Max continued to stare up at the mountain of muscle standing in front of him. The student was the kind of person one would have a hard time believing wasn't already a full-grown adult.
It was exactly the type of person Max knew he wasn't ready to face yet. Guys like this, huge, experienced delinquents, were always the toughest to fight. Even with Max's skills and experience, larger opponents were harder to take down. And considering the student had mentioned Dipter's name, Max could tell this guy wasn't just muscle, he could fight too.
"Damn, is that Jay Woods?" one of the nearby students whispered.
"Crap, Max is done for. I knew he overdid it recently. Looks like they're really going after him now."
Thanks to the students' whispers, Max now had a name to go with the face, Jay Woods.
"Do I have a choice in this?" Max asked. "If I try to leave, are you going to stop me?"
Jay looked down at him, his expression stone cold, unreadable.
"It's best if you follow me," he said. "Unless you want them to go after the girl."
It was a good thing that certain events had unfolded in a particular order. Up until yesterday, Max wouldn't have known who the girl they were referring to even was.
He considered trying to shove past Jay and make a run for it down the hall, or perhaps agree to go with him and escape later. But there was one thought that kept sticking in his mind: Sam.
Sam's life had been drastically altered because of Max's actions. And now, there was a very real chance the same could happen to Abby.
'It's okay… it'll be all right. Because at the end of this, I still have something to use. If I can't get out of a tough situation, I have a lifeline.'
Max gave a small nod, and immediately, Jay started moving. The two of them began walking down the hallway together.
"Don't run off," Jay said. "I'm faster than I look. And doing that will only bring more trouble for everyone."
Although Max wasn't planning to run, he knew he still needed contingencies, because right now, his only lifeline was his phone.
He pulled it out, and while Jay glanced over, he didn't say anything. He had already given his warning.
"Green, can you give me some information on Jay Woods?"
It didn't take long for a message to come back.
"Holy crap, they sent Jay Woods after you?! Good luck, knowing you, you'll need it. No, but seriously, that guy's a monster. I didn't think they'd escalate things this far just because you beat up Ko. No one even liked Ko. He was like that annoying little brother in every story who always gets captured or something.
Anyway, he's strong, really strong. Don't fight him if you can help it."
The messages only confirmed what Max had already suspected. And what made things worse was the realization that they were now heading outside of the school grounds.
As they walked down the streets, Max kept track of their route, and it became clear that they had arrived at the entrance of a construction site.
'This is way too well planned… this Dipter guy knows exactly what he's doing,' Max thought. 'A construction site still in its early stages, there won't be any security cameras. And if someone like Dipter can afford to pay off the principal, getting a few construction workers or guards to take the day off? Easy.'
As expected, they were able to walk straight through the barrier without a single person in sight.
They continued walking until Max eventually came to a halt. Up ahead was an empty building, it looked like the bare skeleton of an unfinished apartment complex. The pillars were in place, but the outer walls hadn't been constructed.
"If I walk in there, I'll be walking straight into my own death," Max muttered.
Jay turned around to face him.
"We only want to talk," he replied calmly. "If we wanted to beat you up, or get rid of you, we could've done it back at school. Nothing stopped us before, and nothing will stop us now."
The group still believed they had the principal completely under their thumb, so the logic made sense. But something about the whole situation didn't sit right with Max.
If they really wanted to talk… why not just do it at school?
"A simple conversation at school wasn't possible?" Max asked.
"This isn't a school matter," Jay replied. "It's personal, and personal things need to be handled outside of school grounds."
"Max, you won't lose your life. I can promise you that," he added. "We're just students, all trying to live our lives and get by. This isn't personal, it's just business. And I'm not in the business of killing other students."
The words spoken by Jay felt surprisingly genuine. Maybe it was because of all the years Max had spent in the underworld that he was taking these events a little too seriously.
As Jay said, they were students. High school bullies. For them to go as far as murder… that wasn't something easy to do, or typical of people their age.
Max took a deep breath and walked forward, entering the construction site. That's when he saw a single person sitting on a chair, turned backward. He was relatively small, with a strange, creepy smile stretched across his face.
Is that Dipter? Max wondered. It wasn't at all how he had imagined him.
Soon after, Max found himself standing in the middle of the empty space while Jay walked over to the seated figure's side.
"Max, I don't think the two of us have officially met!" the person said. "My name's Snide, but I'm sure you already knew that."
"I'm here on behalf of Dipter," Snide continued, "he asked me to call you here for a little meeting, you see."
"We saw the video, what you did to Ko, and we have to admit, we were impressed. So we're here to ask… would you like to join us? And let me add one more thing, if you do, I promise you, you'll obtain wealth beyond your imagination."