The house was quiet by the time Garcia stopped pretending he was going to sleep.

His laptop sat open on the kitchen table, the screen the only light in the room. The drive back from Salford was still in his shoulders and behind his eyes, but every time he closed them the same line was waiting.

Mission: Sign Jamie Holt Into G11.

He read it again, then looked away from it.

Watching a boy play football was one thing. Tomorrow he had to put a real agreement in front of a careful father and ask him to hand over his sixteen-year-old son, and the man he was asking was not a fool.

Confidence won’t get me through that door. He’s read enough to know what a bad agent sounds like.

He pulled the system up.

He could not walk into that house with nothing but a smile and a folder.

He checked his status before he spent a single point.

[HOST STATUS]

Name: Gabriel Garcia

Agency: G11 Sports Management Ltd

Represented Players: 0

Skill Points: 1300

Shop Access: Level 1

Agent Stats:

— Scouting: D — 431 / 1500 SP → 451 / 1500 SP

— Negotiation: D — 391 / 1500 SP

— Contract Knowledge: D — 391 / 1500 SP

— Client Management: C- — 631 / 2000 SP → 651 / 2000 SP

— Network: Damaged — 46 / 100 → 56 / 100

— Reputation: Ruined — 1 / 100

The two weeks had moved three numbers. Scouting, Client Management, Network, each one a little less broken than it had been. Not much. Enough to see.

He opened the Level 1 shop.

[Level 1 Skill Shop]

Golden Eye: Prospect Appraisal — OwnedContract Red Flag — 250 Skill PointsCalm Table — 400 Skill PointsContact Thread — 700 Skill PointsReputation Buffer — 1,000 Skill Points

His eyes went to the second line the way they had every time he had opened this menu and not been able to afford anything but breathing.

Contract Red Flag.

For months it had been a thing he stared at from the wrong side of an empty bank account. Now the number under it was smaller than the number he had.

The problem was not spotting talent anymore. He had the talent. The problem now was the paperwork, and the most dangerous person in any bad contract was usually the desperate man who wrote it.

He confirmed the purchase.

[Purchase Confirmed] Skill Purchased: Contract Red Flag Cost: 250 Skill Points Skill Points Balance: 1300 → 1050

[Skill Acquired]

Contract Red Flag Rank: E Effect: Highlights dangerous, unfair, unclear, or exploitative clauses in representation agreements and football-related contracts. Restriction: Does not replace legal advice. Does not create contracts from nothing. Accuracy is limited at E-rank.

Does not create contracts from nothing.

Garcia almost smiled at that. The system was telling him the same thing he already knew. It would not do the work. It would only show him where the work was.

He did not start from a blank page, because nobody sensible did.

He pulled up the standard FA representation agreement, the registered-agent template, the one with the obligatory clauses already baked in. Then, before he changed a single word of it, he checked the two things that decided whether any of this was even legal.

He opened Jamie’s file and found the date of birth.

Sixteen. Turned earlier in the year. Past the first of September in the academic year he turned sixteen, which was the line in England underneath which an agent could not put a minor’s name on anything at all. Jamie was clear of it. He sat inside the narrow window where a first proper football pathway became a real thing instead of a fantasy.

Then he checked himself.

Vantage had taken his job, his contacts, and his name. They had not taken the one thing that needed an exam and a federation behind it, because that was not theirs to take. His agent’s licence was still live. So was the minor authorisation that sat underneath it, the safeguarding side of it, the part that let him work with a boy this young at all.

Ruined reputation. Valid licence.

It was a strange pair of facts to be grateful for at two in the morning, but he was grateful for both.

He started shaping the template for Jamie, and halfway down the second page the skill woke up.

DRAFT — REPRESENTATION AGREEMENT Between: Gabriel Garcia, FA Registered Football Agent, for and on behalf of G11 Sports Management Ltd And: Jamie Holt ("the Player"), a Minor And: Alan Holt ("the Parent/Legal Guardian")

3.1 Commission. The Agent shall be entitled to a reasonable percentage of... 6.4 Term. This Agreement shall renew automatically unless cancelled in writing... 8.2 Termination. This Agreement may be terminated in accordance with the Agent’s discretion... 9.1 Club Contact. The Agent may approach clubs on the Player’s behalf as the Agent sees fit...

[CONTRACT RED FLAG — E] — Clause 3.1 (Commission): "reasonable percentage" is not a number. Vague. — Clause 6.4 (Term): auto-renewing. One-sided toward agent. Note: maximum lawful term is two years. — Clause 8.2 (Termination): grounds undefined. Hard for guardian to exit. — Clause 9.1 (Club Contact): permits approach without notice to guardian.

Garcia stopped on the last one and sat back.

Clause 9.1.

It was the standard template line, the kind that lived in a thousand agreements and nobody read. It would have let him talk to any club he liked about Jamie without telling Alan a word.

It was exactly the sort of thing the agents he hated relied on.

And I’d have signed it without seeing it. Because it was already in the template.

He deleted it.

Then he went back up the page and did the rest by hand. He killed the auto-renewal and set the term to two years, the longest the rules allowed and not a day more. He made the termination grounds something a father could actually use.

And he wrote the commission clause as the truth, not a percentage dressed up as a favour.

Because the truth was the part that mattered most, and it was the part most agents buried. He could not take a penny in fees for a sixteen-year-old. Not now. Not from this. The only world in which Garcia ever got paid for Jamie Holt was one where Jamie signed a real professional contract and that contract came into force.

Until then, every hour he spent on this boy was free.

He typed it in plainly, where Alan could not miss it.

The skill had not written a word for him. It had only made him look where he would not have looked.

That was the whole point of it.

He sent the draft to Theo before he could talk himself out of it.

Theo was not a sports lawyer. Theo worked in finance and read every document like it had personally insulted him, which was exactly why Garcia wanted his eyes on it.

The reply came back close to one in the morning.

It’s 1am. Right. I can flag business risk, I can’t give you legal advice, so don’t quote me as your lawyer when this goes wrong. Three things. The kid’s sixteen. Put the guardian consent right at the front, in plain words, not buried on page four. Don’t write anything that reads like you’re promising a club. No "will secure," no "guaranteed interest." You can’t promise that, and if you write it you’ll eat it. And you do understand you’ve just drafted a contract that pays you nothing? You’re working for free on this one. As your friend in finance I’m legally obliged to tell you that’s insane.

Garcia read it twice.

I know.

Course you do. Go to bed.

He pulled the consent line up to the front of the agreement, plain and unmissable, and stripped out every phrase that leaned even slightly toward a promise he could not keep.

Then he sat for a moment with Theo’s last point, the one about working for free, and did not change a thing.

He already knew what he was doing. He was spending two years of unpaid work to find out if he had been right about one boy.

By the time he stopped, the agreement was not glamorous.

It was clean. It ran for two years and no longer. It said G11 could not speak to a single club about Jamie without Alan being told first. It said the family owed nothing up front, that there were no hidden fees, and that no fee of any kind was payable in respect of Jamie unless and until he signed a professional contract that actually came into force.

It said Alan could end the whole thing if Garcia ever hid an offer, pressured Jamie, or lied about what a club had said.

It said Jamie had to read it too, even though Alan signed as guardian. And it said the signed agreement would be lodged with the FA within fourteen days, because that was the law and because Garcia wanted a father to see he intended to follow it.

It was built to answer the questions a frightened parent would actually ask. Nothing more.

Before he closed the laptop, he checked Golden Eye out of habit.

[Skill Status]

Golden Eye:

Prospect Appraisal Rank: E

Skill Progress: 6 / 30

Valid Uses Range: 30 meters Weekly

Uses Remaining: 0 / 3

E-Rank Report Includes:

— Name, Age, Position

— Current Star Rating, Potential Star Rating

— Key Strength, Key Weakness — One

Recommended Training Focus

Restrictions: — Target must be an active footballer or registered football prospect.

— Target must be within 30 meters.

— Scan cannot be used through photos, videos, livestreams, or recorded matches.

— Report accuracy is limited at E-rank.

Zero of three.

He had spent them all at Northgate, and the week had not turned over yet. He could not lean on the system tomorrow. He could not scan Jamie again to remind himself he was right.

Good, he thought, and closed it.

Tomorrow was not a scan. Tomorrow was paperwork, trust, and a real conversation across a real table, and the system could not sit in on any of it.

He went to Jamie’s house the next morning with the agreement printed and a copy on a drive in his pocket.

Alan opened the door, nodded him in, and the house felt different from the last time he had stood in it. This was not trial talk anymore. Everyone in the room knew it.

Jamie was at the table already, quieter than his father, a glass of water in front of him he had not touched.

Garcia did not sit down like the room belonged to him.

He put the printed agreement on the table, turned it to face Alan, and pushed it across.

"Read it first," he said. "Before I say anything. All of it."

Then he sat back and let the man read.

Alan read slowly, a finger under the lines, the way people read things they have decided to take seriously.

He did not get far before he stopped.

"Do I owe you money? Now, today, for any of this?"