My cheeks burn as I’m forced to cross the classroom to the pile of chairs, convinced everyone’s eyes are trained on my back. There’s an awkward moment as the metal legs catch and clatter together, and I almost find myself buried under the toppling chairs. I just about manage to stop them from falling, but so much for being cool and inconspicuous. I think back to my first day at Profectus, when Jinx had been the one drawing all the attention. I much preferred that to this option.

I drop the hard plastic chair next to Zora’s desk as she scoots over to make room for me. Thankfully, everyone except Zora seems to lower their concentration back down to their work. She just stares at me, and I stare back.

I know we’re both thinking the exact same thing:

What on earth is going on?

7

My time in Mrs. Pendle’s class disappears in a flash of quadratic equations and formulas I barely pay attention to. Thankfully this is one class I could take in my sleep. We covered most of this in my first few weeks at Profectus, and math has always been one of my favorite of the “normal” subjects. At Profectus I would be learning how to code battle strategies in Moncha’s unique programming language—and then moving on to industrial design class, where we were going to use the academy’s own wind tunnel to test the aerodynamics of new baku prototypes.

St. Agnes doesn’t have a wind tunnel.

There’s no state-of-the-art programming lab.

The gym is an ordinary gym, not a secret baku battling arena.

My heart rate rises as I think of all I’m losing out on if this expulsion is permanent. It can’t be. I have to find a way back to Profectus.

I keep my head down, dodging looks from other students.

But I can’t escape them completely. Slick crawls on my knee and projects a message onto my black Profectus-uniform trousers. Bakus aren’t technically supposed to be active during class, but an enterprising St. Agnes student had found a way around the block on external messaging in class. To get around it, messages are sent from baku to baku on a group school message board, rather than using names and profiles. A simple fix that the school’s security should have picked up…but didn’t. A loophole in the code.

And messages are being sent to Slick already. There are lots of my former classmates here, people who have known me from elementary school. Slick sends a steady stream of messages my way from those dying with curiosity about what must have happened to me.

They start out fairly normal:

HARRIET: Lacey, are you back permanently?

ALESHA: Has something happened to Profectus?

DEVON: What the heck are you doing here?

But the longer I leave them unanswered, the more extreme they become.