Chapter 3

The final bell rang, but I wasn't going anywhere.

Brittany and her circle of friends, including Liam, cornered me by my locker. Their smiles were gone, replaced by sneers.

"We need to talk, Ava," Brittany said, blocking my path.

"I have nothing to say to you," I replied, trying to push past her.

Liam grabbed my arm, his grip surprisingly strong.

"You're not going anywhere. We saw you talking to Mr. Harrison earlier. What did you say to him?"

"I didn't say anything," I said, my voice cold.

"Liar," one of Brittany' s friends, a girl named Jessica, spat. "You're trying to ruin this for everyone, just like you tried to before."

They herded me into an empty classroom, the door clicking shut behind us. The air grew thick with their hostility.

"You're going to use the AI, right now," Brittany commanded, holding out her tablet. "We're going to see what your 'potential' is. I bet it says 'professional mooch'."

Her friends laughed.

"I don't want to," I said, standing my ground.

"It's not a request." Liam tightened his grip on my arm, twisting it. A jolt of pain shot up to my shoulder.

I reacted on instinct, shoving him away with my free hand. I wasn't the same weak girl from my past life. The struggle for survival had hardened me.

But in the process, I knocked the tablet from Brittany' s hands. It hit the floor with a sickening crack, the screen fracturing into a spiderweb of broken glass.

Silence.

Brittany stared at the broken device, her face contorting with rage.

"You broke it," she whispered, her voice dangerously low.

Then she looked at Liam. "Handle her."

Before I could react, Liam' s hand flew across my face. The slap was loud, stinging. My head snapped to the side, my cheek burning.

"You little bitch," he snarled, his handsome face ugly with fury. "Do you know how much that costs?"

While I was still reeling, Brittany picked up her own phone. "It's fine. I can access the system from here. We'll just do it for her."

She held the phone up, its camera scanning my face for biometric identification. I struggled, but Liam and another boy held me fast.

"What should her dream job be, Liam?" Brittany asked with a malicious grin.

Liam laughed, a cruel, ugly sound. "How about garbage collector? Or maybe professional failure. Put that."

"Even better," Brittany said, her fingers flying across the screen. "I'm assigning her to the 'Domestic Services' track at a vocational school in the middle of nowhere. Let's see you get into a good college now, Ava."

She showed me the screen. My name was there, next to a career path that was a dead end. My future, officially logged in their system, was ruined.

"There," she said, pulling the phone back. "Now your profile matches your personality. Trash."

They laughed as they left the room, leaving me on the floor, my cheek throbbing.

I didn't cry.

I slowly pushed myself up, a cold, calculating calm settling over me.

They thought they had broken me. They thought they had won.

But I was just getting started.

I remembered something from my past life, a piece of information I had dismissed as gossip. Liam Carter, the golden boy, the class president with the perfect future.

His father wasn't a successful lawyer or a doctor.

He was a gambler, a drunk, deep in debt to very dangerous people. Liam's desperation for success wasn't just ambition.

It was a lifeline. And I was about to cut it.