Alexander slammed the Shelby’s heavy door open, his breathing ragged, the heat under his skin pulsing like a cracked engine block. Before he could slide into the driver’s seat, the violent stomp of boots echoed across the asphalt. Marcus arrived, his face flushed with a mixture of sheer fury and stress.

"Wait, Alexander!" shouted Marcus, slamming his hand down on the roof of the muscle car to block him. "You are committing an irreversible stupidity right now! We are going to sit down and talk!"

Alexander spun around, his eyes wild, the veins along his neck bulging against his collar as he stepped directly into Marcus’s personal space.

"You want to talk?!" roared Alexander, his voice cutting through the open parking lot like a blade. "Let’s talk about what the fuck you think you’re doing! Why the hell are you sticking your nose into my goddamn business?!"

"Your business?!" yelled Marcus, his chest heaving as he refused to take a single step back. "You just terrorized a civilian in a public restroom! You’re losing your fucking mind, kid! The serum is frying your brain and you’re turning into a liability!"

"Shut the fuck up!" screamed Alexander.

Driven by the overwhelming, erratic chemical short-circuit in his brain, Alexander unleashed a blinding, heavy right hook straight at Marcus’s jaw. The strike carried enough raw, enhanced power to shatter concrete.

But Marcus wasn’t a faceless entity in a digital simulation. He was a seasoned veteran.

With a fluid, micro-movement born of months submerged in identical high-level TMC training, Marcus slipped the punch by a hair, ducking inside Alexander’s over-extended guard. Before Alexander could reset, Marcus drove a brutal, localized palm-strike directly into his sternum, knocking the wind straight out of his lungs.

"You think two sessions in Stephen’s playground makes you a killer?!" said Marcus, his voice a low, dangerous growl as he instantly seized Alexander’s left wrist, twisting his arm behind his back with an unyielding leverage that forced Alexander down to his knees. "There is a massive fucking difference between a modified rookie and a veteran, boy!"

By now, the loud shouting and the echoing thud of the brief struggle had drawn a massive crowd. Dozens of students stood near the courtyard steps, their phones already raised, their faces twisted in shock as they watched the violent spectacle unfold. The whispers spread through the crowd like wildfire.

"Holy shit... is that Marcus and Alexander?" muttered a student near the front.

"The king of the academy and the straight-edge prince are actually trying to kill each other!" whispered another.

"I heard it’s over Lilly! They just dragged her out of the women’s bathroom crying!"

Alexander let out a guttural, beastly roar, his enhanced muscles straining against the lock as he forced his weight upward, blind to the crowd. He managed to break Marcus’s grip, throwing a desperate, spinning back-fist that grazed Marcus’s cheek, drawing a thin line of crimson.

"I said stay out of my way!" shouted Alexander, his vision blurring as his nervous system pushed past its limit.

"That’s enough!" shouted Marcus, his patience evaporating.

Marcus ducked under the wild swing, transitioned seamlessly behind Alexander’s broad shoulders, and wrapped his thick forearm tightly around the kid’s throat. He locked in a textbook, deep rear-naked choke, applying a precise, overwhelming pressure to the carotid arteries.

Alexander thrashed violently, his fingers clawing at Marcus’s arms, his teeth grinding as his brain entered a total, catastrophic short-circuit. The psychological trauma of the faceless boxer, the burning blueberry fluid, and his raw, possessive fury collided all at once, driving his mind to the brink of collapse.

Within five seconds, the fight drained from Alexander’s limbs. His eyes rolled back into his head, and his body went limp.

Marcus held him for a beat longer to ensure he was fully unconscious, then let the kid’s dead weight slide onto the hot asphalt. He took a deep, ragged breath, wiped the blood from his cheek, and looked over at the crowd of students staring at him in paralyzed silence.

Without a word of explanation, Marcus reached down, hoisted Alexander’s heavy, unconscious frame over his shoulder, and walked straight over to the rear of the Shelby. He pulled the keycard from Alexander’s pocket, popped the heavy trunk open, and carelessly dumped the academy’s golden boy into the cargo space like a piece of dirty luggage, slamming the lid shut with a loud, metallic thud.

The crowd erupted into panic.

"What the fuck?! Did he just kidnap him?!" screamed a girl near the back.

"Are they going to kill the prince?! Oh my god, call the cops!"

"Shit, shit, look at this video! This is insane!" 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

Marcus ignored the screams, hopped straight into the driver’s seat of the Shelby, and slammed his foot down on the accelerator. The tires shrieked violently against the pavement, leaving thick black lines of burning rubber behind as the muscle car tore out of the academy gates, while the digital gossip and viral videos of the brutal kidnapping spread through every smartphone on campus like a deadly, unstoppable virus.

From the shelter of the courtyard pillars, Lilly witnessed the entire horrific sequence. Her hands flew to her mouth, her fingers trembling against her lips as she watched the heavy trunk of the Shelby slam shut on Alexander’s limp body. The screech of the tires vibrated through her chest, leaving her paralyzed in a state of shock.

Before she could even process the violence, the atmosphere around her shifted into a toxic swarm. A dozen girls from the crowd aggressively swarmed her, their faces twisted in bitter, jealous rage as they hemmed her against the stone wall.

"Are you happy now, you little bitch?!" one of the popular girls shrieked, shoving her shoulder. "You caused the fight between them, didn’t you, you fucking whore?!"

"If Alexander was a golden prince, Marcus was the king of this campus!" another girl snarled, stepping into her face. "There isn’t a single person here who hasn’t tried to get his attention, and you just ruined both of them in one morning!"

Lilly felt suffocated, her eyes burning with fresh tears as the insults rained down on her from every direction. She was utterly cornered. Desperate for an escape, she forcefully pushed her way through a gap in the crowd and took off sprinting toward the edge of the campus, her high heels clicking frantically against the concrete while the vicious taunts and screams of "Zorra!" echoed behind her.

Amidst the chaotic onlookers stood Ben and Leo, two rookies from the academy’s theater club. They had been standing casually with their own girlfriends when the violent spectacle erupted, but the moment they saw Lilly being ruthlessly hunted by the crowd, their expressions turned serious.

"Hey, babe, I’m so sorry, I have to go," Ben said hurriedly to his girlfriend, breaking away from her grip.

"Yeah, we’ll catch up with you guys later, we need to handle this!" Leo added, already turning on his heel.

Without waiting for their girls’ confused complaints, the two young theater students took off at a full sprint, pushing through the lingering groups of gossiping students to chase after Lilly’s retreating figure before the rest of the campus could tear her apart.