The next three days were a blur of fever dreams and the stinging scent of antiseptic. Every time I tried to shift in bed, my ribs reminded me of Elena's Knights. But it wasn't just the physical pain that kept me awake; it was the humiliation. I had been thrown out like trash. To the Apex, I wasn't a threat—I was an inconvenience.
Chloe didn't leave my side. She was there with soup, with medicine, and with a silence that spoke louder than any lecture.
On the fourth morning, I found her in my small kitchen, staring out the window at the grey city skyline. I walked in, leaning heavily against the doorframe. My shirt was off, and the purple-and-black bruising across my torso looked like a macabre map of my failures.
"You're up," she said, not turning around.
"I can't stay in that bed anymore, Chloe. My skin feels like it's crawling."
She finally turned, her eyes scanning the damage on my chest. She walked over, her fingers hovering just inches away from a particularly nasty bruise near my collarbone. "You're lucky they didn't puncture a lung. Another inch, Asher, and I'd be visiting two hospital rooms instead of one."
"I know," I muttered. "But I realized something while I was out. Elena wasn't faster than me. She just controlled the environment. The gas, the lights, the twins... she turned the hallway into a weapon. I was fighting a girl, but I should have been fighting the room."
Chloe sighed, pulling a small, weathered notebook from her bag and thumping it onto the kitchen table. "If you're going back—and I know I can't stop you—you're going to do it right. My dad... before he left, he was a tactical instructor for the academy. He left behind these journals."
I opened the notebook. It wasn't about flashy kicks or karate chops. It was about leverage, pressure points, and 'Environmental Dominance.'
"Level 3 isn't about strength, Asher," Chloe whispered, her hand finally resting on my arm. "It's about the mind. You need to stop being a brawler and start being a shadow."
For the next two weeks, my apartment became a training ground. Chloe didn't just nurse me; she became my strategist. She would blindfold me and make me move through the furniture, forcing me to map the room using only the vibrations of her footsteps—just like Julian had taught me, but refined.
I spent hours doing isometric holds to strengthen my core, making my body dense and hard as iron. Every night, the routine was the same:
Physical Conditioning: 500 weighted lunges to build the explosive power needed to close gaps.
Sensory Deprivation: Learning to fight in the dark, anticipating attacks by the shift in air pressure.
The Study: Memorizing the blueprints of Oakridge High's third floor—the ventilation ducts, the fuse boxes, the blind spots of the cameras.
One night, after a particularly brutal session where I had successfully disarmed Chloe (who was wielding a wooden spoon as a makeshift taser), we both ended up on the floor, breathless and sweating.
The tension in the room shifted. The adrenaline faded, replaced by something heavy and warm. Chloe was inches away from me, her hair messy, her chest heaving.
"Why are you doing this for me?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper. "You hate the violence. You hate what I'm becoming."
Chloe looked at me, and for a second, the 'strategist' mask slipped. "I hate that they hurt Julian. And I hate the idea of losing you even more. If the only way to keep you alive is to make sure you win... then I'll help you win. But promise me, Asher... once you reach the top, you come back to me. Don't stay up there with them."
I reached out, my calloused hand cupping her cheek. For a moment, the revenge, the Apex, and the hospital room didn't exist. There was just the sound of our breathing. I leaned in, my forehead resting against hers.
"I promise," I said. But even as I said it, a dark part of my mind was already back in that hallway, calculating the exact amount of force needed to break Elena's taser.
I wasn't just healing. I was evolving. My movements were becoming quieter, my strikes shorter and more lethal. I wasn't the boy who fell down the stairs anymore.
I was the glitch in their perfect system. And I was almost ready to go back.