Silver Elite

Recruits fly to the Point for the next round of drills. They are split into teams and tasked with climbing a five-story building and then jumping to another building without safety gear. Wren, Lyddie, Roe, and another recruit named Jones are team one. Lyddie struggles but makes the climb and jump safely with Wren’s encouragement. Cotter, from team two, dies attempting the jump, impaled on a fence spike. Betima is instructed to hold him while Ford attempts to inspect his wounds, but Cotter dies before they can remove him from the fence. After the incident, Wren feels eyes on her. Roe is regarding her with suspicion, frowning as though she is responsible for Cotter’s death.

Betima is bothered most by witnessing Cotter’s death. When she goes to the roof of the barracks that night for a smoke, Wren accompanies her. Roe and Anson corner them on the rooftop. Roe claims there is an Aberrant in their ranks and draws his gun. Wren worries he’s somehow found her out, but he then points the gun at Betima’s head. He claims to have seen the veins on her arms glow as she touched Cotter earlier; she is an empath and felt his pain as he died. Betima is given no time to explain before Roe pulls the trigger.

Wren shoves Anson aside and rushes downstairs. She directs Officer Hadley to the incident before vomiting in the barracks bathroom. The girls are horrified—except Kess, who’s smug. Wren sits on her mattress in a state of shock and grief. Lyddie attempts to comfort her but falls short when she calls Betima “one of them,” and Kaine’s response is no better, as he claims, “if she was Aberrant, it was bound to happen anyway” (221). Wren pretends to agree with their sentiments but internally feels resentment toward them and their prejudices. However, in Kaine’s face she recognizes genuine pain and grief. After lights-out, Wren lies in bed feeling completely alone. She wishes her parents were alive to comfort her. She feels like she’s let them down. They sacrificed their lives for the Uprising, fighting back against oppression, yet all Wren can do is run and hide. Kaine asks if she’s okay; she says no and slips into his bed. They kiss, but Kaine stops, saying it’s not the right time.

The next morning, Hadley addresses the recruits. He informs them that Betima was revealed to be working for the enemy and was dealt with accordingly. Wren is enraged that they’re supposed to act like Betima wasn’t murdered, and she plots to escape before Roe targets her too. Wren seeks out Cross’s office where she hopes to negotiate new terms with him, but she overhears him inside with his father. While Cross wants Roe removed from the Program, the General believes Roe excelled in his duty of ridding the world of Aberrants, and he forces Cross to keep Roe enrolled. Wren leaves rather than risk confrontation the General. At the afternoon sparring sessions, Wren decides she will need to find her own escape. She remembers her conversation with Wolf about how animals escape traps; she decides to be like the white coyote, which bites off its own leg to escape. During her sparring match with Kess, she allows the girl to break her wrist, sending Wren to Medical.

Cross foils Wren’s plan by flying in a powerful Mod healer who instantly mends her wrist. Back at the barracks by nightfall, Wren receives a request to link from her Uprising handler, Declan. Though she is angry the network has waited so long to contact her, she accepts the link. Declan informs her that a woman named Adrienne will meet her at the vehicle pool on the west end of the base at midnight tomorrow. He assures her the surveillance cameras will not be an issue.

At the meeting, Adrienne is indifferent about Wren’s safety, stating that Wren and Jim have been more trouble than they’re worth. She reveals that Betima was an inside operative for the Uprising and that the spot needs filling; Adrienne will help Wren only if she qualifies for the Silver Elite in Betima’s place. Qualifying for the Silver Elite means Wren will need to stop sabotaging herself and excel. When Wren begrudgingly agrees to try, Adrienne creates a link with her. She informs Wren that Declan will be assigning her orders on behalf of the network moving forward.

The recruits are taken to the desert for sniper exercises. Partnered with Ivy as spotter, Wren shocks everyone by nailing every shot. When Wren notices Cross and Ford laughing at camp 1200 yards away instead of watching her performance, Wren makes a risky shot at Ford’s canteen to get their attention. Despite her excellence in most categories moving forward, Wren’s scores stay in the 60s and 70s. Cross is purposefully scoring her low. Furious, Wren links with Declan, who sends her schematics of the officers’ quarters at her request.

Wren has Kaine distract Anson in Tech class the following day while she steals a signal jammer. That night, she uses it to jam the cameras while she sneaks out of the barracks. She locates Cross’s room in the officer’s quarters, but it is locked and can only be accessed by thumbprint scan. Though she hears him speaking inside his room, she assumes it is just his comms and climbs to the roof, where she descends the fire escape ladder and jumps to Cross’s balcony. His door is open to let in the evening air. Inside, Cross is with the woman from the pit a few weeks prior. Rather than abandon her plan after seeing the intimacy between Cross and the woman, Wren uses Cross’s distraction to catch him off guard. She sneaks up behind him and presses her knife to his throat. Though Cross is calm, the girl he’s with is startled. After recognizing who his captor is, Cross dismisses the other woman from the room. Wren accuses him of sabotaging her chances of passing the program. Cross inquires into why she cares considering she’s been sabotaging her own chances. After some pleading and convincing, Cross agrees to raise her scores according to her merit only if she raises her written scores; excelling in fieldwork and marksmanship alone isn’t enough to earn her a spot in Silver Block.

The recruits travel to the desert for parachute drills, which exhilarate Wren. That night, they make camp in the desert at the Command base, where Ford, Hadley, and Cross wait. When settled around the bonfire with food and drink, Lyddie mentions missing Betima. Lash doesn’t believe Roe’s claims that she was an Aberrant. Their conversation is interrupted when someone’s source—a device akin to a radio receiver—begins playing General Redden’s latest broadcast. He speaks on their duty as citizens to eradicate Aberrants who might seek to spread the destructive philosophy of Severnism, named for former President Severn.

Rather than listen to his drivel, Wren leaves the bonfire in search of the showers. Cross enters at the same time Wren does. She gapes as he strips in front of her and enters a shower stall. She then enters the one beside him. He’s tall enough to see into her stall as she strips, intending to affect him as much as he affects her. Midway through their showers, Cross asks if she’s sleeping with Kaine. She teases him about caring but admits she isn’t. In return, she asks the same about Ivy; Cross also answers no. When Wren returns to the fire and lays her sleeping roll between Lyddie and Kaine, Kaine jokes about being in competition with Cross for Wren’s affection. Wren insists there is no competition and nothing going on between her and Cross. Wren leaves to refill her canteen; Ford is standing nearby and claims that while he doesn’t like Wren much, he is amused at seeing Cross unmoored around her.

Lyddie’s tutoring boosts Wren’s written scores. In a rescue drill, Wren and Kaine are assigned as captives who must wait to be saved by their team. However, they become impatient waiting for rescue and instead ambush their captor, Roe, in order to escape by themselves. Breaking the rules causes them to fail. Jayde Valence visits the recruits. She approaches a recruit named Peter Berghman, using her gift of precognition to claim that he will make a grave error in eight months that will cause the deaths of six fellow soldiers. Peter is dismissed from the program on the spot. The incident lingers in Wren’s mind long after, prompting her to think about the role of fate in life. When Wolf links with her that night, she asks him about fate. He explains his opinion—that they have control over their destinies to an extent, but they are limited by their circumstances. Wren is comforted by the thought that she has some ability to shape her own destiny. When Wren sneaks out of the barracks that night, Cross tracks her down. They exchange flirtatious banter, and Cross pulls her into a shadowed alcove where they kiss. They have immediate, electrifying chemistry but break apart abruptly when they hear a soldier patrolling nearby.

Black Cell starts going on morning runs. After one, Wren is approached by Jordan, who is temporarily visiting base. Cross watches them closely and snaps at Wren to rejoin her cell. The recruits are assigned undercover operations for the week. Wren and Bryce are scheduled for that evening. They are given their missions and instructed to pick appropriate outfits for the occasion. Wren chooses a sexy but still somewhat modest dress, and a vehicle takes her into the city, where she will enter an illegal sex-work establishment called Haven. Wren will need to make contact with the establishment’s manager, Shenise Nelson, and ask about a job. She is informed that Cross will be in the field with her. Though the bartender is cagey when Wren asks about speaking with Shenise, she successfully plays the role of a struggling young woman desperate for a paying job, and eventually Shenise seeks her out. Wren hints at wanting a job just before Cross enters the establishment.

Shenise tells Wren that Cross has requested her company for the night and suggests she treat it as an informal job interview. Wren must convince Shenise she can handle the job. Wren approaches Cross, who pulls her onto his lap. They banter, and Wren portrays herself as both shy and seductive. Cross orders Command to cut comms so they can talk privately, and their flirtation becomes more personal. Just as things are getting genuinely heated between the two, Cross instructs her to push him away, inform Shenise that she’s not ready for this line of work, and leave. Though Wren is reluctant to pull away, she does as Cross instructs. On the car ride back, her comms reactivate, and Cross orders her to report to his office for a debrief.