Chapter 24
Wyatt
Inever do things by half measure so it shouldn’t surprise me that when I finally fell in love, it wouldn’t be a slow thing that developed over time.
No, it’s much more my style to just jump in with both feet, and with two people as well.
That part was a surprise to even me. I’ve done the whole group thing before, spent several hours where you have no idea which limbs belong to which person, but I never thought that my heart would up and divide itself, and give both halves away at the same time.
It's not been long, a few weeks, but there’s no other explanation for my complete one-eighty on fucking around and having a good time. I want them both. Exclusively. Permanently. I already belong to them. If that’s not love, then I don’t know what is.
Only Tacita went and practically stomped on my declaration by admitting she’s fucking around with someone else. She didn’t have to say the words but it was obvious. I want to find out which of the fuckers it is and make him disappear.
Having stormed back to my room earlier, I haven’t slept a wink.
Instead, I’ve taken a very cold shower to shake the tiredness and calm my body down from the tiny kiss I’d given Milo.
Seriously, that shouldn’t have gotten me hard but it did and I just didn’t have the energy to rub one out by myself. Who even am I right now?
Anyway, the lack of sleep and the shitshow of a morning amounts to me needing a bucket of coffee. I don’t wait, heading to the canteen by myself. Seffy is already at a table so I grab an entire jug of the necessary caffeine and head over to her.
“Morning,” she chirps as I take a seat opposite her.
“Hey,” I reply, my voice as melancholy as my mood.
Glancing around the room, I note how fractured the contestants are.
It seems everyone has indeed teamed up for this challenge and no one is mixing.
I also notice the lack of officers this morning.
Even with the clean-up required early this morning, I would expect there to be more than two posted in here. Normally, there’s at least five.
“There’s been another murder,” Seffy tells me, clearly reading my puzzled expression.
“Who?” I ask.
“Tally.”
“Number one?”
“Yep. Bottom floor of our building.”
I take a drink of coffee so I don’t have to reply.
Tacita’s slip up is still in the front of my mind.
She said ‘you’re’ not ‘we’re’, like she’s not including herself as a competitor.
Could it be that she is here for another reason?
The timing of this latest kill is a strange coincidence.
She was late to our group session last night.
Is that what she was doing? And with all the commotion it would be understandable that the body wasn’t found until this morning.
“Who was One sharing with?”
“Thirty-Eigtht, but they are in separate groups. Thirty-Eight claims to have been with their group in Jesse’s room.
“Jesse is Forty-Five, right? On the second floor.”
“Yes, and the whole group backed them up.”
I drink more coffee as my brain calculates the likelihood that we’re not the only team to have compiled our files and are keeping them in the room of one of the group members.
Of course, we’d had that little debate amongst our team, but as soon as I’d shown them the improved locking mechanism on my door that I’ve installed, they all backed down pretty quickly. Even Tacita had seemed impressed with my enhancements to the standard issue ones installed.
I’d done it on the first day, because like fuck was I risking someone breaking into my space. And good job too, seeing as someone seems hellbent on killing the competition as they sleep.
But maybe the other teams had done the same as us, only without the improved security.
Logging the room number in my brain, I stand and do a quick circuit of the room. There are seven teams left after one got themselves killed last night and all, bar one, are in here chowing down on breakfast. I walk straight past Jesse’s group, I already know about them.
Papers catch my eye as I realise not every team has kept their files locked away. Cameron is sitting at a table with a few others and their files are spread around one guy who is busy making notes as the team is having what looks like a heated discussion.
Grand.
Bouncing over, I slam myself down in the middle of them at an empty seat, ending all conversation around me. Toby and Laz are also in this group so it’s not that weird that I’m here to say hi. However, the greeting I get could freeze Hell.
“How are you doing? This game is totally bonkers, isn’t it? At least we can say it's not the gun after this morning, right?” I throw in that titbit as I didn’t see anyone from this team still hanging around this morning when that was revealed in the wreckage.
“What are you doing over here Wyatt?” Cameron questions.
“Just wanted to check in, I miss the gang. It’s so frustrating that they’re pitching us all against each other. We’re friends, aren’t we?”
“Of course,” Toby replies.
“We are not,” Cameron snaps at him. “He’s our competition.”
I’m not sure I ever really liked Cameron but the dude is getting on my nerves, especially after his comment in the gym as well. “They never said only one team can win.”
It’s a truth most of the competitors seem to have forgotten.
“I don’t care, whoever is first to figure it out is going to stand out. We have no idea what awaits us at the end, but I want to have first dibs.”
“Again, no one said anything about a leader board. I was one of the first to complete that weird ass hike and I’ve had no privileges.”
“That’s true. Are you wanting to collaborate with us?” Toby asks.
“You don’t get to make that decision,” Cameron snaps.
I ignore the douche, he’s clearly on some sort of power trip.
Seeing as no one picked up on the gun reference I made earlier I circle back to it.
Revealing that it’s not the gun we’re looking for isn’t a huge help.
Plus, there were a few others that saw it and no doubt put the evidence together.
It's not a big advantage to know about it.
“Did you know that the gun isn’t the item we need to retrieve? It’s what the team tried to collect this morning before they decided to wake up the entire compound by blowing themselves up.”
A couple of their faces tell me they didn’t know. And a few look like I’ve just blabber mouthed the biggest clue yet. One of the guys starts scribbling in a notebook.
“Thanks, Wyatt,” Toby says.
“How do we know he’s not lying?” Seriously, I have no idea what Cameron’s problem with me is but he’s officially off my buddy list.
“Ask about half the people in the room. Several were there this morning and saw it. They brought it out after you’d clearly given up and gone back to bed.” I glower at him.
Note taking guy, number Thirty-One, starts shuffling through their papers and crossing out sections of their annotations. I keep up the grating conversation as I watch them flip through the stack, recognising the familiar sheets.
I begin to think they’ve got the exact same set of suspects we have until the last. It's a different name on the top. Bingo.
“Well, as fun as this hasn’t been, I better go grab some breakfast.” I push up from the table and stalk away.
The two subsequent tables I visit are just as fruitful, adding two more room numbers to my list to check out.
It’s as I’m selecting which group to approach next that Tacita and Milo arrive.
After this morning, I am not ready to face her yet, so I abandon this mission.
I need a plan on how to win over my girl first.
Milo seeks me out as they sit at the table our team seems to have claimed, and as our eyes lock I shoot him a wink and a smile before I exit the canteen.
Several hours later and having broken into all the rooms I suspected had the files in, I now have three new profiles to add to our collection. We needed two of them, the third I just stumbled across and decided to take it anyway.
I also took some duplicates, you know, just to fuck with the other teams and make it hard to decipher which are the ones we were hunting. Not that they’ll figure out which team now has double the number we were originally given.
My final mission of the day is to bump back into the guy from Cameron’s team and do a little pickpocketing.
Thankfully, our last class is together and I pull my signature bulldozing shit to make sure we sit together.
I feel a little bad because Milo is in this class too, and it’s the only one he doesn’t share with Tacita.
His face nearly broke my heart and made me change my plans when he saw me stride straight past him and head for Thirty-One, whose name I can’t get to stick. Ben maybe? Or Wren.
I don’t care anymore.
He’s a target and he’s about to be relieved of his file hoarding duties. Waiting until the end of the class, I spend the lecture running through my options, but decide to go with the classic.
We’re dismissed by the Officer teaching this class, whatever it was about, and that’s when I start engaging.
“Professor?” I ask, purposefully standing up with all the gusto of a tornado so my chair flies back and my desk flies forward, right into the back of Thirty-One’s knees, unbalancing him.
“Yes, Thirty-Nine.” The Officer turns to face me.
“I got confused on that last bit.” I step forward, spotting the board the officer had been writing on. I act like I’m heading to the front, but crash into my desk again like I’m tripping over my own feet. It traps Thirty-One.
“Watch it,” he grouches at me.
“Sorry dude, my bad.” I put a hand to my chest and give him my sincere eyes. I also slap him on the shoulder, which accidentally knocks the strap of his satchel off and the bag falls to the floor, his stuff exploding everywhere.
A couple more stumbles and shoving of furniture as I apologise more and help him recover his stuff and I am the proud owner of the last file I need.