CHAPTER 25: THE NIGHT BEFORE
The Rats gathered like soldiers before a siege.
Someone had pushed the common room furniture into a rough circle. Billy stood at the center with a six-pack he'd stolen from God-knows-where, passing bottles to hands that needed something to hold. Petra sat cross-legged on the floor, sketching in her notebook — Marcus caught a glimpse of Viktor's face rendered in harsh, unforgiving lines. Torres perched on the arm of a worn couch, his knee bouncing in a rhythm that matched no music.
Willie moved to stand beside Marcus near the doorway. Close enough to offer support, far enough to give him space.
"Hell of a party," Willie said quietly.
"Yeah." Marcus took the beer Billy handed him. The bottle was cold, wet with condensation. A small pleasure before the world went sideways. "Feels like a wake."
"Don't say that shit." Willie's voice dropped even lower. "Some of us might not come back tomorrow. Don't need help thinking about it."
Marcus nodded. He looked around the room — counting bodies, mapping exits, trying not to calculate survival percentages. Lex leaned against the far wall with his arms crossed, a razor blade now visible at the edge of his boot. Shabnam hovered near the snacks, his nervous energy translating into compulsive eating. A few other Rats Marcus barely knew filled the remaining spaces, their faces pale and uncertain.
The marked and the markers. All of them prey.
Billy raised his bottle. "To surviving the assholes who want us dead."
Everyone drank. The beer was cheap and slightly warm, but Marcus couldn't remember anything tasting better. One small moment of peace before the storm.
"Speech!" someone called out. A nervous laugh rippled through the group.
Billy grinned — his usual manic energy barely contained beneath a thin veneer of calm. "Fine. Here's my speech: tomorrow's going to suck. Some of us are going to die. But we're Rats, which means we're scrappy, we're fast, and we're too stupid to know when we're beaten." He raised his bottle again. "Make them work for it. Make them bleed for every inch. And if you can't survive, take some Legacy asshole with you."
It wasn't inspiring. It wasn't hopeful. It was exactly what they needed to hear.
Marcus found himself almost smiling.
---
Torres caught him an hour later, pulling him into an alcove away from the others.
"Lopez. I need to talk to you."
Torres looked worse than the last time Marcus had seen him — the tremors were under control, but his eyes had the hollow quality of someone who'd already accepted defeat. It made Marcus's stomach turn.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong. I just..." Torres reached into his jacket and pulled out a sealed envelope, slightly crumpled from being carried. "If I die tomorrow, there's something you should know."
"Torres—"
"Don't." The word came out sharp, almost angry. "Don't tell me I'm going to be fine. Don't tell me to stay positive. I'm not an idiot, Lopez. I know what my chances are."
Marcus took the envelope. It was lighter than he expected — just paper, just words. But it weighed more than anything he'd ever held.
"What's in here?"
"Names. Who I think is targeting me and why. Things I've noticed that don't add up." Torres's jaw tightened. "If I don't make it, someone should ask questions. Someone should know what happened."
"I'll make sure of it."
Torres nodded once, quick and tight. Then he turned and walked back toward the common room without another word.
Marcus stood alone in the alcove, holding an envelope that might become a dead boy's last testament. He tucked it into his jacket, feeling the paper settle against his chest like a second heartbeat.
I'm going to save you, he promised silently. All of you. Or I'm going to die trying.
The promise felt hollow. Promises usually did, the night before everything went wrong.
---
Later — much later — Marcus stood at his dormitory window, watching the darkness beyond King's Dominion's walls.
The Reaper's Cloak stirred without his permission.
It started as a prickle at the base of his skull, then spread outward in cold waves that made his teeth ache. Death energy. Massive, concentrated, patient. Not inside the school — outside. Circling. Testing. Learning the terrain.
Marcus knew that signature. He'd felt it in dreams, in the memories of fire and screaming children that came from a body that remembered things his mind had never experienced.
Chester.
He found us.
The serial killer was out there, somewhere in the San Francisco night, hunting the boy who'd escaped him twice. He wasn't rushing. He wasn't being stupid. He was doing exactly what Marcus would have done in his position — reconnaissance, pattern analysis, identifying entry points and security gaps.
Chester Wilson had been hunting for months. He could wait one more night.
Marcus pressed his palm against the cold glass and forced himself to breathe. Two threats now, converging on a single point. The Freshman Finals and the man who'd killed everyone Marcus had ever cared about in this body's life.
In the show, he thought, Chester didn't show up until later. Mid-Finals, maybe. Enough time for chaos to build.
But the show hadn't accounted for Marcus's presence. Hadn't accounted for the ripples his choices had sent through the timeline. Chester was here early because Marcus had been visible, had drawn attention, had created patterns that a skilled hunter could follow.
Butterfly effects. Everything came back to butterfly effects.
"You okay?"
Willie's voice, soft and concerned. Marcus hadn't heard him approach — Shadow Monk training apparently had its limits when the mind was elsewhere.
"Chester's outside," Marcus said. "He found the school."
Willie went very still. "How do you know?"
"I can feel him." It sounded insane. It was insane. But Willie had seen too much to question it now. "He's circling. Learning the layout. He'll wait for the Finals to start — use the chaos as cover."
"So we've got Legacies hunting us AND a serial killer."
"Yeah."
Willie was quiet for a long moment. Then he moved to stand beside Marcus, shoulder to shoulder, watching the darkness together.
"Hell of a week," he said finally.
Despite everything, Marcus almost laughed.
Tomorrow the Freshman Finals would begin. Tomorrow the hunt would start. Tomorrow Chester would enter a school full of assassins and try to kill the one person who knew he was coming.
Marcus stood at his window and felt the future pressing down on him like a physical weight. Outside, in the dark, death waited patiently for its chance to strike.
The Finals have company, he thought. And nobody knows it but me.