The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 554

Chapter 554: 554 | A Ghost Town with a Curfew

Dr. Voss signed off on my release with the specific reluctance of someone who knew the numbers didn’t add up but had decided to stop asking questions she didn’t want documented answers to.

She handed me a folder full of follow-up instructions, aftercare protocols, and a prescription for pain medication I wouldn’t need because my body had already decided that pain was a suggestion rather than a requirement.

"Take it easy," she said, which was doctor-speak for "I know you won’t but I have to say it anyway."

"Always do."

She gave me a look that suggested she had access to the monitor data from two nights ago and had formed opinions about it. I decided not to explore that particular conversational thread.

The hallway outside the medical wing was empty. Not the normal kind of empty, where people happened to be somewhere else at the moment. This was the specific emptiness of a building that had been deliberately evacuated, the silence of a space that should have been full of noise and movement and the constant low-level chaos of several hundred teenagers learning to be Heroes.

I walked.

My footsteps echoed off the white concrete walls in a way they never had before. The fluorescent lighting hummed overhead, casting that particular institutional glow that made everything look slightly more sterile than it actually was.

The air smelled like cleaning solution and the faint chemical sweetness of whatever they used to sanitize surfaces after medical emergencies.

Emergency security protocols. That’s what Juno had said. Campus closed until Monday. Essential personnel only.

The doors at the end of the medical wing opened onto the main Academic Spine, and I stopped in the threshold just to look at it.

The corridor stretched east-west through the center of campus, glass and white concrete and clean geometry, the specific aesthetic of a place that had been building toward a standard for sixty-one years.

Natural light poured through the floor-to-ceiling windows on the south side, throwing long rectangles of sunlight across the polished floor. The shadows were wrong. Too sharp. Too defined. There was nobody walking through them to soften the edges.

So this is what an empty Halloran looks like. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

I’d seen the campus during orientation week, when it was so full of bodies that you couldn’t walk ten feet without bumping into someone. I’d seen it during the first week of classes, when the initial chaos had settled into something resembling a routine but the hallways still buzzed with the energy of people figuring out where they were supposed to be.

I’d seen it during the Invitational, when the entire place had been packed with spectators and media and agency scouts treating teenage Heroes like investment opportunities.

I had never seen it like this.

The benches along the windows sat empty. The notice boards were still covered with flyers for clubs and events that wouldn’t happen for at least another week.

The small coffee kiosk near the intersection with the northern corridor had its shutters down, and the absence of the smell of brewing coffee felt like a personal insult.

Someone had left a single textbook on one of the study tables, spine up, pages splayed, like whoever was reading it had stepped away for just a moment and would be right back.

They wouldn’t be right back. Nobody would be right back for days.

I pulled out my phone and typed a message to Sloane.

discharged. campus is a ghost town. where are you?

mom had a meeting in verano. we’re coming to get you. 2 hours out.

i’ll find something to do

don’t get into trouble

when have i ever gotten into trouble

literally always.

that’s slander

it’s documentation.

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