Page 31 of The Pansy Paradox
I swipe my fingers beneath my nose in what I hope looks like I’m wiping away sweat. There’s a smear of red along the back of my hand. I keep my head tilted toward the earth, hoping Agent Darnelle isn’t watching too closely. As a result, a few drops land in front of me, the soil sucking them up as if it’s greedy for my blood.
A moment later, the earth trembles.
True, this is advanced tech, but just because it can deliver stings doesn’t mean it can make the ground shake.
At least, I don’t think it can.
I stand, umbrella at the ready. The next obstacle is straight ahead. I don’t know what it is about the Enclave and rickety bridges, but they turned up a lot during training. And, oh, look! Here’s one now in the examination. The surface trap is so obvious that if you walked into it, you should fail your examination.
But there’s more, layer after layer of more. I don’t mean to hesitate, but the choices here are almost endless. Most paths lead onto the bridge, with varying results, although a virtual plunge is almost guaranteed.
I want to go under, root out the Screamer troll that’s lurking there. This is most definitely the Sight talking. What will it mean if I take this option? I’m itching to, no doubt about it.
“What do you think?” I whisper to my umbrella.
She, too, trembles with indecision. She swings about, first one way and then the other, as if she’s not sure what’s real and what isn’t.
“The course,” I say. “We have to finish the course.”
But she doesn’t want to. She’s tugging me away from the projection of the bridge and toward where I last saw Agent Darnelle. The course flickers, so one moment, I see the bridge, and the next, the chain link along the cemetery. Something roils in the depression beneath the bridge, something I must certainly avoid or attack. But static fills my head. My thoughts scramble. My vision blanks.
This must be the Sight. A warm gush of blood coats my upper lip. So I pitch forward and land on my hands and knees, hoping to keep my clothes stain-free. Better blood splatter on the grass than on my shirt.
It works, and I’m about to stand and continue the course when the ground rumbles again. The sensation has a menacing, fairytale quality—like a groggy giant waking after centuries of slumber.
There’s no warning. No ambush. No flight of Screamers emerging from a fissure. Only a single, piercing screech and then nothing but a searing pain along the small of my back. It’s exquisite and deadly and very, very real.
I stagger to my feet and then do the one thing Agent Darnelle told me not to do.
I remove my goggles.
Chapter 13
Henry
King’s End, Minnesota
Sunday, July 9
Henry expected Pansy to detect the ambush quickly, but not that quickly. He almost missed how she elegantly dispatched the Screamers. They were there and then gone. He flinched when the exam delivered a series of stings. In real life, she would’ve walked away without a scratch. As for the fissure repair? Admirable.
Barely a minute in, and Pansy Little had hit every requirement for a permanent post agent. Henry could stop the exam right now and call it done. Instead, he knelt next to his laptop—or, rather, both of them—and compared the readouts.
Data from umbrellas never lied. Even with a hasty scan, the evidence was clear. It was there in the rhythm, in the choice of targets, in her anticipation of where to move and when to do so.
Pansy Little—and not her mother—had spent the last five years patrolling King’s End.
Henry adjusted the settings. There were several layers to this exam. Now that she’d aced the requirements for a permanent post agent, why not see how close she was to senior field agent? He went ahead and activated every last level, including those for superior Sight.
Because Henry was testing yet another hypothesis. Pansy Little didn’t have mild premonitions or an occasional flash of insight. She was like Ophelia. Better, possibly. Because, unlike his sister, she had the ability to lock down the Sight on command. That Pansy had been able to hide her ability all these years was nothing short of astonishing.
And yes, there it was. The tree. No one sidestepped the tree. He’d been caught up in its virtual branches during his own examination. To his knowledge, only Ophelia had escaped unscathed.
Until now.
The ground rumbled beneath him. Henry pressed a palm against the earth to steady himself and gauge the tremor. Odd. King’s End wasn’t rated for Screamer-generated earthquakes, but then again, no one had bothered with a site survey since 1991.
He could deal with that later. He turned his attention back to both Pansy and the laptop’s screen. She had reached the bridge, and he wanted to see what she’d do next.
