60

It happens sometimes. She just always made your hackles rise. In the small number of interactions you had together, everything she said seemed to irritate or anger you, and the feeling was mutual. You heard she was bad-mouthing you behind your back to anybody in the Faculty who would listen. You graduated before her, and you weren't sorry to see the back of her.

You haven't seen her since graduation, but you've heard the stories. She didn't follow the expected career path and go into academia. Instead she went private as a treasure hunter, and a ruthless one at that. She is spending her career retrieving high-value relics for private collectors—often people with criminal connections and a distinct lack of ethics.

Only last year, you heard she killed a man in cold blood in Peru, a rival treasure hunter who had got to the prize before her. If the stories are true, she tracked him down in the jungle, slit his throat, and claimed the pay for herself. You don't know if that's true or not, but it says a lot that the story seems believable to you.

Sam interrupts your reverie. "OK, how about this? We take the truck. One of us drives, the other's on point. The shooter tries to hit the fuel tank on one of their parked trucks to sow chaos. The driver aims right at that group of soldiers and tries to run the bastards over. What do you think?"