Free Project Sparta (The Xander Whitt Series Book 1) by B.B. Gallagher

T-shirt. The Mainframe felt strangely eerie, as shadows littered the room from the faint glow of the computer monitors. The room was disordered with hardware sprawled out everywhere; screens and computer consoles lined each of the interior walls. There were five workstations on each side, one for each Spartan. Wires hung from the ceiling and coiled around the four support beams in the room. It resembled the guts of a machine and they were all plugged into it.
    Cusick held a keyboard with one hand and typed at an incredible speed with the other. Screens began to change and graphics started moving. “We are going to be learning a lot of different things in this class. This is where you will develop your inner geek like me. You will learn how to crack firewalls, analyze intelligence. You will learn anything and everything having to do with computers. You will learn how to hack.”
    Mac’s face lit up like Christmas morning.
    “And more importantly, I will teach you how to not get caught. If I heard correctly, that was how we found you, Mr. Morrison.” He smiled at Mac, who was still the primary enthusiast in the group. A small chuckle came over the room.
    “Today we will start out slow with computer basics, and then we will get into basic Java script.” They all hopped in the cockpit seats at their workstations, all of which were color-coded. Screens surrounded each Spartan, encasing them in a virtual reality. While the recruits fumbled through the lesson plan, Xander found that it came easily to him. He was able to work his way through basic problems logically although he was somewhat limited by his lack of technical know-how. Mac, however, would complete the exercises twice as fast and help his neighbor finish theirs. Xander noted how helpful Mac could be to him in the future.
    After class the Spartans took a long walk across the Compound to the Thicket. The Thicket was the forest that lined the other side of the Compound. It was a deep and long wooded area that had man-made hills and streams. Oak and fir trees towered seventy feet tall; many of them had grown toward the light shining through the oculus window in the dome. When the recruits arrived, no one had any idea where to find their instructor, Juliette Rearden. In front of the main clearing leading into the woods was a tree stump with a piece of paper nailed to it.
     
    To find what you seek, you must think like what you seek
     
    “She must be hiding or something.” Bronson concluded. The recruits became kids again, playing a game. Eight of them ran off in every direction looking under rocks, behind trees, anywhere Rearden could have been hiding. Ezra and Xander remained at the stump. Xander’s instinct had kicked in and Ezra could see that he had a plan up his sleeve.
    “They aren’t going to find her,” Xander whispered. “She’s too skilled to be found. She might get flushed out from her hiding spot. If so, we should be camouflaged and find higher ground, let her come to us.”
    Ezra arched his eyebrows. “Didn’t realize you had such a knack for strategy.” Xander shrugged and headed to the nearby bank of the stream.
    “Brilliant,” Ezra whispered. Together, they ran over and flopped down in it like pigs taking a mud bath. Covered in mud, they would blend in with the trees. They returned to the tree and climbed as high as they could get. From their perch near the top, they were able to view the whole Thicket. They marveled at the beauty of it all. The sun shined through the oculus at the center of the dome and cascaded down through the trees until it settled on the southern pond. They could see their fellow Spartans run down into the meadow, chasing the wildlife on their way.
    Ezra and Xander sat stone still, blending in the best they could for the next half hour while the others continued their search. Then Xander caught something out of the corner of his eye below—an optical illusion.
    The grass was shifting.
    Xander focused in on the