Page 57 of Vengeful

Something more than the reminder we were twin sisters. This was something deeper than that. A shared fear. Fear of failure. Fear of not being enough. Fear that whatever happened today, there would be no going back.

I gave her a slight nod, which she returned. Zachary gave her a funny look before giving me a dark one.

I smiled at him and mouthed, "Fuck off."

He glared, but didn't mouth anything in return. Or maybe he did and I turned away before I saw.

"The trials commence…now." Pang dropped his hand down in front of us and gestured towards the door.

Several of the students took off at a run.

I walked calmly to the door and out into the rain. If I was going to succeed, I’d do it by remaining calm, not by letting fear or panic get the better of me.

My hair and clothes were plastered to me within moments of stepping outside. Naturally, all the teachers and board members stayed inside where it was dry. All of them except for Slade and Dane, who followed us out.

Officially, to supervise. Unofficially? I could only guess.

Honestly, I couldn't see the point of supervision anyway. It wasn't as though they were going to intervene. Maybe they were there to make sure no one chickened out and ran away at the last moment.

"This is bullshit," Shannon, a fellow business student, muttered as we trudged through the mud. "How are we supposed to know which way is north?"

"I guess we just follow them." I nodded toward the students who ran ahead of us.

"How do we know they're going in the right direction?" she asked.

"Have you got a better idea?" Ronnie, a cybersecurity student, cocked her head at Shannon.

Shannon hesitated. "Nope. What do you think the keys will look like? I mean, should we be crawling on the ground looking through the mud for them?"

Lightning lit up the sky, followed by a massive crash of thunder.

"That sounds like something they'd make us do," Ronnie said. "But I'm keeping an eye on the trees. They might be dangling from there." She glanced at me.

"It sounds like as good an idea as any." Shannon was right though, making us crawl around in the muddidseem like something they'd do. "They're not gonna make this easy."

"Fuck," Shannon swore. "This really is bullshit."

The ground was getting wetter and wetter, forcing us to step off the dirt and into the sodden high grass. Water trickled down under my clothes, making me shiver with cold and discomfort.

"Stumps," I said without thinking. They both stared over at me. "If I was going to hide keys, I'd hide them in stumps."

"So would I," Ronnie said. "But this is Brutham Academy we're talking about. What's a million times worse than sticking your hand into a stump or mud?"

"So many things," Shannon said. "Shit. Jason Pang's asshole. The middle of a fire, but nothing is burning out here on a day like this."

"We're heading in the wrong direction," I concluded. I wasn't sure if I should be helping them, but neither seemed to have a grudge against me for anything. I never had a run in with either of them. I may regret it, but this was better than doing it alone.

A part of me wished I was doing this with my sister.

"What do you mean?" Shannon asked.

"The dam." I turned around and headed back in the other direction. "Even if we were going north, we won't get far with these fucking handcuffs on."

I trudged back through mud and grass, past a bemused Slade, and stepped straight into the water.

For the first time, I didn't give a shit I was wet. I was going to get wetter. Not in a good way either.

I lowered myself down in the brown water and felt around behind me with my fingertips. It didn't take me long to touch something. It felt like a bone. Was it human or animal?

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