The Trial Contract

The team was called Northline Pulse. Nobody expected much from them. They had no famous sponsor, no celebrity player, no glossy boot camp facility. Their practice room sat in a tired office building outside Chicago, next to an accounting firm. The hallway always smelled like stale coffee and printer paper. The one thing that looked serious was a whiteboard covered in the weekly schedule: Aim Training. VOD Review. Drop Spot Planning. Loot Route. Rotation Route. Endgame Simulation. Scrim. Storm Timing. Replay Review. Coach David Brooks did not talk much. He looked like someone who had been tired for years. On Chase’s first day, David slid a spreadsheet across the table and said, “Your Ranked numbers are good. Your first-shot accuracy is good.