Recoil (13 page)

It was my mother, of course, wearing full protective gear.

“Hi, Mom, I’m perfectly healthy.” I bumped elbows with her. I
knew better than to try hug her.

“Hiya,
Jinxy
.” Robin gave me a tight
hug.

“Hey, Robin. What’s up?”

“Ah, you know, same old, same old.”

“Yeah.” I did know. I gave him a sympathetic grimace.

“Exciting day for you, though.”

“Yeah!”

“You going to stay on and work for them?”

“If they let me, sure.”

“Oh,
Jinxy
, do you really think you
should? A year and a half! It’ll be so dangerous, being out there. I wish you’d
come home now,” said Mom.

“You know I love you and I miss you, Mom” — the first part wasn’t
a lie — “but I’ve got a chance to do something really worthwhile here.”

“I know, I know. But I worry.”

“You? Worry? I never knew — you should have said something, Mom!”
said Robin and we all laughed, even my mother.

“I know you think I’m overprotective. But with your father …” She
hesitated, biting her lip.

“What have you been up to, Robin?” I rushed to fill the awkward
silence.

“I’ve been doing a couple of programming courses, playing around
on some sites.”

“He’s always on that computer, even late at night,” said Mom.

“Have you been playing The Game?” How cool would it be if Robin
was selected and could join me
here.
Immediately,
another thought intruded. Would Mom cope if she had to live alone?

“There are other games in the world, you know, and some of them
are very interesting. I’m learning a lot.”

“That sounds cryptic,” I said.

“We’ll chat when you come home for a visit.”

“My God — that mother just kissed her son!” said Mom, appalled.

A loud buzzer sounded — it was time for the graduation ceremony
to begin.

Chapter 15

Hog’s Tooth

My mother, Robin and I exchanged hurried goodbyes, with her
begging me to write more frequently and him wishing me luck. Then we joined the
throng making for Lecture Room 1, which was really more of an auditorium,
complete with raked rows of seats and a small platform down front. The families
were directed to chairs at the back of the room, while the cadets filed to the
front, each division taking their seats in a different row.

Our graduation ceremony was way different from the ones I’d seen
in movies on T.V. We all still wore our differently colored jump-suits, rather
than academic gowns and mortarboard caps. No photographer took pictures of the
graduates posing with their proud parents, and all cellphones and cameras had
been confiscated at the front door. Afterwards, there would be no red-cup keg
party around a swimming pool. Our only celebration would be one in the
cafeteria, and I doubted there would be any alcohol or much fun allowed.

The black division was directed to the last row of cadet seats,
behind the convicts — which was what we called the division who wore
prison-orange suits — and since there were only six of us, half our row was
left empty. I took a seat next to
Leya
, and Bruce
promptly installed himself on my other side.

“I wish we could sit with our families,” I said. Or boyfriends.

“No way. It’s right that we’re sitting like this — squad before
blood,” said Bruce.

He left his hand palm-side up on the armrest between us, as if
hoping I’d take his hand. He never gave up! I crossed my arms.

Quinn was sitting in the middle of the ten blue cadets seated
three rows in front of us. He was taller than all of them.

“I saw your brother. He’s gorgeous!” whispered
Leya
. “How old is he?”

“We’re twins, so sixteen.”

“
Leya
is a cougar,” Bruce chanted in a
singsong voice.

Leya
stretched an arm around the back
of me to cuff him upside the head.

Roberta Roth stood up from the line of instructors sitting up
front and addressed the auditorium, telling our parents how proud they should
be of us, how she hoped we’d benefited from our vocational training, how
valuable we would be in the war against the pandemic, how it was each citizen’s
duty to serve their country, blah
blah
blah
. I wasn’t really listening. I had my eyes on the back
of Quinn’s neck, where his dark hair curled a V into his nape. He was sitting
next to Sofia, and as I watched, he muttered something into her ear that made
her shoulders shake with suppressed laughter. I fought an urge to pluck a
button off my suit and flick it at her pretty little patterned head. Where’s a
paintball rifle when you need one?

The sound of applause brought me out of my fantasy. Cadets from
the green division were making their way down to the podium where Fiona now
stood, calling out names. Each cadet shook Roth’s hand, received a certificate,
and then shook their instructors’ hands and were handed a divisional pin. They
lined up with their fellow graduates for one last round of applause before
returning to their seats, and the next division’s cadets were called up. When Quinn’s
name was announced, I clapped harder than anyone else.
Leya
giggled and whispered, “He
is
hot!” Bruce made a sound of disgust.

A few minutes later, I was up front with the rest of my squad. As
Roberta Roth shook my hand, she leaned forward and spoke quietly beside my ear.

“We’ve got exciting things planned for you, Specialist James.”

I only had a moment to say a brief thank you as I accepted my
certificate. In italic gold lettering, it confirmed that Jinx E. James had
passed with distinction the advanced training course in Marksmanship and Sniper
Specialist Skills.

“Glad you finally got your ass into gear, Blue,” said
Sarge
as he shook my hand hard and handed me my divisional
pin.

Then he spun me around in front of him, and I held my hair up as
he fastened something around my neck. I looked down at the long black leather
thong with a wooden carving of a .5 caliber round threaded through it.
Sarge
had told us all about the old marine tradition of
giving a graduating sniper a “hog’s tooth” — the emblem of living life on the
sharp edge. While Bruce and Cameron and Tae-Hyun were getting theirs, I fixed
my pin onto the flap of the chest pocket on my jumpsuit. It was about the size
of a dollar coin, made of silver in the shape of a scope’s cross-hairs, with a
rifle stretching diagonally across it.

“So cool!” I whispered to
Leya
, who was
standing beside me.

“Arctic!” she whispered back.

I smiled out at Quinn and then gave a tiny wave to Robin and my
mother sitting at the back. I had done it. I had succeeded. I hadn’t let
Sarge
intimidate me or Bruce get to me with his endless
comments. I had overcome daily exhaustion and feeble biceps. I’d learned to
hide and stalk and shoot a dozen different weapons. I’d even come to terms,
mostly, with shooting those damn rats, and now I was an expert, ready to go out
into the world and make a real difference. I couldn’t wait to begin. And I
couldn’t wait to hug Quinn and hear all about his work. I bet it was something
brainy — code-breaking, maybe, or
intel
.

Once the last of us was back in our seats, Roth thanked the
families, and then it was time for them to leave, and for us to be on the
ear-end of more speechifying.

“Congratulations again — you are now officially specialists. As
you probably already know,” Roth concluded, “you all have the rest of the day
off.” She smiled her tight, thin-lipped smile at the cheers that followed, and
then held up a hand for silence. “You are to meet at your Unit Commanders’
offices at 09h00 tomorrow morning to receive your assignments. Some of you will
be scheduled for additional training, while others will be deployed to other
regions.”

Uh-oh.
Sarge
had
not
told
us about that. I was no longer smiling. What if either Quinn or I was sent
somewhere else? I couldn’t stand it if he were sent to one end of the country
and I to another. Quinn swiveled in his seat and pulled a worried face at me —
I could tell he’d had the same thought.

Roth was talking again. “… and some of you will immediately be
deployed on assignments or active missions.”

“Yes!” said Bruce, pumping his fist.

I might not be as enthusiastic as Bruce about killing critters,
but I did hope I would be one of the ones sent out on a mission, though I hoped
I’d be based in the same sector as Quinn. We’d been confined to this compound
for the last six weeks, and I was totally sick of it. The main reason I’d been
keen to sign up at the Academy was to get out, and I was looking forward to
finally doing it.

“You are reminded that you are still not permitted to discuss
your work at all with persons outside of this organization. Within the Academy,
your projects will be subject to different levels of security clearance as
advised by your
COs.
But for now, congratulations
again, and enjoy the rest of the afternoon!”

Everyone cheered and scrambled for the doors. Bruce seized the
chance to give me a congratulatory hug, and
Leya
asked whether I’d be joining them in the cafeteria.

“Sure, but later. I want to catch up with Quinn.”

“
Smoochy
time!” she teased.

Bruce scowled and pushed his way past Tae-Hyun.

“Don’t be long,”
Leya
called as she
followed. “There’s a rumor going around that one of the convicts smuggled in a
crate of beer.”

“I call BS on that,” I said. How would they get it past all the
security?

Quinn was already waiting at our secret stairwell by the time I
got there. He grinned and pulled me into a tight hug. The fire-alarm box
pressed painfully into my back, but Quinn was the one who said, “Ow!”

He stepped back from me, rubbing his chest. I noticed the badge
on his lapel at once. A magnifying glass perched vertically over the silver
circle. As he lifted the thong to pull up the hard hog’s tooth, the brush of
his fingers against my chest raised a shiver of goose bumps on my skin.

“What in the name of St. Patrick is this thing around your neck?”

“It’s a hog’s tooth,” I told him. “Not literally, I mean, this
one’s made of wood, so it’s just a symbol that we’ve qualified, joined the
squad and are ready for live shooting. Each of
us’ll
get a real one — the casing on the round — when we make our first kill.”

Quinn stood frozen with the carving in his hand. Only his face
moved as the wide smile which had been there dissolved.

“Your first kill?” he repeated.

“Yes, from our first assignment.”

Quinn’s hand dropped the hog’s tooth like it was hot then moved
to brush aside my hair so that he could see my chest. This time he wasn’t
reading my embroidered name. His eyes were trained on my division pin, the
rifle perched diagonally across the scope’s crosshairs. His brows drew together
and, for the first time ever, he looked pale.

“What are you?” he said.

“What do you mean?”

The hairs on the back of my neck prickled with the sense of
danger drawing close.

“What division do you belong to, Jinx? What have you been
training to become?” Quinn’s voice was flat, hard,
unrecognizable
.

“I’m a sniper,” I said, forcing an uncertain smile through my
worry. Something was going horribly wrong.

“You’re not.”

“I am.”

“You can’t be!”

“Why not?” I was getting annoyed. “Because I’m a girl? I never
figured you for a sexist.”

“No, not because you’re a girl,” he said slowly, and without the
hint of a smile. “Because you’re a code-breaker.”

“I’m not a code-breaker. Where did you get that idea?” I said,
puzzled.

“You told me you were.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yes you did. That day, in the canteen, with Bruce — you said you
couldn’t break the code.”

“Oh, that?”

Relief washed through me. This was obviously a misunderstanding.
He only looked angry because he thought I’d misled him.

“No, I said I
wouldn’t
break the code,” I
explained quickly, eager to wipe that horrible expression off his face. “We
snipers have a code of having each other’s back, not telling tales on each
other, and
Sarge’s
number-one boot-camp code was that
we were not to tell people in other units what it is we do. Not like we were
allowed to anyway.”

Quinn stared down at me. A muscle pulsed in his jaw.

“Bruce was scared I was telling you stuff you shouldn’t know, so
I told him I wouldn’t break the code to, you know, reassure him,” I finished
lamely.

Quinn pulled the certificate out of my hand, unrolled and read
it, and then handed it back to me.

“So you really are a ratter?” His face was tight with repugnance.

“A sniper, yes.”

I jumped when Quinn cursed loudly and punched the wall beside me.

“What
is
your problem, Quinn
O’Riley
?”
I demanded.

“Are you kidding me? Do you know what ratters do, what
you’re
being trained to do?”

“Jeez, patronize much? Yes, as I am a member of the squad, I do
in fact know exactly what I’m going to be deployed to do.”

“And do you know that —” He paused and looked around to check we
weren’t being overheard, then continued in a whisper, “that you’re going to be
taking out live targets?”

“If I’d just wanted to play games, I could have stayed at home. I
knew what I was signing up for when I started.”

“And you really think that’s acceptable?” he said, his voice a
mixture of disbelief and disgust.

I knew Quinn loved his pets and probably hated the idea that they
might be infected one day and have to be taken out, but he was taking things a
bit far. It was one thing to be an animal-lover, but it was quite another to be
so extreme that you thought it was a bad idea to kill infected rats.

“Okay, so I’m not 100% comfortable with it, but —”

“
Not 100% comfortable with it
? Listen to you!”

“But Quinn, we’re not going to win this war unless we take them
out.”

“Who told you that —
Sarge
? So you want
to be like him now? A killer?”

“I’m only killing a threat to our lives. What’s the matter with
that?” My own anger was growing now.

“What’s the
matter
with that?”

He raked his fingers through his hair. He was staring at me as if
he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

“The
matter
is that you’ll be taking innocent lives.”

“Oh, please don’t be ridiculous, Quinn. You can hardly call them
innocent when they pose a danger to us, when they’ve caused the deaths of
millions of people. When the plague has caused us to become virtual prisoners
in our own houses.”

“That’s not what has caused us to become virtual prisoners,” he
scoffed. “Faith! You’ve swallowed what they’ve told you hook, line and sinker.
I thought you were someone … different. But I don’t know you at all. Who
are
you?” He almost shouted the last three words.

“Who are
you
to judge me?” I shouted back, poking him in the
chest with my rolled-up certificate. “What division are you in that’s so
lily-pure?”

“Intel,” he muttered.

“I should have guessed. Nice and clean and indoors. And so safe.”

“Are you implying that I’m a coward?” His eyes had paled to the
color of frosted steel.