Silas’s brow rose. “I didn’t know Opti did that.”
She leaned back against the jukebox, giving the approaching man a look to turn around and wait to put in his music request. “They don’t, but Opti found me at like ten, so they just let me hang with my retired agent/child psychologist for the drafter studies, and I got the military stuff through the Marines.”
She’d gone through Marine training? Gutsy.
“It’s nice to meet you,” Allen said, making Silas wonder at the light in his eye.
“Ah, this is Summer, my girlfriend,” Silas said, and the two women shook hands, looking so different they complemented each other.
“Peri Reed. Pleasure,” the woman said again, her confidence telling Silas she was used to meeting people with a lot of personal clout and could hold her own.
“I think you met Silas yesterday?” Summer guessed.
“Met? She hit me with a stolen drone and got my exam thrown out,” he said, and Summer grinned.
“Sorry about the migraine last night,” Summer said brightly.
Peri shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. You do what you need to do to save your anchor, the hell with the rest. If nothing else, I’ve got a big list of what not to do next year.”
Allen cleared his throat, clearly not sure if she was being sarcastic or not. Silas was betting she wasn’t.
“And what would you have done?” Allen asked as he took his glasses off and dropped them in his shirt pocket. “There were six agents on site and one goal.”
Peri beamed. “There was one retired agent on site,” she said, and Allen froze when she reached out and tightened his tie. “Watching six students and one lab rat trying to play pin the tail on the box of chocolates.”
Lab rat?
“If it had been me,” Peri said as she dropped back from Allen, his ears now a flustered red, “I would have gone into Professor Milo’s office the night before and replaced the chocolates in the box with fuzzy troll babies.”
Silas chuckled, smile fading when three couples took their table, pushing their used glasses to the front, where a waitress whisked them away.
“Yeah?” Allen said antagonistically as Summer began casting around for another table, but the place was full.
“Yeah.” Peri cocked her head coyly. “It’s a win-win either way. If I got the box on task, I win. If I didn’t get the box on task, it’s still a win because I already have the chocolate.”
It made sense in a warped and twisted way. Just the thing a retired, bored Opti-agent-turned-schoolteacher would find amusing. “And if you got caught in Milo’s office?” he asked.
Peri smiled as she turned to him. “I’d still call that a win. I’d probably be put on suspension, but I’d have the kudos for trying.”
There was that, and Silas’s hand tightened around Summer’s waist.
“I hear you all have to wait six months to retake,” Peri said. “If someone tried that with me, I’d trash the grading computer so everyone had to retake. They won’t make everyone wait to graduate, and if they run them again . . .” Peri smirked, turning to the jukebox to make another selection.
“That’s not a bad idea,” Allen said softly.
Suddenly wary, Silas stopped looking for another table. “What,” he said flatly.
“We could do that!” Allen said with wide-eyed enthusiasm. “We could break into the registrar’s office and wipe out everyone’s grades for the semester.”
Summer began to laugh. “Allen, love. They back those up,” she said, and Silas frowned, wishing Allen would let it go.
“So we put the system in a death spiral instead,” Allen said, waving his arms and inching into Peri’s personal space. “It will have the same effect. If they can’t reboot, they can’t post grades. Silas knows how to do that.”
“And everyone on campus knows it,” Silas said as Peri pushed Allen right back with a stiff finger. Silas hid a smile, enjoying how the woman was reading everyone quickly and correctly. His smile faded. Something had hurt her in the past, something that made her good at assessing people fast. But most drafters were like that.
“Which means nothing if they can’t prove it was you,” Allen persisted. “It will take months to rebuild. Win-win,” he said brightly. “Either we do it and they let us graduate with everyone else due to the general disarray, or we fail and deserve being held back.”