Chapter 881
She looked at her reflection in the grimy windowpane. Her eyes were dark, her expression grim.
“You are not dying here, Caroline,” she whispered to the ghost in the glass. “You chose this. Now survive it.”
The thought of her father’s fatal car crash, the long-suppressed need for answers, for vengeance, rose to the surface, sharpened to a fine point by the immediate threat of death.
She pushed herself off the wall and rejoined the squad. Her entire demeanor had shifted. The fear was still there, but it was now overlaid with a layer of icy, lethal purpose.
Brenna saw the change, the new hardness in her friend’s eyes, and wisely said nothing.
Melanie saw it too, but misinterpreted it as fear of the course. A look of malicious satisfaction spread across her face.
High above them, in the command tower, Jarrod watched her on a monitor. K.C. Bell stood beside him, his voice a low murmur of concern.
“Sir, assigning the evolution to Instructor Hawke is a significant risk.”
Jarrod didn’t turn from the screen. His eyes were fixed on the image of Caroline, her back straight, her jaw set. His right arm remained locked across his torso inside the heavy medical brace. His splinted left hand stayed rigid at his side. Nothing in him moved except the muscle tightening along his jaw.
His voice was as cold as the darkness she was about to enter. “I know. That’s why you will personally conduct three separate, top-tier inspections of Trainee Thompson’s equipment after Hawke is finished. No one else touches it.”
He had pushed her toward the lion’s den, but he had already locked the lion’s jaw as tightly as command authority allowed.
The equipment room smelled of nylon, canvas, wet rope, and the faint, metallic tang of fear. The air was thick with a tense, focused silence as the members of Alpha squad filed in to draw their harnesses, helmets, lamps, gloves, and navigation kits for the Night Terrain Confidence Course.
Sloane Hawke stood before the racks of climbing harnesses and sealed equipment bins like a high priestess presiding over a sacrifice. Her gaze swept over each trainee, cold and dismissive, until it landed on Caroline.
She picked up a harness pack and held it out. A smile, thin and sharp as a razor blade, touched her lips.
“Thompson,” she said, her voice a low purr. “This one’s for you. Good luck.”
Caroline took the heavy pack, its weight feeling unnatural in her arms. She told herself it was just her nerves. She moved to her designated spot on the floor and began the painstaking process of her own pre-course inspection.
Brenna sat beside her on a low bench instead of drawing a full kit. Her right arm was still locked in a bulky white cast and sling, the medical restriction tag clipped plainly to the front of her fatigue jacket. She had been ordered to attend the briefing and observe the evolution, but no sane cadre member would put a trainee with one usable hand on an elevated rope traverse.