Recoil

by Joanne Macgregor

  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.

  “No. I’m implying that you’re a hypocrite. What do you think happens to the information intel figures out? You think your data and analysis won’t feed directly into my dirty work? You think where we go and what we target won’t be a direct result of your intelligence work?”

  Quinn paused, scrubbed a hand across his mouth and shook his head ruefully.

  “Ah, you’ve got me there, Blue.”

  “Don’t call me Blue.”

  “How about I don’t call you at all?”

  “Fine!”

  “Fine!”

  He spun on his heel and stalked off. I was left alone, in the dusty silence under the stairs, clutching my crumpled certificate against my hog’s tooth.

  Chapter 16

  Deployed

  No Irish pirate slouched up against the cafeteria door waiting for me the next morning. I grabbed a tray and joined the food line, even though I wasn’t hungry — I’d been sucking up a steady diet of tears served with a side of anger and self-pity sauce since the night before, and my stomach felt heavy from all the angst. I grabbed an apple and a cup of coffee and then noticed as I passed by the rack that always held the baked goods that there was exactly one chocolate muffin left. I stared at it bleakly. If Quinn had been with me, we’d have shared it, maybe even fed each other. Or he would have insisted I have it. I walked away from the racks to the check-out register.

  “It’s too low on calories, honey,” said the operator who scanned my food. “According to the system, you’re scheduled for active duty today, so you’ll need to get more, preferably something with protein.”

  I took my tray and headed back against the stream of specialists headed for checkout, and nearly collided with Quinn. His plate was laden with eggs, bacon and toast. And the chocolate muffin. Obviously, his appetite was unaffected by our bust-up. He stared down at my apple and coffee, flicked his glance to my single earring, then met my eyes with his own flint-gray gaze.

  “What? No appetite for killing today?”

  I wanted to tell him where to get off. I wanted to cry. I wanted him to hug me. But I just stood there stupidly staring down at his checkerboard sneakers and remembering the day I’d first seen them. He moved off, and the throng of diners parted around me like I was a rock in a river. My face went cold, then hot. I dipped my head and snagged a protein power bar from a shelf before heading back to the checkout.

  “Still not enough, dear. You need at least 150 calories more.”

  What the hell?

  I spun on my heel and held my tray out to the nearest server.

  “What would you —”

  “150 calories of anything.”

  Back at checkout, the operator finally nodded approval — at the two hard-boiled eggs on my plate. Irish oysters. Now my eyes were burning as well as my face.

  I had to pass Quinn again on my way to the table where my unit was gathered. He was sitting with the blues, though they all wore civilian clothing today, unlike our unit, who were all still in the black jumpsuits. Sofia looked up as I passed. I didn’t think I imagined the deep satisfaction in her henna-circled eyes. Quinn ignored me.

  I dumped my tray on the metal table, slumped onto the edge of the attached bench beside Leya, and contemplated my apple and eggs unenthusiastically.

  “Hey, girl, you faded on a great party last night.”

  “Yeah.”

  “There was beer!” said Mitch.

  “And” — Leya looked over at Quinn’s table — “you’re not sitting with your other half.”

  “No.”

  “Relationship status update?”

  “It’s complicated,” I muttered. “No, scratch that. It’s actually very simple — he dumped me.”

  Bruce, who was sitting at the far end of the bench on the other side of the table, perked up at this.

  “Blue —”

  “Not a word, Bruce,” I said, holding up a hand as if to stop the traffic of his speech. If I was being rude, then too bad.

  “But I —”

  “Zip it!” I must have looked or sounded fierce, because he actually closed his lips. Though he tracked the rest of the conversation avidly.

  “No way did he dump you! No way! That boy loves you,” said Leya.

  “Nope. Apparently he ‘doesn’t even know me’.” I sketched quotation marks around his words as I spoke them.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I’m not sure I understand it myself. He got it in his head that I was a code-breaker. He’s intel.”

  “I know,” said Leya.

  “You did?”

  “Well, I saw the badges on the blues — all, like, Sherlock Holmes. And did you know the convicts are spooks?”

  “The oranges?” said Mitch.

  “Yeah, they’re spies, snoops and info-collectors. They work closely with intel.”

  “Greens?” asked Cameron.

  “Programmers. I think they get to work on The Game eventually.”

  Apparently unable to hold back any longer, Bruce asked, “But what about the effing leprechaun?” He nodded his head in the direction of Quinn.

  “Yeah,” said Leya. “What’s not being a code-breaker got to do with your relationship?”

  “When he found out I was a sniper, he completely freaked out.”

  “Did he now? I wonder why?”

  “He’s some kind of major animal-loving pacifist and takes exception to the fact that I’ll be shooting live rats, and maybe other animals. Don’t know what he thinks we should do with them, since they’re infected. Maybe put them in little hospital beds with blankies tucked around their furry little necks,” I said bitterly.

  Bruce laughed at that.

  “He sounds crazy,” said Leya, giving my hand a squeeze. Her sympathy soothed my wounded ego and fed my anger.

  “He thinks I’m crazy — he called me a killer!”

  “Huh,” said Cameron who
was sitting, as usual, directly opposite Leya.

  “He did not!” said Leya.

  “Said I was being trained to take innocent lives! I mean, honestly.”

  “That boy needs to shut up. And stop being mean to you.” Leya turned around in her seat and gave Quinn’s back a slit-eyed look.

  “Do you want me to sort him out, Blue? Open up a can of whoopass and teach him some manners? Just say the word.” Bruce cracked his knuckles.

  “No.”

  “Moral of the story is don’t have feelings for someone outside your unit,” said Mitch.

  “True story, bro,” said Bruce.

  “Moral of the story is don’t have feelings for anyone, ever — especially in this line of work,” muttered Leya. “Come on, eat your food, we need to go get our assignments.”

  Nothing would have gotten me to eat the eggs, but I forced myself to eat the apple and drink the now-cold coffee, and shoved the power bar into a pocket for later. Then we all trooped over to Sarge’s office.

  On the way, I ducked into the bathroom to remove Quinn’s earring — I couldn’t wear it now that we’d split. Problem was, I didn’t know what to do with it. I should give it back to him, I supposed, but I dreaded another face-to-face confrontation. I could fling it in the trashcan or flush it down the toilet. But, dumb as it might be, I wanted to keep it, and keep it close to me. I tucked it into my chest pocket but then, worried that it might get lost, clasped it instead around the left strap of my bra, where it lay against my skin. Perfect — I could feel it, and no one else could see it. Then I hurried off to catch up with the others.

  “Well, look at my sweet little piglets all grown up into lean, mean, fighting-machine hogs. Ready to get out and get shooting?” said Sarge as the six of us crammed around his desk. We all nodded.

  Bruce, who as usual had managed to wedge himself into the spot next to me, said, “Sir, yes sir!”

  “As of now, you are all on active assignment.”

  With all of us squashed together, Bruce didn’t have enough room to do a fist-pump or a high-five, but I could feel his knees give a celebratory dip beside me.