Page 130 of The First Spark
Maybe Mira. No one else.
Blowing out a sigh, Zane spun around. “Until they decrypt the data, or we hear from Mira, there’s no point thinking about it. You need to focus on this. Got it?”
“Fine.” Kalie slammed her water down and shuffled to the starting point at the other end of the concrete strip.
Zane trudged to the nanotech sim’s control box. “Focus. This is important.”
“I know it is.” Kalie’s jaw tightened as she adjusted her stance. She picked up the pulser, and he jabbed the button to start the simulation.
A dummy popped up. Kalie fired.One, two, three. The lasers veered wide, thudding against a boulder.
Rattling cannons boomed through the speakers, a line of crackling thuds in quick succession. Then a wailing projectile, and a deafening collision.
The stench of fire was back, stronger than before.
And the screams.
“No!”
Zane squeezed his eyes shut. He forced himself to focus on the booming cannons, the lull of silence left in their wake, and the shriek of a missile. Fake. All fake. The screams were fake, too, part of the simulation.
But he could feel the fiery blast tearing through his leg. The odor of smoke burning his nose as he gasped. The cool, sticky blood flowing from his thigh. The scream. Footsteps pausing. Coming back, as he bellowed for her to go.
Zane’s eyes flew open.
Kalie was at the third position, firing at a clay dummy fifteen yards out. The recoil knocked her hand back, and the shot soared into the air. Ripples danced across the sky as the blast merged into the forcefield.
Like an idiot, she stood and watched.
“Go!” Zane bellowed. “Keep moving, dammit!”
Finally, she did, but her foot caught on a rock jutting out from the ground.
Zane gnashed his teeth together.
An ear-splitting screech wailed through the speakers. Two thunderclaps rang out, followed by a gut-twisting explosion. Zane inhaled, but the stench of burning flesh was all too real. Another shriek. Crashing rubble. Distant screams.
Bile rose to his throat, and he swallowed, wincing at the acid burn.
“I’m getting you out of here.”
On a distant battlefield, a missile wailed, crashing into the ground. Chunks of asphalt launched into the air and rained down on the broken earth.
“No, go! Run!”
Gasping, Zane turned to Kalie.
She missed another shot and jogged to the sixth position. A dummy rose. Panting, she set her pulser down, seized her ponytail, and tightened it. Her expression was distant, unfocused.
He jabbed a button on the control box, and a scarlet ball of paint exploded against her chest.
Kalie yelped, and her face reddened as she whirled on him. “What was that for?”
“That? What the hell isthis?” Zane gestured to her hands, frozen with locks of hair clenched in each fist. “You think it’s a joke? Just a stupid game?”
“It’s practice, and my hair was getting in the way!”
Zane punched the button again.
