Disruption (7 page)

Mr. Dalson’s grip on my shoulder tightened. I glanced up. He eyed me carefully, but not the way you’d expect if he were trying to see if I needed medical attention. Instead, he stared at me like a damaged toy, deciding whether he should fix me.

I just stood there dumbly as another series of questions jolted through me. Why wasn’t anyone panicking? Why weren’t they yelling? A mine had just exploded and very nearly cut me in half. Why wasn’t the camp medic rushing across the field? Why were the fabric walls still up?

Dalson gave me a gentle shove and guided me back across the field. “I shouldn’t say this,” he said in a low voice, “but well done.”

“W-what?” I rubbed my ears. No way had I heard him correctly. “Well done?”

He grinned when we got to the sidelines. “The ringing won’t last long. You’re free to go get cleaned up. There won’t be any more challenges for you today.”

I didn’t respond. I couldn’t. My mouth gaped like the fish I was. I now understood why they used that name for newbies
.
Newbies stood around with their mouths hanging open like mine.

He looked around and then brought his head close to mine. “Between you and me, Cambridge, how’d you know the mines around the ball were real? What gave it away?”

I blinked trying to understand the question.

“You couldn’t have known just by looking at them.” He nudged my shoulder. “C’mon, how’d you know?”

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. I felt like the explosion had knocked me into some alternate reality. One where a kid almost getting blown to bits was grounds for congratulations and where camp leaders seemed surprised when their campers survived challenges. The fact that my hands shook as though I’d just downed a gallon of Red Bull didn’t help matters.

Dalson nodded even though I hadn’t spoken, and then tapped his ear. He locked eyes with me and spoke, mouthing each word carefully. “Well done.” He raised his hand and brought it down in a quick movement. The fabric wall around the field dropped in a blink, and a dozen or so campers who had been near the barrier scattered back to their cabins like startled cockroaches.

I glanced at the field. It was as though I’d never set foot on the turf. There were no signs of paint explosions or burned grass. There were no bits and pieces of debris, at least none that I could see. The only thing on the field was an official-looking soccer ball, on the exact spot it had been when I had arrived.

What was going on here?

Chapter 11

My senses trickled back as I trudged toward the cabin.

At home, Jason and I used to watch all kinds of reality shows about SWAT teams and prison guards. I remembered a few episodes where they used things called flashbangs and stun grenades to take care of criminals. Flashbangs are essentially really loud bangs accompanied by bright flashes of light. The idea is to disorient without hurting anyone. Jason and I had wanted to get a couple to set off in school during study hall, but they’re surprisingly hard to come by. Even for a kid with as much money as Jason.

I wondered if the mines under the soccer ball had been flashbangs. In the TV shows I’d watched, I was pretty sure they’d called them harmless. My hand went to my head, and the singed ends of my hair crunched. I’d been torched. There was nothing harmless about getting torched.

Still, the reaction from Dalson and the linesmen had made it clear they’d intended those mines to go off that way, which meant they were okay with the possibility I wouldn’t have ducked and so . . . what? They had waited until I was clear before setting them off? Otherwise, they were okay with the possibility that I’d be killed or, at the very least, maimed.

I cursed my dad for sneaking my name onto a camp roster without checking it out first. What kind of parent does that? I thought about it for a second and then considered the possibility that he
had
looked into it and had decided to send me anyway. That thought morphed out of control, and by the time I was halfway back to the Delta cabin, I had concocted a massive conspiracy where Dad had taken out a major life insurance policy on me and was looking to rid himself of his troubled kid once and for all. Not sure Mom would be happy with that, but then again, she
had
been wanting to remodel the kitchen.

“Focus, Matt,” I told myself. Obviously, this camp wasn’t what it seemed; I’d had that much sorted out before the first challenge. Now, though, I was starting to realize just how different it really was. I clenched my fists and reminded myself that if things got any worse, I’d just bolt. I’d find a way to call Jason, he’d help me get back home, and if it cost my dad his job, so be it.

But there was something else. Something tickled the back of my mind, and it was a feeling I knew I wouldn’t be able to ignore—curiosity. This camp was different—crazy different. And that made me want, no,
need
to figure it out more. They had competitions where kids could get blown up. I wasn’t even beginning to make sense of everything, but I had to try. There was something more to this place. I just had to stay alive until I figured out what it was.

It was like when Jason and I were little and some older kids told us about the bogeyman who lived in closets. Jason believed them and decided night-lights were the answer, but even though I mostly believed them, too, I wasn’t satisfied with night-lights. If there was some crazy monster in my closet, I had to know for sure. Jason took some convincing, but eventually he was on board, and together we spent the next few weekends having sleepovers where we’d try to bait that sucker out of our closets with food, shiny things, or money. Twice Jason and I even used each other as bait while the other waited with an aluminum baseball bat. It scared us half to death, but I just had to know.

Yaakov gave a frightened yelp when I pushed open the cabin door. The others, who were hunched over his bed, turned sharply in my direction and jumped to their feet, forming a human wall in front of the bed.

An awkward second passed, and then Rylee said, “Matt?”

“Captain?” Angie asked. “Is that you?” One of her thin eyebrows rose, and she laughed. “Look at you. Was the challenge some kind of art project? You’re filthy.”

The others didn’t smile.

“What happened?” Rylee asked.

“It didn’t go well,” I grumbled.

“Clearly,” Juno said. “Just tell us we’re not starting out with the lowest ranking.”

“How would he know how everyone else ranked?” Rylee snapped. “It was a
preliminary
challenge.” She turned to Yaakov; his gaze was fixated on his computer screen. “Yaakov?”

“I’m already on it,” he said.

“What happened?” Rylee asked again. This time her voice was much less agitated.

“I just want to take a shower.” I plodded my way to my storage bin and pulled a set of clean clothes from my bag.

When I turned around, Amara was blocking my path. I tried to move around him, but he grabbed my shoulder and held me in place. His eyes narrowed as he scanned me up and down, all the while muttering in a language I couldn’t understand and was pretty sure I’d never heard before.

“Land mines,” he said finally. “Right? Poppers, probably. Modified to disperse paint, obviously.”

“That’s . . . that’s right,” I said. “Probably. Except—”

“Except for a couple of them,” Amara cut in. “Your hair looks singed.”

He ran a thumb over my eyebrow, and I smacked it away. Then he touched my hair, and I smacked his hand away again.

“A couple of them were only directionally modified,” he said.

“Not a couple,” I snapped. “Three. And I don’t know what they were, but if I hadn’t been on the ground when they exploded I could’ve been . . . really hurt.” I hesitated to say “killed” because I didn’t want to seem dramatic, yet that’s what I was thinking.

“Hurt?” Yaakov asked without looking up. “Don’t you mean killed?”

“Not likely,” Angie said. “Probably just maimed.”

“Oh, that’s loads better,” I said fiercely.

“How big were they?” Amara asked.

I couldn’t tell if they were just giving me a hard time or if they were serious. I also wasn’t sure which would be worse, their trying to scare me, or being unaffected that I’d nearly died.

Juno sidled up beside Amara. “I’m with Angie; he’d have been maimed. Now, seriously, how big were the mines?”

I groaned. “The size of a hockey puck, I guess.”

“Hockey puck?” Amara asked. He made a circle with his hands as if I had no idea how big a hockey puck was.

I nodded, and Juno whistled.

“I’ve seen those in other camps,” Juno said. “They’re pretty messy if they hit you right.” He grimaced, and I had a sick feeling he wasn’t talking about paint when he said
messy
.

“Argh,” Yaakov growled at the computer. “You think you’re so smart I can’t get around that?” He hunched over his computer, and his fingers became a blur on the keyboard.

While he had the attention of the rest of the team, I slipped around Amara and Juno and crept for the door.

“Hurry up, Yaakov,” Juno said. “I know hackers who’d already be in and out without leaving a footprint.”

Yaakov gave an annoyed sigh. “No, you don’t. You have no idea the system they have in place. We’re talking quadruple redundancies, state-of-the-art anti-hacking programs, and tracker bots that could find an infiltration in a trillionth of a second. I’ve already set up a—” He glanced up at what I’m sure were blank expressions from the rest of the team and shook his head. “You know what? If anyone else were doing this, they’d have already been discovered and would probably be dead.”

I cringed at the second mention of death and slipped through the door. The sound of the bickering vanished when I was a dozen feet away from the cabin. I made it twice that distance before Rylee called my name and jogged up from behind me.

“Sorry about that,” she said. “I know it’s rough when a challenge doesn’t go as well as you’d hoped.”

“What would you know about it, Rylee?” I snapped without slowing down. “When were you ever on a Delta team? Huh? Try never.” I wasn’t sure if I was angrier that I’d almost been killed, or that I’d likely made a fool out of myself for not knowing there was more to the challenge than just kicking a ball.

Rylee kept pace with me and didn’t seem taken aback in the least by my anger. “Don’t worry about it, Matt. If we start out in last place, who cares? We’ll make up for it. I’m telling you, we have a good team.”

I stopped abruptly and pointed toward the cabin. “
That’s
a good team? Them? In what universe are they good? This is the first time any of them have been on a Delta team. If they were so great, why haven’t they been picked before?”

Rylee eyed me carefully. “You said you’ve never been to one of these camps before, but your scores say you’re a liar.” I opened my mouth to speak, but she continued before I got a word out. “Your body language says you’re not a liar, and your questions make me think you’re really sincere in your ignorance.” She waved her hand. “You’re an enigma, Matt Cambridge. But that’s an asset here, so let me put your mind at ease about your team.” Rylee held up one finger. “Juno is a fighter. A really great fighter. There’s no one in camp who will be able to beat him. I promise. He’s been training since he was crawling.” She lifted another finger. “Amara is an explosives genius. He can make them, and he can disarm them. Trust me, he’ll be useful.” A third finger went up. “Yaakov doesn’t look it, but he’s the best hacker in the camp. Better than any of the instructors, I bet. If we need to hack into something, he’s the one to do it.” She put her hand against her chest. “I am really good at reading people. My friends back home call me Six because they think I have a sixth sense.”

I rolled my eyes. “A sixth sense? Give me a break.” I gestured back to the cabin. “And don’t get me started on those weirdos. They seem like a bunch of punks.”

Rylee shrugged. “They are. But they’ll be good in competitions when the time comes. You can trust them.”

“What about Angie?”

Rylee’s face scrunched up. “Angie’s a bit . . . different.”

“Meaning?”

“She’s a sociopath.” She frowned. “Or maybe a psychopath, depending on who you ask.”

“I’m asking you.”

Rylee waved her hand. “Do I look like a psychologist? Just know that when the time comes, she’s the person you want on your team because she’ll do . . . anything. She doesn’t really have a . . . well, a conscience.”

I shook my head. I wasn’t in the mood to be teased, or played, or whatever it was that Rylee was doing to me. I might not have known a lot about the camp, but I knew Angie was no psychopath. She couldn’t be, because kids can’t be psychopaths. My chest hurt when I breathed, and I could feel the paint drying on my arms and face. “I need a shower.”

I headed for the bathrooms, and Rylee called out behind me. “Just don’t get bummed out about the preliminary rankings. They don’t usually count for much anyway.”

Anger flashed inside me. I’d nearly been blown up, and Rylee thought I was
bummed out
?
I turned around to really give her a piece of my mind, but she was already jogging back to the cabin. I considered hollering after her, but what was the point? I stormed into the showers and slammed the door behind me.

My face, neck, and forearms were burned pink; scrubbing them wasn’t an option. I put my head against the wall of the shower and let the water clean the dirt and paint off my skin and soothe the nicks and scratches that must’ve been caused by shrapnel.

Shrapnel. The word made my entire body tense.

I told myself over and over that the land mine couldn’t have been lethal. But there was a rolling in the pit of my stomach that wouldn’t go away. This camp had to be military. No one else would use explosives. There weren’t uniforms, though; no saluting, no people with ranks. I didn’t know a lot about army camps for kids, but I was pretty sure they didn’t look like Camp Friendship. Where were the marching drills and push-ups and KP duty I’d heard about? Camp Friendship didn’t seem to have any of that.

Plus, why had Dalson told everyone to treat this place like a regular camp? I couldn’t think of a single explanation for why anyone would say that. Under what circumstances would a camp want to look like a regular camp, but not
be
a regular camp?