Page 12 of Shadow Caster
She winced. “Lloyd has his moments. He’s under a lot of pressure to be … perfect.”
Yeah, if anyone understood pressure, it was me. I’d grown up under the pressure of being the wrong sex.
I took in Minnie’s outfit: combat trousers with a dagger strapped to the thigh, long-sleeved, dark-green top, and heavy-duty boots. Mine was the same. Clothes designed to blend in, and shoes made to carry us over difficult terrain. One thing she had that I didn’t was a backpack. It sat snug against her back and bulged with items.
I guess Minnie was the resource manager then.
Harmon and Thomas strode toward us from the tree line. They were dressed the same as us. Thomas wore the outfit easily, his slender form looking comfortable in the getup, but Harmon? Not so much. The pants looked too tight, and his polo top stretched, ready to burst at the seams.
He tugged at the collar. “It’s a simulation, you’d think they’d get the proportions right.”
I rolled my eyes. “We’re in a simulation, so you’re not actually wearing the clothes. There’s no reason for them to get it right.”
Something made an eerie chirping sound.
“You think they’d be a little more original when it comes to location,” Thomas said drolly.
“Would you rather we were in a desert?” Minnie asked.
“At least then we’d see any danger coming,” Thomas replied.
“We’d probably die of thirst and exposure first,” Harmon said. “Come on, Tom, think.” His tone was good-natured, but there was no mistaking the glint of annoyance in Thomas’s eyes.
It looked like there was trouble in paradise.
“Where’s golden boy?” I glanced about, searching for Oberon.
The clearing was obviously the rendezvous spot, so he should have been dropped close by.
“Fuck him,” Harmon said.
“I bet you would,” Thomas muttered under his breath.
But he might as well have shouted it—we all had super hearing, after all.
Harmon’s chest rumbled. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
Thomas exhaled through his nose and closed his eyes. “Nothing. It means nothing. We should get moving.”
Honestly, these guys. “You want to fail? I mean not that I give a shit, but I assume you guys do.”
They looked at me with matching frowns.
“We have to wait for him,” Minnie said. “Teamwork, remember? If we leave anyone behind, we lose.”
“Fuck.” Harmon rubbed the back of his neck. “Fine, let’s go find him. Maybe this is part of the test. Maybe he’s in trouble?”
It was a possibility.
Just then Oberon strolled into the clearing, cargo pants hugging his slender hips, hair pulled back off his chiseled face in a half pony, sapphire eyes cool as they took us in.
“So, are we going to go somewhere?” He shrugged. “Or do you plan on hanging out in the clearing until they drag us out of the sim?”
Irritation flared in my chest. “What took you so long, Goldie? Did you stop for some porridge?”
He pouted at me and I gave him the finger.
“We have to get to this spot.” Minnie waved a map around. “Look.”
