I flung the door of my dormitory open to leave for my meeting but was met with Sarah's shocked face, a fist poised above her head to knock. She stumbled back a step, surprised by the sudden opening of the door. I laughed at her raised brows and lips drawn into a shocked “o” shape.
“Hey!” I said, chuckling. “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.”
Sarah, one of four of my group mates from the Mastering Group Combat class, cleared her throat and attempted to regain her composure. The natural pink on her high cheekbones turned a bright red as she mindlessly straightened the top of her jumpsuit.
“Hi, Rayden. I was just coming to tell you that we found something. We think we solved your ‘hidden door’ clue.”
“Really?” My voice raised about an octave with excitement. I coughed to distract Sarah from the change. “Uh, what did you find?”
“You need to just see it,” Sarah said, grabbing my arm and pulling me out of the dorm.
“Oh, I have a meeting.” I pulled against her grip just slightly. “An important one.”
Though, her offer tempted me to skip the meeting. If Sarah and the rest of the group had found the hidden door mentioned in one of the two clues I’d been assigned to find for our group quest, we were another step closer to winning Professor Bilith’s competition and claiming the prize that awaited in her safe. We all wanted the prize–even though none of us knew what it was.
Sarah pushed her bottom lip out in a pout. “You can’t skip it?”
I hesitated, feeling even more swayed by the pleading look on her pretty face, but remained strong. “No. As I said, it’s important.”
I wanted to train to become a scout–I didn’t want to just be a scout support for the allotted two years while I waited for the chance to request a new job assignment.
“Can I meet you after?” I asked.
Sarah rolled her eyes and sighed but then threw a sparkling smile at me. “Sure. Meet me in that same library I took you to when we were doing our research. I’ll wait there for a couple hours.”
With that, Sarah turned on her heel, sweet-smelling hair flicking in my face as she left with an exuberant wave.
***
“Thank you all for coming.” Gareth stood at the front of the large lecture room with hands clasped behind his back. He blocked half of the screen used for classes with his wide body.
Five other large-statured and muscly people lined up on either side of Gareth, most with arms crossed and all with intimidating glares boring into our very Souls.
Gareth himself turned up his broad chin and narrowed his eyes, studying the five of us scout supports sitting side-by-side in small desks.
“It seems we are missing a person, but we should get started.”
As if mocking Gareth’s statement, the tall wooden door slammed open, hitting the red-papered wall as it flew.
All eyes turned to the newcomer, and my first thought was, I’m glad I’m not the late one for once, which was immediately followed by a curse that I almost shouted aloud and won’t repeat here.
“Cinthara, glad you could join us after all,” Gareth said. He nodded in the direction of an empty seat at my right for her to take. “We were just about to begin.”
It took every bit of my strength of will to not slink down in my seat as Cinthara approached me, but she didn’t so much as even make eye contact. She settled into her seat, long platinum-blond braids falling over the back of her chair. She set her hands atop the wood surface of her desk and turned every bit of her attention to Gareth and none in my direction. Did she dislike me even more after I had failed to meet her at the city entrance the night of my medical emergency when Codex had shut off?
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But you know, if she didn’t want to look at me, I was perfectly fine with avoiding her fiery eyes and angry expressions for now.
“First, the other scout leaders and I would like to thank the six of you for attending this meeting.”
I glanced at the others standing by Gareth again. Ah, so they lead some other scout teams. Is this all of the scout leaders? Only six scout teams? I doubted that.
There were three women among the leaders and three men, including Gareth. And they looked like they’d seen quite a few fights in their day, with magnificent scars on varying parts of their bodies and menacing looks stuck on their faces.
Gareth took a step closer. “Second, we want to clarify why we chose the six of you for this… test we want to run. You have all shown, at one time or another, exceptional potential as future scouts–not just scout supports.”
The scout supports, including me, sat up straighter in our seats with satisfied smiles and enthusiastic nods of our heads.
“The six of you are no longer scout supports,” Gareth continued. “At least, if you choose to move forward with this plan, you will be the first group of elite scout supports who will go out on shifts on a trial run as full-on scouts.”
A dark-skinned girl who looked so much like Sarina that my heart skipped a panicked beat shot her hand up in the air.
“Yes, Beth?”
“What do you mean we are the first group?” She gestured to the six of us young, inexperienced supports. “You want the six of us to go on shifts alone–without real scouts?”
“You are real scouts,” Gareth corrected. “On a trial basis, as I said.”
“So, you will assign us some supports,” Cinthara chimed in. She said the words as a statement, not a question.
Gareth took a deep breath and shot nervous glances at the other scout leaders. “No.”
Outbursts of shock erupted all around me.
“No way!” a boy about my age raged, rising from his seat and pounding a fist on his desk. “You’re insane!”
Gareth’s lips twisted into a snarl, and his calm demeanor immediately turned nasty. He had a way of looking angry and threatening when he wanted to.
“It’s important that this goes the way we have planned! No one can know what we're assigning you to do besides a few designated people like those in this room and a few other higher-ups in the city."
Gareth’s scowl dropped into a sympathetic frown as he raised his hands and shook his head. “Listen, we are not forcing any of you to accept this job. What we are asking you to do is dangerous, but we think the six of you can handle it. If this experiment works, we will enlist other scout supports to do the same thing. We need more capable hands fighting new threats on the surface.”
That shut everybody up.
Gareth sighed and rubbed his forehead. “We don’t know how this started, but about two months ago, massive cracks started opening in various spots on the surface. We call them rifts. And new monsters, ones we had never seen before, appeared inside every single one. And they respawn after we kill them–over and over again. We can’t explain it.”
I knew all of this, but based on the wide eyes and wringing of hands among my fellow scout supports, at least three of them had heard nothing about this. Even Cinthara shifted in her seat uncomfortably.
“A new rift opens once every two weeks. Almost like clockwork.” Gareth shook his head. "We're running out of ideas, and soon, these new creatures will overrun the entire planet."
“But these monsters can’t reach the city, surely,” Cinthara said, leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms.
“That’s not necessarily true,” Gareth said. Some rifts are opening up dangerously close to the pathway on the surface that leads here. We have no way of knowing if a rift will open in the city. And even if just the surface gets overrun by monsters, it will get increasingly harder to harvest the food and other items we use to survive down here.”
Murmurs of agreement resounded, and even Cinthara nodded her assent.
“If you do decide to move forward with our plan, we will make it worth your while. Each of you who agrees will receive a bonus of 1,000 credits as soon as you leave this room, deposited by your scout leaders–us.” Gareth waved at himself and the others next to him.
Gasps of surprise matched my own gasp that left my mouth. I hate to say it, but the 1,000 credit bonus convinced me to follow through with this plan immediately. I needed the money. And I wasn’t scared to take on new monsters. Sure, I might die, but it wasn’t like I didn’t know how to fight. Drayek had trained me my entire life, even before I had advanced to Tier 1. I wasn’t incompetent in any sense of the word.
I used to believe I was worthless back when I lived in Edrona–the pale-skinned baby found in the middle of nowhere on a desert planet with no clues revealing where I might have come from. And not receiving a Mark when the rest of my peers had made that feeling even worse. But I didn’t believe I was worthless anymore. Besides, Gareth had chosen me for a reason. I had proved my capabilities to him on just one scouting trip.
I rose from my seat and, staring Gareth directly in the eyes, said, “I will do it.”
Cinthara jumped up just seconds after me and said, “Me too.”
There was some nervous grumbling, but the remaining scout supports stood and, one by one, slowly agreed to take on the challenge.
Gareth sighed a breath of relief, obviously grateful that none of the six of us had decided to back out. “Excellent. Your first shift and instructions will be sent to your neural implants tomorrow. Welcome to the scouts, Elite Group #1.”