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“Nemean Class,” I say, and nothing more.

There’s a pause, then a shuffling, then the muted noises of people discussing something, then the far-less-muted noises of the same people fighting. The only clear noise that filters through is someone moaning, “Ow, ow, fuck! Fuck, you bastard, alright!”

Finally, the door unlocks, and Peter Drike is standing there, same old obnoxious sneer on his face.

“Why you bothering me, then?” he grunts.

“What did Meléti tell you?” I ask.

“Fuck off.” He tries to shut the door—one hand splayed, breathing hard, Leo stops him. He steps over the threshold into Peter’s room, eyes dark. They stare at each other, both about the same size, both angry in the physical way I think all tall, broad men are by nature—they can afford to be what more delicate bodies cannot: rage with force behind it, rage tethered to a vessel where bodily violence is possible. I am pretty fucking brittle by comparison and God, I think I’m jealous. Peter Drike shoved me against a wall like I was nothing. Leo Shaw can stand there and hold his own and not look one bit scared.

“He asked you a question,” Leo grunts. “So answer it.”

A smirk, a look back into the room to someone out of sight. Peter rolls his shoulders, quirks a brow. “Xenos cunt.”

Leo punches him square in the nose.

Blood spurts immediately. Peter stumbles back from the door, which groans wide, revealing a mismatched group of people standing in wait behind Drike. Several are cowering—a woman, two men—and the other three square up, reading to shatter Leo’s face in return.

“Shit!” Bellamy practically squeals, arms high. His torn-up forearm is bandaged. “Nope, no fucking way.” Then he’s gone, rushing down the stairs out of the way. I don’t blame him, but I can’t turn tail. Not when Leo stood there for me.

I take the gun out, cock it, and point it at Drike’s head.

The effect is immediate, in both the faces of his roommates, and the air around me. There is at once the bare-bones horror of having a gun to your face: of realising all that strength and brute force means nothing with a tiny bullet hurtling toward your skull. And around me, in me, I feel my own body shift with the power the little gun affords me.

“Christ,” Drike mutters. He makes some gesture and turns his back on Leo and me—a bold statement, I think, that he’s not scared of us. He collapses on their window seat equivalent, which is covered in paper notes and a scattering of books. I think they’ve torn pages out, to write on or maybe for the fun of it. Drike makes a show of shoving the pile onto the floor, opening his hands with false showmanship. “Sit, then.”

“No, thank you,” I say, and lower the hammer on the gun before I put it away. “This will be quick. Just want to know what the damned automaton said.”

Drike turns to the others—he must be hurting them, from the way half of them flinch—and hisses through his teeth. It’s a signal and it sends them scattering until it’s only Leo and me facing Peter Drike down.

“You said Nemean Class before,” Drike says, when the final roommate’s door shuts with a click.

“That’s my guess,” I say. I don’t want to give too much of my hand away, in case he has nothing to offer.

“Don’t know anything about that.”

Leo breathes deep, expands his chest, looks very, very good for a dazzling moment as he looks Drike up and down. “Are you sure about that?”

Drike meets his gaze with vitriol. He grinds his teeth so obviously his jaw protrudes, like he’s about to spit on Leo’s feet. But he changes his mind at the last minute; sits upright and sighs. “Meléti didn’t say anything like that. Didn’t name the class, or the tier, or what to do. Just told me where I could petition graduate students on campus.”

“Where?” I say—too desperately. Drike acts like an oaf, but he has a brain, and he catches my tone, my over eagerness.

He quirks a brow and snorts. “Oh? You want that information, do you?”

I slam my jaw shut, but I know the damage is done. “I’ve given you the next teras we’ll face.”

“Yeah, and you gave away the single bargaining chip you had. Not my fault you’re too stupid to play the game, Jones.”

Before I can say anything, Leo’s hand is in my pants. I freeze instinctively, because that primal instinct in me is filled with relief and interest—I think my soul is a whore; I think I don’t know how to love without using my body—and I look up at him to see he’s not looking at me. He’s grabbed the gun from my pocket, re-cocked it, aimed it at Peter’s head.

It doesn’t have the same effect. The shock is gone. Peter was expecting this, I think. He laughs a little, rolls his eyes in an obvious taunt.

“You won’t,” he says.

“Cassius has already killed a man on the University’s grounds,” he says.

Drike’s smile quirks—not because he believes it, but because he doesn’t. His eyes slide to me, and I see in them a calculating, disbelieving scepticism. I am the lithe, delicate queer Drike’s been teasing for years. I am the man who’s never fought back when he’s shoved me against a wall. But I killed a man—that much is true. Drike doesn’t need to know the circumstances. He just needs to believe it.