Read Chapter 2: — THE TRANSFER

Northbridge University's School of Engineering did not often lose its best students to medicine.

It certainly did not expect to lose three at once.

Daniel Mercer sat across from Dean Edward Hall with a transfer form between them. Hall had spent forty minutes explaining what Daniel was throwing away: a scholarship, a place in a nationally ranked electronics programme, a research assistantship, and a clear path into semiconductor design.

"You are not failing engineering," Hall said. "You are exceptional at it. That matters."

"I know."

"Then why leave?"

Daniel stared at the rain running down the office window.

His sixth-form physics teacher, Marianne Cole, had died that summer after years of poorly controlled hyperthyroidism and complications from treatment. Daniel had spent the funeral angry at everyone: the doctors, the system, Marianne for hiding how ill she was, himself for knowing enough science to understand radiation yet not enough medicine to help.

He had read obsessively afterward. Thyroid physiology. Radioiodine. Imaging. Treatment pathways. Risk.

The deeper he went, the more medicine stopped looking like a foreign country.

"Because I want to understand why technology reaches some patients and not others," he said. "And because engineering is not disappearing from my life just because I learn anatomy."

Hall leaned back.

"You think you can do both."

"I think the useful problems live between them."

The dean had almost given up when another transfer request landed on his desk.

Clara Bennett.

Then a third.

Marcus Shaw.

Clara had always been the most unpredictable of the three: top marks, concert-level piano, an ability to charm lecturers and terrify committee meetings. Marcus was quieter, sharper, from a farming town where his family treated university education like a collective investment.

When Hall summoned them together, he looked from one face to the next.

"Is this a conspiracy?"

Clara smiled. "Only academically."

Marcus said nothing.

Daniel answered, "We'd like to keep selected engineering modules."

Hall stared at them, then laughed despite himself.

"Fine. Go and become doctors. But if any of you design a scanner one day, I want engineering's name on the plaque."

Daniel held out his hand.

"Deal."

Years later, Hall would keep a photograph of that handshake in his office.

At the time, it looked like three students making an impulsive decision.

It was the first step toward everything that followed.