood to steel. He'd traded quiet dread for explosive, certain retaliation. And from the corner of his eye, he saw Zach not taking notes, not listening—just staring, a statue of pure, simmering hate.
The day stretched, agonizing and slow. Every minute was a grain of sand falling in an hourglass, each one bringing him closer to 3:15 PM. He could feel Zach's gaze like a physical pressure between his shoulder blades. Marco passed him three notes, each a variation of "PLEASE JUST GO TO THE NURSE." Each time, Ace would read it, meet Marco's terrified eyes, and give a minute, firm shake of his head.
He was staying. He had to. The clock in his mind was ticking down for Carl, and this school, with all its petty dangers, was the antechamber to that true crisis. Leaving felt like abandoning his post. So he endured the stares, the tension, the horrible, crawling slowness of the clock, anchored only by a terrible promise and a deadline written in neat, blue ink.
The final bell was a death knell, a shrill, institutional sound that released the student body into a churning river of backpacks and shouted plans. For Ace, it was the starting pistol. 2:47 PM. The math was brutal and automatic in his head: Twenty-eight minutes.
He moved with the crowd, a single determined fish swimming against the current, his focus a laser beam tunneling toward the school gates, toward home, toward the silent room and the locked door. The chatter around him—who was hanging out where, who liked who—was white noise, the meaningless hum of a world that didn't understand the architecture of a day built around a single, terrible minute.
He pushed through the double doors, the afternoon sun hitting him like a physical wall after the fluorescent gloom of the hallways. He blinked, his eyes scanning the usual post-school chaos of idling cars, clustered friends, and smoking seniors.
Then he saw them.
They weren't part of the scenery. They were a stain on it.
Six of them. Older. Not college-old, but hard-life old. They stood in a loose, deliberate semicircle just beyond the gate, a cork in the bottle of the student exit. They wore plain hoodies, jeans, and baseball caps pulled low. Ski masks, the cheap, coarse kind, were rolled up to their hairlines like knitted beanies, ready to be pulled down in an instant. They weren't talking. They weren't fidgeting. They were just… waiting. Their stillness was more threatening than any bluster.
And beside them, leaning against a chain-link fence with a viper's smile, was Zach. He wasn't looking at the crowd. He was scanning it, hunting. When his eyes locked onto Ace, the smile widened. It was a smile of pure, vindictive triumph. He lifted a hand and pointed, a casual, damning gesture.
There.
The six heads turned in unison.
Ace's feet kept moving forward, driven by momentum and a stubborn refusal to run. Running would mean they'd chase, and a chase was time he didn't have. His mind, the hunter's mind, switched into a cold, analytical overdrive. No obvious weapons in hands. Stances are relaxed but balanced. Formation is blocking, not encircling… yet. They've done this before.
Two of them detached from the group and walked toward him. Their walk wasn't a swagger; it was an efficient, ground-eating stride that closed the distance too quickly. The other four shifted subtly, cutting off angles to the left and right. A professional funnel.
The first one, a guy with a thin scar puckering his lip, got in front of Ace, stopping his progress. "You're Ace, huh?" His voice was bored, gravelly from cigarettes.
The second, taller and broader, came up beside him, his shadow falling over Ace. "Today's your unlucky day, kid." He said it like he was commenting on the weather.
Before Ace could speak, a third—the one who'd been directly in front of the gate—stepped in close. He didn't shout. He didn't post up. His hand shot out, fast and practiced, not to swing, but to seize. His fingers locked into the material of Ace's jacket and the shirt beneath, twisting just so, right at the collarbone. It was a controlling grip, a steer-and-drag hold used by bouncers and cops.
The man's eyes, up close, were the worst part. They weren't angry or excited. They were flat, empty. This was a job.
He leaned in, his breath smelling of mint gum and something metallic. His voice was a low, conversational rumble that didn't carry three feet past them.
"Let's go and talk somewhere now, shall we?"