Disruption by Steven Whibley Page B

thoughtfully at the ceiling.
    “When did she join the Agency?” Rylee asked.
    Amara shook his head. Rylee turned to Angie, and she shrugged. Then Rylee craned her neck and looked at Yaakov.
    “Yak?”
    He huffed and plopped back onto his bed and began tapping at his computer. “You know, Rylee, you can’t just expect me to have every answer to every question your little mind comes up with.”
    Rylee looked at me and rolled her eyes. “He’ll find it.”
    I nodded, even though I didn’t have a clue what Yaakov was looking for or what they were getting so worked up about. She ran operations in Turkey? That sounded military. And the way everyone said the Agency this and the Agency that was weird. It felt like a poke from a stick every time someone said it. There was something about that term I recognized, but I didn’t know what it meant.
     
     

Chapter 14
     
     
    The mess hall was about the size of an elementary school gym. Large, rectangular tables were positioned end-to-end, forming five long rows that ran the length of the room. At the front of each row sat a circular table with six seats and above each of those five tables hung a banner with a shadowed figure of the animal associated with each team.
    Most of the other Deltas were settled at their tables. Alexander Bratersky, looking as mean as ever, sat with his entire group. Chase was seated with the rest of Team Squirrel, and everyone at the table glared across the mess hall at me as I approached the table beneath the bear silhouette.
    “She’s not here,” Rylee said breezily after I’d taken my seat.
    “Who?” I asked.
    “Becca, of course,” she said. She craned her neck around a few other students. “Nope, she’s gone. Good.”
    I glanced down the row of Delta tables to the one beneath the hyena silhouette. Three of Becca’s teammates were seated at the table, and all three of them looked like they’d just seen a puppy get hit by a car.
    Angie leaned across the table toward Rylee. “Maybe if you hadn’t made Yaakov spend the last few hours searching for information on Clakk, he could’ve hacked the footage for Becca’s challenge and we’d know what happened.”
    Rylee grumbled something she probably didn’t care for anyone to understand.
    I considered asking Rylee why she hated Becca so much, but her foul expression made me think twice. It was probably something stupid like Becca had kissed the boy Rylee liked or something. Girls were always fighting about that kind of stuff.
    “We all had the same challenge,” I said. “So, I mean, if she didn’t get out of the way of those land mines, she could be really hurt.” I glanced around the table. “You guys saw it. I could’ve been . . .”
    “Killed,” Juno deadpanned.
    “Yes,” Angie said, “we know. It was all very traumatic for you. I mean, you did get a scratch from it all. How terrifying.”
    I felt my cheeks flush.
    “Yeah, man,” Juno said, “we all saw the footage; it wasn’t that bad. I’ve seen worse. Besides, I bet that even if you had been blasted by those final mines, you’d be just fine. Bruised, sure, but generally fine. Certainly alive.”
    “Oh, well, that’s fantastic,” I said.
    Juno opened his mouth to say something else, probably to disagree, but before he could make a sound, Becca Plain was pushed into the mess hall in a wheelchair. Thick bandages covered her head and parts of her face. Her right forearm was encased in a green cast, and her left arm, while bare, bore long red scratches and purple welts. She looked, well, like she’d just been blown up by a land mine.
    I turned back to Juno. “What were you saying?”
    “Fine,” he said, wincing. “Maybe you could’ve been killed.”
    “Thank you!” I said. I smiled at that small victory, and then stopped abruptly when I realized it meant I’d been right. I considered that as more campers filed in. I considered, too, the fact that no one seemed concerned that Becca, a fellow camper, had been so