Luminosity Read Online Free Page A

equipped with paintball guns loaded with red pellets that leave nice bruises that take weeks to heal.
    Gabriel and I are the last pair to line up. In front of us, a girl named Rachelle turns and smirks. Rachelle is usually the captain for Team B. She has been striving to move up to Team A, doing whatever she can to get the attention of our trainers. Sometimes, she even resorts to dirty tactics, just skirting the definition of “cheating.” Today, they are letting her play on the A team, testing her skills. “You two together again?”
    “We were late,” I say defensively.
    “Yes.” Gabe replies without any hint of being offended. He smiles at me and warmth floods my cheeks.
    The red light over the massive doors begins to rotate, filling the hall with strobes of deep crimson. A loud buzzer goes off somewhere behind where we stand. At the last minute, I pull the sensor vest off the hook on the wall and wiggle it over my head. I’m not thrilled about the Games, especially when something is still pounding from inside my head, as if trying to get out.
    “Ugh,” I groan.
    “No turning back now, Bea. Just stay out of the light.”
    “Yeah, don’t screw it up for us, you hear?” Rachelle throws in for good measure. I hear her, but I certainly do not care. She has no idea how this team runs, and she’s no one to talk to me like that.
    I turn to the rest of the team and step up to try and take control of the situation. “Listen up, Team A! We have a lot to prove, and we can’t let Team B beat us. Keep to the shadows as much as you can. We are going to break up today and each go in different directions so they can’t focus on any group of us.” Looking over the gathered Seers, I stare at their helmets, barely able to see their eyes through the tinted visors. I look for my friends, but they blend into the group. “Don’t hesitate. There’s no time for hesitating. Got it?”
    They mumble their assent together, and Gabe gives me a thumbs up. His simple gesture fills me with even more confidence than I had before, and I somehow know that we’re going to be okay.
    The doors part, screeching under their own weight, and the arena opens before us, a large space with too many walls and too little light. We are dressed in black in order to meld into the shadows. That is where the Dreamcatchers lurk, and in the end, we are being trained to become efficient Dreamcatcher-killing machines.
    The arena is constructed around large holo-projectors that recreate any scene they are programmed to display. Sometimes, you can even go into the buildings, the lights shifting so that you are hidden inside, creating walls that almost seem real. The technology probably costs more than the whole Institution itself, and some of it isn’t explainable, not just tricks of lights and mirrors. Other times, when it’s not so serious, a stage is set up with real rooms made from particleboard walls, and we run around practicing hitting one another with our paintball guns, destroying the bland decor and marking it and ourselves with splotches of many different colors of paint.
    The ten others in front of us quickly scatter into the maze of towering walls, and Gabe starts to make a run for it as well. I thought we were going to stick together, but when he disappears into the dark I am left alone in the red light. Damn you, Gabe. I don’t need him to move forward. I need to protect myself. I heft my weapon, duck, then scurry into the shadows with everyone else.
    A large scoreboard strategically hangs from the top center of the arena. Under “A” and “B” there are two red zeroes. I hear someone scream from far to my left and the zero under the “B” changes to a “1.” Damn it. They are already winning.
    As I run, I nearly trip over a handle on the floor. Dipping into a crouch, I pull on it, opening a trapdoor that leads under the arena. I find this to be fair game. The Institution is always trying to sway the results of the Training Games one