The elevator hummed with mechanical indifference as floors blurred past—each number a reminder of how far Mateo had fallen before being dragged back up. His reflection stared back from the polished steel doors: hollow-eyed, shoulders hunched like he was bracing for impact. The stomach-dropping ascent felt like punishment disguised as elevation.
Ten floors. Twenty. Thirty.
By the time they reached the top, his palms were slick against his sides. This was Atlas Academy's crown—the first floor, where Elizabeth Atlas ruled from her perch above the world.
Reeves moved with practiced silence, her face unreadable as they approached the imposing metal door. No doubt reinforced with layers of protective barriers, it looked more like a vault than an office entrance. She pressed a special card to the detector, which beeped green with immediate recognition.
The door opened to reveal another door. Then another.
"Good luck," Reeves said without ceremony, already stepping back toward the elevator. The dismissal was final—whatever happened next, Mateo would face alone.
Ten pneumatic doors later, each one sealing behind him with a soft sigh, a voice cut through the sterile air.
"Come in."
Feminine. Controlled. Utterly without warmth.
Mateo stepped into an office that defied every expectation. The space was vast—twenty times larger than his coffin-sized room in the Cemetery—but it wasn't the size that stole his breath. Conventional walls had been abandoned in favor of floor-to-ceiling glass that rose like transparent barriers against the sky itself.
Clouds rolled against the glass like trapped mist, reminding him just how impossibly high he was. Not the fluffy white cotton balls he'd seen from ground level, but dense, roiling masses that moved with their own weight and purpose. The evening sun painted them in shades of amber and gold, casting everything in cinematic light.
The office floor was pitch-black tile that gleamed like obsidian, reflecting the dying light and making the space feel both infinite and claustrophobic. At the center of this sterile perfection sat Elizabeth Atlas.
She looked exactly as she had during yesterday's EP17 broadcast—silver-blonde hair cut sharp at her neck, stern brows that seemed carved from stone. But seeing her in person was different. Her presence filled the space like a gravitational force, pulling attention and demanding submission without a word.
Her irises were pitch black against white sclera, and when they fixed on him, Mateo felt something cold trickle down his spine.
There was nowhere to sit. The message was clear—he would stand, and she would look down at him, and the natural order would be maintained.
"Mateo Mendoza."
The way she said his name felt like a diagnosis.
"Yes, ma'am."
She studied him with the detached interest of someone examining a specimen. Seconds stretched into an eternity before she spoke again.
"You hesitated."
"I'm sorry?"
"During your fight with Velez. You hesitated before using your quirk." Her voice remained level, clinical. "Even when death was imminent, you chose to rely on physical ability alone. Why?"
Mateo's throat went dry. "I don't understand what you mean."
"I spoke with Oblitus." She stood, moving toward the glass wall with fluid grace. Even with her back turned, her authority remained absolute. "He informed me that you also hesitated when describing your quirk during registration. A pattern of reluctance. I want to know why."
Oblitus. The white-haired man who interviewed him. Of course they'd discussed him. Of course his failures had been catalogued and analyzed.
"Answer me, Mateo."
The command was quiet but unyielding. When he remained silent, she turned back to face him, and something in her expression had sharpened.
"Because it's not useful," he said finally.
"No." The single word cut through his excuse. "You and I both know that's false."
She walked closer, her footsteps echoing against the black tile. "It prevented Alexander Velez from ending your life." Her dark eyes never left his face. "Yet you treat it like a burden. Why?"
Because it saved me when it should have saved them, Mateo thought, but couldn't say. Because I lived when Alec burned. Because this power chose me, and I don't understand why I deserved survival when they didn't.
Instead, he said nothing.
Elizabeth Atlas sighed—not with frustration, but with something closer to disappointment. She returned to her desk but didn't sit, instead placing her palms flat against its surface.
"Do you know that thirty of the world's top heroes are dead?"
Mateo's chest tightened, but not with the patriotic grief she might have expected. Instead, he felt something harder, more bitter. "What does that have to do with me?"
"Everything." Her voice took on a different quality—still controlled, but with an undercurrent of something dangerous. "We're hemorrhaging our best fighters. Peaceful confrontation died with the first wave of coordinated villain attacks. Now it's pure attrition—wearing each other down until one side breaks."
She gestured toward the window, where city lights were beginning to pierce the gathering darkness. "It's only a matter of time before this war consumes half the country. Heroes are dying faster than we can replace them." Her gaze returned to him. "And you're wasting potential because you're afraid of your own power."
"I'm not afraid—"
"Then what?" The question came sharp and sudden. "Because I can tell you what I see. I see someone who survived a tragedy and decided survival was something to be ashamed of."
The words landed like a punch to the gut. Mateo's hands clenched into fists, trembling with suppressed rage. What did she know about Alec? About watching your brother burn while you fell safely through the air, cushioned by the very power that should have been saving him instead?
For the first time since he'd entered the office, Elizabeth Atlas's expression shifted. Something flickered behind her dark eyes—not quite sympathy, but recognition. She was quiet for a long moment, studying his face.
"I don't have a quirk."
The admission came so quietly he almost missed it. Elizabeth Atlas—the most powerful woman in the world, the sole proprietor of Atlas Academy, the woman who commanded armies of heroes—was quirkless.
She sank into her chair, and for the first time, she looked human. Tired. The red-rimmed eyes, the deepening shadows beneath them, the pallor that spoke of too many sleepless nights carrying impossible weight.
"Surprising, isn't it?" She gave a sound that might have been laughter but carried no humor. "The Atlas family built this academy on the principle that quirks make heroes. And here I am—the one who inherited it all—without a single superhuman ability to my name."
She leaned back, her gaze distant. "I grew up watching my siblings demonstrate their powers, knowing I would never measure up. I had to rely on intelligence, manipulation, political maneuvering. I had to be twice as ruthless as anyone else just to earn a seat at the table."
Her eyes refocused on him with laser intensity. "I fought for years to claim proprietorship of this academy. I used every tool at my disposal—deceit, blackmail, strategies I can't even speak aloud. And do you know why?"
Mateo couldn't speak.
"Because I understood something that my powered siblings never did. Quirks don't make heroes. Choice does. The decision to use whatever advantage you've been given, fairly or unfairly, for something greater than yourself."
She stood again, moving back toward the window where stars were beginning to appear in the darkening sky. "I would have given anything for a quirk like yours. Not because it's powerful—though it is—but because of what it represents. Potential. The ability to save lives, to make a difference, to be more than just another casualty in this war."
The silence stretched between them, filled only by the soft whisper of wind against glass.
"I'm not removing you from the academy," she said finally, her voice returning to its professional cadence. "Despite your performance against Velez, I see something in you that you refuse to see in yourself."
She turned back to face him. "You don't have much time before deployment. One month to decide whether you're going to honor the gift you've been given, or waste it out of misplaced guilt."
The words hit like ice water. Deployment. Soon he would be fighting on the front lines, wielding power he didn't want.
"Our conversation is finished," Elizabeth Atlas said, gesturing toward the door. "Report to the hero trainee dormitories. Training begins tomorrow."
Mateo nodded numbly and turned to leave, his mind reeling. As he reached the first pneumatic door, her voice stopped him.
"Mateo."
He looked back.
"Your brother would be proud of you for surviving. Don't dishonor his memory by throwing that survival away."
The doors sealed behind him with mechanical finality, leaving him alone in the sterile corridor. As he waited for the elevator, her words echoed in his mind alongside his own spiraling thoughts.
She was quirkless and had built an empire. She had fought and schemed and clawed her way to the top through pure determination. And she was telling him—him, with his slime quirk and his guilt and his complete inability to save anyone who mattered—that he had potential worth preserving.
The elevator descended through the floors, each number counting down like a countdown to judgment. By the time he reached the dormitory level, one question had crystallized in his mind, sharp and merciless:
Could he really do nothing on his own merit?