30 You're A-class, I have class

It disappeared.

After Sebastian read the last syllable in the chat bubble, the black words with exclamation marks became a gray 'this message was deleted' text.

For a few seconds, he thought that Samantha might have miswritten a letter so she deleted it to change it.

But then, an incoming call from her arrived.

Miriam picked up the phone.

"Sam, where are… Hello?"

In presence of Alexandra and Sebastian, Miriam's expression turned a bit inexplicable.

First, it was confusion, then surprise, and at the end, just alarm was left.

"Just me, my girlfriend, and a friend." She said to the other side of the phone.

"Yes, the three of us are Manifesters."

"We signed it today, a few hours ago."

"Names? Sure. Miriam Parnell, Alexandra Lin, and Sebastian Bercic."

"Of course, I'll tell them that. Sorry for the trouble caused."

"Can I speak to Samantha?"

"When can I speak to her then?"

"Okay, thank you anyway."

"Bye."

Miriam pulled the cell phone away from her ear but still kept looking a the screen with unrealness.

"What happened!" Alexandra hurried to ask.

Sebastian stared at her with the same question.

"It's an officer of the MDW, they ask from us discretion about the message we got." Miriam looked around and then whispered "The A-class ability one."

The cautiousness was contagious, so Alexandra also responded with a murmur. "But what happened to Sam! Is she okay?"

"They say she's with them, but…"

"Maybe we should go to a more private place to talk." Sebastian stopped both from making things look suspicious. They were still at the school entrance, and today, students are very sensitive about ability topics. "Let's go have lunch as we said before."

…

…

"Everything is solved First Lieutenant Meeks, the friends of Samantha Allen will stay quiet about it." Tina Allenson closed the door and talked to the man outside.

"Good."

He acknowledged while having a thin and long cylindrical object on his mouth.

Although that wasn't a cigarette, Lenard Meeks didn't have that kind of bad habit. The thing grabbed by his lips was a French Fry.

"Nice looking house, don't you think?" Lenard turned around and contemplated the building.

Tina Allenson didn't respond to her superior, because that would ruin her serious character role.

But if Sebastian and company were here, they would recognize that this was no other than Samantha's house.

"One of them was the boy you talked to this morning." The woman in uniform mentioned the detail.

"Who? Sebastian?"

"Yes. And sorry for the question, sir, but who is this guy? I noticed that you told him a lot of things that…" She paused.

"That shouldn't be said out to the public yet?"

"I have no intention to inquire you, Sir. It's mere curiosity." She carefully chose her words to amend what might have sounded defiant.

But the carefulness was unnecessary, she probably hasn't got used to that this superior is very easy going in non-working hours.

Lenard had no reproachful intent on his face. After all, the former psychologist was also a person motivated by inquisitiveness. He simply shoved another French fry into his mouth.

"That's the guy that saved all the survivors from dying when the portal here opened. Russell has been wanting to recruit him."

"The Colonel himself?" She exclaimed, then looked down at the list she had in her hand. '4'. "Oh! I wondered why he had so few slots, so he has equipped some gems already."

"Not really, he does truly have four slots only."

"Huh?"

Tina Alleson seemed confused. That small number not only symbolized slowness leveling up but difficulty in forming a decent ability combo.

Knowing that one of the characteristics of soldiers is comprehensiveness, Manifester soldiers more than no one needs to be able to face all kinds of unprecedented situations. And what allows that is the variety of abilities precisely.

If that boy cannot permit that…

"Then… why?" She asked.

"An A-class is an A-class." The man sighed.

…

…

Away from school, the three students were sitting at the corner of the before-mentioned Thai food restaurant.

It was not yet common to have customers at this time of the day and lucky enough the waitress/cashier/actual owner of the place was helping in the kitchen. Meaning no concern that someone could overhear their conversation.

"Samantha will be fine, trust me, okay?" With his arms leaning on the table, face to face, making eye contact, Sebastian tried to comfort his friends. "I lied before, actually, my ability is A-class too, and those people know it. But here I am, they did nothing to me. They probably just want to recruit Samantha too, that's all."

"What? You too?!" The surprise made Alexandra push her chair back a little.

And it was expected another same reaction, but there was a reason why Miriam was the other half, contrary to Alexandra, she kept silent.

By her experience with guys, the words 'trust me' and 'I know I lied before' in the same sentence tend to be an indication of a huge massive colossal red flag.

Sebastian had to thank that today he wasn't the main topic, so his lie could be discussed later.

"How sure are you about this?" Miriam asked, deciding to trust a friend.

"Samantha sent you those messages herself, right? So chill, she was not kidnapped or any of those movie things you two are inventing in your minds. The MDW only reacted because Sam spoke about the thing that she shouldn't. An A-class ability has high military importance, the fewer people know about it, the best."

"How important you say? Well, if no one stops me, my initial could easily kill a thousand people while I'm having this little TED talk with you... maybe more, I haven't tried yet…. Hey, don't look at me like that, you asked me first."

"But back on topic, the MDW is not going to force anybody, the most they will do is throw money and benefits at you to make you lose resistance. Even I right now regret not shaking that hand and saying 'yes sir, I'm all yours'. But that's a conversation for another day."

"Just focus on 'Samantha will be fine'. If you don't believe me, call her a couple of hours later. Just don't mention any Manifester stuff, they're probably monitoring her calls, so don't make them see us as a bunch of kids that can't keep our mouth shut and end up taking other alternatives."

Sebastian drank some water to hydrate his dry throat.

"Any other concern?"

"Yes, why are you on MDW's side." Miriam crossed her arms.

"......." Sebastian almost spitted the water. "I'm not on their-"

"Of course you are!" Alexandra slapped the table to interrupt, now things were starting to feel like an interrogation, the only question was who is the good cop and who is the bad one.

"Fine, maybe a little. But don't you watch the news? Outside of Lhyno is a mess: Crime rate in red numbers, clandestine fights of Manifesters for betting, awaken animals attacking citizens, terrorism, some governments can't even defend their own portals."

"There's this server on a popular game that is used to commemorate the reporters that died on hands of their governments for knowing too much, and it also has a library with forbidden information of different countries. The governments can't take it down because they would need to sue the entire game company."

"What about it?"

"Well, these people made a ranking of all the Manifester organizations around the world about who's doing a greater job, based on different types of research: compiling local, provincial, national and international news, checking social-media waves, interviewing people to get their experiences, also checking on the trustworthiness the population has. And even if you don't believe it, the MDW is on a very very, surprisingly high place."

"So yeah, I'll leave it there. Trust is mutual, you trust them, they trust you back. Zhreta should be the center of chaos, but it's not, we're still having or normal lives, we're in safe hands."

"Then… are you gonna join the MDW?"

"Ha, hell no."

Alexandra: ".....…"

Miriam: "....…."

"The level of hypocrisy I'm seeing over here."

Sebastian shrugged without shame.

Dignity? What's that?

"Ahhhhh~ I feel hurt," Miriam started sighing out of nowhere, "I thought you'll be with me in D-class, fighting the evil C-class Alexa together, and now it turns out that I'm the weakest of the group…"

"Liar! Why you and Samantha are both A-class!"

She then hugged Alexandra for comfort, "You aren't an A-class too, do you?"

"I wish."

"Good, hug me tighter, make me forget about the betray of those two."

"Alright, babe."

Miriam: 'You have an ability, I have a girlfriend. Let's see who hurts the most!'

Sebastian: ".....…"