Page 9

The Touching Yourself Song

“The game is simple,” Ed Jones announced, his co-host standing beside him with a signature smirk. They shared a secret look, which was, of course, about as secret as a flashing neon sign. The cameras would have zoomed in to catch the sly sparkle of mirth passing between them in high definition.

Isobel swallowed, and the gathered students fell silent. They waited for the punchline because, at Ironside, the game was never simple. It was Saturday night, and they were gathered in Reputation Race, one of the labelled buildings on Ironside Row.

“Whoever makes it through the obstacle course first wins,” Ed continued, speaking into his microphone, a gleeful twinkle in his eyes.

He didn’t spell out what they would win, since they were being broadcast live instead of pre-recorded for the show.

They liked to pretend that everyone was competing for fun whenever they weren’t dangling enticing incentives right in front of their eyes, like the fifty-thousand-dollar donation they had teased the week before.

A huge paycheque for whichever charity the winner chose.

A life-saving amount for someone back in one of the settlements …

except it was one of the humans who won, and Mei Ito chose to donate to an animal rights charity, knowing that every other Gifted was competing to send the money back home.

Isobel still didn’t know if it had been an intentional choice to make the Gifted seem less worthy than even animals. It was better not to know.

They all began to warm up, ready to compete again, acting like they were doing it because it was fun and not because they desperately needed the popularity points.

Reputation Race was a building decked out in obstacle courses and physical challenges.

It was the main reason most of the students had learned to wear casual clothing to Ironside Row, despite the urge to dress up as formally as they could for the cameras.

Nobody knew which building they would be called to until they arrived, and trying to scramble through an adventure course in a dress and heels or formal pants and shoes wasn’t just awkward, it was a sure way to lose.

“There is one small twist, though,” Jack Ransom—Ed’s co-host—inserted, almost like an afterthought .

“Oh yes, of course,” Ed cackled. “I almost forgot the twist.”

Most of the students laughed.

Isobel did not.

The first few months of their fourth year at Ironside had been brutal.

Their popularity was at an all-time high and the officials had stopped treating them like a problem and started treating them like an opportunity.

Week after week, they could feel the grips around their necks tightening further and further, squeezing firmer with every viral video and burst of positive press.

This was only going to end one way. With every drop of sweat wrung from their bodies and every ounce of spirit torn from their souls and churned into profit.

Saturday nights were the worst. The live shows milked their group’s popularity for everything it was worth.

For that one night, Ironside Row became The Eleven Show , drawing out their jealousies, insecurities, and talents, stripping and flaying them in turn and then pinning all their pieces beneath a microscope for public consumption.

They were what the world wanted to see, and Ironside promised to deliver.

“The twist,” Jack Ransom’s voice boomed over their heads and set Isobel’s teeth together, “is that you’re going to do this in pairs, and one of you will be blindfolded while the other will deliver directions through an earpiece.”

Okay, not too bad .

“And,” Ed tacked on. Okay, spoke too soon . “You’ll only be able to move through one part of the course after answering a question from your fans. The sections of the course are marked by white flags, which your teammate will be able to see, but you won’t.”

Isobel pushed down her nerves, hooking her arm through Kilian’s and leaning on him like she didn’t have a care in the world.

That was how the fans liked them most. Carefree.

The public wanted to believe in the false utopia of Ironside, and they only wanted to consume content that fed into their delusion that their favourite group was living the dream—sponsored by them, of course.

As usual, Eleven and Hero—the human group—would have to perform as a group to make it fair on the other single players wanting to win, and as with most other nights, Ed and Jack announced who would be representing their teams. This time, it was Isobel who would be doing the obstacle course blindfolded, and Moses who would be speaking instructions into her ear.

An interesting choice. A fan-made video of her and Moses had just gone viral that morning, shocking their entire group.

10 Minutes of Carter and Moses Trying not to F.

The joke was that the “F” stood for “fight,” though the connotations of the video were highly sexually suggestive.

All audio had been stripped from the clips, leaving only slow-motion footage of her and Moses glaring at each other with emotionally charged music.

Halfway through the video, Moses tossed her over his shoulder and smacked her ass, but instead of dropping his hand, he left it there.

It even appeared that he flexed his fingers slightly.

In real life, it would have been only a fraction of a moment, but the slowed-down version made it seem much longer.

There was a clip of them fighting over her phone, where Moses held it behind him, forcing her to climb over his lap in an attempt to retrieve it.

They froze the clip right at the part where their faces were the closest, and suddenly, the fight looked very different.

Moses looked like he was about to shove her back to the ground and tear her clothes off.

She looked like she was thinking of choking him.

And then there was the part at the end …

This is all because of that video . Theodore’s voice burst into her head, echoing through the bond in the way their voices did when they were trying to address the entire bond instead of speaking to her privately.

Excuse me for zoning out, Moses returned sarcastically.

He was referring to the last part of the video.

It had shown Moses collapsed against the back wall of their practice room beneath the lit Eleven sign, watching as Isobel ran through some choreography, his earbuds in as he grew distracted and lost himself to his own thoughts.

Kilian and Theodore were also in the shot, messing around on their phones.

Elijah and Gabriel were in the corner of the frame, talking quietly and moving through a few moves of their own while they discussed ideas.

It was one of those lazy afternoons where they all practised their own projects together in the same room, voices and music overlapping.

Isobel had turned on her livestream to record her dancing for a single song while the music thumped loudly enough to drown out everyone else’s private conversations.

In the live stream, Moses seemed to space out watching her, too exhausted to school his features, too at ease in their private practice room, perhaps even forgetting that she was streaming.

He wasn’t looking at her like he usually did in front of the cameras.

There was no teasing mischief in his eyes, no gentle indulgence or stubbornness.

He wasn’t looking at her like the little sister of Dorm A, whom he equally tormented and cherished.

For a moment, he deviated from the script—which was ironic, because it was only yesterday that they had revised the script to encourage this sort of thing.

It was something they would have had to do damage control on last week, but there was no hate in the comment section.

People were having a lot of fun with it.

In the clip, Moses’ eyes were shadowed, his lids weighed down.

His expression was tight and intense, his focus heavy and unwavering.

Some fans claimed they must have just had a bad fight, but others pointed to the end of the video where Isobel finished her dance and turned around, seemingly making eye contact with him, and he ran his tongue across his lower lip without breaking eye contact.

According to the other half of the viewers, that meant he wanted to fuck her. The joke spiralled from there.

And as always, the officials didn’t miss a beat.

“Wait, I’m confused.” Moses chose to show no reaction to the fact that he and Isobel had been chosen out of everyone in the group. “Who’s answering the questions from the fans? Me, or Carter?”

“The person doing the course,” Cian said as the other students paired up according to Ed’s instructions, and equipment was handed out.

Moses attached a headset while Isobel slipped in the earpiece given to her and strapped herself into a harness, following the others up to the start of the course.

Unsurprisingly, the officials had called all the most popular fourth-year students into Reputation Race that night, and the most popular again out of that selection were now lined up with Isobel, each of them being directed to a starting point on the elaborate course.

The actual start of the course was covered by curtains, likely so that they couldn’t plan their route before they were blindfolded.

There were ten little gates waiting before the curtain, a blindfold hung over each gate.

Luca Santoro was led to the first starting spot, and she was led to the second.

He gave her a wink. “The backup Kane gonna drop you on that pretty ass of yours, Carter? ”

Isobel bristled, but that was exactly what he wanted.

“Ignore him,” Moses’ deep voice drawled through her earpiece.

She scowled at Santoro, forgetting for a moment that her group was likely standing before one of the monitors below with a clear view of her face.