Alan read slowly, a finger under the lines, the way people read things they have decided to take seriously.

He did not get far before he stopped.

"Do I owe you money? Now, today, for any of this?"

"No," Garcia said. "Nothing up front. No fee from the family at all."

"And your cut. Where’s your cut."

"There isn’t one yet." Garcia kept his voice flat and plain. "I can’t take a fee for a sixteen-year-old. The rules don’t allow it. The only time I ever get paid for Jamie is if he signs a professional contract one day and it actually comes into force. Until then I work for nothing." He let that sit. "I’d rather you heard that from me than worked out later that I’d hidden a number somewhere."

Alan looked at him for a second longer than the answer needed, then went back to the page.

"This bit." He tapped it. "Can you ring round clubs about him without telling me?"

"No. There’s a line in there that says I can’t speak to a single club about Jamie without you knowing first. I took the standard one out. The standard one let me. That one doesn’t."

"And if he changes his mind. If we do."

"You can end it. The grounds are written there. If I hide an offer, if I push him, if I lie to you about what a club’s actually said, you walk, and you don’t owe me for the privilege." He nodded at the page. "And it only runs two years. That’s the longest one of these is allowed to run. After that you decide all over again whether you want me at all."

"What if someone bigger comes in." Alan did not look up. "Some Crownbridge type. Promises the world."

"Then you read what they put in front of you the same way you’re reading this," Garcia said. "And you ask them why their number isn’t zero like mine."

Alan said nothing to that. But his finger kept moving down the page.

"Jamie." Alan turned the agreement halfway toward his son. "You understand this?"

Jamie pulled it closer and looked at it.

"Some of it," he said. "Not all of it."

It was an honest answer, and Garcia was glad of it. A sixteen-year-old who claimed to understand a full representation agreement would have worried him more.

"Then I’ll tell you the simple version," Garcia said. "If you sign this, G11 handles the football side. The clubs, the calls, the noise. When someone wants you, it comes through me, and I tell your dad, and we look at it together." He leaned in a little. "It doesn’t mean you stop. You still train. You still play. And if anything ever feels wrong, you say so. That part’s still yours."

Jamie nodded slowly.

Then he asked the only question he really had.

"Does signing this mean a club’s already picked me?"

"No," Garcia said. "It doesn’t mean that."

Jamie’s shoulders dropped a fraction, and Garcia could not tell if it was disappointment or relief.

"It means," Garcia said, "you don’t face the next bit on your own."

"He’s sixteen." Alan said it straight at Garcia, not as a complaint, as a fact he wanted answered. "You’re asking me to sign my sixteen-year-old to an agency. Is that even allowed?"

"It is, now, and only just." Garcia did not dodge it. "There’s an age underneath which I couldn’t have brought you anything at all. Jamie’s past it. He turned sixteen this year, he’s into the right school year for it, and he’s close enough to the age where a first proper deal starts to matter." He held Alan’s eye. "That’s why it’s you signing, as his guardian, in plain words on the front page. And it’s why I’m the one sitting here and not some bloke off the phone. I still hold the licence for this. I still hold the part of it that says I’m cleared to work with someone his age. They took a lot off me when they pushed me out. They couldn’t take that, because it isn’t theirs to take."

Alan studied him for a long moment.

"And if you didn’t have all that. The licence, the rest of it."

"Then I wouldn’t be here," Garcia said. "I’d have told you to wait, and find someone who did."

"No," Alan said finally. "I believe you would have."

He did not sign on a feeling.

He read the last page again, slowly, then set the pen down on top of it and looked at his son one more time.

"You want him doing this? Handling all of it?"

"Yeah," Jamie said. "I do."

Alan picked the pen back up.

He signed first, as guardian, his signature pressing slow into the paper.

Then he slid it to Jamie, and Jamie signed under him, quicker, the way a boy signs his own name.

Garcia signed last, for G11.

There was no celebration. Nobody stood up. The only sound was the pen and the paper moving across the table, and the small, plain fact underneath all of it.

The agency was not empty anymore.

He saved the signed copy, confirmed it, and the system did not wait long.

[SIDE MISSION COMPLETED]

Mission: Sign Jamie Holt Into G11

Objective Complete: Jamie Holt has signed a valid representation agreement with G11 Sports Management Ltd with guardian consent.

Rewards: — Skill Points +500

— Contract Knowledge SP +20

— Client Management SP +20 — Reputation +5

[AGENT STATS UPDATED]

— Skill Points: 1050 → 1550

— Contract Knowledge: D — 391 / 1500 SP → 411 / 1500 SP

— Client Management: C- — 651 / 2000 SP → 671 / 2000 SP

— Reputation: Ruined — 1 / 100 → 6 / 100

Reputation moved.

It had sat on one for over a year, the number that told the whole story of what had been done to him, and now it read six. Five points of a hundred. It should have meant nothing.

It did not mean nothing.

Then the system did something it had never done before.

[CLIENT PROFILE UNLOCKED]

Name: Jamie Holt

Age: 16

Position: Right Back

Preferred Foot: Right

Agency: G11 Sports Management Ltd

Current Rating: ★ (0.8) ☆☆☆☆

Previous Rating: ★ (0.4) ☆☆☆☆

Potential Rating: ★★★★★ (5.0)

Player Attributes:

— Pace: 72

— Acceleration: 79

— Stamina: 60

— Strength: 43

— Recovery Speed: 84

— Defensive Awareness: 50

— Standing Tackle: 47

— Positioning: 43

— Short Passing: 46

— Crossing: 39

— First Touch: 40

— Composure: 38

— Confidence Under Pressure: 34

Key Strength: Explosive recovery speed

Key Weakness: Confidence under possession pressure

Primary Development Focus: First-touch passing after defensive recovery

Recent Development Notes:

— Recovery speed remains elite for current level.

— First touch under pressure has improved but remains unstable.

— Forward passing after defensive recovery has improved from poor to inconsistent.

— Confidence increased after competitive trial exposure.

— Match impact still depends heavily on defensive recovery actions.

This was not a Golden Eye scan. It could not be. He had nothing left this week.

It was something new, fuller than the old E-rank window, the kind of profile the system only opened once a player was actually his.

The number that mattered sat near the top. Current Rating, 0.8. It had been 0.4 the first time he scanned Jamie at Croydon.

Two weeks and one trial match had doubled it.

And every weakness was still written there in plain text. Strength forty-three. First touch forty. Confidence under pressure thirty-four. The recovery speed read eighty-four and stood out from the rest of the column like it belonged to a different boy.

That’s the whole of him, Garcia thought. One elite number holding up a list of poor ones.

It was exactly what he had signed.

The shop changed underneath the profile.

[NEW SHOP ITEM UNLOCKED]

Training Manual: Development Pathway — 600 Skill Points

Effect: Generates a limited development pathway for a signed G11 client based on current player profile, position, key weakness, and recent match data.

Limitations:

— Only works on signed G11 clients.

— Requires an existing Golden Eye scan or unlocked Client Profile.

— Generates no more than three priority training areas.

— Does not replace a qualified coach.

— Does not create medical, nutrition, gym-load, or injury-management plans.

— Cannot guarantee improvement.

— Updates only after new match data, training review, or system-recognised performance change.

Garcia read it once and left it sitting there.

Six hundred points, and a long list of things it could not do. It would help him plan with Rafi and whatever coaches came next. It would not turn him into one.

Not today. Today was about signing Jamie, not training him all over again.

He closed it without buying.

The last panel came up on its own.

[NEW SIDE MISSION GENERATED]

Mission: Secure Jamie Holt’s First Professional Pathway

Objective: Help Jamie Holt earn a formal club trial, scholarship pathway, or professional development opportunity from a recognised club.

Reward:

— Skill Points +800

— Scouting SP +30

— Negotiation SP +25

— Contract Knowledge SP +20

— Reputation +10

— Network +10

Failure Penalty:

— Jamie Holt’s development window narrows.

— Guardian trust decreases.

— Competing agencies gain approach advantage.

It did not say sign a professional contract tomorrow. The system was being honest about the size of the next step.

A boy this age did not get a professional deal handed to him. What he got, if he was lucky and good, was a scholarship, a place inside a club’s academy, a real door instead of a closed one. The pro contract came later or not at all.

That was the door Garcia had to find now.

He let the panel fade and came back to the room, where Alan was screwing the cap back onto the pen and Jamie was finally drinking his water.

"Alan." Garcia kept his voice level. "Now I’m allowed to ask. How many clubs have actually come back through Northgate?"

Alan set the pen down.

"Three," he said.

"Three." Garcia did not let his face move. "Through the programme? Proper ones?"

"They didn’t come from random blokes with a phone." Alan reached for his laptop and pulled it toward him. "Northgate forwarded them. Proper interest, asking permission to bring him in, off the back of Friday." He glanced up. "Three clubs want him in for a proper look."

This was it. The first time G11 had to behave like an agency instead of a name on a card.

"Which ones?" Garcia asked.

Alan turned to the screen and opened the emails. He did not answer straight away, because the names meant something now in a way they had not yesterday.

Across the table, Jamie leaned forward for the first time all morning.

Garcia stayed very still.

Alan looked at the screen, scrolled once, and said, "There’s three names here."