“This is it,” whispered Satterfield when Rose and Leslie approached. “Hanks says the captains are in that urbanized area.”
The older woman didn’t look so confident but said nothing to correct her squad leader.
“Are we heading in?” Rose hadn’t been pleased when the draw sergeants announced this field exercise. It sounded like a giant game of capture the flag with the bonus that you might get tagged by painful, high-velocity paintballs, the reason the techs fit her with two body cams, in case the paintballs coated one. But now that she was in the thick of the game, she found her pulse quickening. She wanted to win.
Satterfield shook her head. “Not all of us. Not yet. Trees are cleared for at least an eighth of a mile in every direction. There’s no way we could make the approach without getting slaughtered.”
“You think the captains are in that tower?” Leslie asked.
“I doubt it,” Rose said.
Satterfield narrowed her eyes. “Why’s that?”
“It doesn’t feel right. Why the pretense of a fake town if our prize is inside the most obvious place?”
“Bystanders,” Satterfield said. “Lipe or Ambrose, whoever designed this thing, wants our teams spraying innocents while we try to take the tower.”
“I’m with Rose on this one,” Hanks said. “I doubt the captains are in there.”
“Is that a discernment, or just your gut talking?” Satterfield asked.
Hanks cocked her head as if listening to something the others couldn’t hear. “Hard to say. I can’t see the people we’re dealing with.”
“That’s why I need you two.” Satterfield indicated Rose and Leslie. “You’ve got the most charm in the platoon. I want you to use it to get into the town, figure out where the captains are being held, and clue us in.”
“That’s a long way to walk without cover,” Leslie said. “I could snipe all six of the guards from a tree and save us the trouble.”
Satterfield shook her head. “Too risky. Those can’t be the only armed resistance.”
“You think our charm will reach the tower?” Rose asked. She didn’t know how she felt about becoming the team’s sacrificial lamb.
“I think you’re going to find out.”
Fifteen minutes later, having dropped their weapons and exchanged their camo uniforms for jeans and t-shirts, Rose and Leslie strode across the empty expanse between Team Blue’s hiding spot and the fake town. Sweat drenched Rose’s face. She held her arms up, trying to avoid pit stains. Too late. She cut her eyes at Leslie. “You could at least sweat.”
“I am.”
“No, you’re glistening prettily. Makes me sick.”
Leslie laughed.
The previously gravel lane gave way to pavement as it neared the city proper. Without discussing it, Rose and Leslie circled toward the asphalt. A faded sign, its paint chipped and worn, read, “Smash Town.”
“Subtle,” Rose said.
“Let’s hope it’s true,” Leslie said.
Smash Town consisted of four roads, two running north to south, two east to west. Main Street—there was a sign—bustled with pedestrians while all others stood empty. Men and women dressed in everyday clothes strolled along its narrow sidewalks, chatting on cell phones, jogging, and peering into shop windows.
No one paid Rose or Leslie the least bit of attention. Did that mean Rose’s draw of charm obscured their concentration as she intended? Or had Robin and Lipe coached these actors to ignore interlopers? Rose decided to test it.
“Excuse me, sir.” She approached a squat man sitting on a wooden bench outside a barbershop.
He didn’t look up at first, but when Rose repeated herself, the old guy peered around as if someone had called his name. He looked genuinely confused.
“Guess our charm shield is working,” Leslie said. “Now what?”
Rose jogged to the corner of Main and First. There she spun slowly in a circle, observing the town, taking it all in as she added discernment to her draw of charm. While she couldn’t hope to match Myra Hanks in that department, Rose had her fair share of insight. Renni and Lee had seen to that.
Of all her powers, Rose considered discernment the strangest, maybe because it wasn’t physical like speed or dexterity. Or perhaps the oddness stemmed from what she perceived as a lack of control when it came to this elusive draw. Unlike those others, discernment hinged on the human ability to guess at outcomes. The bulk of this guessing came down to interpreting an adversary’s micro-tissue facial expressions—the nearly imperceptible contractions of eye, cheek, or lips. Those, coupled with larger scale body movements, could inform a succubus much about another person’s intentions whether she was trying to catch a lie or broker a multi-billion-dollar merger.
But what if these people, these actors, didn’t know what she was seeking? What good was discernment when the individuals you could see didn’t have the information you wanted? That was when discernment leaped the infinitesimal line between reality and something preternatural. Tiny clues, subtle hints Rose was not aware of on anything approaching a conscious level, stuck out to some dark section of her mind. These could be as minuscule as the way a fake grocer stocked the gum rack outside his store.
Maybe he didn’t know where the captains were hidden in this town, but he had seen something—an unusual number of people entering one of the fake buildings, a delivery boy bringing sandwiches to what should be an empty section of town, or perhaps just the way one of the other actors walked. Whatever the trigger, something caused him to place his empty packs of sugar free gum in a certain order concealed even from his own conscious mind. Rose, equally as unaware of that order as the phony grocer, could nonetheless use it to zero in on her target by dint of her draw on intuition.
Or, maybe she was blowing smoke up her imaginary skirt. Either way, she spun in her tracks to point at the Smash Town Credit Union. “There. That’s the place.”
The bank occupied a small building with a large glass window, cheap red carpets, and one of those rope mazes bank managers set up to keep the tellers from being overwhelmed by customers. Except there were no customers in the Smash Town Credit Union. It contained two teller positions, one empty, the other staffed by a guy dressed in a blue blazer and matching tie. Absorbed in a game on his phone, he didn’t notice Rose and Leslie enter.
“Follow my lead.” Rose bypassed the line maze to march toward the counter. She maintained her draw on charm until she stood inches from the teller’s face. The guy let out a squeak of surprise when she dropped it.
“Hi,” Rose said.
“You scared the shi—” the would-be teller began. Then, remembering himself, he straightened his tie, and said, “Welcome to Smash Town Credit Union. How may I help you today?”
Rose gave Leslie a sly smile that the redhead returned in earnest. They drew charm in unison, this time to overwhelm rather than obscure. The teller’s face went instantly slack, his glossy eyes riveted on Rose’s face.
“Oh, God you’re beautiful,” he breathed.
Rose gave him her best demure smile. She hadn’t much practice with that sort of thing, but by the look on the teller’s face, that wouldn’t matter. “Thank you. What’s your name?”
“Charlie, but I’m not supposed to tell you that.”
“It’s okay. Can you tell me where they’re holding the captains, Charlie?”
His eyes flicked down to the empty counter. A pained look crossed his face as he deliberated. “I don’t—I don’t think I’m supposed to do that.”
Rose glanced at Leslie, who moved closer. “We’d be grateful if you’d help us, Charlie. We really want to find those captains.”
Charlie shuddered. “All right. They’re in the vault.” He hooked a thumb over one shoulder.
Rose came around the counter, tapped on the vault door. “It’s real?”
“Oh, yeah. But it’s not sealed. The people inside aren’t going to suffocate or anything. They have movies and stuff to do.”
The steel door had a keypad the size of a notebook computer at its center. Touchscreen buttons glowed on its face.
“Can you open it for us?” Rose asked.
Charlie’s face fell. “I can’t. Don’t know how. But I can get Drakes. He’s the maintenance guy for the fake town. He knows how to open it.”
“Is he one of the town’s actors?”
“No. Just a fix-it guy. You’re never supposed to see him.”
Rose clicked her tongue. “That won’t do.”
“I want to help you,” Charlie said, his tone piteous. He turned to Leslie. “Both of you at once.”
“Yuck.” Leslie curled her lips at the besotted Charlie.
Rose keyed her mic. “Blue Ox, this is Bubble.”
“Bubble, go ahead,” replied Satterfield’s tinny voice through the earbud.
“We’re Copeland.” Rose indicated that they had found the captains but had no way to extract them on their own.
“Roger that, Bubble. We’re—” Satterfield cut off.
The next instant brought the report of distant gunfire. Though standard paintball guns—everyone called them markers—made less noise than a well-suppressed rifle, the Order had modified the teams’ weapons to sound like regular gunfire. That made it harder for one team to sit in the woods and snipe another from cover.
“Shit,” Leslie said.
Rose peered out the window and her throat constricted. Uniformed men and women herded the fake civilians between the two tallest buildings on Main Street. She didn’t see many, perhaps seven or eight, but their uniforms were a mix of red and orange tinged camouflage, and that meant trouble.
“Blue Ox, Bubble. You there?”
A static-filled five seconds passed during which several booms rattled the fake bank’s plate glass window. Then Satterfield’s voice returned.
“Bubble, Blue Ox. We took some fire, but no one was hit. It was a feint. One of the other teams is in the town. What do you see? Over.”
“It’s two teams, Red and Orange. Looks like they combined forces. Over.”
“Dammit.”
“Attention, all citizens,” said an amplified voice from outside. “Exit your places of business and proceed to the intersection of First and Main for safe haven.”
“They’re coming,” Leslie said. “What now?”
Rose tore the radio from her ear as she raced behind the counter. She dropped it on the floor. “Charlie, hide. Les, get that thing out of your ear. We’re bank tellers.”
“But—”
“Do it.”
The front door banged open. A big man dressed in orange camo entered with a smaller guy in tow. They looked surprised to see Rose and Leslie.
“Good afternoon, sir. Welcome to Smash Town Credit Union.” Rose tried to mimic Leslie’s usual chipper tone. Would these guys notice the sheen of sweat on her forehead?
“Did you hear me out there?” the big guy asked. He was way too tall to be an incubus, but genetics wore funny trousers sometimes.
“We can’t abandon our posts,” Rose said. “Someone might rob the bank.”
“Funny.” He cocked a thumb over his shoulder. “We’ve taken the city. The rest of your actor buddies are already out there. My squad leader doesn’t want anybody shot that isn’t asking for it, but that don’t mean I won’t tag your ass if it’s dragging. Got me, honey?”
“I got you.” Rose motioned below the counter for Leslie to follow her lead. She had no intention of leaving the bank without a fight, but attacking these guys unarmed sounded ill-advised. “Come on, Les. Let’s go.”
Leslie nodded, and they started around the counter headed for the exit.
“Wait,” said the smaller guy.
Rose kept walking.
“I know that one. She’s Torres’s pet sime, the one that keeps winning all the sprint trials.”
Before he had even stopped speaking, his partner let loose with a volley of shots. They passed through where Rose had been standing to splatter against the plate glass window with a rhythmic thump-thump-thump, turning instantly into orange slime.
Rose hit the far wall at a dead run, took five steps up it toward the corner, and leapt at the shooter. He twisted to follow her trail but met her foot instead. She pulled the kick—a bit. But the big man toppled sole over crown, taking out his smaller friend in the process.
The little guy remained conscious if disoriented. Leslie swiped his marker and tagged him with it once at point-blank range.
“Geez, that hurt!” He rubbed his chest, spreading finger-sized paint splotches across his uniform.
“Shut up; you’re dead.” Leslie tossed his gun aside.
“Fine.”
She tagged the big guy too, splattering his facemask. She shrugged at Rose’s quizzical look. “Don’t want him thinking he’s still in the game when he comes around.”
Rose got back on the radio. “Ox?”
“Bubble.”
“We secure?”
“Yes,” Satterfield said.
Rose hesitated. “Is this signal secure?”
“They have the town,” Satterfield said. “Their forces are already assaulting the tower. Our squad has zero chance of coming in there without taking heavy casualties. I doubt anything you say now is going to compromise us.”
“You can’t come in force, but could you send one or two people?”
“What for?”
“The king isn’t in his castle,” Rose hoped Satterfield would take her meaning.
A long pause. “You sure.”
Rose glanced at the vault door. “Yeah, but we need Moss down here. Now. We took out a couple of theirs, and I don’t know when they’re going to be missed.”
“Honestly,” the little guy said, “I doubt we will. We didn’t get put on civie round up because we’re super troopers. Bradford there is a sime, but nobody trusts him, and all I’ve got is a draw on voice.”
“Ox, get Moss here quick.”
“Roger Wilco.”
Gunfire erupted outside. It sounded like the guys in the tower were putting up a hell of a fight. Rose peered out, but all she could see were the civilians. Most sat on the sidewalk or in the street looking bored while their captors stood by smoking cigarettes and chatting, their weapons hanging on straps.
“That’s good,” Leslie said. “They look complacent.”
Twenty minutes passed, thirty. The gunfight never ceased. Twice guards peeled away from the civilian group, jogging toward the tower. Reinforcements.
Rose bit her lip. Their dwindling numbers meant less chance one of them would spot something amiss, but it also meant the opposing commanders hadn’t given up. They were hell-bent on taking that tower, but when they did, they would find it empty. Then it would only be a matter of time before she and Leslie were found out.
Game over.
A thumping noise erupted inside the bank’s interior wall.
“The hell was that?” Charlie asked, standing up from his hiding place behind the counter, rubbing his eyes. He peered around blearily. “Who are you people? What—”
Rose shot him in the chest, and he yelped.
“Ow, dammit! Was that necessary?”
“Yes.”
The thumping continued, growing louder.
“You aren’t supposed to shoot the actors,” Charlie complained, rubbing his chest and smearing blue goo.
“Shut up.”
A crack appeared in the wall, tiny at first, but it spread quickly. The thumping came louder, faster, until a claw hammer burst through, showering bits of drywall onto the red carpet.
“Leslie?” asked a young man’s voice.
“Moss!” Leslie ran to the opening.
“Hey, cutie. I heard you two needed the resident genius.”
“How’d you know where to find us? I mean you didn’t come in the bank part.”
“Hanks is with me, and about half the team. Red and Orange are so busy they’ve pulled in all their point protection. We pretty much walked right in.
Hey, back up. This wall’s flimsy, but it’s still gonna take some work to push through.”
A series of booming blows followed by a terrific crack saw the wall crumble outward. Moss, covered in white dust from head to toe, appeared with Hanks and twelve more armed members of Team Blue.
“Carver,” Moss said.
Rose stepped forward.
Moss saluted. “Acting Captain Satterfield sends her regards and orders you to take charge of this contingent of Team Blue. She’s using the rest to harry the perimeter, make it seem like Red and Orange are under attack.”
Rose felt her back stiffen. Satterfield was giving her command of half the team? She didn’t know what to say. Almost without thinking, she returned Moss’s salute. “Ah, okay.”
Moss smiled. “Show me what you wanted me for.”
“There’s an electronic lock on that safe. Think you can break it?” Rose asked.
“Sure thing, boss.”
The big guy, who had been out all this time, groaned.
“You want we should tie these enemies up?” asked Frangle, an incubus with a pronounced Brooklyn accent.
“No.” Rose’s mind whirled. She never guessed command would throw her like this. Sweat trickled down the center of her back.
She drew a breath. Calm. Be calm. The squad would feed off what they saw in her. Best to look in charge even if she didn’t feel it.
Rose drew discernment and mental acuity. Every trait had its limit—she wasn’t going to suddenly become Patten or Einstein—but these helped immeasurably. “Okay, people. There’s a lot of you for this enclosed space. I want you four back in the tunnel. Secure the entrance you made. The rest of you fan out. I want clear lanes of fire on the door and that opening.”
Suddenly, the nearby gunfire ceased. Rose had a fraction of a second to realize this before her radio crackled.
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