15. Addie
ADDIE
CEDRIC VERMUE – ECOS DEL PASADO
“What’s he playing at?” Ethan muttered, shooting daggers at the man whose bulk almost killed me, yet caught me when I was likely seconds from passing out.
“Probably just eager to get rid of us.”
“I’m not so sure that’s it.” He looked down at me again, seeming to really see me for the first time since exiting the compound. “How’d you do it, Ads?”
“By channelling trauma through weight sessions, I guess.”
“No—not that—although that was fucking impressive. How did you avoid collapsing like the rest of us?” His deep brown eyes flitted over my face, apparently searching for the deception he so obviously believed me guilty of.
Scowling, I answered, “I ripped my comms out the second we were all in the same room. No one else did. And right before you fell, your hand was halfway up to—”
“My ear,” he breathed, eyes going wide. “You’re right. Just before I fell, I heard a sharp, high-pitched tone—like the comms had bad feedback.” He shuddered at the recollection. “Fuck.”
“Mmm. We’re gonna need them in the next round too. Plus, my period ended a few days ago”—his face scrunched in disgust, while mine twisted in the lingering memory of horrific, foetal-position, nine-out-of-ten pain—“and I always feel stronger when that shit is over.”
Mercy nodded enthusiastically. “Girl, same—”
The sound of gunfire interrupted her, the sentence dying on the tip of her tongue. Seb’s team had begun—and hopefully Evander or Beckett could make that asshole hurt before I got my hands on him in the next round.
I followed Eth over to a set of smaller screens on this side of the compound, ignoring the glares of the tech squad assigned to monitor them. Two screens—each divided into four grids of separate video feeds—flickered as Seb’s team moved through the compound.
It was impossible to tell whose feed was whose, at least until one of his teammates looked directly at him, showing me that he was at the junction of the first hallway. I was then able to narrow down which feed was Seb’s based on what he should have been seeing at that point in the first task.
He gestured for five of his team to go left—the same way I’d gone—leaving himself and two others to go right. Eric looked about ready to shit his own pants when Sebastos sent him around the corner first. Even more so when his body flew backwards as a round hit him squarely in the chest.
Sebastos shot the perpetrator down, stepped over his friend’s body, and fucking strolled up to the end of the hallway like he knew exactly where the instructors were and had no qualms about them shooting him when he got there.
My eyes narrowed, watching the scene unfold from his perspective.
With a gun barely drawn, casually pointed down at a forty-five-degree angle, Sebastos turned the handle of the study I knew Beckett was in and peered around the doorframe.
Evander greeted him with the barrel of a handgun, poised to shoot—but hesitated.
“Why the fuck—” Eth began.
The exterior doors slammed open, and everyone in the back end of the compound whirled at the intrusion.
Sharp, precise footsteps click-clacked in—dress shoes covering the toes of none other than Commander Varco.
With zero hesitation, he strode over to the same screens Eth and I had been staring at and cleared his throat pointedly at us still standing there.
We backstepped, falling into those blank stares and taut postures drilled into us from day one.
Commander Varco tutted, stepping up into my space, tainting the air with the smell of mint, leather, and cigarette smoke. “Blackwing does not take kindly to cheats.”
I bristled at the insinuation.
“So, unless you’d like to find yourselves at the bottom of the leaderboard come Graduation, I suggest you step away from these screens.”
“Yes, Sir,” Ethan barked, immediately gripping my upper arm and hauling me away.
“We weren’t cheating,” I grumbled, wrenching my arm free from his tight grip.
“I know, but I’m not about to give him an excuse to penalise either one of us.” His eyes dug into mine. “We have too much on the line here, Ads.”
He ran a hand roughly through his thick, black hair, mussing up the short strands in a way that tugged painfully on my heartstrings. Fleur had always smoothed them back down for him—calmed him with one kind gesture.
My fingers twitched, wanting to offer the same reprieve yet unable to make myself do so.
I didn’t want to take her place. Not even in something as simple as a small kindness.
But I simultaneously hated that he was as torn up as I was, and yet neither could share, much less aid the other.
My inner turmoil gave him time to recompose himself, and when he turned back around, it was with that same blank face in situ.
“Red team!” he called, daring a quick smirk my way. Whispering behind a cupped hand, he added, “I wanted so badly to say assemble.”
I snorted at the reference—one I was actually familiar with considering the franchise had been plastered over every billboard in every city, every time a new movie was coming out.
“We need a game plan. Varco’s team will be coming in hot, judging by their tactics in this first part of the assessment,” Ethan told them. “Sebastos gives no fucks as to how many of his team falls, so long as he gets what he needs by the end.”
Bodie snarled, but even he couldn’t disagree.
“Okay, so both teams will have the same mark, yes?” Mercy asked.
I nodded. “Pearce said as much before we began.” Something pinged in the back of my mind—something else he’d said at the beginning. “Empty your magazines,” I ordered, emptying my spares into the palm of my hand. “Quickly! We don’t have much time.”
“Do as she says,” Eth snapped, his hands already full of shiny gold cartridges. His brows lifted, silently asking what now?
After visually inspecting each round in my hand, I lifted them one by one, shook them, and compared them. Cheeks reddening with every passing second, I was about to admit embarrassing defeat when the very last one felt different.
To an unsuspecting victim, the weight difference was not noticeable. Because I was looking for it, however, it was undeniably lighter than the others. And when I shook it, the damn casing tinkled.
It was tiny, easy to overlook or believe you’d imagined—but it was there.
“Listen to this,” I said to Eth, rattling it beside his ear before he had a chance to answer.
After registering the soft metallic clink, his eyes widened, likely mirroring my own. “Holy fuck, you were right.”
“I ought to be offended you doubted me.”
“But you’re not.” He smirked.
“No. I’m not.”
“Well,” he snapped at our gawking teammates—humour vanishing in an instant. “Why aren’t you checking your own rounds?”
They rushed to obey, pausing when a robotic voice announced over the speaker system, “Seven minutes, twenty-nine seconds.”
That put us two seconds ahead. That was all—two short seconds. Luckily, I wasn’t counting on racking up assessment points by being quicker, but by being more accurate.
After reloading my magazines, putting the full one in my handgun first, and the one missing a bullet back in my vest, Eth took a count. In total, we only had five flawed cartridges—and who knew what they would have done if fired.
“What the fuck was that?!” The callous shout came from across the room, from Seb’s downturned mouth, as he berated Instructor Pearce in front of everyone, including his father.
Commander Varco tippy-tapped his way over, startling Sebastos into some semblance of regret.
“What is the meaning of this?” he hissed.
Sebastos blushed, but still managed to glare at the unbothered instructor. “They mixed blanks in with the good rounds,” he snarled.
And to everyone’s surprise, most of all Seb’s, Commander Varco laughed. “Did you expect this would be an easy, straightforward assessment, son? Of course there’s blanks mixed in. An elite would have noticed before loading one into his gun.”
Verbal lashing impactfully imparted, and confirmation of what we’d just discovered, Commander Varco turned to face the cohort of waiting recruits.
“Well done, teams. Those are some fairly impressive times.” His smirk said he was anything but pleased, however.
“Now, onto your final assessment. This is your mark.”
He pointed at a screen fixed above his head, and like a magic trick, a photo of Evander Lockwood appeared. He was younger and colder than I knew him, but it was him all the same.
“Find him, retrieve the keyword, and you’re done. There’ll be beer in the mess hall tonight, and campus facilities will remain open for you to use until you graduate in… oh, a 150 or so hours.”
Cheers rang out around the room, the most raucous of which came from the would-be frat boy standing beside me. Eth nudged me with his elbow, and a grin curled my lips despite my best efforts to remain focused.
“Blue team, circle back around to the first entryway. Red team, you’ll begin from here,” Pearce called, meeting my eyes for a heartbeat before moving on. “When the bell sounds, go—and good luck. In less than a week, you’ll be full-fledged assassins.”
Whoops of excitement sounded again, but not from me. Not this time.
Instead, all I felt were the icy fingers of dread tangling around my spine like claws.