Infinite Cashback System: Every Loss Makes Me Richer

The College Rival's Revenge

The banner stretched across the quad read THE COLE INSTITUTE FOR APPLIED SCIENCES, and Ethan still wasn't entirely used to seeing his own name attached to a building that hadn't existed six months ago.

He stood near the ribbon, hands in his pockets, watching a crowd gather that was three times larger than anything his old university had drawn for a groundbreaking in his memory. Camera crews jockeyed for angles. Students filmed on their phones, whispering to each other. Somewhere near the back, a group of professors who had once given him mediocre recommendation letters were now craning their necks to catch his eye.

"You could smile," Jax said quietly beside him, scanning the crowd out of habit rather than nerves. "It's a good day."

"I am smiling."

"That's your listening-to-a-bad-quarterly-report face."

Ethan huffed something close to a laugh. Jax wasn't wrong. There was something surreal about standing on the same concrete where he used to eat vending machine sandwiches between shifts, now watching the university president adjust his tie three times before approaching the podium like Ethan was visiting royalty.

"Mr. Cole." President Hensley extended a hand, palm damp with nerves. "We can't thank you enough. This building will change what's possible for our engineering and applied sciences programs for the next fifty years."

"It's an investment," Ethan said simply. "Good minds shouldn't be limited by bad infrastructure."

It was the kind of line that sounded rehearsed, except it wasn't. He remembered exactly what it felt like to be told a research grant fell through because the lab equipment was outdated. He remembered exactly how that felt.

The ceremony began the way these things always did ... a speech from the president, polite applause, a speech from the dean of the engineering department, more polite applause. Ethan let it wash past him, nodding at appropriate intervals, aware of Jax a half-step behind his shoulder, quiet and watchful the way he always was in public spaces now.

That was when he saw Marcus.

It took him a second to place the face ... heavier now, jaw tighter, eyes sunken in a way that had nothing to do with sleep. Marcus Vane. His old rival from the business program, the guy who'd competed with him for the same internships, the same scholarships, the same recognition, and had usually won. Marcus, who'd once told a room full of classmates that Ethan would "amount to a decent bookkeeper somewhere, if he was lucky."

He was standing near the edge of the press section now, in a suit that didn't quite fit right, staring at Ethan with an expression that made the hair on the back of Ethan's neck rise ... not fear, just a distant, clinical recognition.

Something's wrong with him.

Jax noticed too. Ethan felt it in the subtle shift of his bodyguard's weight, the way his gaze slid toward Marcus and stayed there.

"You know him?" Jax murmured.

"College," Ethan said. "He used to beat me at everything. Looks like that stopped working out for him."

"He's carrying something."

Ethan didn't ask how Jax knew. He'd learned by now not to.

President Hensley gestured toward the ribbon. "And now, if Mr. Cole would do us the honor..."

Marcus moved.

It happened fast enough that most of the crowd registered it as noise before they registered it as danger ... a shout, a shove through the press line, someone's tripod clattering to the pavement. Marcus was running now, something in his right hand catching the light wrong, a jagged edge that didn't look like metal or glass but something in between, humming faintly with a color that had no business existing under an ordinary afternoon sun.

"You stole it!" Marcus screamed, and his voice cracked in a way that made several students flinch back. "Everything! The scholarships, the internships, the life ... that was supposed to be mine! I was better than you! I was always better than you!"

Security guards lunged and missed. A journalist screamed. Someone's phone camera, held with shaking hands, kept filming even as its owner backed away.

Ethan didn't move.

He felt the pull of instinct ... the old reflex from a life where every threat meant he had to fight for himself ... but it arrived and passed like a wave over a rock. He simply watched, the way a man watches weather he already knows the forecast for.

Jax stepped forward.

He didn't run. He didn't shout. He crossed the distance between himself and Marcus in a handful of unhurried strides, timed with an ease that made it look almost lazy ... right up until the moment Marcus was close enough to matter.

Marcus swung the artifact in a wild arc meant for Ethan's throat.

Jax caught his wrist mid-swing, twisted once, and drove his open palm into the center of the artifact itself.

The sound was small ... a single, sharp crack, like a dropped teacup ... followed by a burst of pale light that dissolved before it fully formed, and then nothing. The artifact fragmented into dust between Jax's fingers, and Marcus's knees buckled from the force traveling backward through his own arm. He hit the pavement hard, gasping, the fight went out of him entirely.

For a full second, the quad was silent.

Then the applause started.

It began hesitantly ... a few uncertain claps from students who didn't fully understand what they'd just seen ... and spread as the narrative rewrote itself in real time. Security demonstration. Had to be staged. Look how smooth that was. Someone near the front actually whooped. A journalist turned to her camera, breathless, already narrating: "...incredible, just incredible, that looked completely choreographed, folks, this is the kind of security presence you'd expect at a Cole event..."

Ethan didn't correct her.

He watched two campus security guards finally arrive to zip-tie Marcus's wrists, the man sobbing now, muttering the same phrase over and over ... it should have been me, it should have been me ... as they hauled him upright.

"You okay?" Jax asked, returning to Ethan's side, brushing dust off his palm like he'd swatted a fly rather than shattered a weapon that had briefly glowed with something ancient.

"I didn't even have to move," Ethan said.

"That's the point." Jax's mouth twitched, close to a smile. "That's what I'm for."

Marcus was dragged past them, still screaming, his voice raw and unraveling. "You don't deserve this! None of it! You were nobody..."

"I know," Ethan said quietly, not unkindly, and meant it.

The crowd was still buzzing, still applauding, still filming, completely unaware they'd just watched a man survive an assassination attempt disguised as showmanship. President Hensley was already smoothing his tie again, laughing nervously, gesturing toward the ribbon like nothing had happened at all.

Ethan turned to follow him ... and stopped.

Luna was there.

She hadn't been a second ago. She stood just at the edge of his vision, translucent against the afternoon light, and for the first time in longer than he could remember, she wasn't smiling.

"Ethan," she said, and something in her voice made the applause around him fade into background noise. "You need to see this."

He didn't have time to ask what was wrong.

[SYSTEM ALERT]

A Planetary Trial Candidate has entered your city.

Threat Level: Unknown.

Ethan stared at the words hanging in the air only he and Luna could see, and the ribbon-cutting scissors in his hand suddenly felt very far away.