Zara wanted to get ahead in school. She wanted the cute guy. She wanted to win the game. Trouble was, everybody else had expensive brain implants, augmented muscles, and those pretty tailored bodies. She had none of those things. Of course, she work...
Zara held Xavier's delicious form in her sights, the prince of the class, the top student, his body tailored and his muscles augmented for matchless performance. She clutched the stun pistol in her hand, aiming at his wide V-shaped back, ready to take him out with a single well-placed shot.
She imagined how good that would feel. What she would say to him as he floated to the floor, upside-down, humiliated.
Unfortunately, while she dallied, he progressed too far away for a sure shot. She didn't want to miss. She didn't want to warn him that she was on his tail.
Besides, the astrophysics platform loomed between them, a holographic theater of star systems and galaxies. She leaped onto the station and quickly placed various stars and planets in their appropriate quadrants by marking their place on the holographic board.
She ran across the air on her supernatant athletic shoes and bounded onto the language station. She did okay with language, and a bit better with history. More importantly, she did them fast. That was where she made up ground. All that remained was government.
Zara focused so much on Xavier, so intently on speeding through the stations, that she forgot about any evasive measures from other students. After all, nobody took much notice of her. She had never been a frontrunner before. She couldn't imagine that she might be a target.
Until the stun hit her.
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Pain shot through her body. Her arms and legs froze in cold agony. She could no longer pedal to keep herself aloft. She flipped upside down and drifted aimlessly downwards.
"Who are-"
She didn't finish because the paralysis took charge of her tongue. Although she might have seen him before, a nameless face in a crowd of students, she disregarded him. Thin and rangy, he wasn't nearly as spectacular as Xavier or Samara. How could he be, without any augmentation or skeletal tailoring? And his hair stuck out at weird angles. Didn't he know about electrostatic conditioners?
"Sorry about that, Squark," he said.
She wanted to tell him that her name wasn't Squark but her tongue didn't work right. He swam down to her, gazing directly into her eyes, his raw angular face peering into her upside-down one and smiling victoriously. He gently traced the outline of the mottled burn mark on her left cheek as she sunk slowly downward. She would have smacked him, but her arms wouldn't respond. She tried to spit on him, but her mouth had filled with cotton.
"I'm glad you didn't get it fixed, Squark. I think it's hot."
Then he sped away.
It took forever to float to the ground. She had to think about it all the way. Stunned and eliminated, as hard as she had practiced, as much as she had studied, she still lost the game. Even worse, she lost to some guy with floppy hair who called her Squark.
While she recovered from the stun, she stood in a crowd with other losers, including Samara, who took the opportunity to glare at her. "How does it feel, proton?" Samara clenched her hands into fists. "You got what you deserved. I hope you get whipped hard. I hope you cry. And I'm going to laugh the entire time."
