Recoil (11 page)

I pulled on my ear protectors, raised my rifle, aimed, and
hesitated.

“Do it, Blue! Don’t be a goddamn pansy. You’re a sniper,
soldier!”
Sarge
shouted. “On my command: ready, aim,
fire!”

I did. I took careful aim, then fired. And missed by about a
mile.

“Our motto is ‘one shot, one kill’, Goldilocks, not ‘one shot,
one miserable piss-ant miss’!”

Sarge
had me do fifty push-ups as
punishment. “Pain is good, now feel the goodness!”

Up —
Failure is not an option.
Down —
I will not
quit.

I had to track the rat and set up the shot all over again.

“You can do it, Jinx,” said
Leya
,
smiling encouragingly.

I wiped my sweaty palms on the legs of my jumpsuit, then shook
out my arms, which were trembling from the PT, made sure my rifle was stable,
waited for the rat to stop moving — the little critter was munching on
something to the side of a metal trashcan — and then sent a round down the
chamber that blew off most of its head. It was the first time I’d ever killed a
living being.

“Congrats, you’ve popped your rat-cherry,” whispered Bruce into
my ear.

The others cheered. I swallowed hard and wiped my ear against my
shoulder.

Prickly with guilt, I spent the rest of the day killing time. I
wished I could tell Quinn about it that night as we played a game of pool in
the rec room.

It was the night we were given the all-clear on our test results
and granted permission to remove masks and gloves. Everyone, it seemed, had
gathered in the rec room to celebrate, reveling in the fun of being able to
openly eat and drink the snacks and sodas we bought from the vending machines.

It was strange and wonderful to finally see everyone’s faces.
Everyone looked completely different and somehow naked without their masks.
More vulnerable. We all shuffled about, staring at each other and grinning
sheepishly, like newly stripped visitors in a nudist colony.

I discovered that
Leya
had a small
rosebud of a mouth, that Bruce had a square chin and Cameron a faint scar through
his top lip, and that Tae-Hyun’s tongue was pierced with a red barbell. His
habit of tapping his tongue against his front teeth explained the faint
clicking sound I sometimes heard coming from him.

Quinn’s face was lean, with a strong jaw and a faint, but totally
fascinating, cleft in his chin. His mouth was wide, his teeth white and even,
and his humor infectious. Every time I saw his smile or heard his deep, lilting
voice clearly without the slight muffle of the mask, something tight and hard
melted inside me, and a glowing bubble of happy took its place.

Quinn stared and stared at my face until, embarrassed, I
eventually ducked my head so that my hair swung down to hide my warm cheeks.

“Something’s really bothering you,
Jinxy
.”
He brushed my hair back from my face, twisting one of the fading blue strands
around his finger before tucking it behind my ear.

“Yeah.”

“Let’s get out of here. It’s too crowded and noisy to talk.”

It was. There was a whole lot of shouting and cheering coming
from the pool table, and the digital jukebox was at full volume. One of the
blue unit recruits, a heavily tattooed girl called
Dasha
,
was doing a roaring trade selling prepaid cash cards. Probably black-market.

The day before, Quinn had urged me to buy a couple of the cards
in a few different denominations.

“Why?” I’d asked. “I have a credit card.”

“You never know when you might want to buy something without it
leaving a trail for someone to follow.”

Nobody used cash anymore — it was too risky when rat fever was so
easily spread — but people still wanted a way to buy stuff without it showing
up on their charge cards. Teens especially wanted a way to buy booze,
cigarettes, age-restricted apps, movies and reading material without tipping
off their parents. They said you could even buy banned books and firearms with
cash cards — if you knew where to look. I’d taken Quinn’s advice, more to
please him than with any real idea of ever using them myself.

It was a relief to get away from the loud music, the din of the
pinball machines and the shouts of the crowd.

We headed to the huge indoor arena of the gymnasium and walked
slowly around its silent floodlit track. Quinn kept sneaking glances at me as
we walked. I was hyper-aware of the way his ungloved hand wrapped around mine —
it was big and hard, and warmer than I could have imagined — and the way
holding hands with him made me feel. Safe and confident. With my hand in his, I
could have taken on the world.

“So, tell me about it.”

“I can’t. It’s, you know, work.”

“I got to say, I don’t get this whole secrecy thing.”

I looked up at him, surprised. I hadn’t questioned the need for
the rule.

“I can just about understand why they think we shouldn’t talk
about our work to the outside world. Though I think people would be pleased to
hear that there’s a program to train experts in fighting the war against the
plague. But why can’t we talk to each other?”

I thought about that, but couldn’t actually come up with many
good reasons.

“We might tell someone outside?”

“In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re locked in a super
high-security facility — we can’t run off and alert the media.”

“We could tell them on a call or in an email.”

“
Jinxy
,” he said, laughing down at me.
“You do know our calls and mails are monitored.”

“
What
?” I hadn’t known. I hadn’t even suspected.

“Every communication coming in or going out from this place is
scanned and checked for classified information.”

“But, isn’t that illegal, an invasion of privacy? They should
have told us!”

“I think you’ll find they did, somewhere in the fine print of
those contracts we all signed.”

I scanned back over my calls and mails to Robin and my mother and
the few friends I’d had contact with since coming here, trying to think if I’d
said anything very personal. I already knew I hadn’t said anything classified —
I’d been a good girl on that front. Embarrassment blazed hot when I realized
that I’d gushed to Robin about Quinn. Whoever was monitoring our communications
would know all about my crush on him.

“Hey, you’re blushing! Have you been doing something you
shouldn’t?” he teased.

“Not really.” Not nearly enough.

He stroked a finger down my cheekbone and trailed it down my
throat to the opening of my jumpsuit. The pit of my stomach tightened.

“Can I tempt you to do so, then?” he said. He cupped my chin and
tilted it up, so that I was gazing straight into his warm eyes, and rubbed his
thumb over my lower lip. “Can I lead you well and truly astray?”

Yes, please, I wanted to say. I’d like that a lot. All I managed
was a soft, “Uh …” But my parted lips seemed answer enough for him.

He lowered his head, by slow, halting inches, then touched his
lips to mine. I hadn’t kissed anyone since Mom and Dad back when I was a tiny
kid, and I’d sure as heck never kissed anyone like this. It felt foreign and
familiar, forbidden and necessary. Exotic. Dangerous.

His lips were firm and warm and opened up a current of energy
which both electrified me and welded me to him. His mouth, when he opened it
against mine, was like a channel into the heart of him. He tasted of coffee
and, at the corner of his mouth, minty toothpaste. His hands moved down from my
face, over my back, along my waist and down to my butt as he hugged me tight
against him. I was icy, burning, desperate to breathe, determined not to pull
my mouth off his. I wanted to melt into him, to stay there forever. My hands
crept up to touch his jaw, his temples,
the
silver
ring through the dark brow. His body shuddered against mine.

When finally we came up for air, I was different, changed. This
was something else I’d never known, hadn’t even suspected.

Quinn looked like he had been rocked too.

“Faith!” he said, his voice deeper, rougher than usual.

“Who’s Faith?”

“It’s Irish for
wow. Freaking wow!
”

I grinned. “Good thing we’ve been working on our aerobic fitness.”
My voice was high and breathy.

“Never reckoned I’d be grateful for the training,” he said,
lowering his head to mine again.

And while I allowed my fingers to explore his thick hair, his
muscled arms and shoulders, we tested our aerobic capacity for a good while
longer.

Chapter 13

Clocked

The next morning, before breakfast, Quinn knocked at my door.

“I wanted to give you this.” He handed me a small jewelry box.

“Are you proposing?” I teased, and was delighted to see I’d
succeeded in making
him
blush for once.

“Nah, no diamonds. But those” — he gestured to the box — “come in
pairs, and I wanted you to have the other one.”

Inside the little box was a silver earring, the mate of the one
threaded through Quinn’s brow. My eyes filled.

“It was getting a bit lonely, all by itself in the box.” When I
didn’t respond, he continued uncertainly. “But you only have to wear it if, you
know, you like.”

“I like.”

He grinned. I threaded the hoop through my right ear, and as I
closed the clasp, it felt like I was setting the seal on us. We, too, were a
pair.

I only wished my shooting was going as well as our relationship,
because even with weeks of practice, I hadn’t gotten much better at shooting
live targets. Everyone in the unit had their own theory about why I could hit
the bull’s eye in a paper target at a thousand yards, but couldn’t reliably
take down a rat at a quarter that distance.

“You obviously don’t
want
to hit them, and your
subconscious sabotages your shots,” said
Leya
.

“Maybe you want to leave here and go home,” suggested Tae-Hyun.

“No way,” I said.

“It’s because you’re fantasizing about me naked when you should
be focused on the rat,” said Bruce.

“Even less way!”

“Guilt,” said Cameron.

 
“You’re overthinking it,
you’re jinxing it,” said Mitch.

“Funny one, Mitch,” I said, not smiling.

“Stop thinking about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it,
and if it’s right or wrong. Just do it, man,” he said.

Sarge’s
opinion? “You need to take a
teaspoon of cement and harden the hell up, soldier!”

“I can hack it,” I said. If I told myself that often enough, it
might become true.

I was super fit from the daily runs and the workouts on
cross-trainers and rowing machines, and way stronger from weight-lifting and
resistance-training than I had been before I came here. But I couldn’t figure
out why we had to be so fit and so strong. A lot of the kids at ASTA had weight
to lose — a result of living lives indoors in front of PC screens, I guessed —
and all the divisions, black, blue, green, red and orange, had a daily physical
exercise regime. But none of the other instructors pushed their cadets as hard
as
Sarge
pushed us.

“You need to be prepared for anything. A high-caliber weapon
system can top twelve kilograms — that’s pushing thirty pounds including scope
and ammunition, and not including the other equipment you might have to lug
around, such as range-finders, spare magazines, specialized optics, GPS and
comms
equipment, hydration-packs, and your sidearm.”

He never said this kind of thing in the gymnasium, of course,
where cadets from other divisions might be running past on the track, or
lifting weights on the equipment, or practicing fighting skills on the nearby
mats. He was absolutely vigilant about keeping the work of our division secret
until the day we all “graduated” from basic training. In our very first
lecture, on our very first day, he had told us The Code — a set of rules that
would govern our unit. Top of these was the code of silence. Under no
circumstance were we to talk about our training with anyone outside of our
unit, and we were not to ask cadets from other divisions about their training
either. In fact,
Sarge
strongly discouraged us from
what he called “fraternizing” with the others.

“If you socialize with each other only, you’ll build a stronger
team and won’t be tempted to venture into classified information with
unauthorizeds
. Your fellow squad members are
your new family: squad before blood.”

I ignored this and spent every spare moment in Quinn’s company.
Because we had very little downtime, I made the most of mealtimes by sitting
with him in the cafeteria.

Bruce scowled whenever he noticed me with Quinn, and often joined
us, uninvited, at one of the steel tables where we ate our meals. He had set
himself up as some sort of chaperone, guarding me to check I wasn’t too free
with either my words or my affections.

I wondered, sometimes, whether he reported back on us to
Sarge
, because
Sarge’s
word was
both law and gospel to Bruce. His every other sentence started with, “
Sarge
says,” or “According to
Sarge
,”
or ended with, “… but I’ll check with
Sarge
.”

The first time he saw me eating dinner alone with Quinn, he came
over and demanded to know what we were talking about. Perhaps he was worried
that I was telling Quinn about the day’s events. We’d spent that Sunday morning
lying on our bellies on the ground, sopping wet and muddy from the hard rain,
lined up in a row on the outdoor shooting range. We were working on our
high-precision shooting — using heavier caliber bolt-action rifles stabilized
on bipods and sandbags, shooting at cardboard targets a full kilometer away on
the other side of a shallow, bushy gulley. Apart from the distance, and the
rain which obscured our vision, a cross-wind complicated the shot.

Even worse, Roberta Roth had come out to watch us. Having her
perched beside
Sarge
, the scalloped arcs of her
umbrella like the dripping wings of great black crow, only added to the
pressure. From time to time, they would lean in close to discuss something —
probably us cadets, from the way their gazes latched onto each of us in turn.

“Right, cease fire!” said
Sarge
after
we were all drenched and covered in mud. “Let’s have some new tangos.”

He gave the command over the radio to Juan, who was setting up
the targets at the far end of the range.

“Earplugs out and listen up. How about a little competition to
make this interesting, my
piggies
?”

He often called us pigs and had once explained, “That stands for
Professional Instructed Gunmen — and gunwomen, princess, let us not forget the
women! Once you graduate, you’ll officially be HOGs.”

“What’s that stand for?” I’d asked.

“Hunters of gunmen.”

“But we’ll be shooting rats,” I pointed out.

“I guess I’ll have to call you HORs, then,” said
Sarge
, and Bruce and Tae-Hyun had nearly bust a gut laughing.

Now he smoothed his moustache, staring at each of us in turn.

“Right, piglets, you each get three shots. Cadet with the
tightest grouping on his target gets the afternoon off. Cadet with the widest
cluster gets an extra two hours of PT, with an emphasis on upper-body strength
training. I know how much you love that, Goldilocks.”

I didn’t know whether I was more motivated by the chance of
spending a whole afternoon with Quinn, or by the fear of another two hours of
torture, but I was determined to win. I might not be able to bench-press my own
weight, but I could shoot straight. My waterlogged jumpsuit was weighing me
down, though, and restricting my movements, so I unzipped the top, rolled it
down and tied the arms around my waist. I was soaked to the skin, and my white
undershirt may have been transparent, because Bruce goggled at my chest as
though I was a contestant in a wet t-shirt contest. I guess he was still
distracted when we received the command to fire, because his first shot went
wide. He cursed, refocused and was better pleased with his next two shots.

I was pleased with all three of mine.

“You call this good shooting, boy?”
Sarge
said to Bruce, when we’d hiked across to inspect our targets, envious of Roth,
who returned to the comfort of the compound. “My grandmother can shoot
better’n
this, with her eyes closed!”

Bruce’s face darkened in an angry flush as
Sarge
continued, “I would say you shoot like a girl” —
Sarge
often made sexist comments like this — “only the girl has shot
better’n
you.”

“No she hasn’t, look! She only hit her target with two rounds.
One of them clean missed the target.”

“Look closer. All of you, come look.”

We all clustered around my target. From close up, it was easy for
them to see what I already knew. My second shot had passed through the hole
made by the first, just nibbling off an extra crescent of paper on the edge of
the perforation.

“Snake-eyes!”
Sarge
pointed at the
double hole. “That’s how it’s done, son.”

In disbelief, Bruce ripped the paper target off its backing and
peered up close at the target board, checking the holes that matched the target
shots. Then, using a long blade on the multi-tool he always wore on his belt,
he prized my rounds — both of them — from the hole and cursed again.

“Good shooting, Blue. You’re dismissed, soldier. Enjoy the rest
of your day. Bruce, Fiona will meet you at the track at 14h00 sharp. Embrace
the pain, son. Because pain is
… ?
What is pain,
piglets?”

“Pain is good,
Sarge
!” we all shouted
back.

That night, when Bruce came over to where Quinn and I sat eating
and chatting, he still looked mightily pissed. And exhausted.

“What are you talking about, Blue? Telling him how much better
you are than me?”

“I’m not much better than you, Bruce,” I said. “And I won’t be
the one to break the code.”

Bruce looked only marginally mollified, but Quinn sat back and
smiled, seemingly suddenly very relaxed, as if he’d heard something that
pleased him.

“
Are
you better than him?” he asked, as soon as Bruce
stomped off.

I hesitated, not wanting to appear big-headed. “Mostly,” I said.

“Good. I don’t like him. I hope you beat him every chance you
get. Plus, I have a real soft spot for intelligent wonder-wenches!”

I was too glad that he considered me intelligent to wonder why he
did. If anyone in our unit had the super-smarts, it was
Leya
.
She had, she said, already registered for a college course in Political
Science, and she loved nothing better than a good debate about immigration or
civil liberties, or canvassing everyone’s opinion on the best way to wage war
against the plague. She, too, often joined us at mealtimes. And wherever
Leya
went, Cameron usually followed silently behind, though
he didn’t add more than a word or two to the discussions.

“You know,” said Quinn one Friday afternoon as we finished our
lunch, “I can’t say I like this.”

He tapped the computer printout on the table in front of him.
Every Friday, each cadet was issued with a report on their “physical
parameters”. It was an itemized list and nutritional analysis of everything we’d
eaten in the previous seven days, a log of our time spent in the gymnasium,
results of any exercise assessments we’d been put through (testing strength,
endurance, aerobic capacity and flexibility), our pulse-oximetry, blood glucose
and blood pressure scores, plus our weight and fat-to-muscle ratios, as taken
before dinner every Thursday evening.

“I’m surprised they don’t measure and analyze our output at the
toilet.”

“You don’t think it’s a good thing that they keep tabs on our
health and fitness?” asked
Leya
.

“I simply don’t think it’s necessary that they note our every
input and output,” said Quinn. “Or that they know our every movement — which
they do, thanks to those” — he cast a dark glance at the nearest fisheye
surveillance camera — “and these.” He flicked a finger against the steel ID
bracelet encircling his left wrist.

“You think they monitor everywhere we go?” I found it hard to
believe that.

“Well, obviously we get clocked going into and coming out of the
gymnasium.” Quinn pointed at the logged times on his report. “What’s to say
they aren’t logging all our other movements?”

“Paranoid much?” said
Leya
.

“If you haven’t done anything wrong, then you shouldn’t have
anything to hide,” said Bruce, taking an uneaten half of a roll off my tray,
wiping it in the gravy on my plate, and shoving it in his mouth.

If Robin had done that to me, he would have earned an elbow in
the ribs, but I still wasn’t sure enough of my way around people to feel
confident doing it to Bruce. Besides, my elbow would probably bounce right off
those bulky muscles.

“You’re not paranoid if they are out to get you,” said Sofia
Medina, a pretty and petite girl from Quinn’s unit, who occasionally joined him
at our table. She had dark hair and soft brown eyes made exotic by intricate henna
patterns ornamenting the skin on her cheekbones and temples. She looked like
she was wearing the sheerest of filigreed masquerade masks.

Cameron made a soft noise which might have been a laugh.

“Who are ‘they’, and why would they be out to get you?” asked
Leya
. She was peeling an orange and breaking it into
segments.

“You don’t think that we’ve gone overboard with the restrictions
and government control in the last few years?” said Quinn. “We’ve lost our
privacy, censored our media, choked the free flow of people and ideas, had our
civil liberties steadily eroded —
it’s
banjaxed!”

“Sounds like you’re a member of the Civil Libs,” said
Leya
, offering Quinn an orange segment.

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” said Quinn, shaking his head and
looking like he regretted saying so much. “But they do make some good points.”

I wasn’t sure what I believed. I’d never thought deeply about the
politics of the plague, but now that Quinn had pointed it out, I realized how
closely we were monitored inside the Academy, and how tightly we were
controlled outside of it. Until this moment, I’d felt much less restricted here
than at home. I’d met so many new people, learned so many new things and been
so focused on the goal of getting out, that I had felt much freer. But I was
probably even more closely watched here than under my mother’s anxious eyes.