His arrow hit an inner ring.

“Nice,” Kayden said.

Arnett frowned as he stared at the arrow for a second.

Meanwhile, Livia drew her bow. She fired. Her arrow hit a middle ring. She took a deep breath and tried again.

Arnett pulled out his next arrow, nocked it, and drew his bow again. This time he held it for just a bit longer. He adjusted his aim.

Raine was hopeful. Bullseye. Come on.

Arnett released the arrow.

It hit a middle ring. Raine sighed, while Arnett smacked his forehead with his palm. He took out another arrow from his quiver.

Raine wasn’t sure that was a good idea. He should calm down first.

Livia drew her bow again. Like Arnett, she held it drawn for longer than she had the first time. She fired. She bit her lip as she watched arrow fly to the target.

Her arrow hit an inner ring.

She breathed a sigh of relief and nocked another arrow. For the third time, she drew her bow, staring at the target intensely. She fired sooner than before. Raine didn’t know what to make of that.

Then her arrow landed, and the other archers paused.

Bullseye.

“Fuck yeah, I knew you could do it!” Julia cried. Steele glared at her, and she immediately apologized.

Livia smiled. Then she drew her fourth arrow. Her expression returned to one of focus and seriousness.

Second place is probably theirs, Raine thought as he glanced at Livia and her team. Then his gaze returned to Arnett.

. . . .

Aw hell. Arnett stared at the arrow on the bullseye for a long moment. Then he shook his head and took a deep breath. It’s all good. I got this. I got this. I’m not going to dump the job of getting us to the top on Kayden.

He drew his bow for the third time. Bullseye, bitch. Come on.

He stared right at those oh-so-desirable gold rings at the center of the target. His hand released his arrow.

He knew it was off. He wasn’t sure how, but he knew it. Fuck.

The arrow landed on a middle ring.

How much time do I have? He glanced at the digital clock behind him. He still had a little over two minutes. He took another deep breath. Plenty of time. Time to relax. Gotta calm the fuck down.

He closed his eyes and took a second to think. Okay, fuck the bullseye. If I just shoot well, I’ll still score higher than everyone but Kayden.

Something about that thought was relaxing. There really was no need to stress about getting a bullseye. He opened his eyes, pulled out his arrow, nocked it, and drew his bow. Let’s do this. Inner rings over and over.

He fired.

Bullseye.

For a moment, he just stood there, staring blankly at the arrow. He wasn’t sure how to feel.

. . . .

“Yes!” Max said quietly, throwing his hands into the air.

“Very nice,” Kayden said. “He was calm all the way through.”

With two bullseyes by two different people, the other eight archers began to panic. Two or three missed a shot each. Erwin shook his head in frustration when he saw Arnett keep shooting and hit the inner rings consistently. Although Erwin continued firing soon, it was obvious that he’d lost his motivation.

Livia tried to keep up with Arnett, but she couldn’t. She failed to get another bullseye and even hit an outer ring on her last shot.

Then, after most of the archers had finished shooting, the digital clock buzzed.

“Stop now,” Steele said. “Next ten.”

Kayden went next. He high-fived Arnett.

“Good work,” Kayden said.

Arnett grinned. “Thanks. Good luck.”

Raine passed him a towel and complimented his shooting.

“I think I lucked out on the bullseye,” Arnett said. “I mean, I want to pretend it was all skill. But man, that was just bullshit.”

“That’s fine,” Raine said with a grin. “You did great anyway.”

“That was shit,” Edgar said to Erwin. Raine’s eyes went to him. His team sat two rows in front of Raine’s.

“Hey, that’s fucking unnecessary, man,” Marco said. “He did his best.”

“You’re soft, Marco. That’s why this team won’t win shit,” Edgar said, getting up and leaving the stands.

Marco shook his head as he watched Edgar go. “What a prick.”

Edgar, Kayden, and the other eight competitors received their bows and arrows. Once they were all in their places, Steele counted down.

“...one. Go.”

Faster than anyone else, Kayden pulled an arrow out of his quiver, nocked it, and fired. Bullseye.

In that moment, Raine saw the other competitors’ confidence evaporate.

Kayden fired again. Inner ring. He fired yet again. Bullseye.

He was done with all ten arrows before anyone else. Every one of them landed on the bullseye or the surrounding red ring.

“Boom,” Max said. “Victory.”

“What a monster,” Lukas said with a grin.

Kayden stood there with nothing to do after he was done. The other competitors were competing desperately for second place. To Raine’s surprise, Edgar looked less unsettled than the rest. He loosed his arrows calmly. Most landed on the outer rings of the target.

He’s putting no effort into it. Raine frowned. He thought about what Edgar said: ‘this team won’t win shit.’ He probably only cares about the individual competition.

Once the three minutes were up, the digital clock buzzed.

“Stop,” Steele said.

Then they went to the last ten competitors. Grant was one of them. He wasn’t great with the bow, but he was good enough to hit the target consistently.

Cecily, Marco, and Julia left the stands to compete.

Raine tried to pay attention to the competition, but he couldn’t. He knew his team was certain to win. Grant did fine and hit the target on the vast majority of his shots, and that was really all that mattered.

After the last ten were done, a few minutes passed while the teams’ scores were tallied.

“Team 5-1 is first,” Steele said.

“Awesome,” Max said, doing a fist pump.

“Team 5-5 is second.” Julia high-fived Livia, who wore a relieved smile. “Team 4-3 is third,” Steele said. That was Cecily’s team. “I’m not going to waste time listing every team. You’ll be emailed a list of the rankings in five minutes.”

Raine heard Cecily’s team talking after Steele spoke.

“Fuck, I can’t believe we didn’t get second place,” a blonde girl said.

“I missed a shot. That was probably it,” another girl sighed.

“Be happy we even got third place,” Cecily said coldly. Her teammates mumbled a few words of agreement. Then their conversation died away.

That’s it? No encouragement? Raine frowned. He knew she had one hell of an ego, but he hadn’t expected her to be such an awful teammate.

June clapped her hands to get everyone’s attention. “Everyone, we’ll be heading for the Costas Hall soon,” June said. “But first, I’d like to talk about the rewards, being that some of you don’t seem terribly motivated for the team competition.”

It couldn’t be more obvious that she was talking about Edgar’s team, considering that Steele was looking right at them.

“So the members of the third place team will receive 1,000 dollars worth of equipment each as soon as they begin work. I can’t say the specifics about this equipment, but it’s essential for high-paying work.”

Raine blinked. Jesus, they’re throwing 8,000 dollars worth of stuff at just the third place team. Is Hopkins run by spendthrifts?

He saw plenty of interest in the eyes of the new employees around him.

“The members of the second place team will each receive 1,000 dollars as soon as work starts, as well as 1,000 dollars worth of equipment each.”

God, they really are spendthrifts.

“A thousand bucks for just one day of pain,” Grant said. “Worth it.”

“Definitely,” Max said.

“And the members of the first place team will each receive 3,000 dollars by Monday and have the keys to a Lexus LX for the rest of their training,” June said. “They’ll also receive a room each on the sixth floor of the Gilman Tower. The rooms there are bigger than the ones on the ones you have now.”

What the...what the hell?

“Jesus Christ, people,” Arnett said. “We need to win this shit.”

“Let’s do it,” Max said, his fists clenched.

“3,000 bucks,” Grant said. “Let’s get that fucking top spot.”

The rest of the team agreed.

“There will be a few more rewards, but those are the big ones,” June said.

“What about the individual competition?” Edgar asked.

“The top ten individuals will have two weeks of personalized guidance from experienced Hopkins members when they start work. Each of the top four will get one room in the Gilman Tower to themselves if they don’t already have it from the team competition.”

The reception was mostly lukewarm.

“Meh,” Arnett said.

“Meh,” Max repeated. “The 3,000 is what really matters.”

“Damn right, kid. Let’s get that fucking dough.”

Reo sighed. “You two...There’s no way Hopkins is going to skimp on its rewards. They’ve proven repeatedly that they invest heavily in people with potential.”

“Exactly,” Raine said. “If the work is really as difficult as Hopkins made it out to be when we got our offers, guidance from someone experienced is going to be invaluable.”

Edgar seemed to realize that as well. He nodded to himself with a serious expression on his face.

June answered a few questions about the rewards before she told the new employees to head to the Costas Hall.

Raine’s team members, like everyone else, spoke excitedly about the rewards as they made their way there. When they arrived, Steele had each team enter a different room.

Raine’s team went into a huge hall, where June passed them a small stack of paper and two calculators. Raine and his teammates took their seats at one long table, with Vick at the middle. They each got two pencils and an eraser.

June told them to turn off their phones and leave them on the table behind them.

“You’ll have one hour for this test,” she said.

“Which one is this? Math, right?” Vick asked eagerly.

“Yep, it is.”

Vick took a deep breath and cracked his knuckles. “My friends. It’s time.”

June smiled wryly. “You start in one minute.”

She pulled her phone out of her pocket and set a timer for one hour.

“Three. Two. One. Go.”

Vick pushed aside the answer sheet at the top and saw the first page of questions. “That’s for Arnett,” he said, passing it to his left. Raine slid it over to Arnett. He went to the second page. “Lukas.” Then the third. “Max.” And so on.

By the order of people Vick was passing the papers to, Raine guessed that the questions went from easy to hard. When everyone else had a sheet of paper in front of them, Vick still had at least six pages in front of him.

“Go, go. And check each other’s work when you’re done,” he said. Even as he spoke, he was scribbling something on the side of his first page.

They put their heads down and worked like it was the test of their lives.

. . . .

“Marco, I can’t solve this last one,” Poe said at normal volume. He passed Marco his sheet of questions.

Quiet the fuck down, moron, Edgar thought as he tried to keep himself from getting drowsy. He had no idea how to solve some of the questions on his paper, but he at least whispered when he asked the one next to him, Yohan, to take over for him.

Yohan took a look and sighed. “This one’s a fucking pickle,” he mumbled.

“Pass it over,” Marco said. He was already done working on Poe's question.

“Alright. It’s a trig question that’s probably going to need a calculator.”

“Pass your calc, Erwin,” Marco said.

“Hold on a second,” Erwin said. He hurriedly punched some buttons on the calculator. Marco waited for a few seconds with a frown.

Edgar shook his head in frustration. This fucking team.

“Okay, got it,” Erwin said. “Here.”

He pushed the calculator to Marco, who immediately started trying to solve the question.

Meanwhile, Edgar had nothing to do. Marco had three sheets of questions he wasn’t working on, but he was too busy solving the trig question to pass them around.

Edgar sighed in frustration and leaned back in his seat. These guys are fucking idiots.

. . . .

Vick chuckled. He was on his last sheet of questions. Raine glanced at him curiously.

“Sorry,” Vick said quietly.

“Five minutes,” June said.

“Awesome. Plenty of time. Reo, do you need your calculator?”

“Yes. I’ll be done in twenty seconds,” Reo said.

“Vick, here,” Grant said. He slid the second calculator across the table. Raine pushed it to Vick.

“Thanks,” Vick said. He spent a second punching in a few numbers, and that was it. He started writing on his paper.

Raine had long since finished the questions Vick had given him. They had many steps, and he had to read them repeatedly to get a solid understanding of how to solve them. But he was confident he’d answered them correctly.

Reo was checking Arnett’s work, while Grant was checking Max’s. Aside from Vick, the rest were done.

“How do you think the other teams are doing?” Arnett asked quietly.

“The Ivy guys are probably doing great,” Max whispered. “Team 4-1, I think.”

“Just because you go to Harvard or Princeton doesn’t mean you’re good at math. What if they’re all philosophy majors?”

“Huh. Good point.”

Raine imagined Cecily’s and Julia’s teams were doing well. Cecily once bragged about getting straight A’s in math at Harvard, while Julia was a physics major at Amherst. He wondered how Marco and Edgar’s team was doing.

“Three. Two. One. Time’s up,” June said.

“Yes!” Vick howled, dropping his pencil and throwing his hands into the air. “People, we’re fucking number one. If we aren’t, I’m going to print out an image of Euler and kowtow to it and bitch about Hopkins for an hour straight.”