Page 67 of A Deadly Game of Cat and Mouse

“Huh, everything is fine. I’m so glad you’re all here.”

“Where else would we be, Jelly Fish? Come, let’s enjoy our meal.”

We sat at our table, and my mother put on her festive music, which made me smile.

Eric grabbed my hand and kissed it.

“Don’t ever leave me again, Egghead.”

“What are you talking about? I’ve been right … here… Jell…Y.” The image blurred when I blinked, making me panic.

“Eric? No wait,” I tried to grab him but couldn’t. “Wait, don’t go, please.”

I blinked again, only to realize in one moment of heartbreaking clarity that I was alone in the desert.

My body was burning up with fever, and I was hallucinating.

None of it had been real. Eric hadn’t been there with me. Neither had my family.

Realizing this was so excruciatingly painful to my poor heart, my body began shaking, and it drowned out the sounds of the men lifting me.

“We have her, sir. She’s going to need a medic.”

“See to it.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Jacob Hayes’ shoulders radiated tension as the medic put the girl on a makeshift gurney and lifted her into a black van before everyone headed out.

As much as he disliked Murdoch, he couldn’t afford to have her croak on his watch. So, he would make sure she got to the Academy in one piece if it was the last thing he did.

After they sent Orion to this hellhole, word spread about her exploits.

Unbeknown to many, the Pandora test was set up for everyone to fail. The US Department of Defense had wanted no one to get their hands on it, so they added a failsafe to the file.

If, by some miracle, a hacker breached the fourth level of security, the file would have destroyed itself the minute it was downloaded without proper credentials.

By deleting it, Orion had actually passed the test.

But Rector Marlow hadn’t known this, and they sent Orion to the behavioral camp as a result. The Commander let her, because he believed his little protégé needed a little conditioning to become more malleable.

That was a year ago. The American commander now wanted Marlow to reintegrate this snip of a girl into their ranks, and the Rector had dispatched a team to retrieve her.

Hayes hadn’t appreciated being treated like an errand boy by Marlow. They could have sent anyone after this girl. Why pick HIS team when the task was so below their station?

His arrival had surprised the behavioral camp, and chaos ensued as they scrambled to find her in the middle of a desert at night, while she laid there on the brink of death.

“I don’t know why the Guild is going to this length to protect you, but I sure hope you’re worth all this trouble,” he sneered at the passed out girl in distaste while the van rolled on.

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