was going to

"No way I'm letting some tech geek fry my brain!" Marcus roared through Elena’s throat, the harsh bully grunt completely overpowering her usual soft tone.

The heavy biology lab door groaned as Leo threw his weight against it from the hallway. Panic took over Marcus's hijacked instincts. Instead of dealing with the lock, he spun Elena's body around, his eyes locking onto the large glass window overlooking the school courtyard.

"Wait, Marcus, don't—!" Allie screamed, but she didn't get to finish.

Marcus lunged forward, his heavy, wide-set bully grip tightening painfully around Allie’s wrist. With an explosive burst of adrenaline, he used Elena’s legs to launch them both straight toward the glass. Elena’s emerald silk dress tore wildly as they impacted the window, shattering the pane into a cascade of glittering shards.

They tumbled out of the first-floor window, falling a dozen feet down into the soft, manicured bushes of the school courtyard.

Because Marcus was the one driving, the Neural Sync's safety threshold hard-locked to his inputs. The sub-dermal node on Elena's neck immediately filtered the impact data; Marcus felt absolutely zero pain from the fall, experiencing only a thrilling, deeply intense rush of physical pleasure as they crashed through the branches. Allie, however, wasn't hooked into the protection. She slammed hard into the dirt, crying out as a sharp pain flared in her scraped elbow.

"Holy crap! We actually flew!" Marcus laughed hysterically, standing Elena’s body up with an aggressive, uncoordinated swagger, completely unbothered by the dirt covering the green dress. He yanked Allie to her feet by her arm, dragging her along behind him. "Come on, chick! We're getting out of here before that freak overrides my head!"

Up in the broken biology window, Leo leaned out, holding his glowing smartphone tightly. "Marcus! Stop running! You're overloading the baseline signal!" he yelled down into the courtyard, his thumb hovering right over the emergency purge button.

Leo pointed the helmet directly out of the broken window, his thumb slamming down hard on the Emergency Purge command.

A sharp, digital signal blasted from real helmet resting on Marcus's unconscious head . But because the helmet's main battery was already sitting at absolute zero, the sudden, high-voltage command caused a massive hardware conflict.

Instead of resetting the connection, the helmet emitted a loud electronic pop, zapped the last bit of residual power, and shut down completely.

Down in the courtyard, Elena's body suddenly stiffened. Marcus gasped out loud through her throat as a wave of dead static washed over his consciousness. He expected to wake up back on the locker room bench, but nothing happened. He blinked Elena's long eyelashes, looking down at his delicate hands. He was still trapped in her frame.

Up in the window, Leo looked at his phone screen as a flashing red warning popped up: CRITICAL HARDWARE SHUTDOWN. SIGNAL LOCKED.

Leo's face drained of color as he realized the catastrophic mistake he had just made. By forcing a purge on a dead battery, he had accidentally fried the helmet's wireless transmitter while it was mid-sync. The connection was now completely frozen in place.

Marcus's giant, muscular varsity body back on the locker room bench was now stuck in an unbreakable, catatonic standby mode. Even worse, the sub-dermal chip in Elena's neck had locked its gates to protect the data [HistoricalWeather]. The only way to reverse the sync was to take the heavy chrome helmet, plug it into a specialized Cortex Systems charger for a full 2 to 3 days, and then physically force Marcus's frozen body to wear it again to pull his mind back home

Marcus looked up at the window, his expression on Elena's face twisting into a mixture of absolute panic and aggressive confusion. "Hey! Tech geek! What did you just do to me?! I'm still small! Why didn't I go back?!"

Allie, clutching her scraped elbow in the dirt, stared at Elena in pure horror. She looked up at Leo, who was completely frozen in the window frame, holding his dead phone.

Marcus threw his head back and let out that eerie, deep bully laugh through Elena’s vocal cords. "Two to three days?!" he barked, looking up at Leo’s horrified face in the broken window. "Fine! If I’m stuck in this tiny body, I’m going to have some real fun with it."

Marcus turned Elena's body around and headed back toward the school building. The hallways were already filling with students as the bell rang. He wasn't interested in being a student; he was focused on how he could use this opportunity to completely dismantle Elena’s social standing for his own amusement.

Marcus kicked the door of the girls' restroom open, marching inside with a heavy, wide-set swagger that completely clashed with Elena's delicate frame.

The room was packed with several girls fixing their makeup and chatting by the mirrors. They all snapped their heads around, completely stunned to see the usually timid, quiet Elena storming in with a fierce, brooding scowl. Marcus paused, looking around at the girls surrounding him, a twisted grin breaking across Elena's face as he realized he was completely behind enemy lines.

"What are you all staring at?" Marcus grunted through Elena's vocal cords, the voice dropping into that harsh, aggressive bully tone.

The girls exchanged bewildered, uncomfortable glances, quickly grabbing their bags and hurrying out the door to escape the bizarre, hostile energy.

Once the restroom was completely empty, Marcus walked over to the furthest stall, stepped inside, and violently slammed the door shut, clicking the deadbolt into place. He dropped Elena's purse onto the floor and looked down at the school dress. It was tight, restrictive, and completely annoyed him.

"Time to get out of this ridiculous thing," Marcus muttered.

Using Elena's hands, he reached for the zipper, unfastening the sipper and sliding the dress down her shoulders. He stepped right out of it, leaving Elena standing inside the locked stall in nothing but her delicate matching pink underwear. Standing there, Marcus stretched her arms, flexing her muscles and checking the sub-dermal node on her neck in the tiny reflection of the metal toilet paper dispenser. Through the Neural Sync's absolute sensory link, the cool air of the restroom hit Elena's bare skin, sending a vivid, amplified wave of physical sensation directly into Marcus's mind while the tech kept him completely immune to the actual chill.

He leaned against the stall wall, completely unbothered by the fact that he was occupying his classmate's body in her undergarments. Pulling Elena's smartphone out of the dropped purse, he unlocked the screen, ready to use her private accounts to cause maximum damage while he waited out the days for the helmet to charge.