Page 35 of Silver Elite

The soldier passing out tablets reaches our workstation. When he places mine on the desktop, my heart freezes inside my chest.

I know him.

Chapter 8

When I was young, my uncle used to take me to a neighboring town every few months to pick up supplies for the ranch. The feed store was owned by a woman named Morlee Hadley. Partially owned, anyway. The Company holds a fifty-one percent stake in all Continental businesses, which is the reason I’ve never seen any advantage in joining the business sector. Earning some extra Luxury credits and leisure passes doesn’t seem worth it to me. But some people enjoy the perks, and Morlee was one of them. She loved that store almost as much as she loved her son.My Matty is so smart. My Matty has big ambitions. My Matty will rule the Continent one day. She never stopped praising that boy. She adored him.

She adored me, too. She always slipped me a piece of candy whenever Uncle Jim wasn’t looking. He was such an unsentimental man, didn’t care about spoiling me or using his Lux credits to make my life a little sweeter. Morlee would give me a wink, and then I’d feel a poke in my mind, and when I let her in, her teasing voice would fill my head.

“Our little secret, angel. Don’t tell Jim.”

“Never,”I always promised. Although I’m sure Jim knew. He wasn’t stupid.

One day, we walked into the store and someone else was behind the counter. I was so disappointed. I thought she was sick. But she wasn’t there the next time, either. Or the time after. And the stern-faced man behind the counter didn’t seem concerned that Morlee was gone.

It was only later, through whispers in Hamlett and hushed conversations between Jim and the new owner, that I learned the truth.

Her son turned her in to the Command.

The boy she’d spoken so proudly of had betrayed his own mother and reported her for concealment. Jim eventually told me she’d been sent to a labor camp in the north. Slaving at a salt mine.

Because of this guy standing in front of me.

There’s no recognition on his part as he sets the tablet down. I suppose there wouldn’t be. I only met him once, and I was a kid. No reason for a seventeen-year-old boy to pay much attention to the twelve-year-old in his mother’s feed shop. I’ve never forgotten his face, though. Morlee was a good woman. She deserved better than a son like him.

I inhale slowly. Force myself not to let my gaze linger, my anger show. Then he moves to the next workstation and some of the tension in my shoulders dissipates. Matt Hadley’s presence in this room, on this base, is just a reminder of how much danger I’ve found myself in.

Jim was right. The Pointisa den of vipers.

“This,” Ford says, holding up a tablet, “is your source. While you’re here, it will take the place of your Company comm. It’s where you’ll receive all communications and alerts, and where you’ll find your schedule and progress scores. When we’re in session on the base, you should have it on you at all times. When we conduct off-base ops, you’ll be fitted with a source on your wrist.”

Hadley returns to the front of the room and stands to Ford’s left. His posture is ramrod-straight. Expression carved from stone.

“This is Officer Hadley. He’ll be one of your instructors.”

OfficerHadley. I swallow my distaste as Hadley nods in greeting. It appears being a traitor to your own people, your own mother, helps you rise in the ranks of the Command.

“Scan your thumbs now to activate your source,” Hadley orders in a clipped voice.

Everyone else obeys his command, so I reluctantly follow suit. I press my thumb on the scanner next to the keypad, and the tablet comes to life.

My name appears on the screen.

WREN DARLINGTON, RECRUIT 56

To my dismay, my entire life has already been loaded into this small, thin piece of technology. Biometrics. Medical reports. School transcripts, upperandlower.

Even worse than being surrounded by vipers is the realization that you can never escape them. Their eyes are always on you.

Maybe the Faithful have the right idea after all with those Old Era beliefs. At least back then there’d been some semblance of privacy, of freedom. You could live a life far from civilization if you chose. A harder life, certainly, but that’s the thing about freedom, isn’t it? There’s always a price to pay for it. The Faithful are free…to live in the shadows. To decamp at a moment’s notice and find another home on the fringes. To fend off starvation and be hunted by the Command.

I’m not sure I could do it again. I already lived in the Blacklands. I don’t want to go back to life in the shadows.

“The Program is divided into eight sections,” Hadley says. “A combination of classroom instruction and fieldwork.”

He then proceeds to extol the virtues of Silver Block. Our soldiers are the smartest, the fastest, the strongest. And as he drones on, I feel ever more helpless. My throat closes, and although I’m slightly afraid of using telepathy in proximity to all these strangers, the tight knot of desperation lodged in my windpipe calls for desperate measures.

“Tana, please,”I beg my best friend. “You need to find someone in the network who can help me. Anyone. They reassigned my ranch and threw me into the Command training program. I need to get out of here.”

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