Slayers: Friends and Traitors by C. J. Hill Page A

his mercenary fighters. Overdrake wanted to take over the government and would lay waste to as many cities as he needed until the nation agreed to his terms. Dr. B thought the only reason Overdrake hadn’t launched an assault already was that he was waiting for his dragon eggs to hatch. Once they did, they would mature within a year and be ready for Overdrake to use.
    Dr. B walked back in front of the room and raised his voice, addressing the group again. “Before camp ends, I wanted to say a few words about safety.”
    Safety. An ironic topic after he’d trapped Tori with a flame-throwing dragon and nearly roasted her.
    “I know you’ve all been concerned about an informant or some sort of leak at camp.” Concerned was an understatement. At the beginning of the summer, the Slayers figured out where Overdrake kept the dragon eggs and launched a surprise attack to destroy them. Not only had Overdrake been waiting for them, he knew their names. The Slayers barely managed to escape from the dragon enclosure.
    They had never figured out who tipped off Overdrake or how he knew their names. After the attack, Dr. B moved the Slayers to a hidden backup camp an hour away from their original one. Theo checked all their belongings for bugs and took their phones to search for anything suspicious. The Slayers all had special satellite phones with EMP and tracking protection—or at least they did until Theo confiscated them. The regular kind didn’t work well in the forest and wouldn’t work at all after a dragon strike. Dr. B needed to make sure he always had a way to contact the group.
    In the name of security, Dr. B had added more cameras and sensors along the camp’s boundaries and had given the Slayers a few new rules.
    Camp already had dozens of rules. The Slayers couldn’t give one another any personal information about their outside lives. Not where they lived, what they did, especially not their last names. They couldn’t take pictures of camp or each other. They had a complicated system for going home after the summer to make sure no one followed them. At home, they couldn’t talk about camp to their family or friends. They couldn’t use any of their Slayer powers in a way that would draw attention to themselves. They couldn’t contact one another, except in an emergency.
    “The bad news,” Dr. B went on, “is that I can’t tell you where Overdrake got his information. The analysis of your old phones and your old cabins didn’t turn up anything. You’ll still have to be more careful, more diligent than you’ve ever been.”
    A fair amount of murmuring went through the group at this news. If it wasn’t some sort of bug, what was it? How did they know Overdrake didn’t still have a way to spy on them?
    “The good news,” Dr. B said a little louder, “is that Theo has designed a new, more secure communication device.”
    Theo held up a large black plastic watch for everyone to see. It didn’t just scream tacky, it shrieked it while flashing out the time. “This is the prototype of our new emergency phones,” Dr. B said. “You’ll get yours tomorrow as you leave camp. Always keep it with you.”
    Tori hadn’t realized she’d groaned until Dirk leaned toward her and whispered, “What’s wrong? Will it clash with your Dior outfits?”
    “It’ll clash with any outfit.” Tori allowed herself another groan. “Maybe I could wear it around my ankle so no one will see it.”
    “Hmm,” Dirk said, while Dr. B demonstrated how to send and receive calls. “It sounds to me like you’re not taking your safety seriously.”
    She did take it seriously. During their failed raid, Overdrake had captured Tori and pulled off her helmet. He’d seen her face. If he came after any of them, it was going to be her. “Of course, wearing that watch around my ankle won’t work with shorts or skirts. Do you suppose the band would stretch around my thigh?”
    “I’d like to see you answer a call if it did.” Dirk