"Round two," Beck announced, raising his arm higher than before. A few students instinctively flinched, even though the egg wasn't aimed at them. Someone whispered, ""This is going too far."" But no one stepped in. Not yet. Beck swung his arm down with a force completely unnecessary for an egg.
Crack. The sound was sickening loud enough to bounce off the cafeteria walls. But the noise wasn't from the egg alone. It was from the impact. The shells shattered against Zariah's forehead with a violent snap.
Pieces scraping across her skin as yolk splashed across her face. A thin, startlingly red line bloomed right above her brow. A cut from an egg that should never have been thrown that hard. Gasps rippled through the cafeteria. The boy recording with trembling hands zoomed in.
His breathing suddenly uneven. This wasn't funny anymore. This wasn't harmless. This was the kind of moment people watched later and wondered why no one stopped it. Beck stepped back, startled for half a second by the blood, then smirked again to force down his hesitation.
There we go, he said. Voice a little too loud. Now she'll he stopped because Zariah finally opened her eyes. Slowly, deliberately, like someone waking up, not from sleep, but from restraint, a streak of egg white slid into her eyebrow. The thin line of blood carved down her temple, and yet her gaze was disturbingly calm, colder, sharper, and clearer than anyone expected.
Then she did something that shattered the last of the cafeteria's illusions. She smiled. Not a shaky, hurt smile, not a sarcastic smile. A precise, controlled, terrifying smile. One corner of her mouth, lifting with the confidence of someone who had been holding back far too long.
The temperature in the cafeteria seemed to drop 10°. Milo from Arpac took a step back. Trent's smirk vanished instantly. Even the boy recording lowered his phone slightly, as if bracing for whatever came next. Beck's jaw tightened.
"What are you smiling at?" he demanded. But the bravado in his voice was already cracking. Zariah didn't answer. Instead, she inhaled slow, centered, steady, the exact opposite of someone afraid. Her fingers curled around the sides of her chair.
And then, without rush, without fear, she pushed herself to her feet. The movement was so slow, so deliberate that it felt rehearsed. A predator rising, not a victim retreating. Chairs scraped as nearby students instinctively scooted away. The air sat heavy with anticipation.
A live wire stretching across the room. Even Jace's camera shakily refocused, uncertain whether he was documenting a humiliation or the prologue to a disaster. Zariah stood at her full height, not tall, but composed in a way that made her presence expand. Yolks dripped, blood glimmered, and her eyes locked onto Beck with a calmness that finally made him understand he had not broken her. He had provoked her.