Clifton walked into the massive, open-concept American kitchen. His fingers were shaking slightly as he pressed the extraction button on the espresso machine.

The loud grinding noise of the coffee beans drowned out the sound of his heavy breathing. He planted both hands flat on the cold marble counter, staring blankly as the dark brown liquid dripped into the cup.

Buster Williamson, the first team's entry fragger, shuffled into the kitchen wearing slides. He was holding a mug with an anime girl printed on it.

Buster instantly felt the suffocating low pressure in the room. He stepped cautiously toward Clifton.

"Sponsors on your ass about streaming hours again?" Buster asked.

Clifton picked up the shot of espresso. He drank it black. The bitter, acidic taste burned his throat.

"No," Clifton said coldly.

Buster leaned against the stainless-steel fridge. He lowered his voice like he was sharing gossip.

"I just saw Delmus looking pale on the stairs. Did you go down to the basement and rage at the kids?"

Clifton's fingers clamped down on the small ceramic cup. The skin over his knuckles stretched white. The dark liquid inside shook violently.

He turned his head. He looked at Buster with eyes so cold they could freeze blood.

"Do you remember the Fire Cup tournament in Chicago a year ago?" Clifton asked, his voice rough.

Buster blinked, surprised. Then he slapped his thigh.

"Hell yeah. That was our peak. How could I forget?"

A smile completely void of warmth pulled at the corner of Clifton's mouth.

"That trainee in the corner. The one with the cap. That's Justice Terry."

Buster's fingers went slack. The anime mug slipped from his hand. It slammed onto the marble counter with a loud crack. Buster's eyes went wide with pure shock.

"Wait," Buster stuttered. "The guy who vanished right after the finals? The one you went crazy looking for for a whole month?"

Clifton didn't answer. He just slammed his empty espresso cup down onto the counter. The heavy thud echoed in the kitchen.

Buster realized how bad this was. He looked around nervously, checking the hallway to make sure no one was listening.

He stepped closer to Clifton.

"Why the hell is he at Aegis? Is he here to beg for you back?"

Hearing the words 'get back together' made Clifton feel like he was being stabbed. A heavy, violent rage flashed in his eyes.

He ground his teeth together. "He told me it wasn't real. That night in Chicago. Everything. Said it was a mistake. That he didn't mean for any of it to happen."

Buster sucked in a sharp breath. He looked confused.

"But... the way he used to look at you. It was like you were his whole world."

Clifton ran a hand aggressively through his hair, cutting Buster off.

"It was an act. He's a liar. A fucking actor."

Buster looked at the raw pain twisting his captain's face. He swallowed hard.

"What do you want to do? Should I tell Delmus to kick him out right now?"

Clifton let out a dark laugh. A dangerous, predatory light sparked in his eyes.

"No. If he crawled through hell just to get into the first team, let him stay."

Clifton turned his back to Buster. He walked to the floor-to-ceiling window, staring out at the blinding California sun.

"I'm going to rip his mask off in front of everyone," Clifton said, his voice dropping to a deadly whisper.

Buster felt the crushing weight of Clifton's aura. He swallowed again, too scared to say another word.

Right at that second, a faint metallic clank sounded from the hallway outside the kitchen. Like someone had bumped into a wall.

Clifton snapped his head around. He moved like a startled leopard, crossing the kitchen in three massive strides. He grabbed the sliding door and shoved it open.

The hallway was empty. But a few feet away, a metal trash can was swaying back and forth. Someone had just run away.

Clifton stared at the swaying metal. Suspicion and paranoia spiked in his chest.

He stepped back into the kitchen. He pointed a finger at Buster.

"Not a word of this to anyone. Especially Delmus and the coach."

Buster nodded frantically. He made up a quick excuse about needing to start his stream and practically ran out of the kitchen, desperate to escape the suffocating tension.

Clifton stood alone in the kitchen. He looked out at the green lawn. His right hand instinctively reached up to massage his throbbing wrist. But his mind was completely gone, dragged back to a rainy night in Chicago one year ago.

Clifton closed his eyes. The bright sunlight of the kitchen faded into black. His senses were violently dragged back to a humid, drizzly October night in Chicago, one year ago.

In his memory, his fingers were wrapped tightly around the heavy metal of the Fire Cup MVP trophy. His adrenaline was surging, pumping wildly through his veins from the championship victory just minutes prior.

He was pulling Justice by the wrist. Justice was just an amateur player then. They ducked into a dark, narrow brick alley behind the stadium to escape the screaming fans and flashing cameras.

The alley smelled like wet garbage and stale rain. A single, rusted streetlamp flickered above them. Puddles on the uneven ground reflected the faint, blurry neon lights of the city.

Clifton pushed his back against the wet brick wall. His chest heaved as he tried to catch his breath. He turned his head and looked at Justice standing next to him.

Justice was panting heavily too. His dark hair was plastered to his forehead by the rain. His pale, handsome face was illuminated by the flickering light. Those deep eyes were locked onto Clifton, filled with a fatal, magnetic attraction.

Under the cover of the dark alley and the sheer ecstasy of winning, the love Clifton had been holding back completely shattered his rational defenses.

He let go of the priceless MVP trophy. It hit the ground with a heavy splash, sending muddy water flying onto his shoes. He didn't care.

Clifton took a step forward. He reached out and cupped Justice's freezing cold face with both hands. He tilted his head down and kissed him. It was a forceful, undeniable kiss, driven by pure desire.

The second his lips pressed against Justice's, the passionate response he expected didn't happen.

Instead, a suffocating, terrifying rigidity seized Justice's entire body.

The moment Clifton touched him, Justice reacted as if a high-voltage wire had been jammed into his spine. A violent, full-body spasm ripped through him.

Before Clifton could even deepen the kiss, a massive force slammed into his chest.

Justice let out a sound that was half-gasp, half-animalistic choke. His hands shoved hard against Clifton's chest, pushing him away with desperate, frantic strength.

Caught completely off guard, Clifton stumbled backward. His spine slammed hard into the rough brick wall. A dull, heavy pain radiated across his shoulder blades.

He jerked his head up, shocked. What he saw next burned into his brain, becoming the most humiliating moment of his life.

Justice was looking at him like he was a monster. Justice's hands were clamped over his own mouth, pressing so hard his knuckles were bone-white.

Justice's chest was heaving erratically. It was as if that kiss was a lethal poison. His eyes were wide, filled with naked terror and a visceral, physical revulsion that couldn't be hidden.

Justice stumbled backward, taking two frantic steps away. His foot splashed into a deep puddle. His entire body was shaking uncontrollably. A harsh, dry-heaving sound tore from his throat.

Clifton froze. His hand, still reaching out, hung suspended in the cold air. The rain quickly soaked his sleeve. His heart felt like it had been crushed by an invisible, icy fist.

To a man as proud as Clifton, this reaction was crystal clear. It was raw. It was unfakeable. It was rejection in its purest, most primal form.

The joy of the championship drained from Clifton's face. It was instantly replaced by disbelief, and then, a blinding, humiliating rage at being played for a fool.

He ground his teeth together. His voice shook as he demanded an answer.

"If I disgust you so much," Clifton snarled, "why did you spend the last six months playing duos with me every single day? Why did you look at me like that?"

Justice leaned heavily against a rusted dumpster. He was gasping for air, shaking his head frantically. He tried to speak, but the severe attack locked his jaw. He couldn't force a single syllable out of his throat.

To Clifton, that silence and the shaking head meant only one thing: default. It was the guilt of a liar whose scam had just been exposed.

A bone-chilling coldness washed over Clifton. He bent down and picked up the muddy trophy. He looked at Justice one last time.

"Get out," Clifton spat, using every ounce of his strength to keep his voice cold.

He didn't look back. He turned around and walked out of the muddy alley, leaving that violently shaking figure behind in the rain forever.

That night, back in his hotel room, burning with extreme humiliation, Clifton blocked Justice's phone number, his Discord, his Twitter. He erased him completely.

What he didn't know—what he couldn't have known—was that two hours later, a message was sent from Justice's phone.

It was a single line.

*I'm sorry. It's not you. Please let me explain. *

The message bounced. The number was already blocked.

Justice stared at the delivery failure notification until his phone battery died. Then he sat in the dark, in a cheap motel room paid for with tournament winnings that were almost gone, and tried to breathe through the terror that had seized his body the moment Clifton's hands had touched his face.

He didn't know the word for what was wrong with him. He only knew that the one person who had ever made him feel safe had just become the trigger for something he couldn't control.

By the time he worked up the courage to try again—to find Clifton's team email, to message a teammate, to do anything—Aegis had already flown to a bootcamp in Seoul. And Justice had convinced himself that Clifton was better off without someone so broken.

He was wrong. But he wouldn't understand how wrong until a year later, standing in a basement academy room in Los Angeles, watching the man he'd never stopped thinking about walk through the door with murder in his eyes.

The flashback snapped.

Clifton's eyes flew open. He was still standing in the Aegis kitchen. His fingers had dragged across the marble countertop, leaving a long, wet streak.

The phantom feeling of that rejection crawled over his skin again. His breathing grew heavy. The edges of his eyes turned red with fresh anger.

He pulled out his phone and stared at the Aegis team logo on the screen. His thumb hovered over his blocked list. There it was. The Discord account he had erased. The one that now went by a different name.

Ember.

The ID Justice had chosen for himself. As if he still believed there was something left inside him worth burning for. As if he hadn't already extinguished everything between them in that muddy alley.

Clifton's jaw tightened. He made a silent vow.

He would not let himself be fooled by the same person twice.

Clifton left the kitchen and walked straight down the hall to the data analysis room. He pressed his thumb against the biometric scanner. The heavy electronic lock clicked open.

The room was freezing. Rows of servers hummed with a low, vibrating drone. He pulled out an ergonomic chair and sat down at the main control terminal.

He typed in his senior admin password. On his secondary monitor, a muted VOD of a German VCT tournament played, the casters' rapid-fire analysis something he translated effortlessly in his head-a lingering habit from his early days scrimming in European servers. He bypassed the standard files and directly pulled up the background checks and application forms for every rookie in the boot camp.

Dozens of headshots scrolled across the monitor. Clifton's eyes scanned them rapidly until they locked onto the photo of the boy in the black baseball cap.

He clicked open Justice Terry's file. He didn't care about the insane KDA stats or the win rates from public matches. He scrolled straight down to the bottom. To the 'Recommender' field.

The name printed there made his jaw tight.

Branson Powell. The first team's backup fragger.

Clifton's eyebrows pulled together into a hard line. His index finger tapped aggressively against the plastic shell of the mouse. Click. Click. Click.

Clifton's brain immediately connected the dots back to a year ago. Justice had tried to use Clifton to get into the pro scene. When that failed, he just found another target. He found another stepping stone in Branson.

Clifton let out a harsh, mocking laugh. It was pathetic. This liar was so desperate to climb the ladder he was willing to tolerate a piece of trash like Branson.

Clifton opened a new tab. He pulled up Branson's latest Twitch VOD to look for proof.

On the screen, Branson was screaming into his mic, bragging to his chat about discovering a genius in ranked queue. The chat was spamming praises for Branson's eye for talent.

But Clifton wasn't looking at Branson. He was listening to the background audio. Every few minutes, he heard Justice's voice calling out enemy positions. It was incredibly brief. Cold. Distant.

To Clifton, that cold tone wasn't shyness. It was the exact same 'aloof' persona Justice used to reel him in a year ago.

The door to the analysis room opened. Delmus walked in. He saw Clifton watching Branson's stream and smiled, thinking the captain was just checking on his teammates.

"Branson really pulled through this time," Delmus said, leaning against the desk. "The numbers that Justice kid is putting up in tryouts are breaking base records."

Clifton spun his chair around. He looked up at Delmus with dead eyes.

"What were the terms to sign him?" Clifton asked.

Delmus shifted his weight, looking a little uncomfortable. "Branson brought him in. He demanded a thirty percent cut of Justice's first-year salary as a finder's fee."

Clifton sneered in his head. A predatory contract. The fact that Justice signed a bloodsucking deal like that only proved how greedy and desperate he was to get into the first team.

Delmus let out a heavy sigh. "Look, Clifton. The PR right now is bad. Reddit is tearing you apart. They're saying you're slacking, that your hours are dropping."

Delmus paused, lowering his voice. "There's even a rumor going around that Branson brought this kid in to replace you as captain next season."

The second Delmus said that, a sharp, drilling spike of agony fired deep inside Clifton's right wrist.

Clifton grabbed his wrist with his left hand, squeezing hard to stop the tremor. He kept his face completely blank, hiding the pain.

The fans didn't know. Delmus didn't know. Nobody knew that Clifton wasn't slacking. His wrist had severe, irreversible Repetitive Strain Injury. He was at the end of his lifespan as a pro.

He was cutting his training hours to manage the pain, trying to survive just a little longer. He couldn't say a word, or the sponsors would drop the team instantly.

Clifton looked back at the monitor. He stared at Justice's photo. His chest tightened with a messy knot of rage, bitterness, and a faint, suffocating sorrow.

He had bled for this team. He would rather die than let a snake like Branson and a heartless liar like Justice take it over.

Clifton stood up violently. The wheels of the chair scraped harshly against the floor.

"Set up a scrim for two o'clock," Clifton told Delmus. "First team versus the rookies. I want to see what this genius is made of."

Before Delmus could argue, Clifton walked out of the room. He was going to find Branson.