Fletcher blinked as the bright lights of the cabin came on, waking him up from his nap. This was his second flight, the shorter of the two. The first one took him to Fort Sahara in the northern part of the remnants of Africa. After that he’d had a short layover before boarding this plane heading down to Rwenzori Mountain Base. With so little else to do, he’d slept as much as he could despite the time change.

  He was exhausted after his two week “vacation” at Finnack. True to her word, his mother had seen to it that he was kept busy. Very busy. Every day he’d been given grunt assignments of cleaning bathrooms or moving boxes in and out of storage. And a couple hours of PT on top of it, all conducted by Sergeant Gonzalez. He’d tried to stop by to see Nora, but she ended up going out on a mission before he got the chance, so he left her a written apology instead.

  Jeric and Addy hadn’t been quite so cold—once Addy got back at least—and he’d gone out with them to dinner one of his final nights at Finnack, but aside from that, he’d spent most of his time on the busy work and worrying about officer training.

  Officer training. Deities, he was not looking forward to it. Not only was it another ten weeks of his life that he wouldn’t hear from his friends and family, but he was stressed about trying to achieve the top spot in his class in order to get a shot at the analyst role. He hadn’t seen his mother again since the conversation in which she told him about it, but he’d become more and more sure that that was going to be the best course of action of his life. Being behind a computer, handling data and numbers was a much better alternative to going out to shoot Unhumans, many of whom were pawns in the game like himself.

  The line off the airplane was clearing up enough for him to stand and get his bag from the overhead bin. The one nice thing about officer training was that he was allowed to bring a few things with him, and he heard that during the final weeks there was more leniency in regards to free time, so he’d backed his books. As sick as he was of those same paperbacks, he wanted to bring something homey with him.

  Dufflebag over his shoulder, Fletcher walked out of the airplane and into the morning sun. A breeze blew by as he gazed across the lush, green scenery. It was even more vibrant than Finnack Mountain Base.

  He descended the stairs and glanced around the few doors he saw, all leading into the stoney mountain which towered above him. His eyes passed by a group of soldiers standing near a drill sergeant, and he knew he found his spot.

  Walking over, Fletcher dropped his bag on the pile with the others and fell into the formation with the others.

  “Name?” The sergeant asked. She was short and stout, with ebony skin and braided hair that was pulled back into a bun.

  “Private Fletcher Dixon,” he replied. If he had it his way, he’d use “Dixon” the rest of his time in the military and perhaps the rest of his life. He had no interest in tying himself back to General Hazel Anders and the drama that came with it.

  She marked something off on her clipboard and asked the same question to the next incoming soldier.

  “Ah, good. Another private,” someone said from beside him.

  Fletcher glanced over to see a man shorter than him with fiery red hair and pink eyes. Probably part [Goblin].

  “Excuse you?” Fletcher said.

  “Just taking stock of the platoon. I like to know what I’m up against,” the man answered. His rank denoted him as a private first class, barely a rank above him.

  Fletcher raised an eyebrow. “It’s a little early to start the competition, isn’t it?”

  “Only for the losers, Private.”

  Rolling his eyes, Fletcher turned away. Arguing with that bozo wasn’t going to earn his way to the analyst role so he wasn’t going to waste his time.

  The last two they expected showed up, and then the drill sergeant took them to processing. They deposited their things, got new uniforms and haircuts—another buzzcut unfortunately—and then were given time to go back to their rooms. They got actual rooms, four of them in a room with two sets of bunks beds inside, instead of the wide open barracks used in basic training.

  As nice as it was to have a little more privacy and personal space, Fletcher ended up getting saddled with that irksome private from before, Private White. White shared a bunk with a burly Brazilian man named Private Silva while Fletcher was sharing with Corporal Hajji. Hajji had tan skin and dark hair—before it got shaved off—and he was cordial enough with Fletcher to be bearable.

  It was shocking that they were getting free time on their very first day, but Fletcher didn’t complain. It appeared officer training wasn’t going to suck nearly as much as Hotshot training, so maybe he’d stand a shot of taking the top ranking after all.

  ***

  A piercing alarm rang through the entire building as Fletcher shot up in his bed, narrowly avoiding hitting his head against the ceiling. It wasn’t a warning alarm of any kind, so this didn’t have anything to do with a Hex Cloud or an attack from the Unhumans. It was high pitched and loud enough that people a mile away probably heard it. Some wake up call.

  He swung off his bunk and changed into his PT gear as the others did the same. Soon they were all in the hallway, waiting for the drill sergeant to address their section and take them outside for their daily workout.

  Compared to Hotshot training and even the regiment he was put through by Gonzalez back at Finnack, it was a breeze. They were sent to the mess hall for a quick breakfast, and then they got their chance to shower and get ready for the day. The one nice thing about a buzzcut was that Fletcher didn’t have to spend any of those precious few minutes dealing with his hair.

  Back in the hallway, standing at the ready, Fletcher was taken back to learn that they would be spending the rest of the day in classrooms listening to lectures. It was like school all over again, only this time it was military history, tactics, geography, and [Skills].

  It turned out that basically all of the first half of officer training was going to be that. Lectures, studying, and tests. Every test score would be factored into their final ranking, weighted heavier even than their PT tests—which Fletcher ranked in the top for already. Every evening they were given personal time, but that was always used for studying. They had five different subjects to master in only five weeks.

  It was the end of Fletcher’s fifth full day of training that he sat in the group lounge, pouring over a Mythia geography textbook, practicing the names of every major city when White entered the room with his posse—Salvi and a woman named Boateng, walking right up to Fletcher’s table where he sat alone.

  “Dixon. How’s everyone’s favorite [Vampire]?” White asked in a casual tone.

  “What do you need, White?” Fletcher muttered, staring at the map before him.

  “I want you to join our study group. We think a fourth member would round us out nicely, and you seem to be top of the class,” he answered.

  “And if I’m doing so well, why would I waste time helping you?”

  “If you don’t want to, that’s fine. We’ll find someone else. I just wanted to offer you first.” White nodded to the man and woman behind him. “Let’s check with Hajji.”

  Fletcher shook his head as they went. White had remained extremely competitive, so unless he got a terrible concussion that rewrote his entire personality, there was no way he was doing this to be kind.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  Maybe he should warn Hajji. They weren’t necessarily friends, but Fletcher liked the guy well enough. No. He didn’t have much longer to study, and he was really struggling with mixing up some of the coastal cities. Hajji was intelligent enough to make it this far, so he could surely see for himself that White was being ingenuine.

  When White and his posse walked back through with Hajji in their midst, Fletcher bit his lip. Okay, scratch that. Maybe Hajji wasn’t as observant as he thought. But what could he do now? This wasn’t his problem. He couldn’t afford to babysit someone who was stupid enough to fall for White’s tricks.

  Sighing, Fletcher closed his textbook and packed it away, jogging to catch up to White and the others.

  “I changed my mind. I want to join you,” he said.

  White smiled. “Great. The more the merrier. We can study in our room since no one else is around. I think a private space will really help.”

  Fletcher didn’t know what his plan was, but he went along with them anyway. Maybe White really was being generous, but he wouldn’t believe it until he saw it. One night of inefficient studying wasn’t going to kill him.

  They all crammed into the small space, and White pulled out his history textbook.

  “Here. Let’s start by quizzing each other,” he suggested. “Boatang, what year was the battle of DC in the First Unhuman War?”

  “2046,” she answered.

  “And, Salvi, what was significant about that battle?”

  “It’s when the US government authorized the use of nukes,” Salvi answered with his Portuguese accent.

  “Hajji, when was the first nuclear bomb dropped against the Unhumans?” White asked.

  “That wasn’t until the Second Unhuman War, right at the end in 2063,” the man answered.

  “Correct. Dixon, where was it dropped?”

  Fletcher nearly scoffed at the simplicity of the question. How was this helping anyone? “They nuked Galtoi.”

  White grimaced. “Oh, not quite. It’s called Gal’ti.”

  “It was Galtoi,” he repeated.

  “Gal’ti. You’re wrong.”

  “No. I’m not,” Fletcher argued. “The one and only nuclear weapon was denoted in Galtoi, the Unhuman city that was where everyone signed the First Treaty.”

  “It’s Gal’ti.” White spun his book around and pointed to a paragraph. “Look.”

  Fletcher frowned as he read the words. It confirmed that White was correct and he was wrong. But that couldn’t be right. Fletcher was sure it was Galtoi, not Gal’ti. While not a big difference in principle, on a test something like that did matter.

  “Moving on,” White said. He cleared his throat and asked another round of questions. This time it was Hajji who was wrong.

  Fletcher furled his eyebrows. “No. I’m with Hajji. The first official colony was Ferns, in what used to be Colombia.”

  “No. It was Jersay in the remnants of Canada.” White shrugged. “You guys have your facts mixed up.”

  This time Fletcher turned to his own textbook, not trusting White’s anymore. But it too confirmed that Jersay was the first completed colony. Once again Fletcher was sure he was right and the book was wrong. Something weird was going on.

  “Well, as fun as this has been, I’m going back to finish studying by myself.” Fletcher closed the textbook and stood up. He didn’t understand how White was doing it, but he was sure that the guy was giving them false information to mess them up on the test. Though he thought it a rather stupid plan. White and his crew would probably also struggle to keep their facts straight if they spent all this time coming up with fake ones, so wouldn’t they just all fail together?

  “Your loss, Dixon,” White said. “Though it really seems like you could use the help.”

  Fletcher snorted. “I’ll take my chances on my own. Come on, Hajji. I’ll study with you if you want.”

  “I’ll stay,” the man said. “I guess I don’t know my facts as well as I thought.”

  He made a face, but he didn’t have enough evidence to outright accuse White of scheming, so he left Hajji to his fate.

  As Fletcher returned to the lounge where others were studying, he opened his textbook and reread the same sections as before. It still sided with White, but he refused to believe he was wrong on both counts.

  Glancing around, Fletcher noticed Corporal Campos nearby, a woman who was probably at least fifty percent Hexed given her hair and eyes were the ever changing colors of a [Nix], and her skin faintly shifted in shades as well.

  “Campos, can I borrow your history book for a moment?” he asked.

  She glanced at him suspiciously but slid it over to him.

  He opened it to the same page as his and scanned the text.

  “Okay. Good. I’m not crazy,” he murmured to himself. Campos’s book sided with him, which meant White messed with his book somehow, making it display the wrong information. If the guy was part [Goblin], he probably had access to [Illusion] which would allow him to mess with stuff like this.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “White is trying to sabotage people.” Fletcher pushed both textbooks over to her. “Check out mine compared to yours. He was trying to tell me that the first colony was Jersay instead of Ferns.”

  Campos read through both and glanced up at him. “Deities, you’re right. Yours is wrong. Good thing you noticed.”

  “Hajji is still with him. I couldn’t convince him to leave, and I wasn’t willing to accuse White on the spot. That’s against the rules, right?” Fletcher asked.

  Campos nodded. “It has to be. Take this to the Captain. He’ll want to see it.”

  “Right. Can I borrow your book? Or maybe you should just come with me to back up my story,” he suggested.

  “Sure. We should go now. The test is tomorrow,” she pointed out.

  “Okay. Let’s do it.”

  Picking up both textbooks, Campos led the way out of the lounge and through the hallways to the door of Captain Yusuf, their CO and leader during training.

  Fletcher knocked, and they were called inside.

  “Captain.” He saluted.

  “At ease. What do you need, candidates?” Yusuf asked. He was a burly man, with light brown skin and a bald head, displaying quite clearly his wolf ears atop his head and the blank sides of his head where the Human ears had disappeared. Since that was all the available information on his Hexing, Fletcher couldn’t determine if he was part-[Werewolf] or part-[Bloodhound].

  “White is cheating, sir. Using a [Skill] I believe.” Fletcher held up the textbooks. “He offered to study with me, but somehow he changed my textbook to display incorrect information to try to sabotage me and Hajji.”

  Yusuf made a face. “Let’s see it.”

  Fletcher placed the books on the table, and together he and Campos found the page he’d originally checked.

  “It’s here, sir. Campos’s is correct in saying Ferns was the first colony after the Second Unhuman War, but somehow White changed mine to say it was Jersay,” Fletcher explained.

  The Captain looked over both books and then back up at the pair of them. “These books are identical. Both are correct in saying Ferns was the first colony.”

  Fletcher bit his lip and flipped the books to face him. Captain Yusuf was right. They displayed the same, correct information. Whatever White had done had worn off.

  “I saw it, Captain. Dixon is telling the truth,” Campos said.

  “It's in poor taste to sabotage other candidates,” the Captain said.

  “That’s why we brought the books. To show you what he was doing,” Fletcher said.

  Yusuf scoffed. “You mean to try to get him kicked out. You’re lucky I’m not disciplining both of you for this poorly executed scheme. Get out, and if I hear anything more about this White business, you’ll both spend the next two weeks scrubbing toilets. Are we clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” Fletcher and Campos replied in unison.

  “Dismissed.”

  Scooping up the textbooks, Fletcher followed Campos out of the office. As the door closed behind them, he sighed.

  “Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to drag you into it too,” he said.

  She shook her head. “Whatever. I guess Captain doesn’t care about cheating.”

  “Whatever [Skill] he used must have worn off.” Fletcher frowned down at the textbooks. Hajji didn’t know about what was going on, but he didn’t think he’d get the chance to warn the man tonight. That would have to wait until tomorrow, though that meant Hajji was going to bomb their test tomorrow.

  “What are you going to do about White?” Campos asked.

  He grinned up at her. “The only thing I can do. Beat him anyway and rank higher than him.”