Up In Arms

Chapter 16

Fuck Thanatos.

I threw a tennis ball into the air and caught it again, my phone charging and within reach as I waited to hear from the group about the status of our mission. I replayed what happened earlier over and over in my head as I rhythmically caught and released the yellow-green orb.

He didn't drop the nickname, which struck too close to home for my taste. Always winking at me after referring to a group, he draws more of a reaction from me than the gaggle of college girls and my coworkers ever did, combined. The last time someone had gotten me to open up like that...

I caught the tennis ball and squeezed, finally mad enough to think about my partner without falling apart.

"Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?" Sixteen-year-old me asked, looking up from the piece of paper to return the 'mandatory' eye contact.

He had smiled sweetly and put his hand on top of mine. "Yeah, protecting you."

I have a hunch on how he will die, and it involves a bullet traveling from my rifle through his abdomen. Not enough to kill him instantly, but a wound serious enough that he would suffer before he died.

There was a time while we were in training when we had to share a tent, and there were always a few minutes of free time after we completed our training but before lights-out. I knew the purpose of training alongside a boy was to make me immune to any kind of 'charms' the male gender could use to get beneath my shields, and it succeeded to that extent.

What the training didn't include was how to emotionally detach oneself from situations and interactions, which led to me developing a romantic attraction to my partner.

He had printed out and brought along a list of 36 questions and started the game of us taking turns asking them to each other. I unknowingly played along, my subconscious attraction growing each day while he watched with well-hidden amusement. To him I was just another girl, someone to be manipulated until he could achieve his ultimate goal.

Passing the final test.

A gun was in my seventeen-year-old hands, and I looked uncertainly up at my partner, who was inspecting the weapon he had been given. "Kyle?"

He smiled, but this wasn't the smile I had grown accustomed to, the one that caused butterflies to erupt in my belly and a tingling feeling to nibble my fingertips. This was a smile that sent a chill down my spine and that caused the hair on the back of my neck to stand on-end.

"This is the final test."

"A shooting test?" I asked, picking up the folder by my feet and opening it to find three words.

Shoot your partner.

What we didn't know was that we were not in the same room, that the person we saw as our partner was actually a high-tech holographic projection, our movements and words being transmitted in real-time.

My heart leapt into my throat when he leveled his gun at my head. From instinct and training I aimed back at him, but my hands were shaking, and my aim was lower.

His smile turned into an acidic smirk, and I realized that I had been played. "Easy."

He had shot the hologram of me in the head, and I flinched so hard I shot the hologram of him in the stomach. We both passed, but I haven't spoken a word to Killcount since.

Manipulative bastard.

My phone buzzed, and I dropped the tennis ball to check my messages.

[Roman: Your gun is under my car. Set up facing the pavilion in the forest, it's going down tonight.]