Page 42 of Hunted

“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.

[ 16 ]

ADDIE

DEXTER BRITAIN – DO WHAT YOU ARE DOING