Damn, I hate how accurate he’s accidentally been.
I scrunch up my face before answering, as though it’ll make any difference to my cringe levels. “Space nerd, then, I guess and . . . sometimes computer nerd. And well, maths is essential to literally everything and . . . I suppose dinosaurs are pretty cool too . . .”
“You got the full collection there, huh?”
“I . . . actually love collecting things,” I say.
“Bro! I am shooketh by that revelation. Absolutely shooketh,” he deadpans.
I’m smiling now. Stuff kids used to make me feel bad for liking doesn’t feel so awful around him. I don’t feel so weird. “I alsoreally like . . .” Actually, no, that might be the sticking point. I shake my head, can’t quite finish that sentence in the presence of an actual cool person.
“You like what? Go on.”
Fine, whatever. I’ll never even see this guy again after a couple of weeks. “Star Trek.”
“Aha!” He punches the air. “I knew I had you sussed. What floor of the hotel is your room on?”
“Seventeen, why?”
Eggo collects the empty pint glasses from the grass and holds them both in one hand like a claw grabber. “I’m on fourteen. Let’s go to my room and play on Callum McGinty’s Nintendo Switch. We figured out how to connect it to the telly.” He drapes his free arm over my shoulder, and we amble back towards the stands.
“Pi. That’s your new nickname, by the way,” he says. “Spread it around.”
First Half
Chapter 1
Aiden
Monday 3rd May 2027
It’s been forty hours, and I’m still hungover. My low-slung baseball cap and Ray-Bans are doing very little to convince anyone otherwise. The good news is that I haven’t spewed sincelast night. The bad news, however, is that I have to start my day in a windowless, airless, fart vacuum we call the classroom.
Mathias Jones, or Gadget to his teammates, is the only other person here when my best buddy Harry, a.k.a. Abs, and I arrive.
Unfortunately for Gadget, he unwittingly holds space for one of the largest grudge matches since Worf and the House of Duras—that’s aStar Trekreference—though in fairness, Gadget has done nothing to deserve Abs’s animosity, other than being everything my best friend wants to be himself. It’s jealousy, pure and simple, but it’s also . . . entertaining, so I allow it.
Harry glowers at the back of Mathias’s head and punches me in the hip, a reminder that under no circumstances should I attempt to sit near his arch-rival. Instead, we grab a couple of chairs and arrange them into a little cluster in the opposite corner where Abs will continue to scowl at the Welsh fly-half for the next hour.
I have nothing against Gadget myself. In fact, I respect him a great deal. Probably more than anyone else on this team. He possesses talent beyond natural human-talent capacity. He’s efficient, he gets the job done, he’s reliable, dependable, wicked smart, and doesn’t waste any steam on the am drams and politics the younger guys, like my good friend Abs here, seem to embroil themselves in.
All of this is why, in approximately ten to fifteen minutes once everyone else has arrived and seated themselves with their protein shakes and energy drinks, they’ll announce Gadget as the new captain for the Bath Centurions. I’ll have to console Abs—who perhaps foolishly believed he was in with a shot—for an indeterminable time, but I can’t deny that Jones is the best decision for the team.
“Look at his stupid hair,” Abs whispers, arms folded, teeth grinding. “Thinks he looks so fucking suave.”
I say nothing because with his dark hair, Spanish complexion, smouldering good looks, and his six-five frame, Gadgetdoeslook so fucking suave. A thought I’ve had often, and undoubtedly will be keeping to myself for a plethora of reasons. It’s also a thought that the rest of the world tends to share, especially since Gadget became the face of not only the Bath Cents but the international Welsh rugby team, and countless sponsorship brands too.
Harry and I started with the Cents on the same day. He’d moved up from the academy squad and I’d transferred from Stratford, London, because I’d wanted to experience more of the UK than just its capital city. But in standard Aiden Campbell form, I had arrived at the training grounds on the first morning and was already overthinking my decision.
Why had I left London, one of the most diverse, historical, and interesting cities in the world, to live out in woop woop? Okay, technically Bath isn’t woop woop, but I only have to venture ten minutes in any direction to come face-to-face with the very real and terrifying prospect of being trampled to death by the UK’s deadliest animal: the dairy cow.
Twenty twenty-two Aiden was panicking.
“Do you reckon you could win in a fight against The Rock?”Those had been Harry Ellis’s first words to me during induction training.
“Can I have a weapon? And the element of total surprise?”I’d replied.
“No weapons, and it’s in the MMA ring, so you both know exactly why you’re there.”
