In a world where knowledge outranks wealth... would you die to protect it?

[Sophie]

New YA mystery, dual POV - hope you'll enjoy getting to know Jason and Eva!

Summary:
In Jason's world, money buys everything—including his place at London's elite St Mary's sixth form college. Scholarship student Eva, on the other hand, earned her place through hard work, and is constantly reminded that she doesn't belong.

When Jason's attempt to skip class backfires, he and Eva are thrown into an alternate London where everything they know about social status is reversed. Here, your worth isn't measured by your bank account, but by your knowledge and intellectual curiosity.

As Eva thrives in this new reality, Jason discovers something unsettling: seven people died mysteriously the day they arrived. Convinced their presence somehow caused these deaths, he starts digging—only to uncover two rival secret societies. One protects this knowledge-based society, while the other plots to transform it into a world where money determines status.

With lives at stake, Jason and Eva must overcome their mutual dislike to uncover the truth. And that mysterious boy with the captivating smile? He might just hold the answers Jason needs—if Jason can trust him.

First Chapter:

Jason yawned, stretched on his creaky stool, and dropped his chin in his hand.
If only someone could pull the fire alarm. Or jam their fist on the big ‘Emergency’ button on the wall behind the teacher’s desk.
He sighed and the chemistry teacher shot him a dirty look. “Now, pay attention, there are only seven months left before your A⁠⁠-⁠⁠levels, and this is likely to come up.”
Yadda yadda yadda. A⁠-⁠levels were months away, why did Mr Walker have to go on and on about them? Who cared?
“You must wait until the nitric acid starts bubbling up before adding the copper, but you must be patient, and keep it on a low heat. And do not add any more acid than indicated.”
Why? That was the thing with teachers. They always focused on what not to do, but never told you what would happen if you didn’t follow the rules.
If only he was sat with one of his friends. Why did he have to be stuck, in the front row no less, with nerdy Eva? Jack and Ajay had been paired together at the back of the class, so were Anna and Kenashi, so why did he have to be with the biggest bore and least attractive female of the class? It wasn’t fair.
On the upside, he was pretty much guaranteed an A, all that girl seemed to do was study. Not that she had many other options, she had no friends. Even the new girl seemed to know better than to befriend Eva⁠⁠-⁠⁠the⁠⁠-⁠⁠weirdo from the poorest estate in London.
He knew that she’d entered St Mary’s on a scholarship, and boy did it show. Her shoes were clean, but so worn he could almost see her socks through the leather, her tie was frayed at the edges, and while her shirt was white, he could tell just by looking at it that it was the cheapest, most man⁠-⁠made material there was. How had she not caught on fire when she’d leaned to turn on the Bunsen burner? Jason’s shirt on the other hand was tailor⁠-⁠made in a cotton⁠-⁠silk blend, and he had twenty others like this one in his huge cedar⁠-⁠lined walk⁠-⁠in closet. That was the right way to live.
Jason yawned again. Why did they even have class on Friday afternoons? His eyes glazed over the whiteboard with the instructions for the experiment clearly laid out. Maybe he could have some fun at Eva’s expense, it wasn’t as if he needed good grades. At best, the class would get dismissed and he’d get an early weekend. At worst . . .
Jason frowned. He couldn’t think of anything worse than being stuck in double⁠-⁠period chemistry.
Eva, following the teacher’s instruction, carefully poured a tiny amount of nitric acid in the Erlenmeyer flask and reduced the heat from the Bunsen burner underneath. Jason pulled out his smartphone from his back pocket and texted Ajay under the cover of the lab table.
Seconds later, Ajay was arguing loudly with Jack, distracting the entire class.
As soon as Eva had turned her back, Jason filled the flask with nitric acid, increased the heat as high as it would go, and added all the pennies that had been rattling in his pockets for good measure.
A minute later, thick brown smoke mushroomed over the bench and spread across the classroom.
Eva grabbed Jason’s arm. “What did you do? What’s wrong with you?”
“Everybody out!” Mr Walker’s shout rose above the brouhaha.
In less time than it took the teacher to waddle back from the rear of the classroom to his desk, all the students had evacuated the lab. All, except Jason, whom Eva wouldn’t let go of and whom she carried on berating.
The teacher, panting from the effort of walking faster than he was used to, pressed hard on the ‘Emergency’ button, closing vents and windows automatically and triggering extractor fans in the ceiling before turning a small key in a near invisible hole next to the button.
He looked around and started at the sight of Eva and Jason. “What are you doing here? Get out, fast.”
Jason felt dizzy. He shoved Eva away and strode towards the door, arms extended to guide himself through the brown fog. Eva grabbed the back of his lab coat. Whatever. He just wanted to get out before getting seriously poisoned. As far as pranks went, he would avoid those that generated gases in the future. Unless it involved farting, of course.
In the corridor, he looked back through the lab door’s glass panel. He’d achieved his objective. No way they were going back in.
“Since our lab is not currently accessible,” the teacher said placidly, “we’ll use the one across the hall.”
All the students cheered and started walking behind him like ducklings after their mother.
Jason stood alone in the middle of the hallway, dumbfounded.
What was wrong with those guys? Everybody hated chemistry, it was Friday afternoon, they should have groaned when the teacher had announced class would resume, and yet they were cheering?
He looked around, debating on what to do. Skip class? Maybe no one would notice? He turned on his heels.
“Jason.”
Busted.
“Jason, we’re in this lab,” Mr Walker’s voice said behind him.
He turned around and dragged his feet to the lab. A smile hovered on the teacher’s lips, indicating he had not been fooled. “I believe you had merely not noticed which lab we were in, and wouldn’t have dreamt of skipping class due to the minor incident we had in the first lab, correct?”
Jason shrugged and looked around. Most benches at the back were still available.
Weird.
These were prime seats, why would anyone choose to sit at the front when they could sit at the back? Even stranger, two girls appeared to be fighting to be Eva’s lab partner. Who in their right mind would willingly sit next to her? Jason shook his head and sat in the last row, crossing his arms firmly in front of him.
Seemingly oblivious to this display of disinterest, the teacher carried on with the lesson, almost as if nothing had happened.
When the bell finally rang, signalling the weekend, Jason bolted from his seat, grabbed his things and walked as fast as he could to get out. He opened the door and paused, surprised by the silence behind him. All his classmates were still in their seats, studiously finishing up their experiments, none of them showing any signs of packing up, none of them in a hurry to leave. Jason wondered if the teacher had made some sort of threat, doled out a punishment in retribution for the prank when Jason was still in the corridor, debating on how best to skip class.
But no, the teacher didn’t say anything, only raising a bushy greying eyebrow at him, as if to question his hurried departure. Jason shrugged and left, slamming the door behind him. But the door didn’t slam, it closed quietly behind him. When had they installed door closers?
Jason didn’t let the thought bother him for long. Two seconds later, he was striding towards the main entrance, his footsteps echoing through the halls. Halfway to the front doors, a thought hit him and he stopped dead in his track. He looked around.
There were a few students walking around, but nowhere near as many as there should have been at the end of the school day. And the corridors were quiet. Fridays at three forty⁠-⁠five in the afternoon usually were the loudest the school’s hallways got, all the students erupting from the classrooms like torrents of lava flowing out of a volcano’s crater, eager to get out and start their blessed weekend, sixty⁠-⁠four hours of free time, only occasionally interrupted by homework.
Of course, Jason never let something as trivial as homework disrupt his downtime. He was only at that school because his parents had demanded it, sending the school a very generous donation to bypass the entrance exam, and he was still in that school, despite never studying or ever turning in any homework, because there were more donations coming the school’s way every semester.
How snobbish were his parents really, wanting him to be at St Mary’s because that was where all the kids of captains of industry, rock stars, and other aristocracy progenies went?
Their theory was that money called money, and Jason needed to network. They’d followed this logic since preschool, and the kids saw Jason as one of them.
His parents were rich, sure, but not eye⁠-⁠wateringly rich like most of the teenagers there. One of them got a Ferrari, a fifty⁠-⁠five⁠-⁠feet yacht, a two⁠-⁠seater helicopter, and a private island in the Bahamas for his seventeenth birthday, and the guy had complained that the Ferrari was red, when he’d asked for black, and the helicopter was only a two⁠-⁠seater. Jason rolled his eyes at the memory. He was slumming it with a twenty⁠-⁠four seven on⁠-⁠call car service.
At the top of the front steps, Jason paused and exhaled. He’d finally gotten out of the wretched school.
He rubbed his eyes.
Where the large car park had stood only a few hours ago, there now was a vast expanse of grass, a huge bicycle shed, and a comparatively smallish car park filled with old Japanese pieces of crap, and tiny, completely unremarkable European cars that couldn’t cost more than a week’s allowance.
That was too weird to not be mentioned, and Jason made a note to call his GP when he got home. He had to be hallucinating. Maybe the gas he’d created earlier was poisonous or hallucinogen or something. This was way too elaborate to be a prank his friends were playing on him.