Read Online Disruption by Steven Whibley - Free Book Online

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