Free Dualed by Elsie Chapman

enough.
    My arm swings out, knocks his hand away. Then thrusts hard at his chest. That such a thick man falls back so easily is due more to his utter shock than my strength, though.
    He stares at me from the floor, his face red and squashed. And absolutely murderous. “Okay, that’s it, I’m gonna—”
    My hand, dropping down to the gun in my pocket, digging for it—
    “Hestor.” A deep riptide of a voice, like sand scraping over gravel. “What’s going on out here?”
    I turn to see a man who’s very tall and very wide. Small eyes the color of blue jeans, hair a short scrub of dirty blond, chin covered by a goatee the same shade.
    With one glance I can tell his heft doesn’t come from fat like Hestor’s does. It’s pure muscle. And he’s positioned it to hide the three of us from view from the rest of the store. Which leaves me boxed in, away from the door.
    “This—this little
brat
came here to see you, Dire,” Hestor sputters. “Asking about
the band
.” These last two words are an indignant hiss. “But when I saw how old she was, I said no way, nothing doing. And then she goes and makes a stink about leaving.”
    Dire’s openly assessing me. I can’t get a feel for what he’s thinking, and it’s unnerving. Whether or not he’s going to give me a chance, kick me out, or do something I haven’t even let myself imagine—whatever’s usually done to those who have learned too much.
    “Do you always move that fast?” he asks me. The words are blunt scratches.
    I don’t know. “Yes. Always.”
    A few seconds of silence, then a curt nod. “Fine. But downstairs. Not here.” Dire eyeballs the store, seems satisfied no one has been listening. “Hestor, back to work.”
    Hestor is finally struggling to his feet. “Dire, this is a crazy, stupid idea. The girl is so green she might as well be a—”
    “No greener than I would want.” Dire turns to me, gestures. “This way.”
    The stairway is a skinny, dark slant of space in the back corner. Each step I take furthers my descent into a world that is suddenly all too real, no longer a game.
    The same concrete walls are down here, but there’s a dampness to them, a kind of dank earthiness. It reminds me of how a garden smells when you dig really deep, turning over soil that has never seen the sun. There are no windows, just three naked, swinging bulbs slung across the ceiling. A handful of metal chairs and a dented metal table are placed on the concrete floor. Incongruous to it all is an assortment of sleek tablets wired to machines I can’t begin to recognize.
    And a woman. She’s sitting at the bare table, watching me as I enter the room. She looks just as tough as Dire and about as pleasant as Hestor. Black-haired and dark-skinned, with sharp green eyes. On the table in front of her is a cardboard box.
    Dire pulls out a chair across from the woman, scraping it along the floor. He holds it out. “Have a seat,” he says to me.
    “This is the one from Baer?” The lady’s voice is soft. She continues to stare at me as I sit down. Her appraisal isn’t like a mother’s would be, but a snake’s right before it pounces. “I didn’t know we were taking them this young now.”
    “We’re not.” Dire sits down next to the woman, frowns atme, and rubs his goatee. “What’s your name and how old are you?”
    “West Grayer.” My words are bullets. Have to be. Being turned away is still a possibility. “I’m fifteen, and I’m not too young.”
    He grunts. “So you haven’t completed your assignment yet?”
    “No. Not yet.” My hands are clenched on the table in front of me, so I pull them off the table and sit on them.
    “Why would you want to become a striker when you could go active any day now? Kids your age are too busy getting ready to kill their own Alts to care much about someone else’s. And rightly so. One screwup during a striker contract is just as fatal as one during your own assignment.”
    I nod. “I know that. I came