“I think that’s against the rules,” Alexa said.
“It’s not,” I said. “They said nothing about working together on a team. The winner is an individual, but that doesn’t mean we can’t team up, at least temporarily.”
Alexa paused to think about this. I took the opportunity to really study her without having to worry about getting caught staring. She was pretty tall for a girl. At least five ten maybe, even slightly taller. Her eyes were a beautiful shade of blue, but darker than any I had seen before. Her face was nearly flawless, with nice cheekbones and perfect nose, as well as beautiful skin. She wasn't even wearing make-up, and frankly didn’t need it.
She had a nice figure, too. Trim and athletic, but not in an anorexic I-never-eat sort of way. I could tell from the fit of her shirt that she had some seriously toned muscles in her arms.
“All right,” she said. “Let’s work together. The worst they can do is tell us to stop. Do you have a plan?”
As a matter of fact, I did. “I call it Operation Clownfish,” I said.
Alexa gave me a flat look. “I think you’re the clown,” she said.
“Just hear me out,” I replied. “We are going to take turns being bait and standing out in the open trying to attract attention.”
“Genius!” Alexa said, not bothering to hide the sarcasm in her voice. She threw her arms in the air and shook her head. “I sure hitched my wagon to a star.”
Now it was my turn to give her a look. “First of all, what’s with that comment? What are you, like... eighty? Second, let me finish before you start with the snide remarks.”
Alexa shrugged and motioned for me to go on.
I gave a sniff of mock-indignation. “The other person is going to hide down one of the passageways. There are a bunch of side hallways and alcoves that would be perfect for an ambush. Once the bait has someone’s attention, they fake injury or pretend they’ve lost their discs and run away. They lead the pursuer past where the other person is hiding, who then tags the pursuer. While the pursuer is frozen, the bait comes back and tags them, too. Then we bail out of the area and do it again.”
Alexa said nothing for a moment and then smiled. “You know, Pierce, that plan isn’t half bad.”
The first person to fall into our trap was Caleb. I was the bait and pretended to have a leg cramp. He started running when he saw me, and I limped into the hallway where Alexa was hiding. I heard Caleb running after me and made sure I stayed close enough that he would think there was a chance to catch me. I ran past Alexa and turned the corner. I quickly stopped and waited for him to run past Alexa.
I heard a thump and then the sound of the footsteps abruptly stopped. I turned back around the corner and found Alexa standing over a prone and immobile Caleb, a look of triumph on her face.
She pumped her fist into the air and laughed. I ran over and placed my disc on Caleb’s chest. Then we ran to find our next victim.
Over the next half hour, we tagged Gabriel, Sierra, and Kathryn without either of us getting tagged at all. The process was nearly fool-proof. We each tagged the victim and while they were still unable to move, we made our escape to a different section of the fake town we were in.
Next was Mariah. She had figured out what we were doing and stopped chasing Alexa before she reached the place where I was hiding. Once we realized she was on to us, Alexa chased her down and we both quickly tagged her and then bolted. She may have been a genius, but she couldn’t match either of us athletically.
We found Zach playing a very defensive game. He had shut himself up in an upper room. He used his bulk to keep the door closed and prevent anyone from coming in. Even with both Alexa and I pushing we couldn’t open the door to tag him.
By this time, I had started to notice the patterns of the rooms and passageways. They weren't completely random, like you would find in an actual city where buildings were made by unique people. This had the feel of a computer or at least a bored programmer who built for functionality and speed rather than aesthetics.
“I think there’s another door on the other side of the room,” I said.
“He’ll just block that one if we go there,” Alexa said.
“Not if we split up. You keep pushing at this door and making noise. I’ll see if I can find the other door.”
I ran down the stairs and through some hallways that were now starting to feel familiar. I found another set of stairs in what seemed like the right place. I ran up and saw a door at the top of the stairs.
Exactly as I had envisioned it.
I turned the knob and started to open the door, but was cut off by a huge body hurtling itself at the door and slamming me back.
That would be Zach. Perfect.
As I knew she would, Alexa opened the door on the far side of the room. Now that Zach was guarding my door, she was free to enter. The pressure eased off the door I was pushing against, and I burst into the room.
Alexa and I faced off against Zach. He had four discs attached to him already and looked back and forth between the two of us, clearly unsure how to stop the two of us together.
And I didn’t want to give him the chance to figure out a strategy. I took a couple of steps toward him, and he charged me holding out a disc, only to be brought up short by Alexa placing her disk between his shoulder blades. He fell, immobile, to the ground, his face twisted with anger and frustration.
I quickly put my disc on him, and Alexa and I ran out of there as fast as we could. Neither of us wanted to be there when the immobility from the discs wore off.
Our second to last victim was Kevin. Once we found him, we took him down without too much difficulty, but he complained loudly that we were cheating.
“It’s not a team game,” he said. “Working together to take out people is cheating.”
Neither Alexa nor I bothered to argue. We quickly ran away from Kevin putting as much distance between us and him as possible before he could move again.
Once we were safely away, Alexa and I stopped to talk.
“So, what now?” she asked. “We’re down to just Logan. Do we stay together or split up?”
“As much as I hate to say it,” I said, “I think we have to split up. Unless you’re willing to let me tag Logan first?”
Alexa grinned at me. “Not a chance. You’re a nice enough guy, but not nice enough for me to let you win.”
Which was exactly what I thought. And it just so happened I felt the same way. She was beautiful, and I liked working with her, but I wanted to win this.
“I guess that means we’re splitting up,” I said.
Alexa rolled her eyes. "You make it sound like we've been dating for years and permanently ending a relationship."
For some reason, I couldn’t think of a single response to this. The comment hung awkwardly between us for a moment, until Alexa shook her head and ran down a hallway.
I stood there a moment, unsure of what to do. I knew I needed to go find Logan, but something about Alexa’s comment had really hit home. For a few precious minutes, while we were working together, I had felt something. It was as if we had slipped back into an old pattern...
I am ten years old and running down a passageway with a much younger Alexa. “Come on!” she says. “I want to show you something. We’ve got to hurry before it’s gone!”
I have no idea what she is going to show me, but I learned in my first few weeks here that time with Alexa was never boring. If she wants to show me something, then I absolutely want to see it.
The wound in my shoulder pulls as I run. It was only yesterday that the doctor had allowed me to start using my left arm again. It stings a bit, so I make sure not to pump my arms too high.
We round the corner and into the weapons practice wing. Alexa runs up to a practice room and pulls open the door. I walk in and she closes the door behind us.
“This is it!” she says. She claps her hands together and starts bouncing up and down. She is excited about something, but I can’t tell what. The
room looks like all the other practice rooms I have been in. I can’t see anything out of the ordinary that would make her this excited.
I shrug and look at Alexa. “I don’t get it,” I say.
She points at the control panel. “It’s unlocked!”
The practice rooms require your personal access code to use. Kid access codes have restrictions on them that prevent us from using the Boom Sticks that actually feel real and accessing the more challenging levels. When an adult leaves the room, the code is supposed to automatically deactivate. For some reason, this panel hadn’t.
Alexa picks up a pair of the adult practice Boom Sticks. “You want to give it a try?” she asks.
And then, I was back.
I smiled as I replayed the memory one more time. That was the first memory of Alexa that I had recovered. I was looking forward to recovering more.
But my thoughts were interrupted as I was hit hard from behind and knocked to the ground, immobilized. That was only my second hit. Kevin stood over me and grinned nastily at me.
“Cheater,” he said softly and then in a yell: “Hey, I’ve got Pierce here. He’s immobile. Come and get him!”
The irony of Kevin accusing me of cheating after having knocked me down – something clearly against the rules – was apparently lost on him.
Kevin turned back to face me. “Payback,” he said and ran off.
The distant pounding of footsteps started to come closer. I waited agonizing seconds for the immobilization field to wear off so I could make my escape. Each heartbeat felt like a year, and each breath an eternity.
When the field finally wore off, I jumped up and started running. That was something I knew I was good at. There were very few people who could outrun me.
I was tempted to find Kevin and engage in a bit of my own payback, but I figured my best revenge would be to win. I found that winning shut up guys more than threats or posturing ever did.
“He’s down this way,” I heard a female voice say. I thought it was Kathryn but it could have been Mariah, I needed more time before I was going to be able to tell everyone apart by voice only.
I made three quick turns and ended up in a dead end, blocked by the stairs.
No, not quite. As I looked around, I found a small, empty space that wasn’t immediately obvious. It was only two feet high, but it looked deep. Deep enough to hide in, at least.
I crawled into the dead space and saw that it led to a hollow under the stairs. The perfect hiding place. It was dark and cramped, but unless you knew it was here, it would be almost impossible to find.
Footsteps pounded on the stairs above me, and I held as still as I could. Voices called out from above, but they were muffled and I couldn’t tell what they were saying. I waited in silence for one minute. Two. Five.
Finally, I stopped hearing the voices, and I crawled out of the hidden room. I brushed myself off and started running.
It was time to find Logan.
And that turned out to be no easy feat. I ran through the maze of hallways and buildings looking for him, but he was nowhere to be found. I found everyone else, including Alexa, at least twice, but not Logan. If nothing else, I should have run into him by sheer luck and probability by now.
Unless he wasn’t playing the game.
What if he was hidden someplace and refusing to play? I didn’t know him that well, but given all the complaining he did about Seam Warden training, I could easily see him deciding not to play.
I changed tactics to start looking through hidden cracks and corners. I stopped looking for a moving target and started looking for a well-hidden one.
It took me another fifteen minutes, but I finally found him in a hidden hole under a set of stairs like the one I found earlier.
He was asleep.
Which totally validated my theory about him not playing the game. I reached out and placed my disc onto him – he had no others on him – and the lights in the simulated city all turned on.
Logan yawned, stretched, and opened his eyes. “Is it finally over?” he asked.
We lined up back where we started. Alexa punched me in the shoulder – hard. Judging by the effort she put into the punch and the sound it made, it should have really hurt, but the fabric on my Seam Warden shirt absorbed most of the energy and I only felt a light tap.
For a moment, I thought Alexa was genuinely angry until she smiled and clapped a hand on my other shoulder. “Nice work,” she said. “I couldn’t find Logan anywhere.”
“He was asleep under one of the staircases,” I said.
Alexa groaned and rolled her eyes. “Why am I not surprised?”
Reid pulled me out of line to stand between him and Abby. “The winner of the exercise is Pierce.”
Alexa, Gabriel, Mariah, and Zach clapped. The others joined in somewhat less-than-enthusiastically.
I heard Kevin mutter the word “cheater” loud enough that everyone could hear it.
Reid spun around to look at Kevin. “What was that?” he asked. “I didn’t quite hear your passive-aggressive whining.”
Kevin dropped his head and said nothing.
“Did I hear you accuse one of your fellow cadets of cheating?”
Kevin mumbled something too soft for me to hear.
“He teamed up?” asked Reid. He turned to face me. “Pierce, is this true?”
I shrugged. “Given the rules you established for the exercise, it seemed like the best way to accomplish the end goal.”
“Who did you team up with?” Reid asked.
I hesitated. It was one thing for me to possibly get into trouble, but I sure didn’t want to drag Alexa into this and get her in trouble either. I was the one who came up with the plan.
“It was my idea, sir,” I said. “If anyone is to blame it should be me.
“It was me,” said Alexa. She took a step forward. “I teamed up with Pierce.”
“Interesting,” said Abby. She turned to face me. “Who said anything about blame?” she asked. “You were right. There was nothing in the rules about teaming up. Pierce accomplished the end goal without violating any of the rules.” She gave Kevin a quick glare as he opened his mouth to protest. “No violation. My decision is final.”
“Now that everyone's panties are unwound,” Reid said, “you have a half hour to get cleaned up before lessons start. I suggest you all shower since we are going to be cooped up in a single room with poor ventilation, and I don’t want to be smelling your nasty stink for the rest of the day. Dismissed.”
We all turned to leave. “Not you, Pierce,” said Reid. “I want a word with you.”
Alexa and I made eye contact. What was this all about? She shrugged and gave me a sympathetic expression before walking toward the exit.
But before she could leave, she stopped and walked back to stand beside me, her eyes looked fierce and her jaw was set. “I was just as much a part of this as Pierce. If there are any punishments to be had, I will take them, too.”
Abby folded her arms and met Alexa’s stare, glare for glare. “Did we say he was being punished?”
Alexa’s grim expression faltered. “Well, no.”
“Did we even say it had anything to do with today’s exercise?”
“No.”
“But you thought you could come back here and tell your training masters what we should and shouldn’t do?”
Alexa looked down at the floor. “That’s not what I meant to...”
“It doesn’t matter what you ‘meant’ to do,” Abby said. “Mr. Brewster and I are your training masters. We decide how this program is run, including punishments. Understood?”
“Understood,” Alexa said. Her cheeks flushed and she continued staring down at the ground.
“Good. You are dismissed, cadet.”
Without another word, Alexa strode to the door. She looked back and gave me an apologetic wave before she left. I tried to give her a reassuring smile, but it kind of failed.
Abby let out a deep sigh. “Being
bad cop sucks,” she said.
Reid smiled. “That was your choice,” he said.
They both turned to face me.
“Relax,” Reid said. “We just have a couple of questions that we didn’t want to ask you in front of the entire cadet class.”
I let out my breath and tried to relax. I was woefully unsuccessful.
“You said teaming up seemed like the best way to accomplish the end goal,” Reid said. “I’m confused. The end goal was individual. There could only be one winner. How would teaming up with someone help you with an individual goal?”
I hesitated. The answer seemed completely obvious to me. Why were they asking me these questions?
“That's easy, sir. There were ten of us attempting to win. Once Alexa and I tagged each other, we were no longer a danger to each other. Working as a team, we were able to tag the others much more efficiently and protect ourselves at the same time. By working together, we put ourselves so far ahead of the others that when it came down to the last person to tag, it was no longer a ten person contest, but down to two. My odds of winning increased from 10% to 50% by working with Alexa.”
“And what if she had reached the end goal before you?”
“Then she probably would have been clever enough to do that individually if we hadn’t teamed up,” I said. “If I were to plan it out from a strategic perspective, I probably shouldn’t have picked someone as strong as her to partner with, so I would have had a better chance of winning at the end. The strategy didn’t require the other person on my team be particularly strong.”
“So, why did you choose her?” asked Abby. “Once you came up with the idea, you could have waited and tried it with someone weaker.”
“It ultimately came down to trust,” I said. “At the time I felt like I could trust her to follow along with the plan and not try to stab me in the back before we went our separate ways. That was more important to me and to the success of my plan than the strength of my partner.”
Reid and Abby looked at each other.
“If you keep up with that kind of out-of-the-box thinking, Pierce,” said Abby, “you may make a decent Seam Warden one day.”
Thirteen Forgotten Worlds (Seam Wardens Book 1) Page 9
