Page 116 of Hunted

My joy was short-lived, however, because Sara Calper had a lot to say about Adelaide Sinclair and her handlers.

A document lay open on her screen, filled with dotpoints of psychological jargon and academic linguistics, but it wasn’t all that hard to figure out.

Subject appears to be truthful when

questioned about mission specifics.

Subject neglects to provide more than base answers.

When provoked, subject reacts emotionally.

Subject purposefully uses verbal tactics to rile her opponent.

Subject displays an intense dislike for Agent Marie.

When questioned about her handlers, subject rarely offers more information than strictly necessary, indicative of self-restraint.

Subject appears to be demonstrating early signs of attachments towards her handlers.

I almost scoffed at that part. If only she knew the truth.

Subject’s body language is indicative of dishonesty when asked about Academy

hierarchy and hypothetical kill orders for her handlers.

So, I was shit at lying, apparently. But I hadn’t given her anything she could verifiably use against us. Not even in passing.

I minimised the document, curious to know what else my Blackwing file contained. Since it was open beneath the session notes, it wasn’t hard to find and I grinned at the poor doctor’s stupidity.

I glanced at the door before delving in. No sign of her.

A closed-system program stared back at me containing various tabs and headings—just your stock standard stuff like medical records, family history, employment records, digital footprint, and personnel information. Since I’d intentionally remained offline and had no family to speak of, I expected most of the tabs to contain nothing, or only bare-bones information Blackwing had managed to piece together over the last eighteen months.

I smirked when I clicked the digital footprint tab and it was, indeed, empty. I’d never owned a social media account in my life—with no loved ones to keep in contact with, and no desire to live a life analysed through the lens of my camera, I didn’t see the point. I didn’t even own a phone outside the Academy.

My personnel tab was likewise scant. Beneath my scowling intake photo was a snippet of information I already knew.

NAME: Sinclair, Adelaide

INTAKE DATE: 10/04/2024

STATUS: Assigned

DESIGNATION: Swallow

DES. DATE: 10/04/2024

HANDLER/S: Beckett, H. Lockwood, E. Pearce, D.

My gaze snagged on the repeated dates.

Huh. That’s weird.

Figuring there must be some system error producing an echo, I shrugged it off, knowing Calper must only be minutes away. Determined to uncover everything the Academy thought they knew about me, I clicked onto the next tab⁠—

—and discovered that Blackwing knew more than they should. Far, far more.

They knew I’d been a waitress at some shitty high-end restaurant in 2020.