Harold slept badly. Even with his own supernatural healing capabilities, bolstered by the incredible effects of the Medipills, which were created from a complex combination of some of the most powerful medicinal plants cultivated on the island, the harsh, acidic feeling of the hornets' venom persisted through the night, as if hot water were boiling just beneath the surface of his skin. For nearly an hour he had tossed and turned in his bed, restless and irritable, until at last the comforting allure of his mattress coupled with his own exhaustion lulled him into sleep.

He was still dozing, a peculiar, oddly vivid dream flickering through his mind, when—

Bang!

The door flew open with a wall-shaking crash, and Harold was jerked out of his sleep so abruptly that he fell out of bed.

"Jimmy," he growled, rubbing his head as he stood up. "How many times have I told you not to—" He froze, his eyes wide. He had looked up, expecting to see his best friend standing there, but instead found himself gazing up at the bulky, green-eyed, brutal-faced profile of the year coordinator, Mr. Girvan. He quickly arranged himself into a more dignified position—or as dignified as he could get standing in only his underwear.

"Er...is there something I can help you with, Sir?" he asked, genuinely confused as to what the year coordinator could possibly want from him so early in the morning.

"I was hoping you could tell me," said Girvan, with an unpleasant smile. "Farwell, remind me what day it is."

"Er—Monday, Sir."

"Yes, indeed. And what happens on a Monday, Farwell?"

"Er," Harold said, for the third time. "School, Sir."

"Very good!" Girvan's awful smile widened. "I have just one final question for you, Farwell. If today is a Monday, and you are aware that we have school on Mondays, where do you think you are you supposed to be at this time?"

Harold's heart sank. It was only now, at Girvan's words, that he realized that the quality of the sunlight streaming through the window was too rich for it to be as early as he had assumed. He turned his head sideways, glancing at the alarm clock resting on his bedside table: 10:59. He had overslept. Badly.

"I should be in class, Sir—" he began, in a very quiet voice, but before he could even finish the sentence, Girvan dropped his oily demeanour and barked, "Yes, you should be in class! Now put on your uniform and get to your lessons—whatever's left of them, that is."

Harold moved at once, running around the side of his room and diving into his drawer, uncomfortably aware that Mr. Girvan had not moved from the doorway. He found the lime-green jumpsuit, streaked with black, and pulled it out. He had not had time to iron it the previous day, but he was already late, it would have to do. He then pulled out a fresh suit of undergarments, but before he could move, Girvan said, "Ah ah, it's a bit too late for a morning shower, Farwell."

Harold looked at him in horror. "But—Sir—"

"Get your clothes on and get to class! And next time, when you want to shower, remember this moment, and wake up early and join the rest of the school!"

Anger boiled inside him like the hornet venom. Harold glared at Girvan, his hands clenching. Girvan noticed: his eyes trailed from Harold's fists to his face, and his smile widened. It was taunting. Challenging. He wanted Harold to say something, to worsen his punishment. But Harold wasn't going to give him the satisfaction.

He drew a deep breath and began to draw on the suit, all the while Mr. Girvan remained at the doorway, his hands folded behind his back and his face averted.

When Harold had pulled on his shoes, Mr. Girvan said, "Now get going. And count yourself lucky this is all you're getting, Farwell."

He swept away just as Harold exited the dorm. Harold slammed the door behind him and strode off in the opposite direction, still seething, and hurried out into the main school. Eleven o'clock. By this time, all the students would be gathered in the canteen. At least he hadn't missed lunch.

A buzz of chatter reached his ears the moment he entered the room. All the students were here, seated around the three enormous circular tables positioned in a crude triangle, which represented the patron gods of the school's dorms: white and gold, the Dorm of Zeus, the Sky God; blue and silver, the Dorm of Poseidon, the Sea God; and black and bronze, the Dorm of Hades, the Underworld God. Jimmy and Helen were somewhere around the Hades table, which was the most populated.

Harold approached the counter, ignoring all the stares he was attracting, with his un-ironed clothes and his messy hair. The lunch lady filled his tray with rice, a boat of gravy, two huge pieces of chicken, and after collecting a juice box from the fridge, he made his way to the Dorm table to find the other two, dropping into the seat beside Jimmy when he had.

"Where were you?" Helen hissed. "We had to give Mr. Girvan the report by ourselves, and you missed three classes!"

"Only three?" Harold said, but she cast him a severe look and he laughed. "I'm joking! Yes, I'm aware. What can I say? I had a rough night, didn't wake up when my alarm clock went off." He shrugged and began to shovel food into his mouth.

Jimmy stared at him. "But you did wake up. I came in to see you right before shower time. You said you'd meet me in class, but you never showed."

Harold froze, frowning. "Oh..." He did not remember that. "Seems my brain's a bit fuzzier than I thought it was. I guess having it bashed repeatedly into solid rock would do that to you. Oh well." He shrugged again, starting on his chicken leg. "So, what did I miss?"

Though Helen still looked somewhat suspicious, she changed subject. "Well, word somehow got out about how things went sideways last night," she said, with a glare that clearly conveyed a message apart from her words.

"By that she means someone in here found out what happened and started spreading every number of ridiculous lies and rumours about our mission," Jimmy said helpfully, gnawing on his chicken bone.

"What kind of rumours?" Harold asked, slightly unnerved now.

"Well, all of them got at least one part correct: that we met a giant gorilla who kicked our butts and then escaped," Helen said, with false brightness. "But the rumours vary in parts like, we met a whole army of gorillas and decided to run away like cowards. Or we had to leave because 'the call of the Wild' was tempting us to return home with our siblings, whatever that's supposed to mean. Or that the teachers showed up in the middle of the mission to bail us out because they thought we couldn't handle it, yada yada."

Harold set down his roll of bread, feeling angry again. "Said all that, did they?"

"Believe it or not, those were actually the nice variations," Jimmy said.

Harold scoffed. "Let them talk. They can say whatever they want, but the truth is, if any of them had seen what we fought last night they would have run home crying to Mr. Girvan."

"That's right, and we all know it, so there's no point getting worked up," Helen said briskly.

Harold grunted his agreement.

"Anyway," said Jimmy, as he cleared his tray, "it doesn't matter. We won't have time to worry about what everyone is saying when we're in Gym Class."

Harold's face broke into a genuine smile, the first time he'd done so all morning. Gym Class was his favourite lesson, and the perfect opportunity for a release given all that had happened between last night and this morning. He stared through the cafeteria windows, at the school spreading out around them: a towering, green and white-walled structure that occupied acres and acres of land in the center of a remote island floating way out in the middle of the sea. A dense forest bordered the school on either side, and an endless stretch of water glistened around the island itself, empty except for the occasional flocks of birds that would cross the skyline.

The noon sun lay high above them, its brilliant rays reflected dazzlingly off the face of the water, which was visible from where they sat, and gleaming where it touched the sleek walls of the school: Helix Academy for the Reformation and Pacification of the Enhanced.

Except in Harold's opinion, Helix was less of a school, and more of a holding facility. They would spend hours a day for months at a time trapped on the island, completely closed off from the outside world by the vast walls that were erected around the edges of the school. Until certain cases where something happened out in the real world, and the students were permitted the chance to go and investigate with their allotted squads—like last night.

It had been the second time this term that Harold, Helen, and Jimmy had gone out, which had earned them some jealousy from the other students in their Dorm.

Helix had a specific sorting system for its students. Students were assigned a certain number of points during evaluation upon entering the school, and received more in their later careers from work and successful missions. The Dorm you were placed in depended on how many points you had, and Hades, which ranged from 0-250 points, held the most students.

Harold had wondered upon admission why the school had been so heavily influenced by the old Greek legends, and the answer had been provided by their first-year coordinator: the Greek Heroes of legend, people like Bellerophon, Perseus, Theseus, and Atalanta, had all been children of the gods. Like the students of Helix, they had possessed incredible powers due to their lineage. But unlike the students, they had been praised, revered.

They had gone out to slay fearsome monsters, defeat tyrants, perform incredible acts that were forever marked in history. But now, of a school of two hundred students, everyone here had a tragic back story.

Some had experienced what the teachers had dubbed a "Trigger Moment"—a sudden, intense surge of emotion, usually a result of a traumatic situation, that had resulted in them unlocking their latent abilities, with chaos and devastation following close behind. Others had discovered their powers in other ways, and tried and failed to conceal them. It didn't matter how, they would always end up here, away from the real world, where they couldn't hurt anyone.

In the meantime, they would train here, so that they could be integrated smoothly back into society, serve as protectors, like the Heroes of myth, in the hopes that they too would inherit some of the glory and adoration that they had achieved. But it was a long effort.

Some students remained here the entire year, because they had nowhere else to go. Harold was one of those people....

"Harold."

"What?"

Helen's voice jerked him back to his senses, and he looked up.

"You were assaulting your lunch again," she said matter-of-factly, nodding down at his fingers. He looked down. He had bent his tray, spilling the contents onto the table. Again.

"Oh." He set it down and glanced anxiously at the lunch lady's counter. "Gemma's not gonna like that."

"Nothing you can do about it now," Jimmy said, snickering. "Time for class."

Harold sighed, but followed the other students as they lined up to return their trays while the bell rang in the background. When he had reached the front, he handed over his with an apologetic smile. "Sorry. It was an accident."

The lunch lady, Gemma, looked down at it, then up at him, her face impassive. Then she rolled her eyes to the heavens, sighed, and held up her hands as if to say, "I'm getting too old for this."

"Keep it," she snapped. "You have more use for it than I do. And if this happens again, you'll be eating out of your palms for the rest of the semester, Farwell."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gym Class was Harold's favourite class because it was always the most exciting, action-packed lesson of them all. The teacher, Mrs. Robinson, a heavy-built woman who always wore her hair in a bun and too much lipstick, greeted them in the center of the Gymnasium. The floor was made of sleek, light brown tiles that shone in the overhead light. But Harold knew better. Helix had many regions like the Gym in it, where equipment and even entire virtual environments were stored underneath the tiles, which could retract into the walls. Then the new levels would rise to replace the ones that had disappeared, completely synthetic, but extremely realistic.

Mrs. Robinson would alter the scenery every few classes to test them on new battlegrounds, and this class was one such lesson. With a short blast on her whistle, she directed them to the bleacher-like stands in the corner of the room, one of the few places that never changed.

Then she tapped a button on her control panel and a great whirring filled the room. The tiles retracted into the walls, save for the ones beneath the stands and under Mrs. Robinson's feet, and from the open space, a desolate wasteland emerged. It looked as if it might have once been a city square, but had been leveled by a powerful natural disaster. Chunks of rubble littered the floor, with blazing plumes of fire sprinkled around that Harold could tell were the only aspects of this biome that were real. There was even a foreboding red light illuminating the ceiling, which added to the ambience,

"Nice touch, Coach." Harold grinned, indicating the scarlet glow.

"Thank you," said Mrs. Robinson, with a cheeky smile. "And for your praise, Farwell, you get to be among the first set to test out this new field."

Harold shrugged. "Works for me."

Mrs. Robinson pointed to three more students from the crowd, and all four walked forward. There was a frizzy-haired girl who wore round spectacles that Harold knew to be called Sara, who kept her eyes on the ground as she walked; a tall black boy with a sharp chin named Jayden; and another girl, with short blonde hair and iron-grey eyes, named Kierra.

"You'll be working in pairs today," said Mrs. Robinson. "Kierra, you're with Farwell. You two are down this end." She pointed behind them. "And you two," she said, indicating the others, "are up there. Your objective is to find and retrieve this red ball." She held up her hand, in which was resting a golf ball-sized orb, which was glowing with the same light as the ceiling. She opened her palm and it flew upwards as if it were alive, twisting through the air and winding out of sight before it disappeared completely in the devastation.

"Two points to each member of the group that manages to capture the ball and hold on to it for at least five seconds." Robinson made her way to the stands along with the other students, then gave a short blast on her whistle to signal the start of the challenge. The other two, who had been conversing while she walked, now took off, rushing out of sight.

"I think it went somewhere over there," Harold said, pointing vaguely in the direction he remembered the ball bouncing. "If we go around the other side, we might be able to reach it before they do."

To his surprise, Kierra scoffed. "Around? What, are you scared of getting your hands dirty? Didn't take you for a coward, Farwell."

And she took off, hurtling towards the enormous wall of rubble that rose on their right, stretching towards the ceiling. Harold set off in pursuit, taken aback.

"Wait, we're supposed to do this together!"

"Then try to keep up, slowpoke!"

Incensed, Harold put on a burst of speed, catching up to her as she started to scale the wall. "Scaling" wasn't the right word, he quickly realized. She was leaping from handhold to handhold in rapid succession, positively gliding over the stone's face. Channeling his strength to his fingertips, Harold dug his fingers into the rock and pulled himself up, climbing up behind her. They reached the top at almost the same time, and leapt over.

Harold tucked his knees and turned the fall into a roll, coming to a smooth halt. Kierra touched the ground lightly beside him and streaked off again. With a growl of frustration, Harold darted off behind her.

"What part of together don't you understand?!"

She ignored him. With a gasp of excitement, she came to a sudden stop, staring over to their left. He stopped beside her and saw at once what had caught her attention: the orb.

It was hovering some distance away, with the other two nowhere in sight. They exchanged a look, then both streaked off after it. Just before they closed in on it, however, the rocks beside them began to crumble, cascading down upon them like a miniature landslide. Kierra quickly turned her run into a slide and steered out of the danger zone, leaving Harold behind. He had just had a glimpse of the orb soaring away, when he jumped up, bursting through the avalanche and landing so forcefully that he put out a fire beside him.

Rocks began to roll again, but the movement was more precise, controlled. All at once the boulders rose, flying at him in a very similar manner to the hornets. He ducked and weaved, throwing punches that reduced the boulders to clouds of dust. Then something crashed into his back, sending him flying forward.

He pushed himself to his feet and leapt aside, narrowly avoiding having another huge boulder dropped on him, and looked around. It was Sara, standing on a slight elevation to their left. Strings of yellow energy were protruding from her hands, sticking to the stones, allowing her to manipulate them like some kind of odd puppetmaster.

Ahead of him, a great crash rang out. He looked up: there was Kierra, dodging Jayden as he repeatedly leapt towards her like a pouncing animal, swinging his fists. Strings whipped into the air, crossing Harold's vision again, and tautened around him as if they had been drawn tightly, and boulders shot towards him again. He was reminded forcibly of the hornets once more, and felt a surge of anger. Harold raised his fists to defend himself, but the moment his hands rose, something slick, cool, and wet snapped against his hands, as if tendrils of water had bound then,

"Huh?"

It was one of Sara's strings. She had completely bound his hands, leaving him defenseless as the hail of rocks pelted his body. Then she waved her hands around as if repelling an irksome insect and Harold was lifted off his feet with a scream, slamming into the wall behind them. A dull thud rang out as he slid to the bottom, and he heard a shriek from somewhere behind them. Recovering quickly due to his regenerative factor, he leapt up, pulling hard against the strings so that they snapped, and looked round. Kierra was skidding across the floor, stirring up plumes of dust as she moved. The orb was in front of her, but Jayden was already moving to catch it. Harold dived off, streaking towards it. The two collided midway, while the orb skittered across to their left.

Jayden too possessed enhanced strength. But Harold was stronger. He began to press down on the other's fingers, pushing him back.

An expression of shock and rage clouded Jayden's face as Harold pressed harder, then he kicked out, slamming his heel into Jayden's chest, and he flew sideways. The orb in clear view, Harold ran for it, but another string lashed into view, latched itself onto the orb, and heaved it backwards. Sara caught it, then began to count down in dull monotonous voice: "...three...two...one..."

Mrs. Robinson's whistle rang out, signaling the end of the challenge, and after congratulating the winning side, she sent in the next four.