Page 14 of Synnr's Ride

She aimed it at the sensor on his chest and pressed a button.

"Oh, too bad." She gave him an exaggerated frown. "Looks like you’re dead."

She stood up and slid the laser device back into her pocket. Jori struggled to get up, but they were both wearing harnesses designed to track the damage they accrued during the mission. When the sensors said they were dead, they were more or less frozen in place until the mission ended.

Hanna moved carefully through the pit, using her spark and the laser to cut through the security measures until she made it to the box holding the door controls.

He watched as she flipped it open and pressed the button that ended the exercise and unlocked the doors.

The pressure from his vest disappeared as if it had never been there, and he got to his feet.

Hanna turned towards him with a bright grin. "I win."

"You cheated." That scream would haunt his nightmares. "That was a dirty spy trick." How could he ever trust her when she pulled stunts like that?

"I. Won." She stalked his way and traced a finger down the center of his chest. "You need to get over this spy stuff. We're going undercover. We're going to lie. And if your principles get me killed, I will hunt you through the darkest recesses ofbrazuntil your soul begs for the darkness of undoing." She patted his chest before walking away, leaving Jori alone in the pit with the sinking suspicion that she had a point.

5

Hanna stormedinto the locker room ready to hit something. Anything.

No, not anything.

If she was going to hit anyone, he was standing back in the training room with that angry look on his face. As if he had some moral high ground for his job. They were both pawns.

She yanked off the sensor vest and let it fall to the floor. The rest of her clothes quickly followed before she marched to the shower and turned the water to scalding, as if that could burn out the memory of Jori's hate.

But it wasn't the anger that made her blood sing. Or not only the anger. There'd been a moment back there, after she had the better of him, straddling his thighs and grinning down at him, that all she could think of was what that might be like if they weren't in a training mission.

If they were in his bed.

Hanna groaned and knocked her fist against the slick tile wall.

Admiring him was bad when there was that interrogation table between them. But it was... controllable. That table was a sure sign that nothing could happen, a gap as wide as a vast canyon.

But the table was gone now. And she knew what the press of his body felt like, even if it only came in fleeting bursts in the middle of the mission.

She had to put it out of her mind. How she was going to do that when they were about to start a job that would have them in each other's pockets at all hours, she wasn't sure.

At least the day was almost over.

Hanna took her time showering. She'd had access to facilities when she was under lock and key, but a guard had always been standing just out of sight. Now she had true privacy. It didn't change much about how she soaped herself up, but some tension bled out from between her shoulders.

The soap in the facility canister smelled clean, but mass produced with a slightly astringent undernote. It reminded her more of dish soap than anything else, but luckily it didn't leave her skin unbearably dry.

The towel was also mass produced, an over-washed white that was too thin to be truly absorbent, but big enough to engulf her when she wrapped it around herself. These were both reminders that she was tied up in a military op. Plentiful decent products, but not a luxury to be seen.

Nothing to get hung up on.

There was a change of clothes waiting for Hanna and beside it, a vehicle keycode and an address. Her new home. They were trusting her to get there on her own.

How nice.

The address didn't tell her much, but beside the clothes and papers there was a communicator. She used the device to pull up a map around the address and nodded to herself.

She'd lived in Osais for a couple of months for her last job, establishing her identity as a university student. She was familiar with the area around the university and its trendy shops and cool vibe.

Her new home was on the other side of town and might as well have been in a different world. She'd studied the city before moving and had a vague knowledge of its quadrants and larger neighborhoods. She was moving to a mostly industrial area with rough bars and rougher residents.

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