CHAPTER 43: THE VEGAS PLAN
The announcement came during lunch.
Master Lin's voice crackled through the cafeteria's ancient PA system, cutting through the noise of three hundred students pretending to eat while actually calculating how to kill each other. "Students selected for the Las Vegas educational excursion will receive their travel credentials this afternoon. Departure is scheduled for Friday. Attendance is mandatory for those invited."
"Educational excursion." Billy snorted, sliding into the seat across from Marcus. "That what they're calling it now?"
"Better than 'cartel summit observation trip,'" Willie muttered. He pushed his food around the tray without eating — a habit he'd developed since Finals. The weight of his first kill sat visibly on his shoulders, pulling him down in ways that wouldn't heal with time.
Marcus understood. Some weights you just learned to carry.
"You got the invitation?" Billy asked.
"Through the Kuroki faction." Marcus kept his voice low. The cafeteria was loud enough for privacy, but ears were everywhere in King's Dominion. "Willie's plus-one."
"Lucky bastard." Billy's grin didn't reach his eyes. "I'm going through the Preps — they owed me a favor from before Finals. Cost me, but it's worth it. Vegas is where the real game happens."
"The real game?"
"Legacy politics. Cartel alliances. The shit that determines who runs what when we graduate." Billy leaned forward, animated despite his exhaustion. "My parents' organization is small potatoes compared to the cartels. But connections made in Vegas can change everything."
Marcus filed that away. Billy's ambition was useful — it meant he'd be focused on his own opportunities rather than watching too closely what Marcus was doing. And in Vegas, Marcus suspected he'd need all the cover he could get.
Kill box, Chester observed from the depths of Marcus's consciousness. Multiple factions, enclosed space, drugs and alcohol flowing. Perfect environment for accidents.
Marcus didn't respond out loud — he'd learned to keep his conversations with the dead man internal — but he couldn't dismiss the assessment. Chester's instincts about violence were rarely wrong.
"Who else is going?" he asked.
"Everyone who matters. Kuroki faction's sending a full delegation. Soto Vatos obviously — it's practically their party. The Preps, some Hessians, even a couple Dixie boys." Billy counted on his fingers. "And the Rats. Well, us three plus whoever else can scrounge an invitation."
"Petra?"
"Said she'd rather eat glass than spend a weekend surrounded by cartel kids and slot machines." Billy shrugged. "Her loss."
Marcus glanced across the cafeteria without meaning to and found Maria Salazar immediately. She sat at the Soto Vatos table, Chico's arm draped possessively across her shoulders, laughing at something one of his lieutenants had said. Her eyes were clear, her movements steady — none of the volatile energy that had marked her in those first weeks.
She looked... stable. Centered. Like someone who'd found their place in the hierarchy.
His avoidance strategy had worked exactly as planned. By never engaging with Maria, never giving Chico a reason to see him as competition, he'd sidestepped one of the canon timeline's deadliest threads. Maria had stabilized without Marcus's interference. Chico had no reason to target him specifically.
Mission accomplished.
Then Maria turned, and their eyes met across the room.
Something flickered in her expression — recognition, maybe. Assessment. The look of someone cataloging a face they'd noted but never placed.
She looked away first.
She remembers being avoided, Chester said. That's not the same as being forgotten.
"You okay?" Willie asked.
Marcus realized he'd been staring. "Fine. Just thinking about logistics."
"Right." Willie didn't sound convinced. "The logistics of not looking at Maria Salazar."
"I wasn't—"
"You were." Willie's smile was thin, knowing. "Whatever happened between you two, it's your business. But Vegas is going to put everyone in the same hotel for three days. Hard to avoid someone when you're sharing an elevator."
Marcus hadn't considered that. His avoidance strategy had worked within King's Dominion's sprawling campus — enough space to choose different routes, different schedules, different circles. Vegas would be different. Concentrated. Close.
Complications, Chester observed. Avoid them or eliminate them. Those are the only options.
Marcus pushed the voice down. He wasn't going to "eliminate" Maria Salazar because her presence was inconvenient. That was Chester's thinking, not his.
But the dead man had a point about complications.
---
The travel credentials arrived that afternoon — a manila envelope with Marcus's name typed in neat block letters, containing a bus ticket, hotel information, and a "student activity schedule" that made absolutely no mention of cartel summits or criminal dynasty politics.
"Friday departure, Sunday return," Willie read from his own envelope. "Room assignment: double occupancy, roommate TBD." He looked up. "We sharing?"
"If we can arrange it."
"I'll talk to whoever's handling logistics. The Kuroki girl — Akiko — she seemed to have pull during the meeting."
Marcus nodded, grateful. Having Willie as his roommate meant someone watching his back during sleeping hours, someone who wouldn't ask too many questions if Marcus woke up speaking languages he shouldn't know or screaming from dreams that belonged to dead men.
Later, alone in the Rat common room, Marcus spread out everything he knew about Vegas on the battered study table. The show had covered this arc extensively — he remembered flashes of neon lights, desert highways, violence spiraling out of control in a casino hotel that had seemed glamorous on screen but probably looked different in person.
But the details were fragmented. He remembered Maria being there. Chico. Some kind of confrontation that ended badly. Beyond that, the specifics blurred together with other arcs, other storylines, other moments of violence that the show had reveled in.
Your meta-knowledge is degrading, Chester observed. Too many changes. The butterfly effect is eating your predictions.
"I know."
Then stop relying on it. Use what you can observe, what you can plan, what you can control. The past is dead. Focus on the present.
Marcus almost laughed at the irony of a dead serial killer advising him to focus on the present. But Chester wasn't wrong. The canon timeline was increasingly unreliable — too many divergences, too many ripples from choices Marcus had made. Whatever happened in Vegas wouldn't match what he remembered from the show.
He'd have to navigate it blind. Or as close to blind as someone carrying centuries of ancestral memory and a serial killer's instincts could be.
In Vegas, watch the ones who aren't drinking.
Marcus frowned. "What?"
Advice. At parties, in casinos, in any situation where substances are flowing freely. The dangerous ones are the ones staying sober while everyone else gets impaired. Chester's voice carried the weight of experience. They're waiting. Hunting. Looking for opportunities.
"Is that what you did?"
Sometimes. It's effective. Most people don't notice when the designated driver disappears with their drunk friend.
The casual admission made Marcus's stomach turn. Chester had killed dozens of people, maybe hundreds — the memories were in Marcus's head now, but he'd been careful not to examine them too closely. Some knowledge you didn't want to have.
But the tactical advice was sound. In a environment where drugs and alcohol would be everywhere, the sober ones were worth watching.
He added it to his mental list and tried not to think about where the wisdom had come from.