Kalista braced herself as Bruce kicked at the door: once, twice, then three times. She could feel its metal surface giving way. Adrenaline rising again, she grabbed the console and its power cord, then stopped. If she wanted a chance at getting past Bruce, she would need to outrun him or outfight him. Which one would be easier? It was hard to tell. Bruce was not as strong as Peter, but he was stronger than her. Her only advantage was her agility and speed -- but he was fast too, and she had no idea if there were others who would be chasing her too once she got out there.

Would he find her hiding spot? She winced as she realized that he probably would. He had been in the lab when she had first gone in to this crawl space to fix the console. Maybe he would forget... but no, Academy students remembered everything, filing even inconsequential pieces of information into their mental database. No, he would know, and maybe he was trying to hide here himself.

The image of that leaderboard flashed in her mind's eye, and she acted.

Shoving the console and her phone aside, she grabbed a random hard drive and smashed it against the wall. She heard Bruce pause, then return to destroying the door with more vigor. Satisfied, Kalista clutched the sharp shard of broken metal in her right hand and kicked the panel open.

When the door finally gave, she was ready.

As Bruce burst inside, she jumped on top of him and slit his throat.

He didn't even have time to scream.

She let him fall to the ground and stepped aside. In her pocket, her phone buzzed, but she didn't stop to look. She climbed back onto a desk and was about to swing herself up when a hand clamped around her ankle.

Kalista held back a shout as she looked down to see Harper Edwards, one of the quiet, intelligent ones. In her hand was a kitchen knife.

"Harper," Kalista whispered, watching that knife shake in the girl's small hand. "Harper, we could be allies. Can you imagine? Your brains and my skills. We would be unstoppable. Harper--"

She dodged as the knife was swung at her chest. "Hey! Come on, Harper, that's not what you do to your--"

Harper growled and the knife went toward her head again; it barely sliced her ear as she backflipped away. "Hey, hey," Kalista said, her hands going up. "I'm just trying to--"

This time Harper launched the knife at her heart, but Kalista curved her spine backwards and the knife glided over her, embedding itself into the wall.

Harper froze, weaponless.

"I don't want to do this," Kalista said. All she saw was the Inner Collective's intricate seal as she plunged the hard drive into the girl's chest.

Her phone buzzed again, but she ignored it as she grabbed Harper's knife from the wall and climbed back into the crawl space, waiting to pounce on the next victim.

Safe again in the cabinet, she wiped her blood-covered hands on the wall, shuddering. It was so much harder to be heartless when she was alone in the dark, and she couldn't help but picture Harper's pleading gaze. Giving herself a not-so-light knock on the head, she grabbed her phone from her pocket and stared at the leaderboard, hoping it would make her feel better.

And it did.

4. Kalista Chu - 2 kills.

She grinned joylessly and waited as the night came.

***

A couple of hours later, a faint whirring sound came from the hallway. Kalista stilled. Reaching for her phone, she saw that it was one of the cleaning robots, here to take Harper and Bruce's bodies away. Curious, she jumped down to take a look.

It was one of the spindly contraptions that she had often seen cleaning windows or floors at night. It had one wheel and several arms the length and thickness of branches. On her first day, she had thought it was a walking tree, and it certainly resembled one. When it reached Bruce, it slid two of its arms beneath him and picked him up with ease. It then backed up toward Harper and used two other arms to pick her up as well.

Kalista watched in wonder as it rode silently out of the room.

If she could get one of those and hack into it, she could be unstoppable. She could take them all down, and just from this cabinet! The temptation to chase after the robot tingled in her legs, but she resisted. She would be a clear target in the hallway. It was best to wait until her next kill, and then grab one then before it could pick up her victim.

With a sigh, she returned, yet again, to the cabinet.

From the security footage, Kalista gathered that out of the 33 remaining, 11 were on the first floor, 4 were on the second, 9 were on the third, 6 were on the fourth, and 2 were on the fifth -- including her. The only other person on the fifth floor was Tobias Cleary, a math whiz and robotics fanatic who was currently building a bomb in the physics laboratory.

She wasn't worried -- she could easily take him down if he got too close to finishing it.

It seemed as if everyone had turned in for the night. Her cohort was resting in the corner of the cafeteria, seeming to welcome any attacks. Kaylee was currently on watch while the others slept. Arrogance can destroy you, Kalista thought grimly. She'd known that her cohort was one of the strongest among them -- just having both Kaylee and Kalista had pushed the others to improve as well -- but she could see two other groups lurking in the stairways. They seemed to have formed some sort of alliance, and wanted to corner Kaylee, Lex, and Harley by coming in on two sides.

She counted four and four -- Cohort 1 and Cohort 3. They seemed to be texting back and forth to come up with a plan. She really hoped it would work. It would be great if they could get Kaylee out of the game for her, and even better, they would take her name off of the leaderboard. Something about those "benefits" seemed like they could be life-saving, and she had no idea how many would be considered "top placers."

Quickly checking to make sure that no one was coming up to the fifth floor, she grabbed the hard drive and jumped down from the panel, landing silently on the ground.

Her stomach was growling, and she knew that she couldn't stay at her best without some food. Running over to the smoothie station, she ordered two mango pineapple protein shakes and waited as the machine whirred.

The school was silent. Her heartbeat was finally starting to slow, and she took a deep breath of that familiar Academy air: a mix of caffeine, light perfume, and the cleaning wipes that they used every time an experiment blew up. It was a smell that had cocooned her for most of her life, and she had no doubt that it was her smell now. The Academy had become part of all of its students, and it was fitting that they would die here.

But she was determined that she would not.

All of a sudden, a cry broke out. Kalista listened carefully. It was probably that fight on the first floor, finally breaking out. She wondered mildly whether her cohort would win. Kaylee would survive -- she knew that.

Out of all of them, Kaylee was the one she knew best.

They were sitting in the big stall of the dormitory's bathrooms on their first night at the Academy.

"We can't," she whispered.

"But... Kalista--"

"I don't want it to come down to us. I don't think I could--"

"I can't do it, Lis, not without you."

Kalista felt a single tear slide down her cheek -- her last tear. "You have to."

She pulled her hand away from Kaylee's and stood up.

"You're nothing to me now."

The words grated like fire as they left her tongue.

Kalista shook herself out of the memory and bit her tongue so hard it bled. Why had it come back to her now? After all of those years, that training and discipline that had burned it out of her, why was it here? This was the very moment when she had to forget, and she sank her nails into her palm, hoping that the pain would drive the memory away.

At last, the smoothies were done, and she grabbed both of them and pulled herself back up into the cabinet. Taking one sip and feeling the bright, citrus spark on her tongue, she reached eagerly for her phone and turned it on.

There were ten notifications.

Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead.

The only ones left were Kaylee and Lex.

Kalista's eyes widened and she opened up the video feed. The two of them had returned to their casual spot by the windows, surrounded by a field of bodies. Harley -- brilliant, sarcastic Harley -- was piled up with the rest of them, and Kalista wouldn't be surprised if Lex or Kaylee had killed him themselves.

The leaderboard now read:

1. Kaylee Canton: 10 kills

2. Lex Carson: 4 kills

3. Rex McMahon: 3 kills

4. Nina Sarpen: 2 kills

5. Kalista Chu: 2 kills

Kalista squinted at the video and realized that there was a message, written on the floor in blood. She recoiled. For the first time since the Finals began, she felt a tingle of fear in her stomach.

KALISTA -- WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

And Kaylee was staring right at the camera with a grin.