Chapter 3 - The First Strike
The main arena was an amphitheater built to hold fifteen hundred spectators. Elevated tiers of red velvet seats swept down toward a massive, illuminated stage where three curved glass podiums stood under blinding spotlights. Above the stage, a four-sided Jumbotron displayed real-time scoreboards, split-screen video feeds, and complex data visualizations.
Nathan and Celeste sat in the very first row of the VIP box, directly behind the St. Jude team bench. The placement afforded Nathan a panoramic view of the entire auditorium—and a direct sightline to the elevated adjudication dais where I sat alongside Dean Vance and the State Chief Justice.
I wore no jewelry except for a plain silver watch. Before me lay a terminal directly tied into the encrypted scoring servers. When my fingers tapped the interface, my face appeared on the giant screens above: *Dr. Mara Ellis, Board Chairperson.*
Nathan watched me from below, his hands clenched tightly in his lap. I looked past him, my gaze settling on Stage Left where the Open Decathlon contenders were entering.
The announcer’s voice boomed through the Bose acoustic arrays:
“Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to Round One: Applied Quantitative Analysis and Theoretical Physics. Representing St. Jude Preparatory School—Preston Crowe!”
The applause from the donor boxes was thunderous. Preston walked to the center podium with the relaxed stride of an Olympic diver, raising a single hand in calculated acknowledgment. Nathan stood up in his box, clapping vigorously, nodding toward nearby patrons to ensure everyone knew that the boy on stage carried his bloodline.
“And representing Westridge Comprehensive—Eli Ellis and Ethan Ellis!”
A polite, modest wave of applause rippled through the general seating. Two young men walked out from the shadows into the merciless pool of white light. Eli stepped toward the left terminal; Ethan took the right.
From the first row, Nathan leaned forward, his knuckles turning white against the polished railing.
Under the stadium lamps, the illusion shattered.
Nathan’s jaw dropped. The boy on the left—Eli—turned his profile toward the VIP box to adjust his microphone headset. It was like looking into a temporal mirror. Eli had Nathan’s exact nose, the precise angle of his jawline, the distinct, sharp arch of his right eyebrow when focused. Beside him, Ethan cracked his knuckles, possessing that unmistakable, predatory intensity Nathan had seen in his own reflection every time he closed a hostile takeover deal.
Nathan gripped the railing so hard the varnished wood groaned. “My God,” he breathed.
“Nathan, what is wrong with you?” Celeste snapped in an irritated whisper. “Sit down! People are looking!”
“Those boys,” Nathan stammered, his voice choked with dust and terror. “Look at them, Celeste. Look at their faces!”
Celeste glanced at the stage, then back at Nathan. Her eyes narrowed in slow, horrifying comprehension. “You said she had them in state daycare. You said they were going to fail out of the district. You told me they were irrelevant!”
“Round One begins now,” the master proctor announced. “Sixty seconds on the clock. Advanced Quantum Mechanics: Multidimensional Wave Equation Derivations.”
A wall of mathematical hieroglyphics materialized on the Jumbotron. The problem was an absolute nightmare of partial differential equations, designed to eliminate ninety percent of state-level competitors within thirty seconds.
In the VIP box, Nathan leaned forward, holding his breath. Preston immediately began scribbling furiously on his digital tablet, his stylus flying across the glass, his brow furrowing as he tried to recall the proprietary formula taught to him by his six-hundred-dollar-an-hour private tutor.
Meanwhile, at the Westridge podium, Eli didn't write.
He didn't pick up the pen.
He simply stared at the four-line equation on the screen for three seconds, his hazel eyes flickering across the symbols. Beside him, Ethan typed three characters into the command terminal, nodded once, and stepped back.
*BEEP.*
A sharp, electric chime echoed through the fifteen-hundred-seat auditorium.
The clock stopped at 11.4 seconds.
The display flashed a blinding emerald green:
**WESTRIDGE HIGH: CORRECT. SCORE: 100.**
Preston froze, his stylus hovering an inch above his screen, his mouth falling open. He looked up at the board, then glared at Eli and Ethan. “That's impossible,” Preston muttered into his hot mic, the sound carrying faintly into the first three rows. “The integration takes at least forty seconds!”
On the dais, I looked down at my console. The automated verification software confirmed the result: Eli had bypassed the standard ten-step derivation entirely, using a non-standard symmetrical shortcut published in an obscure European mathematics journal only three months ago.
“Westridge leads,” the announcer proclaimed, a spark of genuine astonishment in his tone. “Time: Eleven point four seconds. A new state tournament record!”
The arena erupted. What began as polite applause turned into a roaring standing ovation from the public tiers.
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In the front row, Nathan Crowe sat frozen, his breath caught in his throat, staring at the two boys who shared his name, his face, and his blood—the two boys he had discarded like worthless trash thirteen years ago, now tearing his golden son to ribbons on live television.
***
