Chapter 4: Advantage in the Dark
The next day, Ridgewood High was a ghost town to me. Students parted like the Red Sea when I walked down the halls. Trent was absent, presumably nursing his bruised face and shattered ego.
But I knew the silence was a trap. By the time the final bell rang and the school emptied out, a heavy, oppressive energy settled over the campus. I was in the library, packing my braille laptop, when the heavy oak doors clicked shut and locked from the outside.
"Mom?" I spoke into the earpiece hidden beneath my hair.
"I'm on the perimeter, Maya," Elara's voice crackled softly. "Carrington hired professionals this time. Ex-military mercenaries. They've jammed the security cameras and locked down the building. There are five of them inside with you. I'm taking out their backup outside. You need to survive for ten minutes."
"Understood."
I slipped my earpiece out so I wouldn't be distracted. Five trained men. This wasn't a schoolyard brawl; this was a hunt.
I heard the tactical squeak of rubber soles echoing down the main corridor. They were fanning out. I navigated the library, slipping between the towering bookshelves. I pulled the fire alarm, but nothing happened—they had cut the system.
Adapt.
I moved to the electrical panel I had memorized during my orientation tour. With a quick wrench of my hands, I ripped out the main fuses for the library. The massive room plunged into pitch darkness.
"Lights are out in the library! Switch to night vision!" a gruff voice echoed from the entrance.
Night vision. That was a disadvantage for me. But I knew something about night vision goggles—they amplified light, which meant they were highly sensitive.
I grabbed a thick, heavy textbook and hurled it through the glass window of the librarian's office. The shattering glass masked my footsteps as I climbed up the shelves, wedging myself near the ceiling.
Two men rushed in, their rifles sweeping the room. I could hear the faint, high-pitched whine of their night-vision optics.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a high-lumen tactical strobe flashlight Elara had given me. I couldn't see the light, but I knew what it did. I tossed it right between the two men and pressed the remote activator in my palm.
A blinding, flashing strobe erupted in the pitch-black room.
Through their night-vision goggles, the intense light would be like staring into the sun. Both men screamed, ripping the goggles off their faces, completely blinded.
I dropped from the shelves like a shadow. A swift chop to the back of the first man's neck dropped him. The second swung his rifle blindly, but I easily ducked under the barrel, striking his solar plexus, leaving him gasping for air on the floor.
Two down. Three to go.
I hunted the rest through the dark corridors of the school. I used the echoes of the lockers, the hum of the vending machines, and the drafts from the air vents to map their locations. I was a phantom. I disarmed the third man in the chemistry lab, using the scent of sulfur to mask my approach. I incapacitated the fourth in the gymnasium, using the vast acoustics of the room to confuse his senses before taking him down with a heavy wrestling mat.
By the time I reached the main foyer, the leader of the mercenaries was standing there, holding a terrified, bruised Trent by the collar.
"Show yourself, girl!" the mercenary barked, his gun pressed to Trent's head. "Carrington Sr. didn't say anything about a trained assassin! We quit! I'm taking the kid as a hostage to get out of here!"
Trent was sobbing. The big, bad bully who had snapped my cane was weeping like a child, begging for his life.
I stepped out of the shadows, my face perfectly calm. "Let him go."
Before the mercenary could react, the front glass doors of the school shattered inward. Elara stepped through the broken glass, holding a sniper rifle with casual elegance.
"She said," Elara announced, her voice echoing with chilling authority, "let him go."
The mercenary dropped his gun and raised his hands in surrender. I walked over to Trent, who was huddled on the floor, shaking uncontrollably. I reached out, my fingers lightly brushing his shoulder. He flinched as if I had burned him.
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"Cry for me, blind kid," I whispered, repeating his own words back to him.
He wept, utterly broken.
