The Unseen by Jake Lingwall Page A

and it’s not timing. Kari studied her map of details on the assassinations, searching for something common between them that she could use to predict the next one.Ever since her argument with Joseth, she hadn’t felt like working on “paying her rent” or doing him any favors, so instead she spent her time working on her other project: figuring out how to stop the assassinations from happening.
    The hope was that if the assassinations could be stopped, the situation would stabilize enough that Kari would feel safe enough to go live close to David and Aubrey. If I want to, that is. Right now I don’t have the option to, even if I wanted to leave Valhalla. Options are freedom.
    At first glance, all the killings seemed to be retaliatory in nature. The Middle States killed the president, so the United States responded by killing the Middle State’s CEO.They went back and forth, one official on the coasts, and then one official from the center of the old United States.The governments denied involvement, of course, but no one believed them. It didn’t help that each assassination was followed by a major offensive by the offended side.
    Before the assassinations, the fighting had been focused on the eastern border and in the Gulf Coast, but now the West Coast was heavily entrenched. It’s a complete mess, and every time it looks like it might get better, it just gets worse. It was to the point that most vacant positions were not being replaced by individuals who could be assassinated easily and were instead being filled by committees.
    Kari had written a dozen algorithms in the last day to try to figure out who the next target would be, but each calculation had given her a different name. The problem was that the victims were all similar—prominent government or military officials—but nothing else she was able to discern connected them. They all held different titles and levels of influence and worked at different agencies across the countries . Several of the assassinations had even occurred when those officials were on foreign soil. Emphasizing different similarities or differences predicted a different person to be next. She was stuck, so she called the one person she could think of who might be able to help.
    “Kari?” David said, his face appearing in Kari’s overridden vision. He looked surprised to see her, and his voice was hushed like he was the middle of something. He was walking away from whatever he was doing pretty quickly, though, a clear sign he wanted to talk.
    “Sorry if I was interrupting anything,” Kari said.
    “Oh, no worries. We were just in a movie.”
    “We can talk later if you want to finish it.”
    “No. No, no, it wasn’t very good anyway,” David said. Kari squinted his eyes in distrust. She didn’t want to interrupt him from having a good time . Especially because, from the way their conversations had been going lately, it seemed David wasn’t particularly happy about his new, subdued college life. With a giant war raging a few hundred miles away he claimed the dorms felt like a prison. “So what’s up?”
    “I was just doing some work and felt like talking through a few things with someone, and I was hoping you wouldn’t mind.”
    “Absolutely! You got a lead on something?”
    “Not really,” Kari said. “And that’s the problem. I should be able to have a good idea of what’s going to happen next, but I don’t have a clue. Aside from the fact that it’s the Middle States’ turn to lose someone, I don’t have any leads.”
    “And that’s strange?” David said. “Maybe they protect the obvious target well enough that they have to pick someone else to get.”
    “You could be right, but we can’t be sure because we don’t even know how they are happening. We don’t have any indication that either side can stop the other from killing whomever they want.”
    “If that’s the case, why wouldn’t the Middle States just wipe out all the leadership of the United