Aiden Huang waited outside the principal's office for the hammer to drop.

It was quiet in the little waiting room; only the sound of the laser-bars fizzling softly on the principal's door could be heard. Outside there was laughter and footsteps, exo-lockers clanging shut, ziv-boots zip-zopping closed for exercises in the balcony yard. The students of Terminary High School were on to their next classes.

Like most days, it seemed like everyone else was moving and Aiden was staying still.

For the moment, anyway. There had been quite a commotion only an hour ago in the lobby downstairs.

Aiden felt blood trickling out of his nose again, and wiped it away. The bruise beside his right eye gave a sharp throb.

"May I clean that up for you, sir?" said a clipped, helpful voice in his ear.

"I'm fine, Auxy."

"Noted. Your lie notwithstanding, perhaps it would tilt the scales somewhat in your favor if you went into Principal Pakkel's office not looking as if you'd been a fight." Helpful as always, Aiden's personal robot assistant — RA for short — was AUXY-418, programmed as personal monitor and chaperone for Aiden when he was outside his family's mansion.

"There's no point in hiding anything," said Aiden. "It's not like it's the first fight."

"The gesture, sir, might mitigate your punishment. 'Though appearances can deceive, manners maketh man.' "

"I hate to be rude, Auxy," said Aiden. "But I'm having a hard enough day without you yammering Mother's axioms in my ear right now. I'd hate to put you on mute."

"Such an effort would be unlikely, sir. Gentlemen Huang found your most recent modifications to my surveillance software and reprogrammed me to the desired settings."

Aiden grimaced. If his father had found that hack, he would probably discover the other minor "updates" he'd made to Auxy's subroutines. Yet more transgressions he would have to explain.

"So he already knows what happened?"

"Likely, sir."

"You think he'll bail me out this time?"

"Highly unlikely, sir."

The laser-locks suddenly retracted into their plugs, and the principal's door swung open. Aiden got to his feet.

"Wish me luck, Auxy."

"As always, sir."

Aiden entered the principal's office with his held high — not only to look proud and nonchalant about his black eye and splitting lip and cut-up cheeks — but also to keep the blood from his nose from dripping down his school uniform. There were many things he could stomach, but his mother's look of dismay upon seeing the blood on the breast of his newly-washed school uniform was not a sight he looked forward to see.

Principal Pakkel was already sitting at his desk. He was a sad sight to Aiden, dressed in a standard, starched educator's uniform whose matte-like appearance couldn't hide the diminished, shriveling man within. And though the skin-fat injection treatments were well within his budget, they could only do so much. He was getting on in years, his thinning hair parted over a bald pate that shone with sweat. Moles and wrinkles were easy fixes, but judging by his frail frame, the man's bones looked as delicate as a baby bird's.

No doubt he was one of those anti-enhancers — those that refused to buy the necessary tech to fortify their skeletons and strengthen their musculature. Pitiful.

Pakkel's watery eyes widened slightly at Aiden's appearance. Then he sighed. Whatever anger and disappointment he'd expressed at previous incidents would be repetitive at this point.

"Well, Aiden, what are we to do with you?" he said resignedly.

Aiden pretended to look around the office, as if there was a jury waiting to give suggestions. "Do we live in a democracy? If so, my vote would be to let me go to linear algebra."

"Please, enough with the history jokes. This is, what, the eleventh incident this year? What was it this time, Aiden? Did Devon insult your brand of insta-lunch? They're all made from the same synthetics. Price makes no difference."

"He made a nasty comment about my family. Then he followed it up with a threat. Maybe you should look into it."

Pakkel looked quite bored. "Oh, really...would you care to explain?"

Aiden tried to raise an eyebrow and winced. Even with the titanium-urion plate that had been implanted after an early childhood accident, his forehead was still a bit tender from slamming into the wall. "He said my family's company was finished, our name and tech soon-to-be obsolete. He called my mother a pus-filled slug. Then he went on to say how his family's private in-com force would come in to destroy our home and seize our labs."

"Figuratively or..."

Aiden glared at him. "What do you think?"

"I want to clarify."

"How's this for clarification? He said his family could blow up my parent's private helicopter with a phone call, and nobody would spare a minute to pick up the charred remains of their e-wallets when it was done."

" 'Could'. That doesn't sound exactly like a threat."

"It's a threat framed as a hypothetical, you stupid man. I've taken enough garbage from Devon this past semester. He deserved everything he got for tarnishing the name of a respectable neuron enhancer company like my family's."

Principal Pakkel curled his lips slightly. "By the looks of it, you received more 'deserving' treatment than he did."

Aiden balled his fists. "I shouldn't be the one sitting here. If anything, I should be commended for preemptive self-defense."

"That would be easy to believe," said Pakkel. "If you hadn't pulled this kind of stunt before. Five fistfights..."

"Unprovoked. They started it."

"Three sabotaged rotorcycles, leading to concussions and broken limbs..."

"They wrecked my roto-bike and gelled up my exo-locker. Besides, they have the best crash-safety gear in the entire city. We all do. Everybody in Terminary, I mean."

"Two hacked laptops..."

Aiden opened his mouth to retort, then hesitated. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Aiden, please."

Aiden shrugged. "Where's the proof it was me?"

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

"And now we have this. An out-and-out brawl in the foyer of this institution, right in the middle of freshman orientation. Are you not aware it's Bring-Your-Sibling-to-Terminary Day? And yet you decide to get yourself into a beatdown because one of your classmates said something you didn't like. I hear little Billy Baffa the Fourth is seeking counseling after what they saw Devon do to you. Tell me, Aiden, do these sound like the actions of the heir to Huang Axon Holdings, a 'respectable neural enhancer company'?"

Pakkel raised his eyebrow, attempting a strange expression combining pedantic smugness and kindly disappointment, but which only resulted in a look of pained surprise, like a baby that had just soiled its diaper.

Aiden rolled his eyes. "What does it even matter — you'll just add this to the list of my citations and send me out with another warning. You don't even care about any of this, do you? Just like you won't go after Devon. Your hands are tied."

They stared at each other for a long moment. Aiden knew Pakkel knew what he was getting at.

Then Pakkel smirked, getting out of his chair to look out the window. Down below, the Neocopy skyline glittered gold and purple, the heat of the streets and the oppressive shine of the sun tenderizing their metallic sheen into wiggly bands of color.

When he turned back around, the façade of the firm, well-meaning principal had dropped, replaced by a look of disdain.

"Very astute, Aiden. It's a marvel how you pick up on my tricks after nearly a dozen of our little sessions. And yet, I do care about some things. I care about keeping order in one of the most prestigious youth academies in this city. I care about not having to waste any more of my precious time with snotty, arrogant punks like you.

"And most of all, I care about the generous donations the Huangs and the Arroyos and the Shettys make to this school every year that you and the rest of their bratty brood attend, no matter how much time you all spend huffing ether crystals or blowing off class in your brand-new rotorcyles. But I may finally have to make the hard decision and decline your family-paid tuition this year, because you are becoming too big of a liability to handle."

Aiden snorted. "Expel me? Yeah, right. Don't you know how much I pay to be here? One semester alone could feed the entire Twelfth Borough."

"How much you pay? Ahhh, that's a good one..." Pakkel stretched his arms and chuckled. "I wasn't under the impression that you ran a half-billion unit company, Aiden. It's a shame you still have to get back to linear algebra. But I am being serious. Act up again, and your time with this fine institution will come to an end."

"And not soon enough..." muttered Aiden under his breath.

"Oh, really?" There was a steely glint in Pakkel's watery eyes. "Try me, boy."

"My parents will hear about this," mumbled Aiden. "My father will have you replaced."

"Your father? Your father will approve. Of all the cold-blooded lizards I've met, your parents are perhaps one of the few well-bred corporazzis in this town, Aiden. Unlike you, they have manners and morals. It makes my job easier. I know what they'll think and what they'll do when their patience finally wears out."

"Okay, okay," said Aiden, raising his palm in the air. "You win. Can I go now?"

Pakkel wagged a finger. "No more fighting. Are we clear? You will keep your nose as clean as a whistle."

"As a what?" said Aiden irritably. He hated it when the man made those kinds of anachronistic metaphors.

Pakkel looked slightly crestfallen. "A whistle. It's a pre-22nd century artifact. You blew into it to make a high-pitched frequency."

"Oh. Fine, I got it."

"Good. Report to detention at three o' clock sharp on Friday."

"Uh-huh. Right." Aiden knew they both knew that he wouldn't be there.

As Aiden stood up, a remote panel on Pakkel's desk flipped upward, flinging his cup of synthetic grape juice into his face. Pakkel leapt away and swore, dabbing at the wave of inky purple spreading over his uniform.

"Old helper desk?" said Aiden.

"No, blast it all. I just got this installed last week."

"Bummer." Aiden stealthily shoved the QWERTY pad he used for quick hacks into his belt. Without looking, his fingers flew over the glowing digital keys. When Pakkel went over to his windows to examine the stain, the ultra-resolution digi-surfaces suddenly became ultra- opaque, then a dazzling rainbow of colors, before finally resolving into a dense, hot pink.

"Do you need help, sir?" said Aiden innocently.

"No, boy. Just get out of my office."

"No problem," said Aiden as he backed out of the room. "Oh, I think it's working again." But as soon as Pakkel turned back to the window, the transparent surface quickly switched back to a shade of bubble gum.

Hiding a grin, Aiden stepped out of the room, but not before activating another desktop function and sliding the entire surface of Pakkel's workspace off its desk legs and onto the floor.

Aiden took the Tortoise Line home, the oldest and slowest of the light-lev trains, aptly named after an ancient reptile known for its sluggish gait, though at the time he was sure the engineers thought it was a tongue-in-cheek reference to their revolutionary accomplishment. It was the long way home. He was trying to put off seeing his parents as long as possible before he had to tell them.

He walked through the rainy streets of downtown, the neon lights of the bars and skyscrapers washing his body in alternating shades of red, blue, and purple. Under the overhead backdrop of boiling dark clouds, the streets were alive with activity. Like giant genies of fine mist, giant holographic images of AI singers and VR-stars danced in a hypnotic, pixelated rhythm beside artificial palm trees made out of trunks of glowing copper and silvery leaves of tensile aluminum.

The walk signs appeared on the street, and Aiden skipped across the steaming crosswalk. The ground reflected the warmth of the nuclear generators running just underneath the roads, regulated to allow the heat of the reactor to counteract the chill of encroaching night and storm. Once Aiden and the remaining pedestrians had crossed, the symbols on the road changed once again, and rotorcycles skimmed along their highlighted green lane at eye-watering speeds, their sleek, bladed wheels blurring parallel to the ground like the wings of dragonflies.

All around was the tinny whine of electric engines and the megaphone-enhanced vendors hawking the latest fads: mem-scents designed to stimulate the user's recall of the exact cocktail of emotions they had within a memory; antimatter Jell-O ("Your stomach will be out of this world!"); immersible sex cabinets that could be outfitted with a thousand toys and a million fantasy simulations with any person imaginable, alive or dead.

A door slid open at Aiden's right, and he side-stepped a scuffle between what looked like a would-be customer and the owner of a cybernetic appendage-repair shop as they toppled out, limbs flailing. It wasn't much of a contest — the customer was missing an arm and a leg. They tussled for a few moments before the customer swore, pushed away, and spat bitterly in the other's direction.

"A goddamn swindler, you are," he hissed. "I told you, I'll bring the rest of the money next week! You already got half!"

"No deposit, no service," said the owner, a narrow-faced man with green sideburns and ash-grey hair, glanced up at Aiden. "Unless you want the nickel-plated skeleton model, I can't help you. They're cheaper, but I wouldn't recommend it, even for the toddlers."

The one-legged man swore again, and like a sentient potted plant, hopped off into the street, narrowly avoiding getting mowed down by a car rounding the corner.

Aiden watched him go. "No good-on-me discount, Markus?"

The man looked up, and upon seeing him, grinned. "It's all about credit, my friend. I've been doing this long enough to know who's going to come up empty. You're a special case. You may not have it, but your parents have plenty."

Aiden scowled. "Just wait another two years. Once I take over factory operations for my father in the Second Borough, I'll flood your line with so much credit you won't know what to do with it."

Markus winked. "Good on me."

"I mean it."

"How's that elitist school going? Still learning how to scam and hardball the peons around here like always with the rest of your chrome-bitching friends? Not much else to take. Moving onto their toenail implants, are we?"

"Eventually, if we get tired of everything else," said Aiden sarcastically.

"Uh-huh. Where'd you get that shiner?"

"From the same guy I punched in the nose for being a chrome-bitch."

"I won't ask who won."

"Why?"

Markus gestured at the bruises on Aiden's face and neck. "Pretty obvious. And if you go ahead and say 'You should see the other guy', I'll shoot mech fuel up my rectum."

"I'll help you with that right now."

"Ah, relax kid. Y'know, everytime I see you I think 'Damn, there goes that money-strapped snot-dripping wire-head', but then you go and do something like this, and you get my prejudices all turned around. Bad on me for still taking your business all these years. You should be grateful."

"Uh-huh," said Aiden dryly. "By the way, do you have any of those fast-acting corticosteroids lying around?"

Markus chuckled. "I wouldn't advise shooting that up your rectum, kid."

Aiden rolled his eyes and pointed at his swollen cheek. "It's for this, goon. I don't want my parents to think it was worse than it was."

"Yeah, yeah, I got you. Let me check." Markus went back into his shop and reappeared momentarily with a small, red-capped tube. "Got a special discount, only because you're a special customer. You wouldn't believe on the prices of the over-the-counter stuff they got these days."

Aiden activated his inbuilt cybernetic neural system and flicked through his e-wallet, the display lighting up green in his virtual reality HUD as he transferred units to Markus's account. He pocketed the medication. "Thanks. And hey, think you can show me that new Overclocked Clavichord you built? I'm thinking of getting one off the catalogue next year with the extra frequencies built in, but if you have a workable prototype I'd love to give it a test run."

Markus put a finger to his lips and shushed him loudly, eyes furtively flicking back and forth to the mass of people walking around them. "Would you keep your damn voice down? That is need-to-know info you just blurted out."

"Okay, catch you later, then," said Aiden, lowering his voice. "I'll net-message you."

"Good on me. Keep that cut clean, kid."

They parted, and Aiden walked on. The clouds opened up and raindrops began to fall, steaming gently all around.