Human Error

BOOK 2 // SEVENTEEN: Pillow Talk

            I'd never carried a gun before.

Of course, there had never been any need to. That and the fact that New London had some of the strictest gun laws in the world, which meant you had to be a pretty seasoned criminal to get your hands on one in the first place. The only times I'd even seen them were from behind the barriers of authority: they were carried by security personnel, police offers, soldiers. Not civilians, and certainly not eighteen-year-old girls.

And yet here I was, as up close and personal with one as somebody could get while remaining on the right side of the barrel. I stared at my reflection in my bedroom mirror as I slid the gun into the holster slung on my waist. I didn't look comfortable in the slightest, the weapon a completely foreign object that I could barely work out how to hold. But who could blame me?

For a few blissful moments, storage unit A had seemed like an abstract concept. From its first mention, right up until the second Art slid the key into the lock, it was one big blank – which meant there was no opportunity for it to bear any weight on my current state of mind. What I didn't know couldn't hurt me. But as one swift movement of Art's arm threw open the door, and I got my first look inside, everything changed.

Walls upon walls were hung with weapons: firearms ranging from the tiny handguns I might've been able to handle to full-sized rifles whose weight looked like they could topple me over. All collected from the ruins of the city, picked up from the most haunting places. Concealed cupboards in family living rooms. Garden sheds next to kids' climbing frames and swings. Slipped into the lining of pillow cases.

Even fifty years ago, they were illegal; the people of Birmingham weren't supposed to have guns. But desperate times called for desperate measures – and I guessed people did things they normally wouldn't when faced with the impending threat of starvation.

Perhaps the last scraps of food that would keep you alive were worth killing someone else for.

I tried not to think about it as I pulled my shirt back down over the holster. It stuck out from beneath the fabric, an awkward bulge protruding from my waist, and its weight would certainly take some getting used to. But I didn't have a choice. Under Nova's orders, we all had to carry these now – and it might even save my life.

There had been some training, but it was minimal. Though Nova did her best to maintain an aura of confidence, I wasn't convinced it was particularly authentic: unless there were major gaps in my knowledge about how she'd spent the last two years, she didn't have any experience of handling guns either. There were some basic instructions about safety, aim and pulling the trigger. That was it.

In some ways, it was like the blind leading the blind.

But I guessed that was better than the blind lying on the floor, waiting for death.

We had to carry them at all times: that was the new rule. According to my sister, any moment we let ourselves go without was like placing a target on our backs. And then, in addition to the weapons, there was everything else. With no training and no experience, we had to become a division of BioPlus security overnight – while our most powerful asset was Nova's anger that we'd been left to do it all alone.

There was, however, one positive: Jace was now well on his way to recovery. A couple of days in the makeshift sick bay had treated him kindly, especially with Thomas kept close to change his bandages and administer medicine. We weren't sure if he had the supercharged immune system that was characteristic of modified kids; though he was sure he could remember bouts of illness throughout his life, his entire perception had since been skewed, and his immune defences could well have been as hardy as ours. Still, it seemed silly to take the risk, what with the gaping wound on his leg, so Thomas took antiseptic precautions anyway.