“Doesn’t change the freak status,” I muttered as I hurried down the hall, but Elliot just sped up to keep pace with me.

“What are you doing?” I asked. “Don’t you have somewhere better to be?”

“Not particularly,” he said. “I was just wondering if you’re competing in the sim test tomorrow.”

“No,” I said.

“You know,” he went on as though I hadn’t said anything, “the test where they pit us against one another? The test you have to win ten times before you are eligible to move up to the next level of the Academy? That sim test? But wait,” he said, pausing with an overly dramatic hand to his chin, “you haven’t even won once? Have you?”

“I said no,” I snapped back, walking so fast he practically had to jog to keep up. It was hard to win something you’d never attempted, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. If I couldn’t pass the Lincoln simulation, I didn’t have a shot of winning a sim test. I turned left down the corridor, my access badge lighting up on my chest as the large metal door slid open to let us through.

“I’ve been prepping for the test for weeks,” Elliot went on. “I’ve already won nine times, which I’m sure you know, but I heard they really make it tough for your tenth try. They don’t like kids leveling up too young.” He paused and looked at me expectantly. I knew Elliot well enough to know that this wasn’t going to end until he made whatever point it was he was trying to make, so I stopped and turned to face him again, arms crossed tight over my chest.

“What’s your point?” I said.

He smiled. “No point. Just thought that you should know that I’m about to be the youngest cadet to level up. Your mom currently holds that record, right?”

I didn’t say anything because the question had been 100 percent rhetorical. He knew, just like the entire Academy knew, that my mom held almost every record worth holding. What was he trying to do? Bait me? I glanced up and down the corridor, but we were alone, everyone else having already abandoned the simulation wing for the mess hall and their dinners.

“Bet she’d have loved it if you’d been the one to beat it,” Elliot said with a fake disappointment that set my teeth on edge. “Anyways,” he went on as though he wasn’t the biggest creep on the planet, “I just wanted you to know so you wouldn’t miss me.”

“No one has ever missed you,” I shot back, and he winced. That wince brought me up short. Elliot never winced; he never showed any sort of emotion besides cocky self-assuredness peppered with the occasional temper spike. Whatever I’d said had struck a nerve, and I studied his face. And then it hit me.