Thirty miles north of the Bottoms, the morning smelled entirely different.
Inside the climate-controlled indoor batting facility of Riverside Academy, the air was conditioned to a crisp, humidity-free sixty-eight degrees. Fluorescent light panels hummed overhead, casting a shadowless, clinical glow across the synthetic turf. High-speed digital cameras mounted on black carbon-fiber tripods surrounded the home plate area, their small red indicator lights blinking rhythmically as they recorded high-frame-rate biomechanical data.
Harrison Vance stood behind an L-shaped protective screen, arms crossed over his chest. His polo shirt was fresh, his hair immaculately groomed, but beneath his eyes were dark, purple bruises of sleeplessness. His lower back was wrapped tightly in an elastic medical brace concealed beneath his trousers, thrumming with the dull ache of the violent miss he had suffered twenty-four hours earlier.
Standing in the left-handed batter's box was Julian Croft.
At seventeen, Julian looked like an anatomical diagram of a modern athletic prodigy. He was six feet three inches tall, with broad, square shoulders that tapered into a lean, muscular waist. His skin was golden-tan from summers on private Florida training circuits, his blond hair cut short and neat beneath a custom-molded matte navy helmet. He wore a brand-new Rawlings batting glove on each hand, the soft sheepskin leather white as freshly fallen snow.
"Set the machine to ninety-two," Harrison ordered the young assistant standing beside the digital control panel. "Two-seam run. Six inches inside off the plate. Let's see him clear his hips."
The machine coughed—a pneumatic hiss-thump—and a pristine yellow dimpled training ball shot out of the chute at ninety-two point four miles an hour, bearing down on Julian’s hands.
Julian didn't flinch. His lower body initiated the swing with explosive, robotic precision. His hips rotated open in a violent, synchronized snap, clearing his hands inside the path of the ball. The aluminum-composite bat tore through the air with a deafening, metallic PING.
The ball ricocheted off the protective netting four hundred feet away at an exit velocity of one hundred and six miles per hour.
"One hundred and six point eight," the assistant read off the digital monitor. "Launch angle: twenty-two degrees. That’s forty rows back in right-center at the stadium, Coach."
Julian lowered his bat, adjusting the Velcro straps of his gloves. His face was entirely devoid of joy. He looked up at Harrison, his pale blue eyes cold and demanding.
"It felt heavy off the end," Julian said, his voice flat, modulated, carrying the crisp diction of prep-school debate halls. "The barrel was an eighth of an inch below the equator. The machine isn't giving me late horizontal bite. It’s too true."
"You cleared the hands clean, Julian," Harrison said, stepping out from behind the screen and offering a practiced, encouraging smile that failed to reach his eyes. "That ball is out of any park in the state. The scouts in Charlotte are looking for projectable power to the pull side. You give them three barrels like that in the showcase game, and the bonus pool starts at two-point-two million."
"I don't care about the bonus pool," Julian said, tapping the black composite plate with the tip of his bat. "My father spoke to Arthur Vance this morning. He said Arthur refused to commit the Atlanta organization to our draft slot. He said Arthur had a wild card on his board."
Harrison froze. The smile vanished from his face as if it had been wiped away with a dry rag. The dull throb in his lower back suddenly flared hot.
"Arthur is seventy years old, Julian," Harrison spat, his voice dropping into a harsh, defensive register. "He’s a relic from the bus-league era. He sits in the back of the bleachers eating sunflower seeds and writing notes on paper napkins while the rest of the league uses computerized spin-axis tracking. He doesn't make the final call on draft day. The front office does. And the front office looks at my data."
Julian looked at his coach with a cool, penetrating detachment that made Harrison feel naked.
"My father said Arthur was at our field yesterday afternoon," Julian said quietly. "He said Arthur watched you take three swings against a boy with no shoes. He said you ended up in the dirt."
The indoor facility went dead silent. The young assistant at the control panel immediately turned his head toward the floor, pretending to calibrate the radar sensors.
Harrison’s throat constricted. He could feel the blood rising into his ears, a hot, suffocating rush of humiliation that made his fingers twitch against his thighs.
"Arthur is a bitter old man who likes fairy tales," Harrison whispered, leaning forward until he was two feet from Julian’s helmet. "He found some stray off the streets throwing scuffed balls with illegal foreign substances. It was a circus trick, Julian. A parlor game. It has nothing to do with real baseball."
Julian didn't blink. He raised his bat, stepping back into the batter’s box with smooth, terrifying deliberation.
"If he has nothing to do with real baseball, Coach," Julian said, setting his spikes into the synthetic turf, "then tell your uncle to bring him to Charlotte. Put him on the mound against me in the seventh inning. Let me hit one of his circus tricks over the scoreboard."
Julian looked Harrison dead in the eye, his lip curling into a thin, merciless smirk that was an exact mirror of the one Harrison had worn on the baseline the day before.
"Or are you afraid a stray from the Bottoms has a better arm than your million-dollar program?"
Harrison stood rooted to the turf, his fingernails biting into his palms through his pockets, unable to utter a single word as the pneumatic machine coughed again, filling the empty room with another violent, shattering crack of metal on leather.