CHAPTER 28
DAYLIGHT STREAMS THROUGH THE LARGE windows when I crack sleep-crusted eyes open. I don’t know when I passed out. I hadn’t intended to sleep at all, and from the looks of the other recruits laying at weird angles in odd places, neither did they. Maverick is in a peaceful state of unconsciousness on the floor next to the couch, and I’m careful not to wake him as I get up in search of the bathroom. When I come back, he’s awake and sitting on the couch.
The smell of coffee is a beckoning aroma, calling me like a siren’s song into the kitchen. There, I find Legacy hovering over a freshly brewed pot of the magical potion that will make me a functional human being. I search the cabinets until I find the cups, then worm my way between Legacy and the coffee pot. I half expect her to fight me for possession of it, but eventually, she lets me in.
I wrap my fingers around the handle of the coffeepot just as Ghost strolls into the room. Legacy looks up at him like a deer in headlights, and I suspect my expression matches. Ghost looks from me to her and back again, and pink creeps into his golden-brown skin. I’m torn between getting my caffeine fix and fleeing.
“Can we talk?” Ghost asks me, and any chance of escape evaporates in the time it takes him to form the words. My first thought is of Legacy. She’s into Ghost. I know it; Ghost knows it. But he’s asking to talk to me. I glance over to her.
She’s watching us intently from behind her coffee mug. When our gazes connect, she lowers her cup and says, “Oh, I’ll just…” She points over her shoulder, then escapes the kitchen in the direction she just pointed.
There’s half a room between Ghost and me, but it is entirely too small without Legacy there to stretch the space. I back myself against the counter to compensate. Ghost leans against the opposite counter, and the kitchen is the right size once again.
“You’ve been avoiding me.” He’s not asking me.
“There’s a lot going on,” I tell him. It’s not the entire truth, but it is true.
“I thought there might be something…” He motions from him to me and back again. “You know… between us.”
He’s picked now to try to define our non-relationship? When I’m still raw from losing Sim and just trying to get through the next forty-eight hours? No, thirty-four hours now, I realize, glancing at the clock on the stove. “Can we talk about this after the mission?” Like a year from now?
“I know it’s not the best time, but really… when is the right time? One of us could be cut from The Program after this mission.”
Or die. From the earnest expression on his face, he’s thinking the same thing. I nod, and he must take that as a good sign.
“The night we kissed…”
“You mean, the night Mirage died?” I’m marking time by when fellow recruits have been murdered, and it doesn’t escape me how messed up that is.
“Yeah,” he pauses somberly before asking, “did you feel anything? For me?”
I avert my gaze, unable to maintain eye contact under the intensity of his question. “Yes.” But what I felt with Maverick was so much bigger.
“Do you like me?” he asks softly.
My insides are an ocean of turbulent emotions. I nod. Embarrassment roils in the pit of my stomach.
“But…?” He encourages, and I get the impression he already knows where my heart is. I still can’t bring myself to say the words to him. And I don’t have to. He does it for me, “But you like him more.”
We both know who he’s talking about. Maverick. And we both know he’s right. “Yes.”
A wave of pain crashes into me, threatening to take me under. I hurt for him, for the wounded look in his eyes. For the fact that not only can I not fix it, I am the cause.
He nods once, twice, then pushes away from the counter. “Thank you for being honest with me,” he rasps on his way out of the kitchen.
As soon as I’m alone, the room goes from being too small to infinitely huge. I feel tiny, downright minuscule in the wake of our conversation. It’s several minutes before I finally pour that cup of coffee I was after.
One cup later, I’m ready to face the day, or at least as ready as I can be under the circumstances. But as it turns out, the day is pretty boring. We spend endless hours staring out the windows and watching Hack and Cipher mess around with the computers. Apparently, the instructors already bugged portions of the building across the street, and we can watch live feeds on the screens instead of the front of a building through a window.
I manage to block out Sim’s absence until dinnertime. I’ve gotten used to finding her in the kitchen with Houdini, mother-henning us all into eating a hearty meal. Images of her fighting so hard to get through that simulation, then seizing on the floor, and eventually staring lifelessly up at the ceiling haunt me, twisting my stomach in knots so tight I’m worried I might be sick. Forget about dinner. I’d be lucky to keep water down right now. Instead, I stay as far from the kitchen as possible.
When the time comes to head across the street, we’ve formulated a half-baked plan, and I’m 75% confident of our success. Analyzing the live feeds of the cameras planted before our arrival has given eyes on six confirmed people inside the building, four of which we know for a fact are armed. But since we don’t know where in the building the cameras are planted, we don’t know where those people are.
The plan is for us to feed Hack information through the earpieces we found in our packs, and she will use our verbal directions and the camera feeds to map out the interior of the building. Once we have enough information to get us safely to the third floor, Maverick will go for the target while the rest of us provide cover. If all goes well, we retrieve the package. Once we provide Hack with confirmation that the package is in hand, the ground team will meet Hack and Cipher halfway down the block to the south, where Anomaly and Redux will be waiting, with the van running, to take us home. Well, not home, but … back to the place where we’ve been housed for the last several weeks.
The whole place is dark and quiet when we get in there. I flip my night view over my right eye and survey my surroundings. We’re in a large room, like a lobby of sorts. At the back, a hallway shoots to the left and another to the right. An elevator sits halfway down the wall on the right, but the doors are slightly ajar. I look to Maverick for direction. He gives the signal for us to split up. He wants me to go down the corridor to the right with him and Legacy to go left with Redux. He gives the signal that we’ll rendezvous at the extraction point in thirty minutes.
We split seamlessly, both halves of our team moving in unison to follow Maverick’s directive. Our route, like the lobby, is empty, and I pray the rest of this exercise goes just as smoothly. At the end of our long hall, there’s a sharp left turn. Maverick pauses a few feet shy of the connection and presses himself against the wall, motions for me to do the same. As soon as I’m flat against the faded floral wallpaper, Maverick readies his weapon and edges around the corner slowly. “Clear,” he whispers, and it echoes through my earpiece. I follow him around the corner, even though my hands are shaking and my stomach is knotted with anxiety.
Gunfire erupts everywhere from out of nowhere. Bullets ricochet off the walls around us. I can’t make sense of where the bullets are coming from, but when one pings the wall just inches from my head, I know where I’m going: anywhere but here. I’m off like a shot. Through it all, one thought is stuck on repeat in my brain. Real bullets means real guns, real mission; this is no exercise. Until now, I’d somehow thought this was a simulated mission, like everything we did back at the houses. But this is live fire. People are actually trying to kill us.
As I run, my earpiece is abuzz with activity—Redux shouting directions at Legacy, Ghost asking what’s happening, Hack trying to reroute us through the building, and Maverick calling my name frantically. Then silence, and a hand is on my arm, tugging me through a doorway before I can fight whoever it is off. As soon as the door slams shut behind us, I’m pressed against a wall, and a body covers mine protectively. Maverick.
I melt into him without conscious thought, and as I pull myself back together, I try to tell myself my reaction was purely from relief. Heavy boot steps, multiple pairs, rush past the room we’re hiding in and fade into the distance, a reminder that this is not the time for romance, no matter how good he smells or how warm he feels surrounding me.
“Are you okay?” he whispers and checks me over carefully.
“I’m fine.”
He runs his hands along my arms and looks me up and down instead of taking me at my word. Then he presses a finger to his earpiece. “Headcount. Ground One. Ground Two?” His voice is quiet in the room with me and nonexistent in my ear. And Ground Two—Legacy—doesn’t respond. I bring my hand up to check for my earpiece, and find the little plastic piece still firmly settled inside my ear.
“I don’t think our coms are working.” So much for the plan. My stomach twists with dread at my own words, like saying them out loud has made them true. Maverick stops and looks at me, like he’s willing me to be wrong. To prove my point, I press my earpiece and say, “Test. Test. Ground Four, testing coms. Repeat, Ground Four, testing coms.”
Maverick’s expression falls. “Nothing. We’re flying blind.”
On a wing and a prayer. “So, what do we do now?” I’m not sure I want to hear the answer. Besides pray, that is.
“We retrieve the package and get to the extraction point.”
Yep, that’s exactly what I didn’t want to hear. But I know he’s right. He opens the door slowly and takes stock of the hall outside. When he gives the all clear, I don’t even hesitate to follow him out. And that’s when it hits me: I trust him. I don’t know his real name, or where he’s from, but I know who he is, and I trust him with my life. It’s a new feeling for me, a throwback to a safer time, pre-Program.
We try the same hallway again, and Maverick is twice as careful as last time. No shots ring out, no bullets ricochet off the wall next to my face. Whoever was shooting at us before must not be here anymore. We continue forward carefully, rounding another corner that leads to a set of stairs. Before we start climbing, though, the squeak of a rubber sole on the linoleum flooring rebounds off the walls. I freeze, grab Maverick’s arm, and we both press tight against the wall. And we wait. My heart pounds in my chest, sending a fresh wave of adrenaline through me with every beat.
Five seconds pass, then ten. I’ve almost convinced myself it was my imagination when someone rushes around the corner at us. Fear pushes me into motion. I lift my gun at the same time Maverick uses his arm to push me behind him. I shift my weight and aim around Maverick in record time.
“Wait! It’s me,” Ghost calls, throwing his hands up in front of him defensively. “It’s me.”
My panic drains away in two seconds flat, and all I’m left with is one thought. I almost shot him. I tuck my gun back into my shoulder holster as quickly as I can, anxious to have it out of my hands. “What are you doing here?”
As soon as the weapon is out of sight, Ghost rushes to me. “Are you hurt? We heard gunshots; then we lost communication.”
Maverick backs off several feet, but I can’t tell if it’s so he can keep a lookout or if he’s uncomfortable being in such close proximity to my conversation with Ghost.
“We’re okay. Have you seen Legacy and Redux? They went the other way before we were ambushed.”
Ghost shakes his head. “No, just you.”
“We need to get moving.” Maverick’s impatience is almost tangible. I could almost pluck it from the air if I tried.
Ghost doesn’t argue. Instead, he sandwiches me between him and Maverick on our way up the stairs, and Maverick seems perfectly happy with the lineup. It’s almost like they’ve struck some silent accord to shelter me from danger with their own bodies, working together to buffer me from anyone who might happen upon us. And if I wasn’t so relieved to have the extra protection, I might be a little upset at the implication that I can’t protect myself.
But really, these guys have real bullets. I’d have to be an idiot to refuse the gesture because I felt I had something to prove. I don’t have anything to prove except that I like being alive.