Let's Start A Riot

Chapter Four - Romeo Squad

While Sarah and Hugo are arguing over who is making dinner, I go back to the room they'd shown me as my own. It is small and bare; it has a metal bed in the corner with a thin mattress and green duvet, a short wooden wardrobe on the wall opposite the bed, and a window looking out to the forest with some green curtains that match the duvet hanging limply to the sides. I go over to the wardrobe and open it up to find some clothes already in there – the same ones that everyone else is wearing; a green top, camouflage cargo pants, thick woolly socks, a khaki-coloured belt, and some khaki boots. I shrug off the clothes I'm wearing and step into the new ones. I buckle the belt tightly, and lace up the boots, finally looking myself up and down. The clothes are a little baggy, and the trousers a tad too long, but I work with it to make them fit. I retie my hair into my bobble to make it look neater, then I stuff my bag at the bottom of the wardrobe, not bothering to unpack any of the other things I have in it.

When I'm done, I walk back out into the living room to find Sarah sitting back on the couch, looking cheerful.

"Hey!" she calls, smiling, "Hugo's making dinner, he's a way better cook than me anyways."

I laugh and sit down next to her.

"You look great! The uniform suits you," She says, but peers closer, prodding my arm, "It's a bit big though, you're so small and cute! I've always wished to not be a giant." She sighs sadly.

"Uhm." I'm unsure what to say back, finding myself speechless yet again.

Sarah elaborates, "I've always been the 'tall girl', I'm envious of you shorties."

"Trust me, it's no picnic." I grumble, making her laugh. Then I ask, "So, Fraser – the chauffeur that drove me here – mentioned something about each squad member having a different skill set. I know mine has to be my gymnastics and acrobatics since I don't possess any other memorable attributes, so what's everyone else's?"

"Well, I specialise in hand-to-hand combat," she explains, listing off on her fingers, "I know multiple types of martial arts, and can take down almost everyone in training. Hugo's a geek for weapons; guns, bombs, blades, you name it, he knows everything about it. He can assemble and disassemble firearms quicker than you can blink, and he can assemble and arm a bomb in around five minutes – it's quite extraordinary. Then there's Marcus. He's..." She trails off, pausing to think.

"He's..." I prompt.

"He's not got a speciality, and if you wanted to give him one, it would be in the arts of how to kill someone. I think by now he must know over five hundred ways to kill someone just using his bare hands. I've heard it's disgusting to watch, but also mesmerising, you can't look away." She says, a solemn look on her face. "He also has an extensive military background; he was born into it." She explains further.

"Wow, really? How many people has he killed?" I ask, intrigued, but scared to hear the answer.

"Actually, not as many as you'd think with my description because he wasn't in the army long before he got pulled to do this instead. He has been training for this since he was a child because his dad is the director of MI6, one of the best agents to ever pass through any military operations organisation, therefore Marcus never really got a choice in what he got to do. He was on deployment before he came here, and he was one of the only soldiers in his unit to return – he was also the youngest, he's just turned twenty so was nineteen on deployment, so to experience what he did... They say he's killed maybe forty people so far using only hand-to-hand combat meaning no weapons, which I know sounds a lot, but in our line of work, is a small number." Sarah tells me.

"Forty?" I gasp, "I'm not sure I can even imagine killing one person."

Sarah looks at me oddly, "You may need to get used to it, kill or be killed, Patience, kill or be killed."