The organizers had done their best to make the group draw look grand.
The main stage at the end of the hall had been raised another few feet since Team Nemean entered, and now the lights above it had shifted into focused gold-white beams that made the black backdrop and league insignia look almost sacred. The ball machine itself stood on a pedestal of smoked glass and brushed steel, a machine built to look half sports theater, half military ritual. Transparent chambers held spheres glowing with LED, each marked with team identifiers and group brackets. Screens behind the stage displayed rankings, sponsor logos, and the current list of qualified teams from the East Coast.
The host, a man with a voice too smooth and smile too polished to be genuine, spoke into the mic about transparency, fairness, and the dawn of a new era in competitive diver culture. Nobody important cared. The divers watched the brackets, the sponsors watched their screens for investment and dividends. The reporters watched for the tiniest of sniff of drama.
Phong watched people.
The draw procedure required one representative from each team.
Dominic stood near the front with Team Nemean, arms crossed, looking toward the stage with the focus of a man with roots in pro-combat sport even before the dungeon. Then, without warning, he looked sideways. At Phong.
Phong immediately knew he was about to suffer.
Dominic nodded once toward the stage.
"You go."
Phong blinked. "What?"
"You represent Team Nemean for the draw."
That got the attention of everyone near them.
Alex turned first. Then Janet. Then Jake and Jack. Joanne looked delighted instantly. Emma did not even pretend to be surprised. Séline, Camille, and Alexei all looked toward him. One by one, every single person on the team gave him the same answer in a different expression.
Go.
Dominic said it again, louder this time, because he knew the microphones nearby would catch it.
"Phong will represent Team Nemean."
The media reacted like sharks getting the smell of blood.
A ripple moved through the hall so quickly it might as well have been visible. Reporters leaned toward one another. Camera operators shifted. Phones went up. Analysts already began whispering theories into earpieces or dictating them into voice notes.
An hour ago, to the wider public, Phong had been the picture of nepotism.
A level 1 farmer who somehow landed the position of coach on what many already considered one of the strongest teams, if not the strongest, on the East Coast. To a shallow audience, the story had seemed obvious. He was dating Alexandra Vogel. He was close to Dominic Torres. He had found the right people, at the right time, and been carried into relevance on the back of stronger names.
Now the narrative cracked.
Because Team Nemean was not hesitating.
Not one of them. From Alex and Dominic, to the Js, Emma, the French duo, and the Cuban paladin. None of them dislike the idea, none of them was against making Phong their representative.
That kind of trust, so open and so public, could not be explained by romance or pity alone. People saw that. Cameras saw that. The reporters' instincts caught the shift right away.
The new story formed in real time:
Phong Tran was not dead weight, but was team Nemean's secret weapon.
Phong hated how believable that sounded.
He also understood why Dominic did it: Visibility.
A public record of importance.
If Daniel Harlan died later, and if the wrong people started looking back through footage and politics and motive, this moment would matter. First, it would be Phong's alibi. Second, it would be team Nemean message to the world: Phong was an important member of theirs, touched him and the matter would not be dealt with so easily.
Still, Phong looked at Dominic one last time with the eyes of a man betrayed by friendship.
Dominic only grinned faintly and jerked his chin toward the stage.
So, Phong went. Dominic was the team captain after all.
He felt the whole room watching him as he crossed the polished floor.
The air near the stage was colder, the kind of cold venues used to keep expensive lights and expensive people from sweating through expensive fabric. Staff moved around the edges with tablets in hand. Security stood just outside the camera arc. Sponsors occupied the better rows of seating with the confidence of those who had paid for proximity and intended to use it.
That was where Phong saw them.
Daniel Harlan.
Stephan Ellison.
They were sitting together in the "esteemed sponsors" section.
Stephan Ellison wore wealth with the same easy softness Olen wore ego. His suit was understated in the way only men with very old money could manage, and when Phong's gaze touched him, Stephan somehow felt it. He turned, their eyes met, and Stephan gave him the faintest smile and a small nod.
Phong would need a Venn diagram just to describe that look. There was industrialize warmth and friendliness, there was assessment like someone was analyzing the worth of a not yet publicly available product. And there was the coyness of someone who had once tried to blackmail the secret of camp Stymphalian out of him through old friends and acquaintances.
That was the look a businessman might use to greet a golden goose whose market value he had not finished calculating.
Phong felt a chill go through him.
Then there was Daniel.
Daniel Harlan looked at Phong the way some people looked at rats in restaurant alleys. It was filled to the brim with contempt mixed with the dull offense of being forced to share sightlines with something beneath him.
Then Daniel leaned slightly and said something to the man next to him.
Phong did not hear the words.
He did not need to.
That face, that gesture, that tone of dismissal. It was enough to make old heat rise in his chest, hot and immediate and familiar. For one dangerous instant he saw flashes of hospital white, of his uncle and aunt funeral, of Josh's face twisted by violence and privilege, of every quiet humiliation that followed because powerful men decided some lives were negotiable.
He swallowed it.
Not here.
Not on camera.
Else what he had prepared all this time would be in vain.
The other team representatives joined him near the draw pedestal.
Josh stepped into place looking polished and composed, Brooklyn's Knights crest on his lapel and a smile on his face built for public consumption. Olen took his place too, flanked by gold and white branding so clean it looked rehearsed by a committee. Then the last man in their draw cluster stepped forward.
He was black, solidly built, older in the face than Josh and Olen, with the calm of someone who had survived enough not to be impressed by rich kids and stage lights. He offered a hand first.
"Bruce William," he said. "Rhode's Gotham."
Phong took it and nodded.
"Phong Tran."
Bruce's grip was firm without showing off.
Unlike Josh.
Josh waited just long enough to make sure cameras were ready before stepping a little closer to Phong. The smile he wore was perfect. That was what made it ugly.
"Phong," he said. "I'm sorry for your loss."
His voice was soft enough to sound sincere. The fury that rolled through Phong at that was so sudden and sharp it almost made his vision narrow.
Josh kept going.
"And I'm glad you recovered so well through the Harlans' sponsorship."
There it was.
The twist of the knife wrapped in public thiefcant.
Josh was trying to do several things at once. Force Phong to react emotionally on camera. Remind anyone listening of the public narrative that the Harlans had "helped" after tragedy. Reduce years of blood and grief into charitable optics. Make Phong look unstable if he snapped, ungrateful if he objected, and small if he said nothing.
Classic Josh. Classic Harlan cruelty.
It was never enough for them to hurt people, they needed the story afterward too.
Phong looked at him.
Really looked.
At the good suit, the clean smile. At the eyes that still held that same old mixture of violence and self-love. And in that instant, the hatred between them did not feel like rivalry. It felt older, more total. Josh was not merely his enemy. He was the human face of everything Phong had lost because power chose convenience over conscience.
If Phong lunged, cameras would eat him alive.
If he cursed, the clip would run for days.
If he denied the sponsorship narrative too directly, commentators would call it bitterness.
So he answered the only way Josh had not prepared for.
Sincerely.
"I hope the Harlans get everything they deserve for what they've done."
He said it plainly. Didn't raised his voice. Kept his voice stable. Didn't make it performative.
Phong sounded sincere enough that it cut deeper than anger would have.
Josh's smile twitched. Only once. But it twitched.
Because there was no easy narrative to spin from that. No wild outburst to package. No messy soundbite. Phong gave him statement calm enough to look almost philosophical, and sharp enough that anyone with a functioning soul could hear the truth inside it.
Bruce William, standing half a step away, glanced sideways, but remained silent.
Olen pretended to study the draw machine, though Phong caught the satisfaction in the corner of his mouth. Olen enjoyed any moment where Josh and Phong bled at each other, even quietly. It made him feel safer, as if being near one predator made him invisible to the other.
The host called their group forward.
The procedure was simple on paper. Each representative stepped up in order, activated the draw mechanism, and received a ball with group designation written on it. The same information would also be projected on the rear screen and confirmed by the league official beside the apparatus. The public loved this kind of ceremony. The divers only cared whether they would get a survivable path to the double elimination rounds.
Josh drew first. The sphere glowed, spun, and released Brooklyn's Knights into group A-3,
Olen went after him and drew the Golden Bridge Warriors into B-6.
Bruce drew Rhode's Gotham into G-2.
Then it was Phong's turn.
He put his hand on the interface and felt, absurdly, like the whole room leaned in.
The machine hummed. Light moved through the transparent chamber. Then the result flashed onto the rear display in clean gold letters.
D1.
The hall erupted into noise.
The reporters and the organizers looked like they were prepared to cry.
Because Team Nemean had been placed cleanly away from Brooklyn's Knights, away from the Golden Bridge Warriors, and away from Rhode's Gotham in the group stage.
No immediate showdown with Josh.
No early spectacle with Olen.
No opening bloodbath against one of the stronger mid-tier dark horse teams.
The commentators loved it instantly, though they still masked it with performative pity. Narratives bloomed like mold on bread. Josh, Olen, Alex and Emma were all crowd favorite, so having them eliminating the other too soon would be bad for the views and engagement.
Phong stepped back from the machine and let the noise pass through him.
Behind the stage lights, he could feel Daniel Harlan's gaze again.
This time, Phong did not look back right away.
He kept his eyes on the screen where D1 still glowed under Team Nemean's name.
Publicly, this was a clean result.
Strategically, it was better too.
He finally turned his head.
Daniel was still watching him. Stephan Ellison too. One with contempt. The other with curiosity.
Phong met Daniel's stare for exactly one second, then looked away first on purpose, not out of submission but because he refused to give the man even the satisfaction of a prolonged exchange.
Around them, the draw continued. Other teams moved up. More names filled the screen. More narratives got born and sold by the second.
But for Phong, the important things had already happened.
He had his alibi.
Now, he just have to wait for Daniel to step into the ambush of 500 Timatoes prepared for him.