Friday came, and for once there was no training with Jordan. Magnus woke up at the usual hour anyway — his body had apparently stopped requiring Jordan's actual presence to enforce her schedule. Magnus wasn't sure how he felt about that, but after staring at the ceiling for a few minutes, he sighed and got up.
The daily quest felt almost easy these days, which still caught him off guard every time. Before the System two months ago, he hadn't really bothered exercising that much. After that, the daily quests had been torture. Heck, the mere thought of twenty push-ups had been demoralizing back then. Now, after less than a month with Jordan, he ground through the push-ups, sit-ups, and squats in the quiet of his room without so much as a grunt (he'd get plenty of running and moving around later, so the 2km run shouldn't be an issue, either). Once he was done, Magnus got ready and started repacking his bag. They were going as spectators, but he threw in a change of clothes, Band-Aids, and water anyway, just in case. "Better safe than sorry" was basically his life motto at this point, and the universe had given him no reason to retire it. If anything, he felt like he had even more reasons to prepare for bad things to happen these days.
Then he noticed the container sitting on his desk. He'd put it together Wednesday afternoon. Nothing fancy — just food that could survive several days and a car ride without going bad, assembled absentmindedly because Alex had a habit of skipping breakfast when she was preoccupied, and they'd have to leave early for Jordan's meet. It had seemed like the obvious thing to do at the time. But that had been Wednesday. Before the shelter visit. Before Harper's apartment. Before everything.
His phone alarm went off. He picked up his bag and turned toward the door. He made it three whole steps before turning around, shoving the container into his bag like it had personally wronged him, then left before he could argue with himself any further.
***
Alex was already waiting outside her building. Tony rode on Magnus's shoulder. The raccoon had somehow already managed to smell worse than he had directly after last night's bath, though still — mercifully — better than his usual baseline, which remained a low bar no matter how you approached it.
Alex glanced at Magnus. "Morning."
"Morning," he nodded back.
And that was it for greetings between them.
Magnus shifted his weight, very clearly feeling the awkwardness. Fighting with his girlfriend and struggling to bathe an unwilling raccoon with her was definitely not how Magnus had imagined celebrating his twenty-first birthday. Then again… considering his life lately? It felt weirdly on-brand, and he still wasn't sure if he wanted to laugh or cry about that.
A car pulled up a minute later. Sofia leaned over from the driver's seat and pushed the passenger door open.
"Get in, losers! We have a track meet to stalk."
Alex took the front without hesitating. Magnus and Tony got in the back. Sofia's eyes found the rearview mirror immediately, took in the seating arrangement, the silence, the careful geometry of where everyone was looking, and sighed once, but wisely chose not to comment before pulling out.
The ride wasn't exactly quiet. Sofia filled the gaps the way she always did — automatically and completely — buffering some of the awkwardness, while Tony refused to stay still, cycling between Magnus's shoulder, the headrest, and an increasingly thorough inspection of the window seam that he clearly found wanting. A few times during the ride, Sofia caught Magnus and Alex stealing glances at each other before immediately averting their eyes. She made no comment on that, either.
Somewhere on the highway, Magnus reached into his bag and set the container on the center console.
"If anyone wants," he said to no one in particular, eyes carefully avoiding the passenger seat.
Sofia glanced at it briefly, then at Alex, then back at the road. "…Right. Thanks."
Tony was faster. The raccoon descended on the food like a victim of famine.
"Acceptable tribute," he intoned. "You've redeemed yourself slightly for last night's transgression!"
"That's for everyone!" Magnus told Tony, then quickly stole a glance at Alex before turning away again.
Alex's gaze flicked to the rearview mirror for a second, took note of what was in the container, then she very deliberately turned toward the window, keeping her hands in her lap. Sofia took a few awkward bites, complimenting the food once, then turned her attention fully back on the road. With no one reaching for the food, most of it ended up in the raccoon's belly.
***
The venue was already in full motion when they arrived. Officials, athletes, screens scrolling heat orders and lane assignments, the low hum of the timing system underneath the crowd noise. Jordan was already on the field, and one look confirmed she was locked in — focused, narrowed down to something singular. She didn't glance toward the stands.
The tension between Magnus and Alex had settled into something colder and more functional somewhere during the car ride over. It was still there, still edged, but… workable. They split up the way they'd planned on Tuesday, naturally and without needing to discuss anything again. The plan was simple enough in theory: Scan the environment, watch the people, gather information from the spectator areas. Don't draw attention, find whatever was supposed to happen before it happened, then attempt to neutralize it.
Magnus took the outer edge of the spectator section near the timing displays. Alex moved toward the central area where staff and coordinators filtered through. Sofia dissolved into the crowd near the registration zone like she'd always been there. Tony split to do his own things — whatever it was that he did — as well, though the raccoon stayed in the general vicinity near Magnus. It made sense, considering the girls couldn't understand him anyway.
Magnus drifted along the outer barrier, hands in his pockets, not really watching the races. His focus was on people — staff with lanyards, officials near the finish line, volunteers clustered around the timing equipment — and the way they moved across the venue. Whenever that movement didn't quite flow the way it should or he felt uneasy, he'd aim a charge of Affective Discernment toward the nearest cluster of officials. This was something he'd found out recently about the power — he could aim a charge to get a read on multiple people instead of just one, at the cost of accuracy and specificity. The result was immediate: concentration and mild stress, the ordinary irritation of people responsible for keeping something large running on time. That was normal, expected. So, he let it go.
Suddenly, Tony landed on his shoulder. "Kid. Remember that thing we discussed before?"
Magnus straightened slightly. "You found Jordan's saboteur?"
"No," Tony said immediately. "I meant about your posture. You are slouching again. It signals weakness. Vulnerability. A lack of spine."
Magnus blinked. "…What?"
"You are distributing your weight inefficiently," Tony continued. "If you were to be ambushed—"
"I'm not getting ambushed at a track meet," Magnus muttered.
Tony sniffed. "Complacency. The first step toward ruin!"
Magnus dragged a hand down his face. "Thanks, Tony."
"You're welcome."
"Now get off!"
"I will not," the raccoon said, settling more comfortably. "This is a teachable moment."
They kept walking. Tony shifted on his shoulder, sniffing the air like a tiny, disgruntled bloodhound.
"Dense. Several layers of pre-competition anxiety. Synthetic materials. Ambition, which always smells faintly of desperation up close." A pause. "Also something near the east entrance I find ethically troubling."
Magnus kept his eyes on the track. "I'm not asking."
"I wasn't offering," Tony said. "Yet." He sniffed again. "It involves a vendor."
"It's always a vendor with you."
"That is because vendors are consistently the most morally complex figures at any public event," Tony said, with complete sincerity, then seemed to notice something across the way and jumped off, disappearing again.
Across the stands, Alex was doing something similar, observing people. The difference was that while Magnus worked off instinct, she did it the same way she did everything else — methodically and controlled. Staff moving between stations. A coach checking something twice. A volunteer drifting near a restricted access point and getting waved off without incident. She catalogued it all and discarded most of it just as quickly, because everything had an explanation and nothing clicked into place. Her jaw tightened. Whatever she was looking for, she hadn't found it yet. So she moved on, adjusting position, changing angles, reframing perspective.
Sofia, meanwhile, was in her element: logistics, chatter, rumors.
"…so heats are staggered every twenty minutes?" she asked, leaning casually against a railing next to a pair of students from another school.
"Yeah, roughly," one of them replied. "Depends on delays."
"Any issues so far?"
"Nah. Pretty smooth."
"Timing system holding up?"
"Should be. They upgraded it this year."
She nodded thoughtfully, filing that away. Then smiled. "Cool. Thanks."
Sofia extracted just enough to be useful, then drifted off before they could ask why she cared.
***
Two heats passed. Magnus circled his section again and found nothing.
Tony jumped back onto his shoulder. "Kid," he announced, resettling, "remember that thing we discussed before?"
"You found the saboteur?"
"No, the vendor situation has developed," Tony said gravely. "I conducted a preliminary investigation."
"We are not here about the vendor!"
"The vendor did not know that." He paused. "I haven't found anyone suspicious seeking to harm the fast one yet. But I maintain that the vendor situation warrants monitoring. I would be fine, but you humans lack raccoon-kind's constitution. You could all be in danger." Then, almost as an afterthought, "By the way, remember how I told you that you humans leak when you're nervous? Well, someone was definitely nervous around the timing equipment."
A beat. "Well, I'm going back to monitor the east entrance."
Tony hopped down from Magnus's shoulder and was gone before he could respond.
Magnus crossed paths with Alex sometime later.
"Anything?" she asked.
"No. You?"
"Nothing I can see."
They kept walking in opposite directions.
Another heat. Another finish.
There hadn't been any human saboteur on the track, either. Magnus had been paying attention during heats where Jordan competed, ready to use Telekinesis in case anyone tried anything. But everything had been normal. Nothing out of the ordinary.
He was starting to doubt his Premonition. Maybe it had just been a misunderstanding. Maybe there wasn't anything going on here at all.
His gaze drifted to the board as times populated. That seemed normal as well. He frowned slightly without knowing why, then looked away.
Nearby, two runners walked off the track.
"Felt like the timing lagged," one said, low, almost to himself.
"You're imagining it," the other replied.
"Yeah, probably."
They kept going.
The lane assignment screen refreshed for the next heat. Magnus happened to be looking at it. It refreshed again, slower, then ran clean. He stood there for another second… then moved on.
***
Sofia met him near the outer barrier. "Schedules are clean. Nothing unauthorized."
"Staff?" Magnus asked.
"All normal. A bit boring, even."
"Equipment?"
"Nothing I could see from the outside."
Magnus nodded. "Chatter?"
"Couple of runners complaining about lag. Nothing you could do anything with." She paused. "Probably nothing."
Magnus nodded. "Alex's not seeing anything either."
Sofia hummed. "That's… concerning."
None of the things they'd planned for on Tuesday were happening. No interference they could see, catch, or act on from the stands. Jordan lined up for her next event, focused and unaware, exactly as she should be.
Magnus watched her and exhaled slowly. "Yeah. So, either there's no sabotage and we're on a wild goose chase. Or… it's subtler than we—"
Tony landed on his shoulder again. "Kid. Remember that thing we discussed before?"
"Please tell me it's about Jordan this time!"
"It is—" Tony began. Magnus dared to hope. Then the raccoon continued with, "Her running form, to be exact. It is too aggressive. Inefficient. Lacking philosophical restraint."
Magnus stared at him. Tony stared back.
"I hate you," Magnus said eventually.
"You rely on me for wisdom."
"I rely on you for nothing."
"Untrue. I provide emotional grounding."
"…You are the opposite of that!"
Alex circled back to meet them. By the look on her face, she was not having any luck, either.
"I think we need to have an emergency meeting…" she said when she reached them. "There might have been a flaw in our planning."