Chapter 48
Chapter forty-eight
Annalise
My head leans against Matt’s shoulder while we wait for everyone else to meet us at dinner.
“Can’t fall asleep yet, Lee. You need to eat to replenish your body after the beating you took in Vanguard,” he playfully chides, making my body bounce.
“You gave me that beating!” I argue before using him as a pillow again. “Just wake me up when they all get here,” I pretend to whine, but really, I’m just so damn content after getting to spend the entire day, other than combat class this morning, with my best friend.
Sasha’s been pulled for a “special project” in spell casting this week, so today was the first day we’ve had a full ‘us’ day since we got here. It was great getting to just be our old, stupid selves when we weren’t in classes.
Even though Matt hasn’t officially bonded yet, we snuck in a short flight over lunch, armed with a bag of snacks, Tyr, and Zest—the cutest yellow dragon, her scales dusted with a few playful twists of red.
I’m convinced they’ll lock in the bond any day now since she’s been refusing to fly with anyone else.
Matt’s head tilts to rest on the top of mine, “Go on then, close your eyes, brat. Love you.”
“Love you, too, Mattey,” I smile to myself as my eyes fall shut.
“Time to wake up,” Josh sing-songs from the other side of the table.
“I’m not even asleep,” I yawn, opening my eyes to see Aiden, James, and Antonio standing around him, waiting for us to get up so we can get in line for food.
“I’ll never understand how you two can just fall asleep like that. I need the room completely dark with a sound machine running,” James says, shaking his head at us.
I think back to the long nights of Matt and me taking turns sleeping or only getting in short naps between my dad's drunken outbursts. Sleeping almost on demand became a key to surviving.
Shaking the memories away, I round the table and hip bump him. “We can’t all work in a fancy lab, James. Some of us are slummers who have to sleep in the field when we can.”
“I don’t feel guilty. You all made your choices.”
“Touche,” Aiden says, pulling me into his side. “Good nap, Sweetheart?”
“Mmmhmm. Combat Class and Vanguard just sucked today.”
“Learn anything good?”
“Nope. Korr’s still a dick, and I suck at land navigation.”
“What happened during land nav?"
“Noth—”
“You should have seen it!” Matt cuts me off, excited to tell everyone what happened, just like I knew he would be. “She took a spiderweb to the mouth, freaked out, and then tripped and rolled down a steep embankment!”
All eyes turn to stare at me, and then they all burst into laughter. I only manage to keep my straight face for a second before I can’t help but join them.
The training hall is dim, other than the illusion pillars that glow faintly when I enter Environmental Tactics.
Captain Varin stands just in front of the illusion and waits until everyone has made it inside.
“This will not be like previous simulations,” she says, not even bothering with a “Hello, recruits,” or anything, which is completely unlike her.
Every conversation in the room dies immediately.
Varin gestures to the row of pillars behind her. Their runes pulse like a heartbeat under the floor.
“Three weeks ago, West of Fairwick, a village was raided. A few families were taken across the border. Scouts tracked their captors through a marsh corridor. They used natural hazards combined with enchanted projection sounds and terrain illusions to confuse search and rescue teams.”
She begins to pace, slow and deliberate.
“This is a recreation of the area that was attacked. You will hear voices in the simulation. Some will sound like adults,” she pauses, and it feels like she’s preparing herself for what she has to tell us next.
“Some will sound like children, and some may even sound like your friends or family crying for help.”
My breath catches. “Gods,” I mutter under my breath.
Varin hears me, giving a somber nod before continuing, “These enchanted projections were designed by Clowessian forces to draw our teams off the safe paths and into capture points.”
“Your objectives: identify decoys. Discern the enchanted projections from the ‘real’ voices. Recover the illusions of missing people by marking their location with a flare stone. Once they’ve been marked, their illusion will disintegrate. And finally, return without losing a teammate.”
She steps closer, the overhead lights catching the silver strands in her hair. “Listen to me carefully. You cannot follow every cry,” she says. “Every second you hesitate, someone dies. And in a real operation, you and your team will die. Or worse, you will doom the people you came to save.”
She gestures to the racks of gear.
“You have light loadouts: water, flare stones, rope, your daggers, and a single comm rune. Remember, this is a rescue simulation, not a hero fantasy.”
Renn scoffs quietly. “What if we get ambushed?”
Varin doesn’t turn, but her answer is sharp. “Then you failed to observe your surroundings. And you fail.”
She gestures to the far side of the hall where the entrance gateway shimmers to life, an arch of churning grey fog, thick and suffocating.
“You will enter in teams of four. These teams have been put together based on the tracks you have narrowed down and who I’ve seen you work well with in the past. Team One, step forward. ”
That’s us.
Me.
Rhyan Reed.
Mateo Conti.
Reyna Ashford.
“Your timer begins the moment you cross the threshold.”
Varin walks with us to the pillars, “Inside the corridor, your eyes will lie. Your ears will lie. Your footing will lie. The only thing that will not lie—” She taps her sternum. “—is what you already know.”
A chill needles through me, and Varin stops at the gateway as the marsh illusion flickers into clarity: twisted cypress roots, cloudy water, and dense fog clinging low to the ground.
“Team One,” Varin says. “Enter.”
Mateo swallows hard. “Well. No turning back.”
The stone floor becomes sinking mud, and I’m instantly reminded of my first simulation.
Rhyan lets out a low whistle. “Varin wasn’t kidding, this is insane.”
“It’s all so real,” Reyna says, sweeping her weapon’s hilt across a patch of reeds, watching them ripple.
Mateo studies the sky, “Do you think the time is the same as back at Scion, or did it change for the simulation? Varin said the last known point was north-east.”
“Help—please … someone? I’m lost…” The child’s voice echoes through the marsh, small and trembling.
Mateo jolts. “She sounds so close. Should we…”
“No,” Rhyan snaps. “It’s a projection. They want us to run toward it.”
A voice comes again, this time older and more panicked. “Please…my child…my baby…help!”
Rhyan’s head jerks toward the sound. “That one sounded legit.”
“It sounded staged,” Reyna counters. “Listen to the echo. It’s bouncing wrong.”
Mateo raises his flarestone slightly. “Should I mark our position?”
“No,” I say on impulse. “Not unless we make contact with one of our 'living simulations.’”
“Fuck, this is heartbreaking. Do you think any of those were real voices captured from another attack?” Reyna asks, and I shiver at the thought.
“I don’t know. And honestly? I don’t think I want to,” I admit, knowing I’m going to have a hard enough time not focusing on the voices when I think they are all sound projections.
A twig snaps behind us.
We spin, mud splashing, only to see the fog shift again, forming the vague outline of a kneeling figure, shoulders shaking, hair matted and dripping.
The figure lifts its head, its pitch-black eyes stare back at us as Reyna unsheathes her dagger halfway.
The figure flickers, then distorts and melts into mist.
“Just a decoy,” Mateo sighs in relief.
Voices begin layering around us—crying, shouting, whispering. A chorus of wrongness.
“How do you think we’re supposed to tell which ones are real?” Rhyan asks.
Reyna glances at me, voice dropping. “Annalise. You good?”
“Yeah, just thinking,” I say. “We need to move, slowly. Stay on high ground. Look for signs of an actual disturbance: bent reeds, fresh mud prints that don’t loop in circles like the illusions.”
Reyna nods sharply. “Finally. A plan.”
We start forward carefully. Then, faintly, so different from the rest—“…h-help…”
My heart stutters.
That voice wasn’t echoing or magically layered like the others. It was small. Human. Terrified.
Rhyan meets my eyes, clearly having heard it too.
“It sounded like it came from North-East of us,” Reyna whispers.
“Okay,” Mateo takes a deep breath. “Let’s go.”
Following the sound, we climb a root-covered ridge, careful as we can be with mud slipping under our boots at every step.
I force myself to remember Varin’s words…then repeat them out loud.
“Your eyes will lie. Your ears will lie. Your footing will lie. Only what you already know will not.”
“There,” Mateo says, pointing to a bunch of freshly broken reeds with green fibers split, and the surrounding mud obviously disturbed. “That looks like real movement, like someone could have really passed through there.”
Reyna crouches, running two fingers along the mud. “This feels like real mud. The small footprints would match the size of that voice we heard.”
Rhyan scans the shifting fog, tension rolling off him in waves. “If the footprints are real, then the kid might be, too.”
“Or it’s bait,” Reyna counters, wiping mud off her hands. “Clowessian illusions aren’t half-assed.”
As we make our way up the ridge, the fog thins just enough to make out the small figure sitting curled up at the base of a cypress trunk. It looks up at us, not a black eye in sight.
It’s a child—shaking, crying, real—or at least it feels real.
Mateo crouches, hands open and gentle. “Hey—we’re here to help. You’re safe now.”
The child flinches but doesn’t vanish. “D-don’t…don’t come too close…please…”
“We won’t hurt you,” I say quietly. “We’re here to get you out. Are you alone?”