by Tarah Benner
I grin because my instincts were right, and that seems to piss her off more.
“What are you smiling about?”
“Nothing.” I sigh. “You just . . . challenge me as a leader.”
A crack appears in her rough demeanor, and a slight smile starts to play on her lips.
“I was universally feared before you came around. Now I’m not sure I have any authority whatsoever,” I say quietly, my eyes still focused on those lips.
Her smile fades a little. She looks as though she wants to say something but then stops herself.
“I guess I should really thank you,” she says finally. “You put your own job at risk to protect me, so . . . thanks.”
I nod, feeling as though I’ve crossed some line that I shouldn’t have. “Look, you have to convince Jayden. It’s not enough to make up an alibi for Constance. You have to sell it now.
“If she thinks you made it up, you can’t trust her to lie for you. She’s senior leadership, which means if she thinks you were actually involved in the bombing, she’s going to turn you in.” I glance down at her face quickly. “She’d throw you under the bus in a second.”
Harper swallows as the realization dawns on her. For the first time since I’ve known her, she looks genuinely worried. She nods quickly and becomes very serious. “Okay. What do I tell her?”
I run through the story I told Jayden, recounting the details as if I’m giving an official report. My face is burning hot. Harper listens with rapt attention, nodding as she files away the information to use later.
When I finish, she looks at the ground, turning the story over in her mind the same way Jayden had. She may be a pain in the ass, but if she doesn’t get herself killed in the next year, Harper’s going to be a killer Recon operative.
“How was it?” she asks finally.
“What?”
“How — was — it?” she repeats slowly.
I just stare at her. I have no clue what she’s talking about.
Harper rolls her eyes. “The sex, Eli. If she asks about it, what should I say?”
“Oh.” I shift my weight from one foot to the other, wishing I could extricate myself from this conversation. “Uh . . . tell her it was great, but you won’t be doing it again.”
For some reason, she grins at this, and my ears suddenly feel as though they’re on fire.
“Why wouldn’t I want to do it again if it was great?”
Now it’s my turn to smirk. “Because I’m your commanding officer, and it was a stupid thing to do.”
She nods, but that look she’s giving me is making me nervous.
“Jayden won’t ask,” I say quickly. “And you shouldn’t give her any more details than you have to. She’s a trained interrogator. She’ll do anything she can to trip you up.”
“Did she trip you up?”
“She didn’t have to. She knows me too well.”
“What do you mean?”
I sigh. I don’t want to tell her the truth, but I know I don’t have a choice. “She thought I was lying.”
The color drains from Harper’s face, but she just nods. “Well, I guess I’ll just have to sell it better, won’t I?”
twenty-one
Eli
After my conversation with Harper, I’m way too wound up to go back to my compartment.
I head to Miles’s instead, and we go up to the canteen to grab an early dinner. He stares at me the entire time, and I know he’s waiting for me to tell him about everything that’s happened.
Harper was right: Everyone is talking about her sleeping with one of her commanding officers. Constance may have sealed a portion of the report, but that hasn’t stopped rumor of her arrest from leaking out of Control. I’m sure Paxton Dellwood is to blame, but he’s too much of a coward to rub it in my face directly.
So far, my own name hasn’t been tied to the story at all. I suppose I’m not interesting enough.
Harper, the smart Systems-track girl who was knocked down a few pegs by scoring a forty-six on her VocAps, makes for a much more entertaining rumor.
People are speculating about who it could be, and hearing the names of random Recon men whispered across the canteen, along with all the dirty things they think Harper might have done, makes me clench my fists on the table until my knuckles whiten.
I’m irrationally defensive about her, and even though I know it’s more than normal protectiveness, I tell myself I’m just looking out for my cadet. I can’t consider any other possibility.
I don’t say anything to Miles the whole way back down to the lower tunnels. I know I’m being paranoid, but I have this weird feeling that I’m being watched — if not by Constance, then by Jayden. She didn’t buy the alibi I created for Harper, and Jayden knows enough about counterintelligence to know that sometimes you just have to wait for your target to screw up.
But instead of going back to one of our compartments, I head for the training center. Miles is still too messed up to spar, but at least I can work off some steam.
It’s after hours, so Miles slams the heavy doors shut and wheels around, his eyes bugging out at me in a “spill your guts” kind of way.
“What is going on? Please tell me you are not the officer who was stupid enough to get caught sleeping with that pretty little stick of dynamite?”
I groan and toss Miles a pair of punching mitts. “I didn’t sleep with her.”
Miles misses one of the mitts, and his jaw drops to the floor. “So you are the guy? Man, that girl is trouble. What were you thinking? I mean, I know she’s hot, but —”
“I told you. I didn’t sleep with her. I didn’t do anything with her. I just . . . gave her an alibi.”
He picks up the mitt and puts his hand in. “Yeah. I give Brooke ‘an alibi’ all the time.”
I raise an eyebrow and shove my hands into a pair of gloves.
Miles stares at me for a long second and then lets out an incredulous laugh. “Oh. Oh my god. You’re serious. You’re sayin’ you got yourself written up for sleeping with her without actually getting to do anything?” He doubles over and slaps his knee. “You’re even dumber than I thought!”
I’ve had enough. I jab, and the mitt appears not a second too soon to keep my glove from colliding with Miles’s broken nose.
“Easy,” he snaps, looking around the gym as though he’s suddenly worried about being overheard. “Why did you do that?”
I do a jab-cross-uppercut combo and work Miles in a circle. “They thought she was involved in the bombing.”
“Why would they think she was involved?”
“Sullivan Taylor was the target of the explosion, and Harper was arrested for breaking into his office.”
Miles’s eyes grow wide, and he’s too slow with the mitt to block my left hook. It sinks into his side, and he makes a pained gurgling noise in his throat.
“Shit!” But I know he isn’t talking about my kidney strike. He’s thinking about Brooke digging up the Bid Day money. “Why would she do that?”
“To find out what he knew about her placement in Recon. She was targeted specifically. It doesn’t make sense.”
Miles lets out a low whistle. “Talk about bad timing. And they think the bombing was an inside job?”
“It has to be. It’s not as if we wouldn’t have seen a bunch of drifters scaling the outer wall.”
“You don’t think . . . you don’t think someone let one in, do you?”
“No, I don’t.”
The idea that anyone in the compound would willingly let a drifter in gives me a chill. Fringe babies are one thing, but bloodthirsty people who want us all dead? That would be the height of stupidity and nearly impossible to do.
“But if it was someone in the compound, who do you think it is?”
“I have no idea.”
“You know they’re going to try to pin it on Recon . . . or ExCon.”
“Probably.”
“What if it was the board?” Miles asks suddenly. “Wha
t if they want everyone to think it was Recon so they’ll have the compound on their side when they decide to send more of us out there?”
I snort, shaking my head in disbelief. “The board took out one of their own?”
“I don’t know! Maybe.”
I throw another jab-cross combo. “Why would they do that?”
“Maybe they thought Taylor was getting cold feet about something. Maybe he was about to get really chatty.”
I force a grin. “You’re getting more paranoid than I am.”
But I don’t think he is. I’ve already entertained this possibility, but bombing a tunnel within the compound is extreme, even for the board.
I can tell Miles is worried. He’s worried about Brooke, and he knows something bigger is coming. Recon can always sense looming disasters because preventing them is a matter of life and death.
When I’m tired enough to sleep, Miles and I walk back to our tunnel in silence. Even though I said he was paranoid, we both know it’s best to tread with a little healthy fear.
When I get back to my compartment, I shower again and climb into bed. My muscles are sore, but my brain is still wired from our conversation.
I know I’m going crazy, but the fact that the board hasn’t come out with a suspect for the bombing is unnerving. Either they have no idea what’s going on, or they were behind it in the first place.
There’s also a gnawing unrest in my gut that’s completely separate from the quiet panic rumbling just beneath the surface.
I realize I’m worried about Harper, which isn’t good. The last time I felt personally invested in another cadet, I let my guard down. I lost my edge. I can’t let that happen again. I can’t let it change the way I train them.
I turn over onto my side to go to sleep, but a tiny pulse of light from across the room catches my eye.
Everything is pitch black for a moment, and I’m almost sure I imagined it. But then it pulsates again — a tiny red light coming from my computer.
That’s weird. I never leave my computer on sleep mode.
I hop out of bed and tread over to the desk, hitting the power button. Instead of flashing to life immediately, I see the welcome screen.
My computer is booting up. It was off, yet the idle light was still blinking.
I turn it off again and back up to the edge of my bed to wait.
Sure enough, that little red light illuminates again, throwing a soft red glow over the monitor. It’s not the light that goes on when the computer is on; it’s the light that flashes whenever you video chat with someone.
My heart starts pounding in my chest, and I lunge for my interface resting on the nightstand. I clip it over my ear and turn it on. The device floods my bedroom with its unearthly blue light, and my dashboard flickers in front of my eyes. Up in the right-hand corner of the display, next to the battery icon, is a tiny red light.
I desperately double-click the home button to pull up my open apps, but the chat app isn’t even running in the background. I click off the device and throw it onto the bed, breathing hard.
They’re watching me.
I want to run. I want to throw my computer against the wall and watch it shatter into a million pieces. But then my instincts kick in — basic, mechanical good sense hardwired by years of stress drills and field training.
I need to act normal.
Heart still pounding, I force myself to lie down and slow my breathing. If I’m being recorded, any freak-out will look suspicious. As long as they don’t know I know I’m being watched, I still have an advantage.
I clench and unclench my fists under the covers. When did I make the leap from slightly paranoid to crazy town?
I don’t actually have any way of knowing if that’s what the red light means. I don’t know anything about computers.
But Harper does. And if they’re watching me, there’s a good chance they’re watching her, too.
I should stay away from her. That would be the safest option. But the moment Constance suspected enough to put me under surveillance, any hope of keeping myself or Harper out of danger disappeared. They know I’ve done something I shouldn’t have. They know I’ve learned too much.
I thought giving Harper a harmless alibi would take suspicion off her, but it just aroused Constance’s suspicion of me. And since my involvement all circles back to digging into Harper’s bid, it’s still going to come back to hurt her.
Instead of protecting Harper as I’d intended, I just gave Constance two messes to clean up instead of one.
twenty-two
Harper
On Saturday morning, I’m still half-asleep when I hear the knock on my door. Oh-seven hundred seems a little early for Jayden to come interrogate me about Eli’s half-baked sex story, so I roll out of bed to answer.
I throw open the door and let out an involuntary sigh of relief when I see it’s him. I’m not sure when I became glad to see Eli — probably around the same time I was tortured by Constance.
Eli doesn’t wait for me to invite him in. He doesn’t even say hi. He just pushes past me to get out of the tunnel and heads straight for my computer — but not before I’ve gotten a look at his face.
He isn’t wearing the hard, smug look he always has in training. His expression is strained, almost panicked. He has dark shadows under his eyes and looks as though he hasn’t slept.
“What are you —”
“You missed a full week of training,” he says. “You need to catch up.”
“Now?”
This is getting weird. He’s standing in front of my computer, staring at it as though he’s never seen one before. I suppose I should be glad he’s preoccupied with my computer, since I’m only wearing a tank top and a pair of tight black Spandex shorts that go under my fatigues.
“Were you thinking you’d just get to skate by in training for the next few weeks without doing some extra work to catch up?” he asks loudly.
I stare at him in disbelief. “I was tackled down a flight of stairs and electrocuted repeatedly. I think that’s a good excuse for taking a few sick days.”
He’s silent for a moment, grabbing my interface off the desk and examining it. For a second, I think he’s trying to read my messages, but he sets it back down quickly.
He turns to look at me, and his eyes jerk involuntarily to my tight shorts and wander up my tank top before snapping back to my face. “You think drifters aren’t going to blow you up because you had fewer days to prepare than everyone else?”
His voice isn’t harsh. It’s low, quiet, and matter-of-fact.
“No,” I say sheepishly, crossing my arms over my chest. I know I’m blushing, which only makes me angrier and redder.
Eli doesn’t say anything, but there’s a satisfied glimmer dancing in his piercing blue eyes. He just nods and crosses to the door. “Put some pants on and meet me in the training center.”
He leaves as abruptly as he came, and I stand there for nearly a full minute, trying to get a read on this weird situation.
Eli’s been douchey to say the least, yet he risked his own career to investigate my bid and covered for me when I should have been in deep shit. Then he shows up in my room at the crack of dawn to give me private one-on-one training sessions?
If he hates me, he sure has a weird way of showing it. Part of me thinks I’m winning him over, and my ultra-cocky alter ego roars in approval.
Feeling a little giddy, I pull on my fatigues and boots. By the time I join Eli in the training center, he’s practically climbing the walls.
“How long does it take to get dressed?” he snaps, prowling over to me like a panther.
I take an automatic step back, wondering if I was way off-base thinking he might actually be growing fond of me.
“Sorry. I move a little slow in the morning,” I say, examining his face carefully. He still looks really flustered, which isn’t like him.
He slams the door shut, and I’m automatically suspicious.
“What’s this
really about?”
Eli looks taken aback, and then I swear he goes a little red. He lowers his voice and glances around the training center. “I have to tell you something.”
I stare at him, utterly bewildered.
He sighs and meets my gaze dead-on. “I think I’m being watched.”
That’s the last thing I expected him to say.
“What?”
He drags in a deep breath, eyes flitting from me to the closed door. “I think my computer and interface have been hacked.”
Suddenly his weird behavior in my room makes sense. “That’s why . . . hang on, have mine been hacked, too?”
“It doesn’t look like it. But I’m not sure if that’s what they’re doing. I don’t know enough about computers. The red light — the one that comes on when you video chat — that’s on all the time. Even when the computer is turned off.”
I let out a long sigh, still trying to process the creepy fact that someone might be watching Eli’s every move. “You think it’s Constance?”
“It has to be.”
I shake my head. “They have to have somebody from Systems working for them. Hacking a device with the antivirus and anti-malware software we install isn’t kid stuff.”
I sink down onto the mat and rest my elbows on my knees. I feel a little dizzy. “Why, though? Is it because of what you told them about me?”
Eli shakes his head. “No way. They must not have bought my story. Now they think I know something I shouldn’t.”
I think I’m going to be sick. “But if they’re spying on you, that’s a huge breach of personal liberty. It’s against the law. Systems would never —”
“Not if Constance has cause to believe I could be endangering the compound.”
He’s right. Hell, I’d probably learn to do something similar if I were in Systems — just in case Constance ever called on my services. “This is wrong.”
Eli laughs — really laughs. “You’re concerned with the ethics of Systems all of the sudden?”
“Well, yeah. I never wanted to do stuff like this. I’m a developer, not a spy.”