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Silver Elite: Chapter 35
Wren emerges from her interrogation exercise exhausted and filthy. She has four days off to rest, so she gets to eat a good meal and shower. Her colleagues are all equally shell-shocked.
Side note: I reread my previous recaps earlier and this exercise, including the four day rest, was mentioned early on in the book. So points for continuity.
Everyone has been given two leisure passes for their rest days...except Wren. Wren is pissed and depressed about it, and roams the base, brooding. She links with Tana, who is also depressed because she and her father are still being surveilled by soldiers.
(Why is the surveillance on them so heavy? I wonder if it'll be explained later. It seems like Julian wasn't super active in the Uprising after he took Wren in, and Wren herself is gone, so Tana is the only Mod there. It didn't seem like the ward was a hotbed of rebel activity.)
The four days end, and now the day has come: they're going to announce which recruits are going through to Silver Block.
Wren has to again borrow clothes, since she only has her uniform and the outfit she borrowed from Betima. She borrows a very sexy red dress. Kaine flirts with her, but Wren blows him off, because he's simply not Cross Redden.
No, I'm fucking with you. Three paragraphs later Wren sees Cross and immediately forgets all about her angst in favor of flirting with him. They start to wander off to fuck, making out on the way, but are interrupted when an intoxicated Roe (apparently he's always on stims, though I don't think that's ever mentioned before this point) shows up to challenge Cross to a fight.
Roe is extremely outclassed, and Cross beats the shit out of him, then leaves. Chapter end!
Roe sucks in every way as a character, but he did save us from a second sex scene, so I'm willing to forgive him.
Next chapter, we will find out if Wren will get into Silver Elite. I mean, we know she will because the book is called Silver Elite, but will she get in on her own merits, or will Cross Redden handle it for her offscreen? We shall see.
Side note: I reread my previous recaps earlier and this exercise, including the four day rest, was mentioned early on in the book. So points for continuity.
Everyone has been given two leisure passes for their rest days...except Wren. Wren is pissed and depressed about it, and roams the base, brooding. She links with Tana, who is also depressed because she and her father are still being surveilled by soldiers.
(Why is the surveillance on them so heavy? I wonder if it'll be explained later. It seems like Julian wasn't super active in the Uprising after he took Wren in, and Wren herself is gone, so Tana is the only Mod there. It didn't seem like the ward was a hotbed of rebel activity.)
The four days end, and now the day has come: they're going to announce which recruits are going through to Silver Block.
My nerves intensify when Ford, Hadley, and Struck show up, and Hadley proceeds to list eleven names. Mine isn’t one of them, and I fight a crushing sense of defeat as—Wren gets out her 'source', which is the very silly name for cellphones in this book, and tries to check her final score, only to find she's been assigned a mysterious test. This happens immediately after Wren thinks that she's disappointed no one mentioned anything about Silver Elite, so I assume this is how the Silver Elite people are recruited.
“Thank you for your interest in Silver Block,” Hadley tells the eleven recruits. “However, you haven’t been accepted at this time.”
The relief almost knocks me over.
There’s a date and time beside it. It’s scheduled for tomorrow afternoon.Everyone celebrates by going to the pit to have cage matches.
I bite my lip to contain my excitement.
Lyddie peers over my shoulder and gasps. “You’ve been shortlisted! This must be the final test to get into Elite.”
“I got the same message,” Kaine says, twisting his source toward me.
A few others are now exclaiming over the message. The final count ends up being twelve. Twelve of the twenty-five recruits made the short list. The number seems quite high. How many of us will earn a slot?
Wren has to again borrow clothes, since she only has her uniform and the outfit she borrowed from Betima. She borrows a very sexy red dress. Kaine flirts with her, but Wren blows him off, because he's simply not Cross Redden.
I’m relieved he drops the issue so readily, though I wonder what I’ll say next time it comes up. I can’t tell him I slept with Cross, and I certainly can’t tell him that our captain has completely messed with my head. That I wore this dress for Cross. That I—You're right! But will you actually do anything with this revelation, or is this just lip service because dramatic internal monologue is the only kind of character development this book has? I don't know. It's a mystery. It's impossible to predict.
Guilt jams in my throat and closes around my windpipe as something suddenly becomes apparent to me.
I’ve forgotten why I’m here.
What am I doing? This is not my life. I shouldn’t be donning sexy dresses and celebrating with Primes. I haven’t even made it into Elite, damn it. That’s the objective. Not to drink whiskey and have a good time at the fights with my friends.
No, I'm fucking with you. Three paragraphs later Wren sees Cross and immediately forgets all about her angst in favor of flirting with him. They start to wander off to fuck, making out on the way, but are interrupted when an intoxicated Roe (apparently he's always on stims, though I don't think that's ever mentioned before this point) shows up to challenge Cross to a fight.
Roe is extremely outclassed, and Cross beats the shit out of him, then leaves. Chapter end!
Roe sucks in every way as a character, but he did save us from a second sex scene, so I'm willing to forgive him.
Next chapter, we will find out if Wren will get into Silver Elite. I mean, we know she will because the book is called Silver Elite, but will she get in on her own merits, or will Cross Redden handle it for her offscreen? We shall see.