Chapter 27

THE AFTERNOON IS ALMOST OVER before they gather us all in the training room. My fury has dissipated to the point that all I’m left with is self-hatred, anger at myself for not listening to Sim. It sits sour in my stomach like spoiled milk and eats away at what little emotional control I have left. The Program, I think bitterly, doesn’t train us to be elite agents. It ruins us. Those of us who survive. I should have asked to skip the assessment. Maybe they would have given me a free pass. Maybe they would have looked closer and seen whatever it is Sim saw in the coding of my simulation. Worst case scenario, they might have kicked me out of the program, but Sim would still be alive. She died because of me.

Today’s elimination is a somber affair. They don’t make me or Hack go through with our assessments. But I wouldn’t set foot back in the simulation room for anything, so the allowance is both a boon and moot. They award the two of us points based on our practice runs instead.

Wraith makes short work of getting the rankings onto the murder board without fanfare or pomp. She seems shell-shocked, and just as broken as I feel right now, pale faced and vacant eyed. With Sim gone, only two recruits are eliminated this week: Havoc and Houdini. Houdini’s eyes and nose are red from spending the afternoon crying, his tan face blotchy and streaked with hours’ worth of tears. But he’s composed as Matrix ushers them from the room.

Ruger and Sever step in, their arms loaded with black backpacks. They split up and begin distributing packs, one for each of us. A muscle in Sever’s jaw ticks when he gets to me, and he hesitates before offering me one, like he recognizes I’m still not ready to function. He ends up dropping it on the mat at my feet when I don’t take it from him. I can’t make my muscles work. Or maybe I don’t want to try.

“I know it’s been a rough day for everyone,” Sever announces.

I laugh, a loud, bitter, scoffing sound, and Wraith pauses whatever announcement she was about to make to look at me. Her gaze is soft, not the annoyance I expected. She’s taking pity on me, and that makes me angrier. I don’t want her pity. I don’t deserve her pity. I deserve to suffer.

“As much as we would like to give you all a chance to absorb what’s happened today and heal a little, The Program is on a schedule, and we cannot deviate from it. For that reason, you will all be shipping out for your final training mission. Everything you need is in those bags. Outside, you will find a van. Sever is going to drive you all to the drop point, and it will be up to you to complete the mission and get back here in the next forty-eight hours, or your mission will be considered a failure and you will all be scrubbed from The Program. Good luck, recruits.”

Everyone else takes their packs and starts a slow progression out of the house, but I can’t make myself move. Then Maverick is in front of me, commanding my attention with the intensity of his gaze. “Sim wouldn’t want you to give up now.” He looks like he wants to say more, but darts a nervous glance around the room at the instructors instead and then clamps his lips together tight. He picks my pack up off the floor and holds it out to me, his eyes imploring me with some request I can’t quite discern.

Deep down, I know he’s right. Sim wouldn’t want me to give up. She would want me to finish what we started. Not just to make it to the end, but to find out who’s been sabotaging the other recruits. To find out who killed her. I yank my pack out of his hands, spin on my heel, and storm out of the training room and out of the building.

Just as Wraith said, a black panel van waits on the road out front. The other remaining recruits are already inside. I step in and take the first available seat: front row, next to the window. A heartbeat later, Maverick plops down on the seat next to me. Ruger shuts the doors from the outside and taps twice on one to let Sever know he’s clear to leave.

I curl into a ball on the seat and press my face to the glass. It’s cold on my forehead and cheek, and I find relief there in that small moment. If I could just stay here, in this exact spot for the rest of my life, I might actually be okay.

#

The drive is long, and it’s well after dark when we get to our destination—a run-down building in the heart of a scary-even-in-daylight kind of neighborhood in a dump of a town called Beaumont. Even though I have the name of the town from the highway signs, I still don’t know what state we’re even in. Hopefully, someone paid more attention than me if we’re supposed to make the trek back to wherever the heck it is that we came from when we finish here. The van rolls to a stop a few feet from the front door, and Sever tosses a set of keys into Maverick’s lap.

“Everything you need is already in there, third floor, apartment B. See you in forty-eight hours, recruits.” Then he opens his door, climbs out of the driver’s seat, and jogs off down the road. We watch until he is out of sight.

Then Cipher opens the van doors and climbs out. We all follow his lead, including when he heads inside the building. The building is a walk-up, which suits me just fine. It’s in such bad shape, I’m not sure I would trust an elevator if it had one. By the time we reach apartment B on the third floor, I’m already done being here. Is it too late to just wash out and go home?

Maverick uses the keys Sever gave him to unlock the door, but Legacy is the first one in. I’m the last. I make it a point to shut and lock the door behind me. Nothing is safe anymore.

Someone ahead of me flicks on the light in the kitchen just off the entryway, and enough light bleeds into the rest of the apartment to see by. The inside of the apartment is nicer than I expect. I assume whoever runs The Program must have renovated it, because the flooring is dark planks—except where it switches to ceramic tile in the kitchen—just like back at our houses, and the décor is surprisingly similar. It’s staged to look like a happy little home. Past the kitchen, the entryway opens into a long living room with tall windows. One end is set up like a standard family room: couch, chairs, coffee table, TV. The other is outfitted with floor to ceiling tech. In my gut, there’s a stirring of grief caused by the similarity between this setup and the one where my friend just…

I push my emotions down, every last one of them, and bury them deep. If I fall apart now, Sim died for nothing.

Everyone gathers in the living room, those of us who are left: Cipher, Hack, Redux, Anomaly, Legacy, Ghost, Maverick. And me. Legacy sits in one of the armchairs, sets her pack in her lap, and rifles through it. “Change of clothes, earpiece, headset, toothbrush, gun…”

We’ve been casually lugging around backpacks with guns in them? My stomach leaps into my chest, forcing the air from my lungs in the process.

Cipher takes a seat on the couch and reaches for a file folder on the coffee table. He opens it and a second later, whistles loudly in awe. “This is quite the exercise, guys. They really pulled out all the stops here.”

“What is it? Lemme see.” Redux leans in and grabs the folder out of Cipher’s hands. “Whoa. Y’all are not going to believe this. Our final test is infiltration and recovery.”

While everyone else gathers around Cipher and Redux, I hang further back, planting myself on a stool at the bar between the kitchen and living room. It’s not that I’m not curious. Just that I don’t feel like crowding in to see the details for myself when I can stay over here with plenty of personal space and listen to them tell me everything I need to know.

And they do.

In this little scenario, the building across the street is owned by a suspected terrorist cell. We’re supposed to sneak in and retrieve some sort of package they believe is being held on the fourth floor. No information is given about what the package is.

“We need a plan,” Legacy announces, like it’s the most brilliant idea ever and not just common sense.

“For starters, I think we should have jobs,” Ghost suggests, and they spend the next several minutes deciding what roles are needed to run a mission like this. They narrow it down to five: operations, someone to manage the job from a distance, move the rest of us like pawns in a game of chess; tech support, someone to handle every aspect involving technology, communications, and anything else that might fall under that category; point, someone to take the lead on the ground—or in this case, in the building; ground support, the supporting characters charged specifically with following orders; and extraction, the person tasked with manning the getaway vehicle.

Determining the jobs is easier than assigning them as it turns out, and it takes us almost an hour to settle the issue of who should do what. Cipher will run operations here in the apartment, and Hack will stay with him on tech duty. Maverick will run point, with Ghost, Legacy, and me acting as ground support. Redux and Anomaly are on extraction.

“Okay, now that we have that settled, let’s get this show on the road!” Redux is all but rubbing is hands together in anticipation.

“You’re kidding, right?” I laugh at his misplaced enthusiasm, and he looks at me like I’ve just kicked his puppy. “We can’t go now. It’s the middle of the night.” I point to the clock under the TV as proof of my words. The bold green letters read 2:00 a.m.

“The middle of the night is the perfect time to go,” Redux argues.

“It is a miracle they let you into The Program a second time, Redux. You’re as dense as they come.” Legacy turns sideways in her armchair and lets her feet hang over one side and her head over the other. Redux gapes at her, and shocked expressions match all around.

I’ve never given any thought to his name, but now it clicks. He’s a second timer. It never even occurred to me that they might let someone come back and try again if they wash out. That should be good news, but it’s actually a little worrying. If I wash out during this last assessment, will they come looking for me again next year? Would I want them to? I’m not even sure I can survive one more week in The Program, let alone do it all over again.

A pinch of suspicion zings through me. Would the idea of washing out of The Program a second time be enough to make him target the other recruits? It certainly would have given him advanced knowledge of The Program the rest of us didn’t have. I eye Redux as he stares at Legacy with defiance written all over him, his expression, his posture.

“Someone explain to me why we shouldn’t go now.” Redux waves off Legacy’s dig and instead challenges me. Maybe I’m the easier target.

Cipher gets up from his place on the couch and heads for the hallway. “Because, Redux, we’ve done zero prep work. We go in tomorrow night. Until then, we watch the building at all times. Since you’re clearly raring to go, why don’t you take first shift? I’m going to get a few hours of sleep. I’ll relieve you at six a.m.” Cipher closes his instructions to Redux by entering the nearest room—presumably a bedroom—and closing the door behind him. Anomaly and Legacy follow his lead and head for another room down the hall.

Hack sets up at the wall of tech and rubs her hands together excitedly before diving in. When Redux takes to sulking in a chair in front of the window, I move from my stool to the newly vacated couch and curl into a corner with my head on the armrest, keeping him squarely in my line of sight. Maverick and Ghost hover across the room from me and across the room from one another, just another reminder that everything about this Program is super messed up. Maybe if I ignore the problem, it will just go away. I’m too drained to deal with it tonight; I have nothing left to give. But as wiped as I am emotionally, my thoughts are running wild. I won’t be able to sleep, so there’s no use scoping out the bedrooms. And after everything that’s happened today, I’d rather be in a room full of almost strangers than by myself. There’s safety in numbers. Especially when one of us is a killer.