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Tom had then warily led his team onto the field and toward the pole with a bell. That was the mission: ring the bell. They had had two hours to find and ring the thing to qualify for continued Spartan training.
There were 418 candidates, and only three hundred slots. Not all of them could be Spartans.
His mistake had been leading his entire team into the clear. They'd all been too eager.
It got them ambushed.
Machine-gun fire from the treetops rained down on them. Adam and Min in flanking positions were immediately taken out.
Only Tom and Lucy had made it to the muddy hole. It was just deep enough to keep from getting shot.
"This is crazy," Lucy spat through her mud-covered face. "We gotta do something."
"They have to run out of ammo sooner or later," Tom told her. "Or one of the other teams will show up and get us out of this jam."
"Sure they will," Lucy said. "After they ring the bell." She squinted at the trees. "There has to be a way out of this. Automated gun turrets up there. That's why they didn't show up on the thermals."
That's what the Lieutenant was always saying about machines: "They easily fool the unsuspecting… but they're also easy to break."
The guns wouldn't kill them—but they'd sure as heck stop them cold. With only gray sweat suits and light boots for protection, the stun rounds hit so hard they numbed whatever they hit: legs or arms or God help you if you got nailed in the head or groin or an eye.
"Nuts to this." Lucy rose into a crouching stance.
Tom grabbed her ankle, pulled her down, and punched her in the gut.
Lucy doubled, but she recovered fast—rolled over Tom and got him in a stranglehold.
Tom shrugged out of the lock and held up both hands. "Come on," he said. "Truce. There has to be a way out of this—a way with us not getting shot."
Lucy glared at him, but then said, "What do you have in mind?"
"What is the point of this 'exercise,' Lieutenant?" Deep Winter asked.
The AI holographic projection of an old man took a step toward the bank of monitors and touched the screen showing a boy and a girl pinned by machine-gun fire. A crackle of ice spread over the plastic.
Chief Mendez stood, and swatted at a mosquito, frowning as he glanced back and forth among the two dozen displays in Camp Currahee's control center. The air conditioner had broken, and both Mendez's and Kurt's uniforms were soaked with sweat.
Kurt said, "Our candidates are doing well in their studies?"
Deep Winter turned his glacier-blue gaze to the Lieutenant. "You've have seen my reports. You know they are. Since you announced their grades were a factor in the selection process, they practically kill themselves every night to learn everything before they pass out. Frankly, I don't see—"
"1 suggest," Kurt said, "you not worry about seeing the point of my battlefield drills, and focus on keeping the candidates on track with their studies."
What could an AI possibly know what it was like on a real mission? Bullets zinging so close over your head that you didn't so much as hear them hut felt them pass. Or what it was like to get hit, but still have to keep going, bleeding, because if you didn't everyone on your team would die?