Chapter 91David was sitting on his bed when Nicholas got back.Not gaming. That was the first thing Nicholas noticed.The monitor was off. The headset was on the desk instead of around David's neck or ears, which was where it usually lived. David was sitting with his elbows on his knees, looking at something on his phone, and he looked up when Nicholas came in and then looked back down in the way of someone who had decided to say something and was still finding the start of it.Nicholas set his bag down and sat on his own bed.He did not ask.He had learned that with David, asking too quickly closed the door.David set his phone face down on the mattress."Hey," he said"Hey," Nicholas said.Another moment passed."Can I ask you something," David said."Go ahead."David scratched the back of his neck and looked at the floor."When you transferred here. Your financial aid. Did it come through straight away or did it take a while to sort out."Nicholas looked at him."It took a while,

Chapter 93Nicholas was already dressed when Rebecca called to say she was thinking of going alone.He told her he would meet her outside the clinic at ten.She started to say something about it not being necessary and he told her he would see her at ten and ended the call.She was there when he arrived.She had on the coat he had not seen before, a light grey one that suited her, and she looked better than she had in the months before the hospital.That was the first thing he always checked now.How she looked."You did not have to come," she said."Good morning," he said.She gave him a look and walked through the door he held open.The clinic was quiet for a Tuesday.A receptionist took Rebecca's name and they sat in the waiting area in the chairs closest to the window.Rebecca had brought a book.She did not read it.She held it in her lap and looked at the middle distance in the way she did when she was working something over quietly.Nicholas did not ask what it was.He looked a

Chapter 95The grade came through on a Thursday morning.Nicholas saw it on his phone before he got out of bed.B+.He looked at it for a moment.Then he put the phone down and went to brush his teeth.David was still asleep.His monitor had been left on overnight, the screensaver cycling through slowly in the early morning light.Nicholas moved around the room quietly, the way he had learned to in the weeks since they had been paired together.He had gotten used to David's patterns.The late nights.The particular frequency of his snoring.The fact that he slept through alarms with a consistency that suggested the alarms were decorative.Nicholas made no noise and thought about the grade while he got dressed.B plus was not an A.He knew exactly where the points had gone.The section on stakeholder prioritisation had been Jake's, and Jake had written it the way someone wrote something the night before it was due without reading the brief carefully enough.Nicholas had revised it.Not

Chapter 97He took the bus.Not because he had to.Because the route ran through the old neighborhood and on a Saturday morning with nowhere to be urgently he wanted the window and the familiar passing of streets he had grown up reading.The bus smelled the way it always had.He found a seat near the back and watched the city change as it moved from the university end of town toward the part of it that had raised him.Smaller storefronts.Older buildings.The particular quality of a neighborhood that had not been touched by the kind of money that changed the shape of things.He rode it all the way to the stop two blocks from the park and got off.Marcus was already there when Nicholas arrived.Devon and Carlos came five minutes later, Devon eating something out of a paper bag and Carlos telling him it was too early to be eating whatever that was.There was no formal greeting between any of them.Devon tossed Nicholas the ball.They started.They ran four games across the morning.The

Chapter 100Nicholas woke up at half past two for no reason he could identify.The room was dark.David was asleep in the way David slept, which was heavily and without movement, the gaming setup humming quietly in sleep mode on his side of the room.Nicholas lay on his back and looked at the ceiling for a moment.Then the interface came.He had not summoned it.It never required summoning.It arrived the way it always did, at the edges of his vision first, the familiar bleed of color that his eyes had learned to adjust to without panic.The room did not disappear.It sat underneath the display the way the world always sat underneath it.David was still asleep.The hum of the setup.The thin strip of light under the door from the corridor outside.All of it is still there.And over it, steady and clear:TASK 4: COMPLETETotal Deployed: $50,000,000Ventures Verified: Sustainable — PASSAssets RetainedNext Directive: PendingNicholas read it.He read it again.He lay completely still a