“I have no idea,” Elliot said. His brow furrowed, and he turned to look at me. “The only reason the board would need to put their eggs, or us, or whatever, in separate baskets would be if the Academy was vulnerable. But that’s impossible, isn’t it?”

I shrugged as I watched my mom talk to the transfer security officer. I thought about mentioning the emergency meeting Mom had been called away to or the way Officer Salzburg had hinted at a threat from Mayhem, but decided against it. “The Academy is one of the safest places on earth,” I said. But even as the words left my mouth, I wasn’t sure which of us I was trying to convince.

“Liar,” he said, and I stiffened and looked over at him.

“What did you call me?” I asked.

“A liar,” he said. “That was the phoniest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Was not,” I said.

Elliot rolled his eyes. “If that were true, would we even be standing here right now?”

“I don’t follow,” I said.

“Shocking,” Elliot muttered, ignoring my glare.

“Just spit it out,” I said as all the solidarity I’d felt a moment before washed away, and I took a step to the left so our shoulders weren’t touching anymore and blinked hard. Grade-A jerk, I reminded myself. What did I expect? For him to warm up to me after years of being at each other’s throats just because we’d been forced together?

“Think about it, Fitz,” he said. “If everything was peachy, we’d never have gotten the you know what that landed us in this stupid program in the first place.”

Not trusting myself to say anything else, I just nodded as I looked back toward the ocean, where a small powerboat was pulling up with more security transfers on board as well as a beaming Professor Callaway. He waved to us excitedly as the boat docked, and despite the tight coil of nerves in my stomach, I smiled back. It was hard not to. He was wearing an orange life jacket across his wide chest, the buckles stretched so tight they reminded me of rubber bands about to bust.

“Here you go,” Mom said, walking up to hand us each our own orange life jacket.

“Where’s yours?” I asked.

“I’m not going any farther,” she said. “Professor Callaway will take you from here.”