Page 23 of Vendetta

LANDRY

UNKNOWN:

Landry Andrews,

Your team name is: FALCON

Your fellow teammates are:

RORY STERLING

MORGAN WINTERS

KEN TANAKA

JARED MCKELVAIN

Your target team’s information will be sent at 5:00 PM tomorrow. You have until then to sign the waiverattached below.

The assignments had come through shortly after we had all been confirmed to play. None of the three of us had been on the same team, the seemingly all-knowing Gamemarkers most likely trying to split friend groups to make the game more interesting. I wouldn’t be surprised if I found out that they had been studying us around campus. The thought gave me chills.

We had argued about how much we should disclose with each other, eventually coming to the decision that we would share who was on our teams in order to help each other track them down, but to not say anything about who our targets were once we received them.

We had pinkie-promised that if one of us ended up with another as a target, we would either target somebody else in their group or let our teammates do the abducting, to make sure that we could still spend time together throughout the week without raising trust issues. If that were to happen, we had sworn not to warn each other, in order to keep with the integrity of the game.

We had stayed in my bed, exchanging team names as Bexley ran to her room to grab her laptop and I did the same. Olivia had done a freshman project with one of Bexley’s teammates and still had his phone number, forwarding it to her. I had found both Rory Sterling and Jared Mckelvain on Facebook, sending them message requests and hoping they would check them soon. We had less than twenty-four hours to find a way to all get in contact and decide on a game plan and home base before getting assigned our target team, so time was of the essence.

Thankfully, both Rory and Jared responded within minutes, Jared starting a group chat between us and adding Ken and Morgan whose numbers he must have received.

JARED:Alright guys, that should be everyone.

RORY:Hey guys, super excited to be playing with y’all this year!! :) #teamfalcon

MORGAN:Aaahh I’m pumped! Nice to meet you

guys! Who’s all played before? This is my second year playing! I got abducted last year lolol. I don’t plan on letting it happen again this time around! #oops #mybad

LANDRY:Nice to meet everyone! I’m a freshman so this will be my first year playing, any tips are welcome. Looking forward to playing with you guys!

RORY:I’m a senior so this ain’t my first rodeo ;) My team made it pretty far a few years ago but we got beat out in finals. Hopefully this will be the golden year!

I guess the Gamemaker tried to keep variety within the teams not only in respect to gender but also experience level. It gave me some relief knowing that someone on the team might actually know what they were doing.

KEN:Hey gang. Freshman here, first year playing.

JARED:Just started my Junior year, I didn’t play my freshman year so last year was my first year playing. Let’s get down to business and talk strategy—Does anybody have a place in mind for a home base? My family has a lake house about an hour from here. I know it’s a bit of a drive, but it could make it harder for the target team to try to rescue whoever we kidnap.

MORGAN:Love that idea! And once we kidnap them, we can just lay back and tan by the water for the rest of the week!!

RORY:Sounds like a plan! For strategy, I think it could be smart if we divide and conquer. If they have the same number of people as us, we could each pick one person to get intel on!

JARED:That works for me. You girls might have better odds of getting close to the targets without being detected, so we could figure out which target would be easiest to get to and then have one or all of you lure them into a trap where Ken and I can do the heavy lifting. Would that work for everyone?

LANDRY:It sounds like a good plan! Count me in!

JARED:Perfect. When the information about our targets gets sent out tomorrow, we can divide and conquer. Maybewe’ll get lucky and one of us will know a name or two on the list.

LANDRY:Question—Sorry, this is my first time playing so just curious if anybody has any tips on how NOT to get abducted. Lol.

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