Boyd whipped her head toward him. “Name?”
“Lucas Costa.”
“Why aren’t you in uniform?”
Pyro shrugged. When Boyd looked down the line of recruits, he turned to Teddy. “Welcome to Shitfield,” he whispered.
Teddy laughed. And her laughter drew Boyd’s attention back to them.
“Unless I ask for specific information, Costa, you may reply to me in one of three ways: ‘Yes, ma’am,’ ‘No, ma’am,’ or ‘No excuse, ma’am.’ Anything else will get you on that ferry back to San Francisco. Now let’s try again. Why aren’t you in uniform?”
Pyro fixed his gaze on a point over Boyd’s head. Seconds ticked past. Boyd shook her head and lifted her clipboard.
“No excuse, ma’am,” Pyro said.
Teddy let out a breath as Boyd lowered her clipboard again. “Give me fifty.” Pyro dropped as Boyd continued her speech. “I love comedy, I really do. In fact, nothing’s funnier to me than watching a smart-ass blow his last chance. Tell me, were you kicked off the force because you were funny, Costa?”
So that’s why he’s here.
Boyd stepped away as Pyro finished his push-ups. “There are twelve of you left,” she said. “Divide yourselves into two squads.”
They split naturally into the groups they’d already favored: Misfits and Alphas. Before Pyro’s clash with Boyd, Teddy had wondered what side he would pick. Sure, he acted like one of them, but he also used to be a cop. Now she knew where he stood: the Misfits included Teddy, Jillian, Dara, Pyro, Jeremy, and Molly. Teddy hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting any of the Alphas yet, but three men and three women stood across from her—all of them annoyingly fit.
“Ladies and gentlemen, there is good in this world, and there is evil. Out there, you will be facing drug dealers, traffickers, rapists, murderers, and terrorists. There is one word, and only one word, for those people. Enemy. In here, the opposing squad is your enemy. If you fail, the enemy wins. I don’t care about trying. I care about winning. Got that?”
The idea of stopping a violent criminal made Teddy’s heart pound. She’d always been on the other side of the law. Now things were about to change. She was going to change.
“This course is designed to replicate everyday obstacles,” Boyd said, directing their attention to the structures in the center of the room. “The sort of obstacles that law enforcement and military personnel might face. You’ll move through the course as a unit. Clear?”
Boyd explained the mechanics: belly-crawl under thirty feet of wire, rope-swing across a pit, walk an elevated balance beam, traverse a set of monkey bars, drag a two-hundred-pound dummy to a point of safety, climb up a wall, and rappel down the back in less than twenty minutes. Teddy cast a look at the rest of her squad. With the exception of Pyro, they all looked worried. Especially Molly, who surveyed the wall with wide-eyed, panicked horror.
Boyd lifted her stopwatch and pointed to the Alphas. “You first.”
The Alphas flew through the course with a grace that was beautiful to watch. The only glitch occurred at the rope swing when Ben Tucker, an Alpha who looked like a rich kid from a John Hughes movie, shot forward without sending the rope back to the next member of his team.
When they finished, the Misfits lined up at the starting point. Teddy wiped her palms on her gym shorts. She could only hope her teammates had been studying the Alphas’ run as carefully as she had. Boyd blew her whistle and they took off.
They made it through the belly crawl and across the rope swing, each Misfit deliberately hurling the rope back to the next squad member. So they had been paying attention. Jeremy wavered on the elevated balance beam, but Molly grabbed his hand to help him. Teddy made it across the monkey bars before her arms gave out. Pyro, Dara, and Teddy caught the two-hundred-pound dummy and dragged it to the point of safety.
Teddy joined her group as they raced toward the massive wall, the final obstacle. Pyro bent down to give the other recruits a knee up. Dara caught the top of the wall, hurled herself over, and raced to the finish line. Jillian followed. Then Jeremy. When Teddy placed her foot on Pyro’s thigh, it slipped, nailing Pyro in the groin. He crumpled. “I’m so sorry,” Teddy said.
“You owe me one,” he said, and then pushed her up toward the wall with his hand on her ass.
“This makes us even.”
“Not even close,” he said.
Teddy made it to the top of the wall, swinging her legs over to rappel down the other side. Only Molly and Pyro were left. They were going to make it.
Then Teddy looked up to see Molly frozen at the top of the wall, her limbs rigid, her delicate features frozen in fear.
“Thirty seconds!” Boyd bellowed.
Pyro was already halfway down the wall before he saw Molly stuck at the top. He yelled to Teddy, “I need you to hold her rope while I carry her down. I won’t leave a teammate behind.” Teddy hesitated. Her instinct was to drive forward, to take care of herself first. She stood for a moment, trying to decide which way to move. By the time she glanced back, it was too late. With Pyro’s help, Molly was halfway down the wall. With nothing else to do, Teddy ran across the finish line.
“What happened back there?” Jillian asked.
“Molly froze.” Teddy heard footsteps pounding behind her and turned to see Pyro crossing the line, carrying Molly in his arms, just as Boyd blew her whistle.
Teddy looked around, hoping to see happy faces. “You might have passed the test,” Boyd said. “But you lost to the other squad by a full two minutes. That means your enemy won.”
Teddy’s gaze shot to the Alphas, who stood grouped together on the sidelines. A tall girl, her shoulder-length brown hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, laughed.
Boyd continued, “In the real world, there are consequences when you fail.
