Stephanie smiled and took it, held it against her chest until she was out of the office, down the hall, had pushed through droves of students who milled around their lockers before leaving for the day, and out the front doors. She headed down the steps and ducked around the corner to lean her back against the concrete of the staircase. Biting the inside of her lip, she stared at the envelope, hoping beyond hope that it said what she needed it to.

  She stuck her finger under the edge of the flap and tore it open carefully to remove the page inside. There really was no reason to prolong the inevitable, so she read it quickly. Finally, she released a long deep, breath and smiled widely. She had passed all her exams with flying colors and as of right then, no longer had to attend the school anymore. It came as something of a relief when she glanced at the stairs and remembered that she had never actually stored anything in her locker. Honestly, she was thrilled to not have to go back in anytime soon.

  “Hey, smarty pants,” Becca yelled from the sidewalk where she stood beside Todd.

  They both put their hands out and Becca laughed. “Are those your results? Are you finally out of this place or what?”

  Stephanie grinned and tucked it in her bag, which she flung over her shoulder. She hurried down the sidewalk to where they stood and put one arm over Todd’s shoulder and one over Becca’s. “Let’s just say that this girl is officially graduated from Chicago PS 34. Thank you very much!”

  Becca rolled her hands over each other and shook her body as she made the sound of deep beats of music with her chest. Todd followed suit and broke out the “shopping cart,” his extra special move for only the best of times. As he placed the imaginary cans in his imaginary cart, he bumped his hip into Becca’s. “We knew you had it in the bag. But we also had some ominous dances picked out in case you had an aneurysm during the test or something.”

  Stephanie shook her head and blinked at them. “You guys are too much for one sidewalk. Seriously. I think people are starting to think you’re having a seizure or something.”

  Becca put her arms out, her short, chubby frame always super-animated. “So, what’s next, Einstein?”

  “My new job, I suppose,” she responded and couldn’t resist a chuckle. That’s the whole reason I did this. To get there sooner. I mean, it’s basically a life-changing kind of job.”

  Todd groaned. “While the rest of us suffer away in school, she’ll be drinking champagne with admirals and lounging in her personalized pods.”

  Becca nodded astutely. “Personally, I think that you deserve every dang second of it. You have busted your butt for far too long. And after what Pinnacle did to you, screw that place. When my dad found out, he took them off the list of my possible schools. He wanted to show his solidarity.”

  Stephanie laughed. “I appreciate it. There are better schools than that for you anyway.”

  Her friend stood tall. “Why thank you. Shall we begin your last walk home?”

  Stephanie put one arm through Todd’s and the other through Becca’s. She was grateful that the girl’s parents had once again relented and allowed her to walk home rather than be driven. While they didn’t have too much longer left in school, it would be good for Todd to have company once she moved on, and he and Becca already had a good friendship.

  He cleared his throat. “So, I came up with the perfect last-walk conversation for us to have. A culmination of all the walks, all the pop-culture, and all the times you were wrong.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Mm-hmm.”

  Todd rubbed his hands together and unlatched from her arm to turn and walk backward. “It’s actually a whole bunch of questions but they are those that have never fully been answered. So, number one. Could Jack have fit on the door with Rose?”

  “Yes,” Stephanie shouted. “There have been recreations, there have been diagrams, everything. The girl was too prissy for her own good and she ended up letting her boyfriend die in the icy hell that was around them. Then, when someone came to save them, she simply let him go and sink to the bottom of the ocean. Personally, I think he should have sacrificed her.”

  He made a check mark in the air. “One we agree on. Okay, moving on. Star Wars—A New Hope or The Empire Strikes Back?”

  Stephanie hissed. “Uh… I will go with A New Hope.”

  Todd’s mouth fell open. “What? Are you kidding me? Empire Strikes Back is when they completely turn the story upside down. It was the re-forging of the core rivalry between Skywalker and Vader with that arc between a father and a son! Tragedy came.”

  She shrugged. “Right, but A New Hope established the entire mythos of Star Wars. Seriously, every major player was introduced. The Force, the Empire, the Rebellion, everything while still leaving the door open.”

  “That’s bull hockey.” He shook his head. “You know that. Just because it set the stage doesn’t make it the best one. How can you even think that the dramatic arc of father and son could come in second to A New Hope? Who even really knows that title? No one. You are no one.”

  Stephanie slapped him in the chest. “Calm down, crazy pants. Let me ask you this then, Star Wars or Star Trek?”

  They both answered at the same time. Stephanie said Trek, Todd said Wars and they both looked at Becca, who watched them with wide eyes and excitement. “Hey, don’t ask me. I’m only here for the drama of it all. I’m walking with so much nerdiness—will some sort of vortex open up and suck the whole world into it?”

  The friends blinked at her and Todd smacked his hand into the other one. “Star Wars has action, adventure, Wookies, a storyline, and the ultimate villain.”

  Stephanie wrinkled her nose. “Right, but Star Trek is pure science fiction. The future. Yours is fantasy. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with fantasy but it’s a cop-out to call it science fiction because it’s not. And Star Trek has a storyline. In fact, it has about ten million storylines throughout history. From the books to the movies, there is something for everyone.”

  Todd gritted his teeth. “Not for me. Not unless there are lightsabers. What does Trek have anyway? Those beam-me-up-Scotty old-ass comms? No. You are absolutely wrong on this one. I’m sorry. You have failed me after all these years and I cannot look you in the eye.”

  She poked him in the stomach and giggled. “I’m screwing with you. Of course I pick Star Wars over Trek. I wanted to see your response, that’s all. It was about as wild as I thought it would be.”

  He clutched his chest dramatically and shook his head. “You are a cow. I seriously thought that all this time, I had steered you down a dark and lonely road. Good Lord.”

  Becca giggled. “Oh. You know what we should do? Because it’s your last ride? We should go get a shake at the diner. You said you would come eventually and it’s your last shot.”

  Stephanie looked at Todd and nodded. “Heck, yeah. Let’s do it. And they’re on me this time.”

  He snickered. “Okay, rich girl. Can I even get whipped cream on mine?”

  “Whoa, buddy.” She laughed. You are taking it too far…way too far. Psych, duh, you can get whipped cream. What is a shake without whipped cream?”

  They turned right and headed to the small shopping area on the outskirts of the subs. Todd held the door for the girls to enter the diner, which was already crowded with students sitting around, laughing, and talking over shakes and fries. It had been years since Stephanie had been in there, but it still looked exactly the same to her—a long metal building with the words The Diner in sketchy neon lights out front. Inside, it was decorated in red and white, from floor to ceiling. The floors were checkered, the tables were red with silver edging, and everything had a sheen to it as if it had been polished for hours.

  On the ViD screens hanging on the walls were old movies from the 1900s and early 2000s. Each one displayed a different movie with the words captioned below the picture. Overhead music played, this time from the 2050s but usually from about a hundred years before that. Stephanie assumed they at least tried to keep with the times before music was incredibly regulated by the Federation. Of course, that unfortunate time period was short-lived as people everywhere from rich to poor spoke out vociferously against the regulations. Music was the one thing that always somehow crossed the invisible divide.

  The three friends chose one of the tables at the window and waited for the waitress to come over. She was in her seventies, at least, with bleached hair pulled back, a red dress that came down to her calves, and a white apron that matched the white tennis shoes on her feet. The varicose veins in her legs showed clearly through her barely opaque stockings. “What can I get you?”

  Becca responded first. “I’ll have a strawberry milkshake with whipped cream.”

  Todd tapped his fingers on his lips. “I’ll have your split one—vanilla and chocolate with whipped cream please.”

  She looked at Stephanie. “And you?”

  “Chocolate, whipped cream, and a large order of fries.” She smiled a little smugly. It felt good to be able to splurge a teeny bit for once in her life.

  The woman walked away, and Todd laughed. “Look at you, money bags. Springing for the spuds.”

  Stephanie shrugged and her gaze traveled the room as she soaked in the atmosphere. “Hey. Sometimes, you have to celebrate.”

  Becca rested her chin on her hands. “I can’t believe this is it for you. We’ve all been in school with each other since we were tiny. Will you come back for graduation?”

  She wrinkled her nose as she considered this. “Maybe. I don’t know. It seems silly, though. Barely anyone comes back for it anymore, right? And I’ll be in the middle of working. I don’t know. We’ll see. Right now, I simply want to enjoy my last day.”

  The six lead recruiters sat silently in their chairs as they watched the playback of Stephanie in the bank robbery game. Their eyes all widened as she used magic to knock the robber unconscious and stepped forward. Ribbons of purple magic whirled around her and seemed to come directly from the floor. Her entire body was swathed from head to foot and her hair waved wildly around her. As she released the wave of magic, the recruiters bolted back in their chairs, their gazes glued to the bodies that disintegrated around her.

  Almost nonchalantly, she grasped a handful of the robber’s shirt and dragged him into the police precinct as if nothing at all had happened. All that was left in her wake were the ashes of the avatars she had taken out in the process. The video stopped and Brown shut it off. The team sat in stupefied silence, unsure of what to do or say at that point.

  Taylor’s feet dropped from the table and he straightened to roll his seat forward. “Okay. That was completely mind-blowing. How in the hell did she do magic like that?”

  Conrad shook his head. “It is the Meligorn side of the docking station, which means it’s within the MU spectrum, but humans aren’t supposed to be able to throw magic, even there. And with the kind of control she had, she made it look like she could perform the exact kind of magic that she wanted to do.”

  Thompkins’s mouth hung open. “Like she had complete control over it. As if she knew how to bring it up and send it back as a destructive power.”

  Holland waved his hands frantically as he squinted at the frozen image on the screen. “Hold up. Wait a second. That’s the girl.”

  The others looked strangely at him. He pointed at Stephanie and pushed to his feet. “That’s the girl who saved that woman and child from the runaway self-driven truck. Here on Earth, she used a battery to generate magical power. Her face was all over the news, but I didn’t recognize her until the magic flowed through her.”

  Brown pressed a few buttons on his tablet and turned to the information screen at the front of the room. He brought up her pod number, location, and finally, her stats. “Stephanie Morgana. What do you know? It is her. She took to the bank vault to work her next piece of magic.”

  Conrad spun his finger lazily. “Okay, where is she? This is something we cannot sleep on. If she is out there still and hasn’t been picked up, she would be the perfect candidate. Our next hero in disguise.”

  The other man scanned through her records. “These aren’t really updated because she just turned eighteen, but it says here she has the last half of her school year to go still. She is in the Gov-Subs in Chicago and attends the public school out there. She apparently did a summer session at Pinnacle but is back home now and continued her public-school enrollment when she got back.”

  The team leader thought about it for a second, then pointed at Thompkins. “I want you to find out who the closest recruiter to her is. I need them sent out immediately. Let’s see if they can’t persuade her that the real world needs her.”

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone get a brain freeze so badly that cold air blew out of their nose.” Becca laughed loudly as the trio walked out of The Diner.

  Todd chuckled. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt my nose hairs freeze like that.”

  Stephanie grimaced. “That’s so gross. But I’m glad you came out of it. I did not want to deliver you back home as a completely frozen statue. The one time we go out, you end up an ice cube. Your parents would not be happy.”

  He scoffed. “They wouldn’t have even noticed. We don’t talk a lot at home so they would have simply patted me on the frozen shoulder and told me to wear a sweatshirt if I was cold so they wouldn’t have to turn the heat up.”

  Becca shook her head, her grin still wide. “Thank you for coming out, Steph. I’m really glad we had this chance. I know you leave soon for your big secretive job.”

  Stephanie hugged her tightly once they stopped on the edge of the town. “I will miss you. But I’ll be back to visit soon, promise. And let me know when you’ll be in town from school. I know you still have the rest of this semester here but it’s off to prep school afterward, so I want to know you are doing well.”

  Her friend squeezed her hands and glanced at Todd, who still rubbed his tongue on the roof of his mouth. “I’ll keep an eye on dummy over here too. Make sure he doesn’t go licking glass windows.”

  “I appreciate that.” Stephanie eyed him with real amusement.

  She hugged the other girl one last time and waved as Becca hurried off in the other direction toward her house. Stephanie tapped Todd on the shoulder and the two headed down through the subs. He finally released the pressure from his mouth and hooked his thumbs in his book bag. “It’s gonna be weird not coming to get you in the morning.”

  Stephanie poked her bottom lip out. “I know it will be, but remember, it won’t be for that long. Before you know it, you will graduate too. It will be a wild ride. And if it’s that hard, you can always call me and I can talk to you on the phone while you walk.”

  He groaned. “Oh please. I’m not that pathetic…okay, maybe turn your phone on in the morning just in case. You know, in case there are some bad guys trying to get me or something.”

  She kept a serious face for his benefit. “Mm-hmm…oh, sure. All the bad guys. Don’t worry, dude, I will keep my phone on and answer it if I possibly can. I’m telling you, though. The first day might be weird but you’ll get used to it really fast. It might save you a few minutes in the morning too.”

  They walked along in almost silence as they made their way through the subs. When they stopped outside her house, Stephanie wrapped her arms around him and squeezed him tightly. “Go home and relax.”

  “Yeah right.” Todd sneered. “I have to do homework like the rest of the plebes—minus you, of course.”

  Stephanie smirked. “Yeah. I have to pack, though. I haven’t started yet and I know I have to take a fair amount back with me this time around. Not the most exciting thing to do, but it is what it is.”

  He gave her a hug again, turned, and whistled to himself as he strolled down the sidewalk. Up to that point, she had been fine, but for a small moment, she felt almost sad that all of it was over. Her life was changing, and the years she’d had to figure it all out were drawing to a close. She had to move forward and hope like hell she had made the best decision.

  With a determined shrug, she headed to the door. As she reached for the handle, she paused when she heard her mom and dad inside through the open window. They hadn’t noticed that she was back yet and were discussing business. Her mom sighed. “It’s such a good opportunity. This could really fill that hole we’ve had every year and be a really good long-term thing. It could give us a chance to finally branch out, have a staff, and move forward with the company.”

  Her father sniffed. “True. Where is it again?”

  “It’s in New Downtown Chicago. Right in the heart—a huge skyscraper. The whole thing needs a possible cleaning service. It looks like 511 New Main Street—that really big one with the all-glass front and the multiple flying car docking stations along the sides of it.”

  Her father smacked his lips thoughtfully. “Well, we should put a bid in.”

  Cindy groaned. “I wish we could but it’s in person only. I don’t see how we could get away from the other jobs long enough to apply for it. Right now, it’s only us and one part-time girl. We would have to basically be in two places at one time. But damn, that would be so good for the company.”

  Stephanie put her back to the door and retrieved her tablet. She put the address into the system and pulled the building up. Croftborrow Services, a leading player in the technological advances for the Federation. It wasn’t a government building but a private business owner who, from the looks of it, had multiple Federation contracts. Normally, that would scare her off but that was a good thing for her parents’ company. If a corporation ran mostly off Federation Contracts, that meant the long-term money and stability would totally be there.

  That was one thing she knew her family needed with their schedules. Stability. The business was so up and down that they never knew from month to month what contracts they would have, which was why they didn’t have a staff. They couldn’t promise hours every single week, much less pay for any benefits that might need to be offered.