After Dykes's earth-shattering display, the remaining students took their turns with a new, sobered intensity. The scale had been set. Now it was about finding their place on it.

  Festus Smith approached the runway with a low, mechanical hum. The specialized treads under his feet whirred to life. He took a deep breath, his face set with grim concentration.

  He didn’t sprint so much as accelerate linearly, building speed like a train leaving a station—smooth, controlled, but with a rising, metallic drone. At the line, he crouched low, and the treads screamed, kicking up a spray of shredded composite material from the track. He launched, but his trajectory was flat and hard, more like a missile than a jumper. He landed with a heavy thud, skidding through the sand on the wheels of his feet before stumbling to a stop.

  Measurement: 48 meters.

  Solid. Respectable. But his expression was tight as he stood, looking first at the gulf between his number and Dykes’s, then at the scarred runway. Not fast enough. Never fast enough.

  ---

  Aarav Kumar didn’t even approach the track. He knelt by his bag, rummaged for a moment, and pulled out a small, sleek, aerodynamic model rocket. With a focused stare, the toy shuddered to life in his hand. He placed it carefully on the ground at the start line.

  The rocket zoomed down the runway, trailing glittering, invisible tethers of his will. At the perfect moment, Aarav yanked himself forward through his connection to the toy, his body snapping forward like a puppet on strings. He flew, limbs loose, before tucking into a roll and landing in a cloud of sand.

  Measurement: 55 meters.

  He stood up, dusted off his pants, and gave a proud nod to his little rocket, now embedded in the far sand. Innovation over imposition.

  ---

  Silas Reed touched the heavy starting block with both hands, his face a mask of concentration. He didn’t run. He began pushing against it telekinetically, walking forward as if wading through thick water while shoving an invisible car. His progress was steady, powerful, but agonizingly slow compared to the blurs and flights that had preceded him. At the line, he gritted his teeth and, with a grunt of effort, shoved the block telekinetically behind him.

  The reactive force launched him into a wobbly, uncontrolled arc. He landed awkwardly, one ankle twisting as he hit the sand.

  Measurement: 34 meters.

  He stood quickly, red-faced, avoiding eye contact. Tactile telekinesis was precise, strong, but it was not meant for this.

  ---

  A loud, derisive snort cut through the post-jump murmurs.

  “Alright, losers,” Vance Kruger announced, swaggering to the start line. His eyes burned with a competitive fire. “Enough with the floating and the toys. Let me show you what real power looks like. Watch me shatter all your scores.”

  He toed off his shoes, leaving them smoldering on the track. He took a deep breath, and twin gouts of plasma ignited under the soles of his feet with a WHOOSH.

  For a few glorious seconds, he flew. Not a jump—a sustained, roaring ascent. He became a comet of flame, arcing up and out over the field, trailing black smoke and heat haze. The class watched, jaws slack, as he blasted past the 100-meter mark, then 200, then 400.

  “FIVE HUNDRED!” he roared into the wind, pushing his metabolism to its screaming limit.

  At 510 meters, his fire guttered out. The super-oxygenated fuel in his blood was spent. The triumphant roar became a shriek of pure terror as the flames died and gravity reclaimed him.

  He fell like a stone, a dark shape against the bright sky.

  Just before he would have cratered into the grass, a thick, coiled rope of water shot out from the sidelines. It wrapped around his torso with a wet snap, arresting his fall ten feet from the ground. It held him there, dangling, for a moment before lowering him gently to the turf.

  Instructor Stan stood with one hand casually extended, the last of the water rope retracting into his ever-present glass. He took a sip.

  Vance lay on his back, gasping, his clothes smoking, his body trembling from hypoglycemic shock and adrenaline.

  The field scanner processed the flight path, then beeped.

  KRUGER, V — 512.4m

  He had taken the stop spot. But the cost was written in Vance’s pale, sweat-soaked face and the two ruined shoes still smoldering at the start line.

  Stan looked down at him, his expression unreadable. “Real power, Mr. Kruger, includes the power to land under your own control. Remember that. Proctor, get him to medical. He needs sugar and an electrolyte drip.”

  The lesson was no longer about distance. It was about sustainability. About the price of the peak. And as two students were helped toward the medical wing—Theo limping, Vance shivering—the rest of the class understood the true weight of the numbers on the board.

  --

  Theo’s world was a throbbing, white-hot blur of pain. Each jostle as the proctor carried him made the fractures in his leg feel like shifting glass. They passed through a set of automatic doors into a large, sterile white room lined with pristine medical beds.

  Sitting behind a sleek workstation, scrolling through a laptop with one hand and sipping coffee with the other, was a short, wiry man with messy black hair and tanned skin. He didn’t look up.

  The proctor—a broad-shouldered man in the dark blue and white uniform of academy support staff—cleared his throat. “We’ve got two of them for you, Doc.”

  The man, Oliver James, finally swiveled his chair. His eyes, a surprisingly warm brown, flicked over Theo’s pained form and then toward the doorway, where Vance Kruger was stumbling in, supported by another proctor. Vance was ashen, shaking, his famous fire utterly spent.

  “A few hours after the school year starts and they’re already trying to dismantle themselves,” Oliver said, his voice a dry, unimpressed monotone. “That might be a new record. Put the crispy one on bed three. Put the broken one on bed two.”

  The proctors complied. Theo was laid down gently, the cool sheets a stark contrast to the feverish pain in his limbs. Vance practically collapsed onto the adjacent bed, a low groan escaping him.

  Stolen story; please report.

  Oliver turned back to his laptop, fingers tapping. “What’s your name, red hair?”

  “V-Vance,” he managed through chattering teeth. “Vance Kruger.”

  Oliver typed. A file populated the screen. “Ah. You’re Abigail’s son. That explains the hair and the… theatrics.” He made another note. “I know just what you need. IV glucose, stat. You’ve bankrupted your own bloodstream.” A med-bot whirred to life, preparing a drip.

  Oliver’s eyes then shifted to Theo. He paused, his head tilting. “Now, yellow hair. Wait. Yellow hair? Is that natural?” He squinted, then shrugged. “Anyway, doesn’t matter. What’s your name, kid?”

  “Theodore Griffin.”

  More typing. Oliver’s brows lifted slightly. “Hmm. I see.” He pushed back from the desk, his wheeled chair gliding silently across the polished floor until he was beside Theo’s bed. He leaned in, his gaze clinical but not unkind. “So. What did you do to end up like a dropped china plate?”

  Theo gritted his teeth. “It’s… the backlash. From my Signature.”

  “Oh, right,” Oliver said, nodding slowly as he scanned Theo’s biometrics on a nearby monitor. “The one that decided to show up fashionably late to the puberty party. At age fifteen. You’re quite the special case, aren’t you?” His tone wasn’t mocking, just stating facts. “Alright. Let’s get this over with.”

  Before Theo could ask what ‘this’ was, Oliver James balled his right hand into a fist.

  And then he started punching Theo.

  Not a wild assault, but a rapid, precise, almost mechanical flurry of blows—fists hammering into Theo’s chest, his arms, his legs, specifically targeting the areas of greatest trauma. The impacts were hard, jarring, and completely unexpected.

  Theo screamed, more from shock and violation than from increased pain.

  “WHAT THE HELL?!” Vance yelled from the next bed, trying and failing to sit up. “Stop it! Are you insane?!”

  Oliver ignored him. His fists were a blur, a percussion of thwack-thwack-thwack against Theo’s body.

  The first hit drove the air from his lungs.

  Not pain—impact. A deep, hollow thud that rattled his ribs and made white light burst behind his eyes.

  Why—?

  The second strike landed in his thigh, right on the fracture. Fire shot up his leg and his body arched against the bed.

  Stop. Stop. This is wrong. Why is he doing this?

  His mind scrambled for logic, for explanation. Is this how he treats his patients? This isn’t—

  Another punch. Chest. Sternum. The sound of it echoed inside him, like being struck from the inside out.

  He tried to raise his hands. They didn’t respond. His muscles locked, confused between bracing and breaking.

  This is it. This is how it happens. Not in a Breach. Not in a fight. On a clean white bed, by someone who’s supposed to help.

  The blows kept coming—fast, precise, merciless. Each one sent a spike of pain, then something else. A strange warmth, blooming beneath the agony. Like heat spreading through frozen metal.

  His thoughts began to fracture.

  I shouldn’t have used five Bouts. I knew better. Stupendous said— Another hit. Then another. His body screamed, but beneath it, something shifted. The pain didn’t stack anymore. It moved—draining away from the breaks, the tears, the places that had been screaming moments ago.

  What… is happening? The burning in his leg dulled. The sharp, glassy edge of the fracture softened. The ache in his chest loosened its grip. He realized, distantly, with a creeping, disbelieving horror—

  The punches aren’t hurting me anymore.

  They were fixing him.

  The last blow landed, and instead of pain, there was only a deep, resonant thrum through his bones. Like an engine settling back into a stable idle.

  Silence.

  Theo lay there, shaking, lungs dragging in air, his heart pounding not from injury—but from the realization.

  Healing here doesn’t feel like mercy.

  It feels like survival being forced into you.

  For ten seconds, it was pure, chaotic violence.

  Then, as suddenly as it began, it stopped.

  Oliver stood back, flexing his hand. “You can go back to class now.”

  Theo lay there, breathless, braced for agony.

  But it didn’t come.

  Instead, a warm, buzzing sensation spread from each point of impact. The searing pain in his leg dissolved. The torn muscle fibers knitted back together. The hairline fracture smoothed over as if it had never been. The deep, cellular ache of Turbo overexposure faded to a dull, manageable hum. He was… healed. Completely.

  He sat up, staring at his own hands, then at his legs, moving them experimentally. No pain. No weakness.

  “What?” he breathed.

  Vance was staring, slack-jawed. “Okay, what the hell just happened?”

  Oliver James was already walking back to his desk, wiping his hands on a towel. “Rapid Heal,” he said, as if explaining a boring paperwork policy. “My Signature. I can repair any biological damage. The punches are just the delivery method—kinetic energy jump-starts the cellular regeneration. Faster than nanites, cheaper than surgery. Side effects: you’ll be hungry, and you might bruise where I hit you. Now,” he pointed a thumb at Vance, whose IV was now flowing. “You, furnace-boy, sit still for twenty minutes. You,” he pointed at Theo, “get out. You’re taking up a bed.”

  Theo swung his legs off the bed, his mind reeling. He was healed. By a man who had just used him as a punching bag.

  “Thank you,” Theo said, the words feeling inadequate.

  Oliver waved a dismissive hand, already turning back to his laptop. “Don’t thank me. Just try not to see me again before finals. I’m busy.”

  As Theo walked out of the medical wing on steady, whole legs, the surreal truth settled in. Turboland didn’t just have teachers who could crush you. It had doctors who could put you back together by beating the damage out of you. Nothing here was simple. Not even healing.

  To Be Continued...