Brand hadn’t wasted any time in the control room. The computer was already online and the scenario he wanted was already programmed. Gideon didn’t know it, but his every move was going to be filmed, watched, analyzed, argued about, debated, and betted upon. Gossip had been spreading about Gideon, and the pack was decidedly curious and getting impatient to know what the boy wanted.
And this was their first real chance to get a good look at the boy.
Brand grinned. He figured that by the time Gideon was through with the maze, there would be quite the audience in the observation room, and those who couldn’t make it would be sorry they missed out. He finished uploading the scenario to the computer and found a chair.
Gideon entered the maze exactly at five minutes.
Brand leaned back, put his hands on his stomach, and put his feet up. Nothing in the shantytown would be able to hurt the boy, but if he did get hit, it would affect his score. He could hear people arriving through the door. Dana had been spreading the word, as Brand knew he would.
“Has he started yet?”
“Score!”
“Let the betting begin.”
“You mean let the vetting begin.”
“No. I meant betting.”
Brand shook his head. It was a pity he couldn’t join in. It wouldn’t be professional or fair. He knew slightly more about the boy than they did. The bets flew back and forth and Brand didn’t bother to pay attention to the details. He grinned though. Not that the lack of information seemed to stop them.
He tracked Gideon on the cameras. Instead of staying at ground level, he’d found a way up to the top of the buildings. Good strategy and could be risky all at once. Maybe he should have told him that the buildings were holograms and may not bear his weight.
Brand thought about that for a moment. Nah. Where was the fun in that?
Gideon jumped down from the top of a building, grabbed a guy around the neck and jerked his head sharply.
Brand blinked. He had given the boy a knife hadn’t he?
“Ohh!” one of the guy’s shouted from the other room.
“Style points!” said one of the others.
Gideon didn’t let the body fall. He dragged it back into a corner, and then checked his kill by using the knife to the back of the guy’s neck. Then he eased the body to the ground. Brand’s eyebrows rose. Gideon checked the pockets and took the guy’s gun and ammo.
Interesting. Brand shifted in his chair.
Gideon hid the body as best he could and then jumped back upwards.
Brand raised an eyebrow. Gideon wasn’t going to be able to do that the entire maze, but for now it still seemed to be a viable strategy.
Ted nudged the door open with his foot. As usual, the big man’s hands were full. One held a metal tin and the other rummaged about in it searching for good bits. Brand sniffed: oatmeal, raisins, and sugar. It smelled like Hazel’s special trail mix recipe. Ted sauntered over and stood behind him, watching and munching on trail mix. He swallowed and brushed crumbs off his vest and a patch that read Secretary.
“Did you put anything real in?” he asked.
“Not this time,” Brand said mildly.
Ted went back to munching, the images of the holographic screen reflected in his dark blue eyes. Every once and a while he reached up and ran his fingers through his messy brown hair. The door opened further again.
Padre stuck his head through the crack first, lights shining off of the top of his head despite his comb over. Seeing that there were the two of them there, he entered and didn’t fully shut the door behind him. He came over and stood by Ted.
Ted offered him his tin. Padre reached in, took a handful of trail mix, and watched. Out of politeness, Ted offered the tin to Brand. Brand waved a hand, reached into his pocket, and pulled out another foil wrapped hard candy. He went through the routine of unwrapping it, sticking it in his mouth, and folding the left over foil into a star.
Gideon had finally run out of rooftops. Brand tilted his head back and forth. Now what? Gideon couldn’t stay up high, not and move forward. What would he do?
Gideon jumped down and pressed himself to the side of a building. He checked both ways. A knot of people started shooting at him. He dashed across the road and dove into what appeared to be nothing more than small topless wooden box and it wasn’t empty. Gideon grabbed the person inside it, put them between him and the bullets. When the bullets stopped flying, he threw the body out of the box. The enemies shot at the body. Gideon knelt on the other side and shot them methodically.
Ted stopped munching. “He’s not doing bad.”
“He started with a knife,” Brand said.
Padre reached over and took more of Ted’s trail mix. “He’s not doing bad,” he said. Despite his gray button down shirt and clerical collar under his club vest, Padre was an old campaigner. He tended to entertain his church congregation with battles stories during his sermons.
Ted watched as Gideon moved onwards. “What did you tell him to do?”
“Get out the other side alive,” Brand said. If the boy ‘died,’ the entire program would shut down.
Ted nodded. It made sense, and the holograms were clearly dressed as a thug or terrorist or basically any number of militants that they ran across on a regular basis. “And the exit?”
Brand smirked. “The same place he came in.”
Padre coughed on a piece of oatmeal and waved off Ted’s hand when Ted offered to pound his back.
Brand shrugged a shoulder. “He said his questions could wait.”
Ted grinned.
Brand continued, “He was arguing with a duck this morning. I think the duck won.”
Ted found more chairs and offered one to Padre. Padre thanked him and they sat down to watch Gideon more.
Padre reached into his pocket. “Tootsie roll says it takes more than an hour.”
“I’ve got an M’M that says two,” Ted riposted.
---
Gideon got to what appeared to be the other side of the compound. Or at least, to his knowledge he’d run out of road. He craned his neck and looked around. “Okay,” he muttered. He was at the other side, but Brand had clearly said ‘out.’ This clearly presented a conundrum. He was at the other side, but there was no way out. He sighed.
Then again, “side” could have a lot of meanings. And it wouldn’t do him any good to stay still too long.
He frowned. None of the men he’d searched had a map, but there had been some bodies he hadn’t bothered to search to begin with. Damn it. He growled and turned back around. Make a map of his own or go back and search the ‘dead,’ what was his better option at the moment? He’d avoided clearly over populated areas of enemies, while working in a fairly consistent direction. Now, it seemed that one of those groups might be in the way of his way out, and he didn’t know where they were.
Tactics.
He was in ‘enemy’ territory with ‘intelligent’ holographic enemies who most likely now knew of his presence. And he wasn’t sure of all the rules and how ‘realistic’ they were going to be.
Maybe he should have asked questions.
It was too late for that now. He looked up and wondered if the exit was going to be that obvious. He could go over the wall.
He considered the wall, looked around for a way to get up it, realized he didn’t have a rope, and decided it was a bad idea. He turned around and looked back the way he’d come and decided that was another bad idea. He frowned. All right, he’d go along the edge of the town until he found another exit. That is, if he could stay along the edge of the town.
He hoped there was a point to all of this.
He went and climbed up on top of the nearest building and jumped over to the next roof.
And fell right through.
He landed on his back and stared at the ceiling while not really seeing it. His chest hurt like he’d hit it on something hard, like the ground, that wasn’t supposed to be there. He swore once. A word that despite the fact he was in his mid-twenties would have his mother wash his mouth out with soap. Then said, “Ow.” His eyes narrowed. Holographic buildings, great, that was going to put a crimp on things. He sighed, stood up and winced. Damn that hurt.
---
The observation room exploded into laughter. It had filled over the course of time with the usual suspects of those who actually worked for the security firm full time, those who worked part time and were off their jobs at the moment, ‘retired’ old timers, and prospects who went to college and were currently at loose ends. They reclined on couches, sat or lay on the floor or sprawled in armchairs all facing one way at several projections showing the new guy’s current movements from different angles. Several shared space with Reese’s dogs that sprawled over laps, feet, and any available floor space.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Reese laughed. “That had to hurt.”
The prospective puppy approached the walls of the ‘building’ he was in warily, and put a hand out to touch each one before sticking his arm all the way through and walking through one of them.
Dana rubbed his chin. His fingers rasped against his whiskers. “Is it me or does he look a little annoyed?”
Sasha scowled at Dana through his beard. “Hush, he is making me money!”
Grant furrowed his brow. “What does that have to do with him being annoyed?” Grant stood out slightly from the rest, his skin the color of heavily creamed coffee and his black hair was buzzed short to keep control over what would have been coarse curls. He had African blood in him, and that was a rarity in the mostly European descended pack. Most of the other men and women in the room had fair cream colored skin and darker hair or hair that clearly portrayed European ancestry, like Ashley’s dark red hair.
There were more members with Hispanic or Latin blood in them in the Club than African. It wasn’t exactly prejudice, although motorcycle clubs, particularly Outlaw Motorcycle Clubs such as the Heaven’s Heathens were notoriously racist. Africans tended to form their own Clubs instead. Latino and Hispanic members were traditionally embraced in white dominant Clubs. But they were far more likely, like the Africans, to form their own Clubs than to join a ‘white man’s’ Club. The Heaven’s Heathens were actually an exception to the continental blood rule due to the fact that their blood rule was different. They only accepted werewolf blood.
Spike was one of these members with Hispanic blood in her ancestry. She rolled her eyes and pushed her long bangs out the way. Boys and money, she let her hand fall out of her lap and towards the floor, wiggling her fingers. One of Reese’s dogs perked up, came over, sniffed the back of her hand, and ducked under it so she could pet him.
Sasha waved a hand. “If he gets annoyed, he might screw up, and I make less money.”
Dana snorted. “I have no control over how annoyed he gets, but I can observe that he is.”
Ashley had quietly claimed a chair near the back and watched with both her arms and her legs crossed. She didn’t know why the puppy had finally decided to make his presence officially known. She wasn’t sure of the entire point of what Brand was having Gideon do. There weren’t to her knowledge any clear fast rules on accepting prospects into the Club that were strangers and as she thought Gideon had been behaving, she didn’t know what this was supposed to prove. There were easier ways to figure out if the puppy could shoot a gun or take cover. She frowned. This was a spectacle.
“Does anyone know what this scenario is really supposed to be?” Cole asked and looked over at Darkside. Darkside sat with her husband Misha at the end of one of the couches. Misha’s sister, Hunter, leaned against the back of the couch and watched the screen with a furrowed brow.
Ashley looked at Darkside too. Her foot twitched. She wasn’t the only one with questions as to the purpose of this display.
Darkside cuddled up closer to her husband, Misha, and smiled at Cole. She knew precisely which one it was.
Cole sighed. “Oh come on, you programmed it. Tell!”
Darkside smiled more and shook her head, putting a finger to her lips.
Gunner sat in a chair in the corner. An older member of the club, his gray hair fell to the length of his chin and his beard had turned white. He rubbed one of Reese’s dogs on the head. “It looks like a pretty standard invasion program to me. Quit yer bellyachin’ and watch,” he said.
Hunter grunted.
Grant put his feet up. “It’d be more interesting if he snuck around less and shot more.”
Dana leaned back. “Couldn’t there be like a fire or something?”
Misha rolled his eyes. “You’re obsessed with fires.”
“A pretend fire,” Dana said and rolled his eyes.
Darkside rubbed her cheek against Misha’s beard. “He is pretty sneaky,” she said.
Whitney sighed. “He’s pretty sexy.” Outside of Ashley, she was the one of the few females in the room that could remotely be considered in Gideon’s age group. Darkside was married, Spike had a secret boyfriend, and Gideon looked in his early twenties to Whitney. She knew Hunter had to be older than him. The others were prospects who she couldn’t remember if they were dating anyone or not.
Dana raised an eyebrow at her. “We are here to evaluate his overall hunting performance, not his looks.”
“Wrong type of hunting, little one,” another of the older female members said.
Reese reached over and ruffled Whitney’s long black hair. “Hunting for sexual relationships and hunting for food and profit are two different things.”
Whitney pouted and kicked her feet back and forth. “Says you.”
“If anything he’s gotten more cautious.”
It appeared that the puppy tested every roof before moving onto it by throwing a rock on it or something similar.
“It’s painful falling through a building like that.”
The group snickered.
Reese raised a hand and let it drop onto the other one. “Aaieee, whump.”
“You laugh because you know which ones are real and which ones aren’t.”
“Not with folks constantly moving them, I don’t,” Reese riposted.
Whitney sniffed. “I maintain that he’s sexy.”
Spike’s lips twitched as she tried to repress a smile. That was the current popular opinion among the female members of the pack. She agreed with it. She knew better than to say it aloud in this audience.
“Whitney,” one of the guys said in disapproval.
Whitney looked defensive. “An observation.”
Ashley wanted to roll her eyes. Trust Whitney to think with her hormones. They couldn’t let the puppy in based on his looks. It was strength of character that made a Heaven’s Heathen and nothing less. She didn’t think that putting the puppy through a gunnery gauntlet would really show his character. At least, unless he was seriously abnormal and sang while he killed things or collected souvenirs. She wasn’t sure how Brand knew the puppy could complete this course. The edges of her lips turned down. The puppy must have said something to Brand when he’d shown up.
She had a niggling suspicion that Brand had her step out of the room and go run a pointless errand for him on purpose.
The puppy flipped off the edge of a building, holding onto the eave with one hand. He used the other arm to fire at a group of enemies before dropping down entirely and rolling behind another building.
“Holy shit!”
“More style points!”
Hunter grunted, trying not to be impressed.
Ashley twitched. The puppy looked competent. Her eyes flicked to Grant and Cole. They avidly watched the display. He’d be a lot nicer to have around than those two, her Thing One and Thing Two guards that Brand insisted she have. She couldn’t get out of Brand the condition he had for taking them off of her every movement. She wanted them gone.
Maybe a prospect could help with that. She would be able to deal with one male better than two. Especially if he was newer. She could explain the rules to him and then go about her business. And because he was a prospect, he wouldn’t be able to question her orders. The thought pleased her. The puppy had been her responsibility thus far. She didn’t see any reason why he wouldn’t remain hers to watch.
Misha scratched his chin. “I think he has a sense of humor.”
Spike shifted in her seat and grabbed popcorn. She spoke up for the first time. “To put up with this bullshit, yes, a sense of humor.” Her voice was a husky alto, what one would call a whisky alto.
Dana was quick to defend the exercise. “This is not bullshit.”
Spike pointed at the screen. “No clear objective, no one to protect, lots of bullets. I cry bullshit.”
Cole looked at Spike. “This is primo entertainment!”
Spike snorted. The boys tended to think of the training runs as college football.
Dana sniffed. “Vetting, Spike. We must vet the prospective.”
“Then give him something clear to do.” In Spike’s opinion, this running around and randomly shooting holograms was stupid.
Dana looked at her. “You don’t know what Brand told him.”
Spike pinned him with her eyes. “Neither do you.”
Misha spoke up. “If you two don’t shut up you’re going to miss it. Ow. Ow. Ow. That was painfully good.”
Dana put up a hand. “I call dibs for Savannah’s team.”
Spike grinned. Oh that would be fun.
Cole growled. “You can’t do that!”
“Already did.” Dana stuck his tongue out at Cole.
Misha took Cole’s side. They were on the same team. It was fair. “What if Brand wants him?”
Reese decided to play devil’s advocate. “What if he doesn’t want to work security at all?”
Gunner snorted. “That’d be a waste.”
Dana stretched and reached for popcorn. “Oh yeah, he does look annoyed now.”
“What is he doing?” Sasha frowned. “He was skirting the edges and now he’s,” Sasha swore in Russian, “Go. Go. Go.”
The guys started to shout and cheer.
Gunner grinned. “That’s more like it.”
Reese reached out and scratched one of his dog’s head. “Any hints, Ash. You’ve been following him.”
Ashley didn’t turn her attention from the screen. “Ask Cole and Grant.”
“And she punts,” Reese muttered.
Hunter snorted again.
Dana sighed. “You have to have an opinion.”
She frowned. “I’m not sharing it.” She had an opinion. Her opinion wasn’t anyone else’s business.
Cole looked over at her. “You know, you’ve become pretty close mouthed since you became an officer.”
Her brow furrowed and her eyes narrowed. “Back off.”
Cole shifted his weight. He leaned closer to her. “Sharing an opinion won’t make anyone think less of you.”
She reached out and pushed him away with a finger. “I said, back off.”
“Yes, yes, yes! Jesus. Look at him move.”
Ashley snorted quietly to herself as Cole’s attention returned to the screen and the puppy.
---
Gideon sat on the edge of one of the rooftops and surveyed the land underneath him. He looked up at the sun. He’d been here a few hours now or close enough that it didn’t make any difference. And he’d combed the entire shantytown over looking for the other exit. About half an hour ago, he’d gotten sick of the holograms shooting at him and in a fit of pique had systematically worked the entire grid while determining and avoiding all the holographic building traps and shot all of the hologram enemies. In the end he had to resort to raiding the ‘bodies’ for more ammunition.
He wasn’t sure if the place was going to repopulate or if he was in the middle of a hologram ghost town. He wasn’t willing to take chances either.
He was waiting on a civilian version of a program that he used in the military to make maps of places. It was a much more rudimentary version of what he was used to, but he’d liked it enough to buy it as it was. He didn’t need the fancy three-dimensional, exactly as your video saw it, graphics of the military spec. The program analyzed his video feed and movements from the time he’d entered the shantytown and created a two-dimensional map of the place. All he wanted was confirmation of something he hoped he was wrong about.
The program beeped and he waved a hand in front of him. A map appeared, much like the writing program hand, though this was a much larger square. He looked it over and made a deep sigh, threw his head to the side, and rolled his eyes.
There was one opening in the entire shantytown. The same opening that he’d entered.
He had been had.
He could have—at the very beginning—walked in, turned around and walked right back out and satisfied Brand’s requirements. He wanted to slap a hand over his face.
He waved his hand in front of him and the map disappeared. Fine. He was done. It was time to leave because it was time to eat. He jumped off the building and dashed in the direction of the exit, stopping at each intersection to check for more enemies.
Across from the exit, he stopped, waited for his heart to slow down, double checked everything, and then put his hands in his pockets and sauntered out the door.
---
There was a line of foil stars on Brand’s leg. He looked back and up at Ted. “I think he’s figured it out.”
“Padre owes me a tootsie roll.”
Padre tossed it at him and shook his head.
“Well,” Brand asked. “What do you think?” He started to pick up his stars and put them in the same pocket he’d put the earlier one.
“He wants to stay,” Ted said and unwrapped the tootsie roll and popping it in his mouth. He chewed on it.
“From the sounds of it,” Brand said. “He’s been looking for a place for a while.”
Ted nodded and continued to chew.
“I’ve seen enough,” Padre said. “He’s got my vote. Aye.”
“Ashley!” Brand shouted. “Get your tail in here!”
The door shoved open and Ashley almost stumbled into the room, pushing hair out of her face. “Sorry, Brand,” she said and flushed.
“Your vote on the boy.”
Ashley looked at the screen. Gideon was headed rapidly in the direction of the opening in the shantytown. “He’s behaved himself. Aye.”
Brand decided that Ashley hadn’t heard of Gideon’s more risqué inquiries. Or else Ashley wouldn’t be looking at him appreciatively. Brand nodded but didn’t comment on it. Since Gideon had seem surprised at the answers he’d gotten and hadn’t pursued them past cursory questions, Brand was willing to wait and see what came out of it.
Ted stopped chewing. “What about Savannah?”
Ashley turned her head to look at him, her brow furrowed. “So?”
Ted swallowed and brushed his vest off. “Shouldn’t she get a vote?”
“She’s busy, Ted, and if the bellowing I heard is any indication, Quinn is on her list,” Padre said. “If wrecking the transport was an unforgivable sin, he’d be going to a cold, dark Hell.”
“Hell ain’t cold,” Ted said. “She still has a vote.”
Padre opened his mouth to start up a debate about the temperature of Hell, and how neither of them had ever been there and neither of them could know.
Brand sighed and held up a hand. He picked up a phone and called her. Padre snapped his mouth shut. Brand set it for speaker.
“What?” Savannah snapped.
“The puppy wants to prospect, yay or nay?” Brand asked.
There was a slight pause on the other end and then a grunt. “Yeah, yeah, sure, whatever,” Savannah said. “Filthy, amoeba breeding, lower than—” the phone hung up.
Brand winced. Savannah was at single cell organisms. Things must be bad. “There, she voted.” He looked at Ted.
Ted looked back at him. “I’m not sure that’s strictly legal,” he said. Brand was up to something. They had a large paying job coming up, Quinn was not on Savannah’s happy list, and this boy had blown through one of Brand’s pet programs. Ted meditatively picked out a peanut from his trail mix and popped it into his mouth. Well, then, he wasn’t going to say anything about that plotting look in Brand’s eye to Brand yet. It was probably best to see how it went. “Then let him stay. Aye.”
Brand nodded. “All right. Aye. He’s in.” Brand stood up and walked out the door.
He tried not to be too amused at the amount of people there were hanging over the couches of the observation room. Reese was sitting upside down, with his head on the couch cushions waving his hands about and talking a mile a minute. Brand shook his head and went out the door. He stopped a few feet away and waited.
Gideon walked out of the shantytown with his hands in his pockets. He stopped in front of Brand and raised his eyebrows.
Brand wrapped an arm about his shoulder. “Not bad, you got ninety-five percent of the weapons, killed all the enemies with an average of three strokes or shots, you were hit five times, one thigh, one calf, one shoulder and two creases to your left bicep. This took you an hour and fifty seven minutes, which gives you a fairly decent score of 4527.”
“You said I wouldn’t be timed.”
“It’s a statistic. We keep track.” Brand turned him around and started walking them towards the clubhouse. It amused him that Gideon didn’t ask what his score was out of. “Do you like travel?”
Gideon looked at him sideways. “I don’t mind it.”
“What did you do in the military?”
He shrugged a shoulder. “I never tested out on anything spectacular. They trained me in a bit of everything, mechanics, demolitions, orienteering, climbing, paratrooper, deep sea diving, you know, whatever I was willing to do.”
Brand kept a poker face, a jack-of-all-trades, excellent. “You know how to clean weapons?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Can you fix them?”
Gideon’s eyes narrowed unsure of where Brand was taking this or what it had to do with him joining the pack. “Yeah.”
“All right, you’re in,” Brand said. They stopped by Gideon’s auto. He let Gideon go and turned to him. “As a prospective member only. You pass your trial period, then you’ll be a full member of the pack.”
Gideon grinned and then suppressed it. It was only a trial. “How long of a trial period?”
“You’re a stranger. By our laws, it’s five years.”
Gideon took a deep breath and nodded slowly. “All right.” He could wait five years if it meant he got to stay right now. It’d taken him a long time to learn that lesson.
“Tomorrow, you’ll start out helping Hunter in the weapon’s locker. She’ll qualify you with what is in our armory.” Brand clapped his shoulder. “You go downtown to Pine Bough Apartments and ask for Beda. She’ll rent you a place. Tell her I sent you and she’ll give you a break on the rent until you get your feet under you.”
“I don’t—”
Brand ignored him. “Get yourself set up a bit, you know. Buy plates, towels, fill the fridge, order furniture, and be back here around five with chips or soda.”
Gideon snapped his mouth shut and nodded.
Brand reached down and took the cuff off of his wrist. Gideon bit the inside of his lip, feeling slightly naked without it though the weapons stored in it were holographic. He reached up and rubbed the wrist.
“A bit small,” Brand shook his head. “Hunter will have to fit you better.” Brand looked him in the eyes. “Remember, five o’clock.”
Gideon nodded again. “Thank you,” he said and held out his hand.
Brand reached down, grabbed him by the forearm and pulled him up against him, hugging him. He pulled back and kissed Gideon gently on the lips.
Gideon froze slightly in shock.
Brand let him go. “Welcome to Heaven’s Heathens. Now get out of here, Prospect, before I change my mind.” Brand turned around and walked away.
Gideon stood there a good minute, staring after him not moving. What in the—he closed his eyes, shook his head rapidly, and grabbed the handle of his auto door. He jerked it open, got in, and sat down. He stared at the steering wheel, and watched Brand enter the clubhouse.
He had no words and no better ideas. He shut his eyes and let out a breath. That was, no, he didn’t want to think about it. He turned the auto on and pulled out of the parking lot. He had things to do.
Like take a shower. Eat lunch. Check out those apartments Brand had told him about. He glanced at the side of entryway into the club.
The guard was missing.