rich like hot chocolate mixed with coffee. Elese then shows me how to properly hold the gun, set my stance, square my shoulders to a target and press the trigger with my thumb.
Then she steps on the red strip and says, “Beginner target.”
About ten meters down the room a circle drops from the ceiling. The center of it glows orange. Elese aims and fires. A burst of sizzle, then the orange light flashes and winks out.
“Your turn.” She moves out of my way.
I step onto the strip. The orange light returns. Concentrating on my body’s position, I lift the gun, aim, and press the trigger. Warmth fills my palm as a sizzle flies and keeps right on going, missing the target.
“Freeze,” Elese orders. She adjusts my stance, turns my shoulders slightly, and lifts my arm. “Try again.”
Another miss. Another adjustment. And...repeat…about ten…twelve times before the stubborn orange light finally dies. Yes! I killed a light, my parents will be so proud.
“Again,” she says.
A sizzle and a miss. Sigh.
“Again.”
Miss.
“Again.”
Hit!
“Again.”
Miss.
When my hits outnumber my misses, Elese is satisfied. She slaps me on the back and says, “The shooting range is yours until seventeen hundred. When you can hit the target twenty times in a row, you can move on. Just say ‘intermediate target’ while standing on the sensor.”
“What if I don’t reach twenty in a row?”
“Then tomorrow you try again and again and again.”
“I’m beginning to hate that word.”
“So worming is easy? You figured it out right away?”
“Shut up.”
She flashes me a smile and leaves.
I squint at the target. Okay, Mr. Orange Light, you’re mine.
After a couple hours, I hate the color orange. I can’t hit the target more than six times in a row. Now, if I had one of those energy wave guns…Mr. Orange Light would be Mr. Shattered Into A Million Pieces Light.
When I finish, Elese is doing bicep curls on one of the weight machines. Her arms flex and her muscles pop to an impressive bulge with each pull, lifting a stack of ten heavy metal plates. I can lift two. Who knew all those hours worming in the Q-net doesn’t build upper body strength, or lower body strength, or core strength? However, my butt muscles are like steel.
When she finishes, I hold out the gun. “Where should I put this?”
“In your holster, Junior Officer Lawrence.”
I stare. Did she just—
“It’s not going to do you any good in a locked armory.”
Just like that, my sour mood vanishes. Yup, I’m that easy.
The divine smell of chicken greets me when I enter my unit. If Radcliff notices the gun as I go to my room, he doesn’t say anything. After a moment to recover from the blast of colors—it’s gonna take me a while to get use it to all the paintings—I tuck the gun—no, my gun—into my leather holster on my belt. All the security officers are armed when dressed in their uniforms. The weapon is also required when wearing the combat jumpsuit—a form fitting material that resists pulse hits and reduces the impact of other lethal weapons. My jumpsuit helped save my life when Jarren shot me. And if I’m not being modest, I look good in it. Even though the black color is slimming, it still shows off my curves.
After a quick shower and change of clothes, I join my parents, Niall and Radcliff. Dinner is a rather normal affair. Well, normal for me. My mom sneaks probing glances at me and I wonder if Radcliff told her about the looters rioting last night.
It’s not until my parents leave that I learn why Mom was being extra mom-ish. Niall and I are on the couch just hanging out when Radcliff approaches.
“You’re on the schedule,” he says to me. “You have the twenty-two-hundred to oh-two-hundred shift watching the camera monitors.”
I’m uncertain whether to be excited or suspicious. “And training?”
“Ongoing. Officer Keir still expects you at oh-eight-hundred hours. You’ll have three and a half hours of training, two hours of weapon drills and you’ll report to Officer Dorey from fourteen hundred until sixteen-thirty. Understand?”
Excitement wins despite the fact I’ll only get six hours of sleep a day. “Yes, sir.”
“Good.”
Before he retreats, I ask him about the pulse kit.
He points to a small leather bag sitting on the end table. “Inside is a charger and a couple power packs. Always have at least one extra power pack with you when you’re armed.” Radcliff goes into his bedroom.
Niall doesn’t say anything, but his arm around my shoulder tenses.
“Okay, spit it out,”