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THERON

A week went by and Nyx, Atlas and I settled back into our routine.

Now that I knew what to expect, I wanted to add in strategy meetings to discuss the best ways to navigate the maps and what to do in worst-case scenarios so we’d all be on the same page if shit went down. Today was our first one, and I’d chosen a spot out in the middle of the lawn, far away from the cameras and any listening ears.

“So what do we know,” I asked.

“The target is a human being,”

Nyx said dryly.

“Yes, which makes her a variable. She’s only fixed until a team gets to her. Having a target with a mind of their own could get complicated,”

I said. “What else?”

“We start out unarmed,”

Preacher said. “Ammo is pretty scarce.”

I nodded. Preacher had slowly been coming around. At first he was doing his own thing and only talked to Nyx and sometimes Atlas, but yesterday he’d stopped by the weight rack as I was finishing my set.

He watched me as I sat up.

“How’s the leg?” He asked.

“It was just a ricochet luckily,”

I said. “Didn’t even need stitches.”

There was a slightly awkward silence, and I looked up at him, then nodded my head towards the lawn. “We’re about to do some hand to hand—you’re welcome to join.”

Today, he’d joined us in our workout routine and now he was sitting next to Nyx, chewing on a blade of grass and contributing to the conversation.

“Yeah—ammo seems to be random. It’s either in a cache or randomly loaded into some guns but not others. It’s paramount we spend the first part of the game outfitting ourselves and finding enough ammo to go into the offensive and then sustain us on the defensive,” I said.

“We have sixty minutes,”

Atlas said. “And the drones are very serious about boundaries and rules.”

I thought back on how the soldier had crossed the boundary and the drone shot him down. It was definitely a deterrent not to get out of line or do anything shady after the buzzer ended the game.

“The tactical gear was a surprise,”

Preacher said.

“Yeah, I was half expecting he’d make us go in this,”

Nyx chuckled, plucking the sweatshirt off his chest.

“I wonder if the map is going to be different each time,”

Atlas said.

“Knowing Vetticus, I bet it will be,”

I said. “He wouldn’t want us to get comfortable.”

“Makes planning difficult,”

Preacher said.

“There are cameras everywhere,”

Atlas said. “And they listen to us through our comms units I’d imagine.”

“That’s going to add another layer to escaping,” Nyx said.

“We’ll have to get the trackers out quickly,”

Preacher added.

“When are we going to try it?”

Atlas asked.

“I think we need to be careful,”

I said. “When we make a move, we need to execute it flawlessly or Vetticus will tighten things up and make it even harder. Right now I don’t think we have enough information to guarantee success.”

Surprisingly, it was Preacher who agreed first. “I agree. We need more information. I don’t want to ‘try’—I want to make sure we don’t have to attempt it a second time.”

“After the next game we’ll have another discussion about logistics with that,”

I said. “How are we going to account for new team members?”

“I think as long as we’re the core four, they follow our lead or they can go off on a suicide mission for all I care,”

Nyx said. “Let them dig their own grave.”

He looked at me pointedly and winked.

I looked around the group. Atlas nodded and Preacher shrugged.

“That’s a variable for sure,”

Preacher added. “But I think if they want to go rogue, we just do our own thing. A four-man team can still get the job done.”

“Then North doesn’t have to shoot anyone,”

Atlas said dryly.

“Exactly!”

Nyx exclaimed.

I shook my head in amusement. “Alright, what could we have tightened up last game?”

“Jesus,”

Nyx said. “Everything?”

“At least you weren’t stuck with Vyper,”

Preacher said with a shake of his head. “I didn’t disagree with you on the fact that he was a liability. He didn’t check his corners, hoarded ammo and left Colt behind without even a see you later.”

“Yeah, exactly why we’re letting the feisty ones get themselves killed from now on,”

Nyx said. “I think we fell apart in the church.”

“Everyone was kind of doing their own thing,”

Preacher agreed. “I think I spent more time yelling at Vyper to open the damn cage than actually communicating with anyone else.”

“I agree with that,”

I said. “Tactics kind of went out the window and we had no communication with each other at all.”

Preacher looked around at us. “Despite that you guys looked like you’d been working together for a long time.”

“Aw, thanks Preach,”

Nyx grinned.

Atlas shook his head. “Well, it does have a lot to do with what North was talking about earlier about leadership.”

Everyone looked over at me. “I agree—but a leader has his work cutout for him if there’s no skills to work with in the first place and luckily, there is no shortage of that here.”

“Okay, okay—”

Nyx gushed. “Enough with the sappy compliments.”

We moved on to other topics, but my mind wandered back to the thoughts of escape. If we could hone our skills, build the team out and bide our time—we could find a weakness in Vetticus’ games and capitalize on it. We just had to be patient.