Chapter 37
DRILLS HALL
I didn’t expect to be patted on the back for my performance. I’m too calloused to hope for even a “good job” from Mister M.
Still, I hadn’t expected this.
Vance shook me awake long before the chime. He offered no explanation as he led me down two flights of maintenance stairs and deposited me in front of a huge set of cracked double doors.
The faded plaque read “drills hall.” The sight of it was nearly enough to drown me in my own terror. The drills hall is a place of legend. The kind that makes a girl want to shut her mouth and never open it again.
An enforcer dressed in black dragged me inside by the arm, slipping a containment cuff on my left wrist and pointing to a spot on the line. There are nine other girls present, all of them wearing brightly colored wristbands.
I’ve seen them a few times before. They denote girls who are slipping.
Flagged. They haven’t been removed from the program yet, but they aren’t like the rest of us.
They’re unstable, unsafe, and emotionally unregulated.
Instead of lectures, they attend drills hall.
Supposedly, it’s to train control under pressure and resilience.
In reality, it’s the ultimate punishment.
Only, I don’t have a wristband. I don’t have any documented flags. According to V, I’m about as close to a perfect subject as one can get.
But I’m here.
Because Mister M wanted me here.
Because I performed too well under the guidance of someone who wasn’t him.
The whistle screeches, sending my thoughts scattering.
“Sequence nine,” barks the instructor. He’s a burly man I don’t recognize, with a long scar that runs from his jaw to the base of his neck. “Go.”
My limbs know this routine better than my head does. I worked this drill in private instruction at least a hundred times.
To mess up now would take effort.
I guess I shouldn’t speak for the others.
A girl beside me stumbles on the first pivot.
Another turns the wrong way. A third forgets the sequence entirely and gets a shock pulse from her cuff for it.
I don’t flinch. I finish on time with a smile on my face.
The picture of obedience. The instructor doesn’t even glance my way.
By the seventh repetition, the girl to my left is sniffling. The one on my right has stopped blinking entirely. I know that look. It’s the same one Brielle gets when she stumbles in lectures. Panic masquerading as stillness.
I’m not sure I’m blinking anymore either. Just panting. And sweating. It’s awful. Grating. Miserable. But I won’t let it get to me. I suck in a deep breath—
The whistle slices the air.
“Again.”
I obey, mouthing the counts to stay conscious. Heat builds behind my eyes, sending tingling sparks down to my fingertips.
I complete every sequence flawlessly.
And still, I’m made to run it again.
Two hours later, I’m sat on an uneven bench in the hallway. The white uniform clings to my back with sweat. My hands tremble enough to make the water bottle in my fingers crinkle with every squeeze.
The girl beside me has blood on her knee from a bad fall that the instructor didn’t even bat an eye at. Her lips are cracked, but she’s made no effort to sip from the water they handed us.
She doesn’t look at me when she says, “You’re not like us.”
I blink a few times in an effort to make the room stop swaying. “What?”
“You’re not flagged.” She shakes her wrist twice, drawing my eyes to the black band. “Why are you here?”
I could tell her the truth. That this is punishment, not protocol. That I did everything right, and it wasn’t enough for my power-hungry mentor, who supposedly wants what’s best for me. Instead, I choke down another sip of water, forcing my breathing to steady.
“I don’t know.”
The door at the end of the hall snaps open with a fervor. I don’t look up, but I can feel a sharp shift in the air. Followed by the distinct click of shoes that aren’t built for patrol.
Mister V.
He’s not supposed to be here. He was scheduled for private instruction today. Where I should’ve been at least an hour ago.
He must’ve been called away, probably responding to whatever chaos is always befalling his tablet. That’s the only conclusion I can make, and the only one I’ll accept. I mean, the man is a walking pocket watch; there’s no way he waited over an hour before questioning where I was.
I let myself glance at him. His jacket is half-buttoned, his hair slightly ruffled.
The tablet in his hand is vibrating nonstop with alerts, screen flashing red like a heartbeat.
His eyes scan the hallway. The benches. The girls.
Me. He freezes, taking me in. Then he moves.
Fast, controlled, but not in the calm way I’ve grown so used to.
He stops dead in front of the instructor.
“214 wasn’t authorized to be here. I’m removing her,” V says, voice steel. The instructor shifts his stance, wildly uncomfortable. V’s grip tightens on the edge of his tablet until his knuckles match the tiles beneath us.
He moves to kneel in front of me, tension radiating off him like heat. His eyes rake over my face, the hair stuck to my neck, the tattered white uniform, the dried sweat on my collarbone.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he whispers like he’s forcing each word out past something sharp in his throat.
“I passed every drill,” I say. It doesn’t feel like an achievement; more like drowning with extra steps.
“I know. You shouldn’t have been made to.”
I look away, because he’s right, and looking at him feels like admitting to it. “It’s fine.”
“No, it isn’t.”
He stands, extending a hand to help me up, deliberately ignoring the half-dozen enforcers staring at him like he’s grown a second head. I don’t let myself relax until the incessant beeping and tension of the drills hall fades.
V takes a left down a side hallway that leads God-knows-where. I don’t question him, because I’m not about to ruin the first half-decent thing that’s happened to me all day.