8. Beck
BECK
IKE DWECK – BITTER THIEF
Her funeral was sad—no, really, it was.
Fleur’s was the only initiate death that had ever caused the Academy to come to a complete standstill, largely due to her surname. The Commander was here—out of respect to the Deveauxs—as were all of the faculty and every recruit, barring one.
Sebastos Varco had been a thorn in my side since the moment his father dropped him into my lap eighteen months ago. He had single-handedly taken out eight of his classmates—nine, now—notching up the highest pre-Graduation kill tally this institution had ever seen.
His father believed it made him a valuable asset to our program. My brothers and I were inclined to believe differently.
He was a loose cannon. An unpredictable variable. A liability.
And then there was the girl. The one I’d personally nabbed off a London street, dragging her straight to her doom.
Five foot fuck-all, beautiful, clever, and completely lethal.
At least, she was until Varco fucked up and took out the wrong blonde three days ago—though I’d wager she’d have made it through the night had they not switched bunks.
That assumption was irrelevant now.
Fleur had probably assumed Varco wouldn’t dare come for her once he realised who she was. She had probably also assumed that the lightning lit up the dorm enough to give her away the moment he roused her.
But assumptions could kill just as easily as a cut throat.
And timing was everything.
If the Taylor boy had swapped instead, she’d still be alive. Or if they’d taken turns on watch like they would on assignment. Or if they simply hadn’t slept at all. One night wouldn’t kill them.
Except it had.
If only she’d just come to me. Sinclair could have just told me about the threat and I’d have… Well, I couldn’t have done anything, could I? My hands were tied bureaucratically, given whose son was making the threats… but morally, I was sure I would have come up with something.
But those were just sentiments now, because Sinclair wasn’t the same person she’d been three days ago. Losing someone like that—someone you loved—hit harder than you’d expect it to.
Now, she was just an empty shell—coincidentally, exactly what the Academy wanted their initiates to be. She was pliable. Broken. And for some reason, that irked me more than it should.
Van blew through the apartment doors after class that night completely baffled. Intrigued by a puzzle he wasn’t expecting to have encountered.
“Someone completed the assessment,” he said by way of greeting, dropping into the armchair by the couch with a bewildered expression plastered across his face.
Fuck. I knew that look.
“No shit? The unbeatable rat trap?” Dek called from the couch over the sound of engineered automatic gunfire. “Ha ha, got you, you little son of a bitch.”
Van and I shared an amused glance just as Dek twisted in his seat to acknowledge our existence now that his first-person shooter game had flicked back over to the menu screen.
“What? That kid from Singapore was hanging me out to dry.”
My left brow lifted almost of its own accord.
He shrugged, offering an easy grin. “I got him in the end, though.”
“Careful, Dek,” Van warned softly. “You could be taking out the next generation of Academy recruits.” His fingers locked together, tucking neatly beneath his chin as he pondered whatever quandary he was currently trying to decipher.
“Oh, right.” Dek’s eyes rolled. “Like Blackwing is keeping tabs on twelve-year-olds with virtual shooting proficiency.” He layered the sarcasm on so thick it was practically frosting.
Van shot him a pointed look, conveying everything he needed to say without so much as a word.
“No shit,” Dek breathed, mind visibly blown.
“Who was it?” I cut in, curious as to which initiate I needed to keep a closer eye on.
Van’s sharp gaze cut back to mine, his face going back to that there-is-a-problem-I-need-to-solve-immediately expression. And then I was slammed with the feeling that I knew exactly whose name was about to drop out of his mouth. “Sinclair.”
Bingo.
“Dibs!” Dek roared, leaping to his feet.
He rounded on Van in less than a second, discarding his precious headset into the cushions with more force than I’d ever seen him use on his things.
“I’ve had my eye on her for months now.” He stared at me, unblinking, imploring me to back him up.
“Come on, man! You know this already. She’s the best shot out of all of them—even has the potential to be as good as me if I can train her. ”
“No one-on-one with initiates,” I grunted. “But he did claim her the second he saw her fire that Barrett M82 for the first time,” I told Van.
“Yesss.” Dek fist-pumped the air, and I glared at him.
“But she still has to earn that Eagle position by graduation. If she fails even a single assessment task from here on out, it’ll take her out of the running.”
Dek nodded.
“The top end of the leaderboard is tight, though this newfound techno-skill might push her over the line.”
Van’s nose scrunched at my technologically illiterate description of his job, but refrained from further comment.
Truthfully, I’d had my eye on her for a while now, too.
She was so tiny that no one batted an eye when they drew her as an opponent during sparring practice—and sure, she’d come out battered and bloody on more than one occasion.
But she was scrappy. Quick. She used every advantage available to her, especially her boxing experience from before—but more importantly, she turned every weakness her rival exposed against them.
But someone had hurt her today. I knew it the second she’d crashed into me in that hallway, immediately soaking my shirt in blood. It had to have been painful, but she didn’t even flinch, plagued instead by the demons that hunted her.
And after those demons said what they did when they thought no one was listening, I had a sneaking suspicion I knew exactly who’d made her bleed in the first place.
They’d tried to take her out on Devil’s Pass, where it could easily be made to look like an accident—and still, she had come out victorious.
“Can you access footage of the mountains for me? From today’s assessment?” I asked Van, who blinked in surprise but nodded. He pulled out his phone and started tapping on the screen, then slid it across the table where it landed perfectly in front of me.
The screen was divided into four quadrants—four different camera angles available to us at all times. I clicked the one I wanted, then scrolled through until her face popped up. I watched her trek up Black Mountain uninhibited, then clicked the next panel and scrolled until she appeared again.
Frowning, I replayed the scuffle at Widow’s Drop three times before clicking on the next panel.
“Something to share with the class?” Dek drawled in the background.
“No.”
I fast-forwarded through the footage until her flying leap registered on this camera.
Watching her soar across the zipline set my hair on end—even more viscerally when Varco dove right after her.
She dragged herself across, ignoring cut-up hands, and armed only with the knowledge that she would die if she paused.
“There,” I muttered as I discovered the reason for my bloodied shirt.
Varco tried to take her out across the line, and only his shitty aim was the reason she still lived long enough to slam into me in the hallway. For whatever reason, he’d decided she was the cohort’s weakest link and had taken it upon himself to tighten up their ranks.
I guess he’d realised first-hand just how resilient she could be. That explained his ire, too, though there was one missing puzzle piece I couldn’t work out.
“Deklan, why would Sebastos Varco want you dead?”
Dek startled—confused, not scared. But then the lights turned on in his brain, and he grinned. “Probably because I almost let our little Sinclair shoot him today.”
Our.
I sighed, tipping my head back to stare at the dull, beige ceiling. I couldn’t wait to get out of this place.
“You’d better explain,” I muttered, worn down by every extra moment spent within Academy walls. Just six months to go, then we’d receive new assignments and be gone.
Dek shrugged nonchalantly in my periphery. “He had it coming. Had the lack of forethought to insult her while she was holding a handgun, which she immediately swung round and aimed at his face. Perfect form too.” He kissed his fingers like an Italian chef and Van barked a sharp laugh.
“That tracks. He insinuated that she was fucking her way up the ranks and that she ought to die for it.” I stared hard at him as I spoke, taking note of his reaction.
“I mean, I wouldn’t be opposed to that idea, but no. I swear it, bro. She’s up there ‘cause she’s earned it, not because she paid with her body to get there.”
I’d known Dek long enough to know that he cracked his knuckles without conscious thought whenever he was lying. And right now, his hands didn’t so much as twitch.
“Right. Well, maybe keep your favouritism to a minimum, at least for a little while.” I sighed, standing. “That goes for both of you. I’m going to bed. Try not to be too loud while you’re murdering prepubescent videogame addicts.”
Dek snorted, reaching for his headset and dropping it over his ears. “What’s that? I didn’t hear you over the sound of my shooting prowess.”
Van chuckled, his attention firmly on the device back in his hand. “Night, boss.”
“I’m not your boss. Not in here, anyway,” I grumbled, making my way across the kitchen and into my moonlit bedroom.
I stripped, folded my clothes in a neat pile and placed them atop the dresser, then climbed beneath the covers, with thoughts of a tiny, bloodied blonde trawling through my mind.
When I fell asleep that night, I had no idea that everything would change by morning.
I ought to have known—ought to have prevented it—but I underestimated Varco.
I’d underestimated his willingness to act upon his vendettas. But I’d never make that mistake again. Only death greeted those who made the same mistake twice.