SENTINEL 555: WAR ✔

BOOK 2: PREVIEW

1 End of the World

Dev owed Oni an apology.

He looked so proud the morning of the cull. Dressed down in figure hugging tights, recruits and head cadets alike shuffled in their prospective lines. Other than Bray, every other crew lost someone in the night because unlike most days, the front doors hadn't closed.

More than one recruit, either realizing the end of their charade or nerves elsewhere, left. Those whoever could not hold their breath but had some incredible skill entered with a lifeline flashing on their files.

Out of everyone there, Sen looked the most miserable. Dev's crew wasn't far behind. All but Mercy who stood bold with her teary-eyed sisters.

Their foolish worry now sent Dev into a panic at first but she thought of all it took to get here and decided to calm.

All through the night, she'd considered what these sisters were up to. Now she understood.

The ability to hold one's breath past three minutes was an incredible feat. Each sister surpassed five. As each Volunteer suit was equip with adequate levels of filters and in some cases, air, there was actually no need for holding one's breath. Not unless they took the helmet...off. Something very rare.

As such, the focus today was on the breathing but Dev, as all head cadets, knew, it was about being trapped and nothing else. The Volunteer suit was lifelong for some.

Panic in the water. Panic in the suit.

Each recruit would get air canisters. So long as they passed the two-minute mark before using it, they could pass this evaluation unceremoniously.

The seven sisters planned to give Mercy their air. Because that was the only way she'd survive this.

Oni glanced back at Dev often in line. She tried to smile at him. Her moment of weakness with giving him her lifeline still troubled her.

Why?

Why had she given it to someone much less someone like him? And yet, she felt right about it.

Sen hadn't spoken a word to her the entire day.

As they reached their tank, Dev met Oni's gaze. She owed him an apology.

Today, when the head cadets' list of lifelines flashed and hers said zero, his eyes lit up. He'd smiled wide. Pride flashed in his gaze.

Recruits weren't privy to their own files, a fact Dev wondered about. But now she understood. Not everyone would get a lifeline and knowing that fact ahead of time could lead to all sorts of trouble. No. Any recruit getting into that water needed to be one who would try their best to make it to the other end of it without help. Because often times, there simply wasn't any.

Because of her lie, he now thought she'd given her last lifeline to Mercy. She hadn't. She'd used it up on Oni to let him back into the program.

No matter what happened today, good or bad, success or...death, Dev had no say in it.

It was forbidden to help anyone without a lifeline.

Dev scanned her matrix one last time and picked her head up to focus on Bray in a tank of his own. All forty were going into the same one. It could fit a hundred but his choice to do this meant he had some sort of special routine. The fact that they were setting everything up one-handed was a strange way to show off but it made her more curious than anything else.

That could be her—would be her and a new crew soon enough. Mercy's demise would be crippling to Dev on many levels. Her highest scorer not making it....