CHAPTER 33: FINALS NIGHT 2
The maintenance tunnels smelled like rust and old fear.
The surviving Rats gathered in a junction chamber that Billy had claimed as their forward base — defensible from three directions, with escape routes to the surface if things went wrong. It was as safe as anywhere could be during Finals.
Marcus counted heads as his allies filtered in. Willie, still watching him with that worried expression. Billy, manic energy barely contained, bouncing on his heels. Petra, silent and observant. Lex, with blood on his shirt that wasn't his own.
No Torres.
"Where is he?" Marcus asked.
Silence.
Billy looked away. Petra's jaw tightened. Lex stared at the floor.
"Soto Vatos found him," Willie said finally. His voice was heavy with something that might have been grief, or resignation, or both. "About three hours ago. One of Chico's boys — the big one, Ruiz. Torres didn't have a chance."
Marcus's hand went to his jacket. The envelope was still there, Torres's letter pressing against his chest like an accusation.
"If I die tomorrow," Torres had said, "there's something you should know."
He'd died anyway. Despite the warnings. Despite the preparation. Despite everything Marcus had tried to do.
Some people you can't save, Chester observed from somewhere deep in Marcus's mind. That's what makes hunting fun. The outcome is never guaranteed.
Marcus shoved the voice down and kept his face neutral.
"We're alive," Petra said. "Torres isn't. That's how Finals work."
"That's bullshit." Billy's voice cracked on the last word. "He was one of us. He was—" He stopped, swallowed hard. "He was just a kid."
"We're all just kids," Marcus said.
The words came out in a voice that wasn't entirely his own — deeper, more controlled, touched with the cold pragmatism that Chester had developed over years of treating people like prey. Willie flinched. Billy stared. Petra's eyes narrowed.
Wrong tone, Marcus realized too late. That was Chester. That was how Chester would have said it.
He tried again, softer this time: "Torres knew the risks. He chose to stay and fight instead of running. That was brave."
Better. More like the Marcus Lopez they expected.
But the damage was done. He could see it in their faces — the way they looked at him now, trying to reconcile the friend they knew with whatever they were seeing.
"We need a plan," Billy said, breaking the tension. "Finals ends tomorrow afternoon. That's eighteen hours. We stay hidden, we survive, we graduate."
"Staying hidden isn't working." Marcus heard himself speak before he'd decided to. Chester's tactical instincts, bubbling up through his conscious mind like water through sand. "The hunters know where to look now. They're learning our patterns. If we keep running, they'll corner us eventually."
"What are you suggesting?"
"We hunt them instead."
Silence.
"That's crazy," Lex said. "We're Rats. We don't hunt — we survive."
"We know these tunnels. They don't." Marcus gestured at the junction chamber around them. "We know the blind corners, the choke points, the routes that look like dead ends but aren't. They're searching in the dark. We have home-court advantage."
Billy was nodding slowly. "Set up ambushes. Pick them off one by one. Turn their numbers into a liability instead of a strength."
"Exactly."
"It's still crazy," Lex muttered. But there was something else in his voice now — hope, maybe. The first sign that the prey might be getting tired of running.
"Crazy is all we've got," Petra said. She pulled out her notebook — the one with sketches of every student she'd been watching for weeks. "I have positions on six remaining hunters. Two are working together, the rest are solo. If we pair up, move fast, hit hard..."
The planning went on for another hour. Marcus contributed ideas, tactics, angles of approach that came from somewhere he didn't want to examine too closely. Chester's predator mind, feeding him information about how hunters think, how they move, how they die.
At some point, Petra handed him a chocolate bar. "For the weird one," she said, almost smiling.
Marcus took it. The sweetness hit his tongue like a revelation — hot food, small pleasures, the simple joy of eating something that tasted good. Tears pricked at his eyes before he could stop them.
Still human, he told himself. Still Marcus. Still capable of appreciating a stolen chocolate bar in the middle of a death sentence.
Chester had never appreciated anything. Chester had consumed without tasting, taken without gratitude, lived his entire miserable life without once understanding why small pleasures mattered.
Marcus wasn't Chester. He wouldn't become Chester.
Even if Chester was becoming part of him.
---
The Rats moved out in pairs. Willie with Billy, heading north toward the Legacy dormitories. Petra with Lex, circling east to cover the main corridors.
Marcus went alone. His allies had offered to partner with him, but something in their eyes said they were relieved when he declined.
They're scared of me now, he realized. They saw me fight those hunters. They heard how I talked about Torres. They know something's changed.
He moved through the tunnels with Chester's predator silence, tracking the remaining hunters through a combination of Reaper's Cloak death sense and instincts borrowed from a serial killer. The Finals were entering their final stretch. Eighteen hours until graduation.
Eighteen hours to survive while carrying a dead man's memories in his head.
Marcus found his first target twenty minutes later — a Kuroki hunter working solo, checking rooms one by one with the systematic patience of good training. She was good. Skilled. Professional.
Chester would have enjoyed breaking her.
Marcus hit her from behind with a sleeper hold, choked her unconscious, and left her tied up in a maintenance closet. Alive. Humiliated. Not dead.
You're being soft, Chester complained. Dead enemies don't come back.
"Fuck off," Marcus whispered to the voice in his head.
He kept moving. The Rats were hunting the hunters now. For the first time since Finals began, the prey had teeth.
The dynamic had shifted.
And somewhere in the back of his mind, Chester Wilson laughed and laughed and laughed.