A nervous chuckle cut through the silence, but it instantly faded when Max’s head snapped toward the sound. Anna’s eyes were fixed on the floor. Her hands were trembling, but if anyone had looked closer, really looked, they would have noticed something strange.
The tremor followed a specific rhythm. «Seven hundred eighty-nine. Did you hear me?» «Strange.»
Max’s voice dropped lower, becoming more dangerous. «I said, get on your knees and bark like the dog you are.» The circle of students closed in tighter, phones raised like weapons.
Anna Harper was in the center. Her small figure seemed even smaller against Max Thompson’s imposing presence. Six-foot-three, 220 pounds of muscle and malice.
The fluorescent lights of Chicago High School’s gym cast harsh shadows on his face as he leaned close enough for her to smell the protein shake on his breath. The crowd loved it. They always loved it when Max found a new victim.
The invisible girl who sat in the back of every class, ate lunch alone, walked the halls like a ghost. She was perfect prey. But what they didn’t know was that Anna Harper wasn’t counting out loud to calm herself.
She was counting backward to zero. Three weeks ago, Anna had made a mistake. She was exhausted.
Workouts at five-thirty a.m. before school. Fights at eleven-thirty p.m. Eastern time. After school, she was worn out.
So when Sean accidentally dropped her books in the hallway, she reacted. It was just a slight movement, a small shift of weight that completely threw off the subsequent shove. He stumbled past her in confusion.
No one else noticed, except Max. Max Thompson ruled Chicago High School like a king over peasants. Captain of the football team, nephew of the mayor, six years of wrestling training, and a father who taught him that power was the only currency that mattered.
He built his reputation on breaking those who thought they could stand up for themselves, and now he’d found his new project. «I’ll count to three,» Max announced, playing to the crowd. «One.»
Anna’s fingers twitched almost imperceptibly. In another life, her real life, those fingers had taken down Alex Romano. The same hands that seemed so small and weak had racked up 47 straight wins in places where losing meant an ambulance, not embarrassment.
«Two.» She thought of her sixteen-year-old brother, fighting a different battle on a hospital bed. Leukemia didn’t care about underground championships or school hierarchies.
It only cared about money. Two thousand dollars for experimental treatment. The insurance company called it non-medically necessary.
Anna called it her only chance. «Three.» The crowd tensed.
This was the moment the invisible girl would break, like all before her. She’d cry, beg, do whatever Max wanted, because that’s how the world worked. The strong devoured the weak.
Anna dropped to her knees. The gym erupted. Phones flashed.
Someone yelled «Bully star.» Others laughed so hard they could barely hold their phones steady. Max stood over her like a gladiator, claiming his victory.
Arms spread wide, basking in the adoration of his followers. «That’s right,» he said loud enough for everyone to record. «Know your place.»
Now bark for daddy. Anna’s lips moved. There was no sound, but her mouth formed numbers.
«Four hundred fifty-six.» The laughter grew. Everyone thought she was trying to speak but couldn’t.
Thought fear had stolen her voice. Thought a lot of things. «Seven hundred eighty-nine.»
Max was starting to lose patience. The script called for total humiliation, and quiet submission wasn’t enough. He needed her to bark.
He needed her to break. He needed the video to go viral by lunch, with a title like «Football Star Turns Weird Girl Into His Pet.» So he did what he always did when someone didn’t follow his script fast enough.
He drew his leg back to kick. Yes, the switch happened in that split second between heartbeats. One moment Anna Harper was a trembling girl on her knees…
The next—something entirely different. Her breathing shifted from panicked to controlled. Her shoulders relaxed.
In her eyes, when she finally looked up, there was nothing—no fear, no anger, just the cold calculation of someone who’d spent years studying exactly how much force it took to crack a rib cage. «Wait,» someone in the crowd whispered. «Look at her face.»
But Max was already swinging the kick. His foot flew toward her ribs with force that could knock the wind out of anyone dumb enough to stay put. Anna didn’t stay put.
She moved like water, finding the path of least resistance. The kick meant for her ribs hit nothing but air. Max, expecting contact, lost his balance.
His own momentum pulled him forward as Anna rolled back, rising into a stance more animal than human. The laughter died. Someone dropped a phone.
«Lucky,» Max growled, trying to regain control. But something in his voice had changed, a barely audible crack in his confidence. He’d been in enough fights to recognize when someone moved with training versus panic.
This wasn’t panic. «Get up,» he ordered. «Stop playing.»
Anna rose slowly, deliberately, with no wasted motion—the kind of economy instantly recognizable in certain underground circles but alien in a school gym. «I already apologized for your friend,» she said calmly. Her voice carried despite its softness.
«I asked to be left alone and told you that you need to learn respect.» Max stepped forward, trying to use his size to intimidate her. «Now back on your knees.
Or what?» Anna tilted her head slightly. «You’re going to hit me. You’re going to humiliate me.
You’re going to make my life hell. Pause. But you’re already doing that.»
The crowd smelled blood. This was new. No one talked to Max Thompson like that.
No one stood their ground when he went into predator mode. «Guys!» Max called, not taking his eyes off Anna. «Looks like we need to teach her a harder lesson.»
Three football players pushed through the crowd. Zach Dudley, the one who started it all with the shove, Derek Black, Max’s enforcer, and Tyler Roden, who enjoyed inflicting pain almost as much as Max himself. Four against one.
Two hundred-pound athletes against a girl who might weigh a hundred and fifteen pounds soaking wet. «Still wanna play brave?» Max asked. Anna’s phone buzzed in her pocket.
She didn’t need to look. That alert meant Victor, meant fight night, meant another chance to earn money that could save her brother’s life. But she couldn’t leave.
Not with these four blocking every exit. Not with the crowd filming everything. Not with Max’s reputation demanding he keep going until someone got seriously hurt.
«I don’t want to fight,» she said sincerely. Fighting here meant exposure. Exposure meant questions.
And questions meant the end of everything she’d built in the shadows. «Too bad,» Max nodded to his guys. «Because you’re about to learn what happens to people who don’t respect me.»
They moved into formation, confident, trained. They’d done this before—corral the target, cut off escapes, take turns landing blows until it broke. It was a system that had worked on dozens of kids over the years.
But those kids hadn’t spent the last five years turning their bodies into weapons out of sheer necessity. Zach went first, trying a simple grab. His hand never touched Anna.
She barely shifted her weight, and suddenly Zach’s own momentum made him stumble past her. To untrained eyes, it looked like a fluke, but to those who knew fighting, it was textbook redirection, using the opponent’s force against him. «Stop dancing,» Max snarled.
«Derek, Tyler, grab her!» They came from both sides, trying to pin her between them. Anna waited until the last second, then dropped low. Derek and Tyler crashed into each other with a force that made the crowd wince.
She rolled back again, rising at the edge of the circle. «How’s she doing that?» someone whispered. «Maybe she’s a gymnast?» «That’s not gymnastics, dude.»
Max’s face turned bright red. It was supposed to be simple—intimidate the weird girl, make her submit, film it, maintain the hierarchy. Instead, his three best guys were made fools of by someone everyone thought couldn’t even throw a punch.
He charged himself, leading with a wild swing that had knocked out three guys in the last year. Time slowed for Anna. She saw the punch coming like it was moving through molasses.
Saw the tell in his shoulder. Saw the bad stance that left him wide open. Saw a dozen ways to counter that would leave him unconscious before he hit the floor.
She also saw the phones, the witnesses, the inevitable questions if she showed what she was really capable of. So she made the decision that would haunt her for the next ten minutes. She let the punch glance off her shoulder.
It spun her around. Dropped her to her knees. The crowd held its breath, then exploded in cheers.
This was what they’d waited for. This was the natural order restored. Max towered over her, breathing heavy but victorious.
«See?» he proclaimed to his audience. It was just luck. But luck runs out.
Anna touched her shoulder, assessing that he’d pulled the punch at the last second. She realized even Max had limits. He wanted submission, not a lawsuit.
«Last chance,» he said quietly, just for her. «Get on all fours and bark, or the next one won’t be held back.» Her phone buzzed again…
