Chapter seventeen

Brown eyes narrowed with a focus behind a layer of glass and plastic. Her finger hovered over the trigger cautiously, waiting until the right moment. Several meters away at the end of a narrow passage, a hidden mechanism caused a human-shaped target to pop out of the wall. She fired repeatedly immediately, hitting the target at various points marked out by concentric circles.

Eventually, the clip ran out, leaving only empty clicks as her finger subconsciously continued to squeeze the trigger. Madison exhaled the breath she had been holding, the scent of gunpowder rushing in with her next breath. It was somewhat cathartic in a weird way. She placed the Ruger .22 pistol on the gun rack and left the shooting platform.

In the room beside hers, Carl practiced his shots with a shotgun that blasted round after devastating round at mobile targets that appeared randomly. Madison observed him, noting how smooth his movements seemed. The look of concentration on his face was a sharp contrast