Variant

She nodded, and we broke the huddle, heading to the taped-off area. Lily, Mason, and I moved to the far right and waited at the ribbon.

Lily pulled her mask down over her face, her hair pulled into a ponytail behind. She turned to me. “You’re pretty fast, aren’t you?”

“Not fast enough to not get shot,” I said, adjusting my own mask.

She knelt down and grabbed a handful of moist mud from the base of a pine tree. “You sent your clothes to the wash,” she said simply, and then began wiping the soil on my arms.

I followed her lead, stooping to get more dirt. “I thought washing clothes was a good thing. Besides, they were splattered with red and blue paint. Not exactly camouflage.” Rubbing it into the cotton sweats, I wondered whether it would actually do any good. The tan was so light it almost glowed.

“Still better than bright and clean,” she said. “What time is it?”

I looked at my watch. “Two minutes.”

“When we start running, just go as fast as you can, but stay at least twenty feet behind me. If I get too far ahead, try to catch up once I stop.”

“Okay.”

The whistle blew, and Lily took off like a rabbit, darting between the trees and bushes. She was wearing some kind of pack under her ghillie suit-maybe tied around her waist-but it didn’t slow her down. I wondered whether she’d bought a bunch of the paint grenades, too. I charged on behind her, but she was easily faster than Mason or me.

To my left I could see Joel, Gabby, and Tapti running straight up the middle, the flag flapping in Gabby’s hand. None of them had their guns raised-it was a full-on sprint.

This field wasn’t as big as the other, and it wasn’t long before I saw the hill. I wanted to watch and see if our squad made it up, but my path was getting rockier and I was having trouble keeping an eye on Lily. Suddenly she dived to the ground. I dropped into a crouch and kept running, my gun ready.

I didn’t see anyone as I took up a position behind her. Mason knelt down next to me, panting.

“Man, she’s fast,” I said, trying to calm my own breathing.

“Best player in the V’s,” he said, his gun pointed off toward her. “Probably the whole school.”

“She been doing this a long time? Or just naturally good?”

He laughed quietly, his eyes still on the forest in front of us. “Works on it constantly. Always practicing. I bet this plan we’re using is something she came up with.”

“She really wants to be the super soldier, huh?”

Mason snorted. “Something like that.”

There was shooting somewhere.

The bullhorn sounded. “The V’s have raised their flag. The timer starts now.”

Lily looked back at me and motioned to follow her. She lifted into a low crouch and began slowly creeping left. I did the same.

Almost immediately she dropped to her knees, ducking behind a tree. Shots hissed, popping into the ground all around her. Mason was firing behind me, but I couldn’t tell what he was shooting at.

Lily was pinned. I met her eyes and she gestured toward her attacker, but her hand signals were too vague.

I watched Mason’s shots, trying to trace them to the Society sniper, but I finally figured he was firing blind.

Everything fell silent. Lily peeked around the tree and paint splattered instantly into the trunk and she had to hide again.

Catching Lily’s attention, I held up my hand, wishing that I knew sign language. Five fingers, four, three, two…

I jumped from my spot, running to the left and diving for a tall bush. The sniper’s paint followed me, crashing through the foliage, but there was no hit. I couldn’t watch Lily-I was just trying to move fast-but in my peripheral vision I saw her turn and fire.

“Hit!” someone called out. “Medic!”

The distraction had worked. Lily got him.

I expected her to form another ambush around the hit sniper-I wanted to wait for Dylan-but she was in a hurry. She gave me a thumbs-up and then motioned for me and Mason to follow her.

We moved toward the hill slowly and carefully. I was trying to walk the way Lily had taught me-stepping with the side of the foot and heel and rolling onto the flat of my foot. It was a lot quieter.

The shots up by the flag were fast and unending, and I wondered how soon it would be before Joel’s squad ran out of paint. We all carried spare packs, but there were hundreds of balls being fired.

Lily moved from tree to tree, and I tried to watch her and scan for bad guys at the same time. Most of them should be attacking the hill. The five minutes had to be close to up, and the game was going to end if no one got our flag down.

She left the cover of one pine and darted to another. Once she was in place, I moved from my rock and-

I never saw him before he shot, but as I ran I moved directly in front of someone in a ghillie suit, hidden in the grass.

“Medic!” I shouted, sitting down on a log. A moment later my shooter called out as well, two blue splotches on his shoulder.

Mason ran over to me and crouched for a moment. There was laughter in his voice. “You still haven’t fired your gun, Fish.”