“Sounds good to me,” Callaway said, turning to walk across the atrium toward where the breakfast dishes were being cleared.

“You know,” Elliot said, standing up and stretching, “if we can get this figured out, we might actually make it as partners.” And for the very first time, I believed it.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Elliot

An alarm blared, jarring me from a dream where I was doing a Glitch in a trench during what had to be World War I. I sat bolt upright, my hair barely skimming the top of my bunk, and for maybe the second time in my life I was grateful for being short. It took me a heartbeat or two to remember where I was. Regan and I had been meeting up every night for the last two weeks to do study simulations, and the lack of sleep was really starting to get to me. A fact I’d made sure to hide from Callaway just in case he decided our extra training was too much and changed his mind.

I rubbed my eyes and peered out of my bunk. The dorm was pitch-black except for a red flashing light in the corner of the ceiling that I’d never seen before. The alarm blared again, and I clapped my hands over my ears. What was going on? Was there a fire? That thought sent terror racing down my spine as I remembered that I was in the heart of a very big mountain.

A second later, the door to our dorm burst open and a pajama-clad Callaway stood silhouetted in the doorway.

“Get dressed and meet in the atrium in two minutes,” he said, flicking on the lights before rushing away. For a half second we just sat there blinking in the harsh light as the alarm continued to blare overhead, and then we sprang into action. I don’t even remember taking my pajamas off, but I was in my uniform and following Sam out the door at a run in less than a minute. We met the girls as they came barreling out of their own door in the same rush to button jackets and stumble into shoes mid-sprint. The partner groups paired up automatically as we rushed down the hall that led to the atrium. Regan looked particularly wild, her blond hair, usually straight, waving out in unruly tangles and twists that made her wide frightened eyes stand out sharply in her pale face. Her shirt was also on backward, but now wasn’t the time to point that out. Her shoulder pressed against mine as we ran, and she shot me a knowing look out of the corner of her eye, her mouth set in a grim line. Something bad had happened, and she knew as well as I did that this could very well be the reason that Cocoon had landed in our laps.