Chapter 77: Rotating stock

"Okay," Rain said. "Okay. Everybody back up a step."

Nobody backed up. The stocky kid in the blue jersey had planted himself right in front of Rain, close enough that Rain could smell the cafeteria on him.

"Just tell us if it’s true," the kid said. "The B-rank thing. Is it real?"

"Who told you that?"

Six heads turned toward the brick wall at the same time. Peter flinched as if somebody had thrown something at him.

"He didn’t tell us exactly," a girl with a clipboard said quickly. "He told Harlan he might have field points coming. Harlan told us."

"Harlan told everybody," somebody muttered.

"I didn’t tell everybody," said a voice from the back.

Rain let out a breath through his nose. "Look. I’m not taking anyone on. The party’s full."

"Full?" The jersey kid looked personally offended. "How is it full? You’ve got four people. I heard you’ve got four people."

"Five," the clipboard girl said. "If Ratchford’s in it."

"Is Ratchford in it?"

"I’m not talking about who’s in it," Rain said.

"So she is."

"I didn’t say..."

"He didn’t say no," somebody told somebody else.

A hand came through the crowd holding a folded stack of uncashed checks.Rain looked at it, then at the boy attached to it, a skinny kid who couldn’t have been much bigger than Peter.

"Put that away," Rain said.

"It’s for gear. I can buy my own gear. I just need a spot on a manifest. I’ll stay at the back, I won’t touch anything..."

"Put it away," Rain said again, quieter, and the kid’s hand dropped.

The jersey kid crossed his arms. "Delacroix said we need a registered party to get Field points. You’re the only first-year in Class C with one. You get that, right? You’re sitting on the only door."

"I get it."

"So open it."

Rain looked at him. Then he looked around at the rest of them: the clipboard girl, the skinny kid with his money crushed in his fist, a pair of twins near the back who hadn’t said a word and looked like they’d been dragged along. Half of them were from his homeroom. He’d sat in the same room with them yesterday while Delacroix put the numbers up.

"I can’t," he said. "Not this run. It isn’t my call, and even if it was, I wouldn’t put any of you in this one."

"Why?"

"Because it’s a B-rank."

That landed. The clipboard girl lowered her clipboard. Someone at the edge of the group said, "Oh," softly, as if the word had only just started to mean something.

"If that changes," Rain said, "if we ever run something smaller and there’s room, I’ll say so. To everybody. Not just whoever gets to me first."

"You promise?" the skinny kid asked.

"I’ll say so," Rain repeated.

It wasn’t enough, and he could see it wasn’t enough. But the crowd started coming apart anyway, a couple of people at a time, still talking, still glancing back at him. The jersey kid was last. He pointed at Rain’s chest on his way past.

"I’m holding you to that."

"Noted."

When the last of them had gone around the corner of the library, Rain turned around.

Peter was still against the wall. He’d slid down it a little.

"So," Rain said.

"I can explain."

"Go ahead."

Peter opened his mouth, shut it, and slid down the rest of the way until he was sitting in the dirt at the base of the bricks with his bag in his lap.

"Harlan’s my lab partner," he said. "In Core Mechanics. He was freaking out about his CP. Like, actually freaking out, he had his terminal out under the table and he kept refreshing it as if it’d change. And he asked me how I was doing, and I said bad, and he said everybody’s bad, nobody can get Field points, and I said..." Peter rubbed his face with both hands. "I said I might. I said it like it was nothing. I never said B-rank. I swear I never said B-rank."

"Somebody did."

"He asked what kind of run. I said a big one. He asked how big, and I made a face." Peter made the face again, a pained wince. "Apparently that’s a face that means B-rank."

Rain looked at him for a long moment.

Then he laughed. It came out short and tired, and he put a hand over his eyes.

"It’s not funny," Peter said.

"It’s a little funny."

"Thirty people chased me across the quad, Rain."

"Twelve."

"It felt like thirty."

Rain sat down in the dirt beside him, his back against the warm brick. For a while neither of them said anything. Two second-years walked past on the path, looked at them, and kept walking.

"I’m sorry," Peter said. "I know it’s Abby’s thing. I know it’s supposed to be quiet."

"It was always going to get out." Rain picked a pebble off the ground and turned it over in his fingers. "Ratchford’s name was going to get attached to an independent party sooner or later. It’d have been all over campus by next week anyway."

"So you’re not mad."

"I never said that."

Peter winced again.

"I’m not mad," Rain said. "Just don’t make that face at anybody else."

Peter let out a breath and leaned his head back against the wall. "Okay. Okay." Then, after a second, quieter: "This is the only way, isn’t it. For the Corwin thing. I keep doing the math and it’s the only way it works."

"It’s the best way."

"That’s not what I asked."

Rain dropped the pebble. "Yeah. It’s the only way I can see."

Peter nodded slowly. He looked no happier, but some of the stiffness went out of his shoulders.

"Abby saw the clerk," Rain said. "We’ve got terms."

Peter sat up. "And?"

Rain went through them: no observer, the guild picks the gate, a deadline before the spring auctions. Peter nodded along with each one, getting a little paler at the deadline.

"And everybody gets tested," Rain said. "Rank and bound skill. At a guild facility in Sector Three. Before the manifest gets filed."

Peter stared at him.

"Tested," he said.

"Yeah."

"They’re going to put me on a machine," Peter said, "and it’s going to say F-rank and some Red Dragon person in a suit is going to look at it and laugh."

Peter’s hands had gone white around the strap of his bag.

’That’s what he’s scared of,’ Rain thought. ’Somebody laughing.’

"Nobody’s going to laugh," Rain said.

"You don’t know that."

"If they laugh, they laugh. You’re on the manifest either way. Abby needs four names, and you’re one of them."

Peter chewed on that. "What about you? You’re F-rank too. Aren’t you worried?"

Rain kept his eyes on the path.

"A little," he said.

---

His phone started going off before he’d made it back to the C-dorms.

He recognized almost none of the numbers. Some had found him through the class directory. One had somehow gotten hold of his personal line. The messages were variations on the same thing.

**Unknown:** Hey it’s Corrie from homeroom, is the party thing real??

**Unknown:** this is Dev (the twins, the tall one). we can both fight. we can pay

**Unknown:** Rain it’s Harlan. I’m so sorry. Also can I join

He muted the thread, then muted the next one, then gave up and turned his phone face down on his desk in C-12.

It buzzed against the wood anyway. A call this time. Nyra.

He picked up. "Hey."

"Peter texted the group," Nyra said, skipping hello. "He said, and I’m reading this word for word, ’I’m so sorry I think I told the whole school.’"

"Not the whole school."

"How much of the school?"

"Twelve people. Maybe more by now."

There was a pause on the line. He could hear her breathing through her nose.

"Fine," she said finally. "It was going to get out. Ratchford’s name is attached. I’m just glad it was Peter and not one of her guild people."

"That’s what I said."

"Don’t agree with me, it makes me suspicious." Something clinked in the background, a mug on a counter. "Theo wants to know if we got terms yet."

"We got terms."

He gave them to her the same way he’d given them to Peter. Nyra listened without interrupting until he got to the deadline, and made a short sound.

"Before the auctions. That’s tight."

"Abby said long enough, if we don’t waste any of it."

"Abby would say that." Another clink. "What else?"

"Testing," Rain said. "Rank and bound skill. Guild facility in Sector Three."

"Standard," Nyra said. "They did that for me before my first contracted run, years back."

Rain sat up a little on the edge of his bed. He kept his voice exactly where it was. "What’s it like?"

"Boring. You stand on a plate, it reads your rank. That part’s been around forever, every guild has one." She paused. "The skill reader’s newer. Guild tech. They had me put my hand on a panel, and it spat out my skill’s name and rank and what type it was. Took about a minute."

"That’s all it read?"

"That’s all they showed me." He could almost hear her shrug. "Why? You worried it’s going to say F-rank in big red letters?"

"Something like that."

"It’s going to say F-rank in big red letters, Rain. You’re F-rank. Everybody knows. You’ve got a video." Her voice softened slightly. "Nobody’s picking this party for its paperwork. Abby picked us because nobody else would take her. The test’s just a box they tick."

"Yeah," Rain said. "I know."

"Get some sleep. And tell Peter to stop apologizing in the group chat. He’s sent six."

She hung up.

Rain sat with the phone in his hand.

’Name, rank, and type.’

So it read the skill, not where the skill came from. Not that Nyra had seen, anyway. That was something.

It was also nowhere near enough. Name, rank, and type was the whole problem. A panel that read his skill would read Flash Step: Zero Drag, Rank SSS, and somebody would be standing there looking at it.

’Nobody’s picking this party for its paperwork.’

Unless the paperwork said SSS.

He lay back on his narrow bed and stared at the ceiling of C-12 for a long time.

Then he pulled up the System.

He’d bought from the store before. The vambrace and the blade had both come out of it, and they’d eaten most of his Synthesis Credits. He knew the Fixed Catalog by heart: potions, salves, a repair kit, a barrier scroll, a carbon dagger. Rank F through D, and nothing in it that did anything like what he needed.

He opened it anyway and scrolled from top to bottom in case something had changed. Nothing had.

That left the Rotating Stock.

It was one of the four rules the System had laid out the day the store first unlocked, back in the infirmary: limited-quantity, specialized, or rare items that showed up on a timed rotation, then expired and refreshed on their own. Rain had read it once, filed it away, and never had a reason to open the tab since. Everything he’d needed had been sitting in the Fixed Catalog.

He opened it now.

Most of it was filler, rank F and D odds and ends he skimmed past without reading properly. He was halfway down the list when he stopped scrolling.

[Rotating Stock: Limited Listing]

[Resonance Shroud (Rank D, Consumable): Conceals the user’s bound skill signature from external detection for 12 hours. Rank and attributes remain readable.]

[Cost: 2,500 Synthesis Credits]

[Listing Expires: 71:42:16]

[Current Balance: 327 Synthesis Credits]

Rain sat up so fast he cracked his elbow on the wall.

He read it again, rubbing his elbow. Then a third time.

It was real. Something that would let him stand on that panel and have it show nothing in Slot 1 that an F-rank shouldn’t have. It was sitting right there, it cost more than seven times what he had, and the timer was already counting down.

’Seventy-one hours.’

The fastest way he knew to make Synthesis Credits was selling cores to the System, and he had no cores. The next fastest was a rift, and the rift was on the other side of the test.

He was still staring at the countdown when his phone buzzed on the desk.

He grabbed it.

**Abby:** Couldn’t sleep, so I sent the names tonight instead of tomorrow.

**Abby:** She already replied. She must live at that desk.

**Abby:** Testing’s booked. Friday, 9am, Sector Three annex. All five of us.

**Abby:** We’re actually doing this.

Rain read the messages. Then he looked back up at the store window still hanging in the dark of his room.

[Listing Expires: 71:39:52]

[Current Balance: 327 Synthesis Credits]

Friday at nine.

The listing would be gone by Friday night. He had three days to find twenty-two hundred credits he didn’t have.