The Weapon (The Hourglass Series Book 2) (7 page)

Bettina
rolled her eyes. “Fine.”

“Hey!”
yelled a voice. They all flinched, turning around, only this time it wasn’t
Boulder. It was one of the guards. “Hey!” He yelled again.

They
ran. They didn’t stop, slow down, or look back until they had been out of sight
for at least five minutes. Hutch brought them to a halt. He looked behind them.

“Nothing,”
he said.
“Oh thank god,” said Bettina, falling to the ground, puffing heavily.

Sarah
could only nod, her own hands were on her knees, trying to regulate her
breathing.

Then,
to everyone’s surprise, Jaz started laughing. She was laughing so hard that
tears were coming out of her eyes. “That,” she wheezed, “was so, fun.”

They
couldn’t help it. They laughed too. It was then that Boulder walked up to the
group, apple still in hand. Clearly he hadn’t gotten into trouble about it.

“What’s
so funny?” he asked.

It
set them off even more.

The
bell for lunch rang. It turned out that pretty much the whole camp had already
heard how one of the new recruits had shot one of his team mates. An older
recruit walked by with one of his buddies. “Oh look,” he said, nudging his friend,
“they’re the ones I was telling you about. The Losers.” It was said with a
capital L.

“Hey,”
began Hutch defensively, but his jaw dropped open as he saw something behind
Sarah, and anything else he was going to say was wiped from his mind. The two
older boys saw it too, their jaws also dropping.

“Oh
you are kidding me,” said the one who had called them losers. “This is just
perfect. This team couldn’t get any worse.”

Sarah
swung around, trying to see what they had spotted. It didn’t take her long.

It
was Finn.

He
had died his hair yellow.

Not
blond, but yellow. Daisy, bumblebee yellow.

She
felt her own jaw drop. The Sarg was going to kill him. He was drawing stares
all around him as me made his way to their table. Once he reached it the
laughter started.

“You
guys,” said Hutch, his voice strained. “You’re killing me.”

“What
did you do that for?” asked Sarah, still completely astounded.

“You
heard the Sarg,” said Finn, looking far too complacent for Sarah’s liking. “He
said to fix my hair, so I fixed it.”

“Where
did you even get that?” she asked. “And what is it?”

Finn
took a large mouthful of mashed potato before replying. “Food dye.”

“Oh
thank god,” said Hutch. “That washes out, right? We can just wash it out before
the Sarg sees you. And kills you. Kills us all.”

“It
won’t work,” said Jaz, equally mortified. “His hair’s white. The dye is going
to stain. We might be able to make it less bright, but it’s yellow now.”

“Then
we’ll shave his head,” said Hutch, determined.

“Whoa,
hold on a second,” said Finn, “you aren’t touching my hair.” He looked a bit
worried now.

Good,
thought Sarah. He should be.

Boulder
snorted a noseful of mashed potato down the table as he tried not to laugh and
failed.

“Eugh,”
said Bettina, trying to avoid the mash-snot, “that’s disgusting.”

But
Boulder had set them all off again. Sarah finally saw the funny side and
started laughing too, even Hutch gave in.

“You’ve
got to admit,” said Finn, enjoying the attention, “it’s going to be funny when
he sees it.”

By
the time lunch ended they were officially known as the Loser Team. To make
matters worse, it was decided that instead of an afternoon spent learning how
to survive in a war zone, they were punished for Gillie’s mistake and made to
run laps around the parade ground. Their misery was compounded when they found
out that they were to be supervised by Dylan, the boy who had started the “Team
Loser” tag during the lunchbreak.

And
it didn’t help that the Sarg finally caught sight of Finn’s hair. The Sarg
happened to be walking by at the same time they were hustled to the parade
ground. Sarah would have laughed at his double take if he didn’t look like he
could kill them all with a single glare. The older recruit, Dylan, had seen the
Sarg coming and brought them to attention. Finn’s erect posture didn’t waver as
the Sarg made a beeline for him. For a moment the Sarg just stood directly in
front of Finn, their noses practically touching. Finn looked straight ahead, as
if he could see right through the man. After a tense few seconds, the Sarg
finally spoke. Or rather, he shouted, spittle flying everywhere, especially in
Finn’s face.

“What
the hell is this, recruit?”

“Sir?”
asked Finn, all innocence.

Sarah
caught her breath. This was not going to go down well.

“You’re
hair, you ignorant piece of shit,” said the Sarg, his voice dangerously low.
Sarah was fairly sure she could hear his teeth grinding.

“You
told me to fix it, Sir. So I did.”

The
Sarg’s face turned beetroot red. Sarah was worried that he was going to blow an
artery. Suddenly the colour drained from the Sarg’s face. His voice came out
silky, and somehow sounded even more dangerous than it did before.

“Follow,”
he ordered.

The
Sarg strode away and, after a slight hesitation, Finn followed after him, his
posture still as erect as the Sarg’s. He darted Sarah an exaggerated, nervous
grin, winked, and then turned back. Sarah shook her head slowly after him. He
was going to get himself killed. Although, if she was honest, she did find his
courage a little sexy.

“Right,
that’s enough,” said Dylan finally as the Sarg and Finn disappeared around a
corner. “Laps. Get to it.”

“But
Sir,” whined Ian, “Gillie isn’t even here.”

“Do
you think I don’t know that, recruit?” bellowed Dylan. He wasn’t Sarg, but he
was close enough. “Do I look blind to you?”

“No,
Sir,” said Ian. “But,” Sarah closed her eyes, wishing he would shut-up, but he
didn’t, “but I was the one who got shot?”

“Twenty
push-ups!” demanded Dylan. “Now.”

Ian
gave up and dropped to the ground. Dylan glared at the rest of them. “What are
you losers waiting for?” he snarled. Inwardly cursing Ian, they dropped to the
ground and joined him. Sarah’s arms were jelly by the end. Thankfully, Dylan
didn’t seem to care so much about technique as the Sarg did and so she managed
to get away with a handful of sloppy ones. When the last of them had stood up
they were sent running around the parade ground. As they ran Dylan stood in the
middle, yelling at them.

“You
think this is tough?” he yelled. “This isn’t even a warm-up compared to the
real thing! When you are out there, fighting for the Covenant, you will be
dreaming of these laps with a smile on your lips! It will seem like heaven!
This will improve you. This will get you fit. This will give you a fighting
chance!” He continued. “And you will want to be the best! Because heaven help
you if you get captured by the enemy! Do you know what they do to their
prisoners?” He paused, but there was no answer besides laboured breaths. “You
will be tortured for information! And when they are done with you, if you are
lucky, they will kill you! If you are unlucky they will send your ass to the
mines, where you will undergo back-breaking labour with no hope of salvation
until you die. They may even experiment on you! Do you understand, recruits?”
He barked.

“Yes,
sir,” they puffed out, roughly simultaneously.

“Then
you understand that you need to be the best. Because the best is the only way
you are going to survive.”

***

Finn
was returned twenty minutes later by a triumphant Sarg. The Sarg pushed him
forward into the middle of the parade ground and then walked off whistling. Not
that anyone was paying the Sarg any attention. All eyes were on Finn. Everyone
stopped running and stared. Even Dylan was staring. Then they started to laugh.

He
was bald.

Not
even a single blade of hair remained left on his head.

Finn
rubbed his bald head sheepishly. Sarah was having trouble staring at him
through the tears of laughter in her eyes. He looked so different. For half a
second she thought he was angry, and then the corner of his mouth twitched up.

“All
right, everyone,” said Dylan eventually. “Get back to it. That means you too,
cue ball.”

Their
laughter doubled them over.

Three
further weeks of intense training followed. Gillie was released from jail. Finn’s
hair started to grow back at an almost alarming pace. Their shooting improved.
Sarah was now hitting the centre of her target nearly every time. Finn managed
to hit the target every time, but where it was changed dramatically. He did,
however, go far better in hand-to-hand combat than Sarah. They were taught
about the different ammunition. Standard bullets were obvious, but stingers
were small darts containing poison that incapacitated a person for two days.
Flashers were light grenades, which would blind a person for up to ten minutes
if they looked at it directly. Stunners were capsules that, upon contact with
the victim, would break and spread an electric current through their body and
immobilise them. Bees were irritants, little rubber bullets coated in a
solution that caused hallucinations and large welts to appear on the body. They
were useful when you wanted to distract and disorientate, rather than kill.
Most of these were, just as Yuki had said, able to be fired out of a standard
gun. Both Hutch and Ian were competing for the position of weapons specialist,
to be taught how to use the other, more specialised weapons, but Sarah knew
they didn’t have a chance. Jaz was going to get it hands down. They had played an
inter-team game of paintball the other day. Their team had lost, but not by
far. Jaz’s strike rate alone had almost tipped them over the winning line.

Then,
on the Monday of their fourth week, the Sarg arrived at the mess tent while
they ate breakfast. This had never happened before. The hall went quiet.

“There
has been a development,” he said. “The enemy has pushed through our lines at
Desmark. The city is threatened. Desmark is vital for our water supply. You
will leave today.”  He left the hall. Noise broke like a tidal wave.

“Are
you kidding?” stormed Bettina, “he can’t do that? We’ve only had three weeks!
Three weeks of training! We’re not ready?” She looked hysterical. To everyone’s
surprise, Ian put an arm over her shoulder to calm her down.

“It
doesn’t matter,” he said, his voice soft, “we have no choice.”

Two
hours later and they were sitting in the transporter, stunned.

“How
could they do this to us?” muttered Bettina for the fiftieth time, her head in
her hands. “We’re not trained yet. It’s only been three weeks.”

Even
Hutch and Jaz, who usually stood up for everything military, had blank looks of
shock on their faces. Ian was the only person who seemed happy about it. Sarah
had heard him mutter something about finally seeing some action. She understood
all of this, even in some weird way Ian’s reaction, but she couldn’t understand
Finn’s. For some reason he kept on glaring at her. After Sarah felt a hole
being burnt into the side of her head for the one hundredth time that morning
she finally snapped.

“What?”
she hissed. “What is it? Why are you so pissed?”

“You
shouldn’t be here. They had nothing on you.”

“Oh
for Christ’s sake, Finn!” she yelled, exasperated, drawing the attention of the
others. “How many times do we have to go through this? What’s done is done. I’m
here whether you like it or not. If you want I can go and sit over near
Boulder.”

A
weird expression passed across his face and he went to open his mouth to speak
but was interrupted by Dylan.

“Alright,
Losers,” said Dylan. “I’ve been assigned to lead you dipshits.”

The
whole team groaned. If anything, this was worse than being sent into a war zone
untrained. Dylan had made their lives hell over the past three weeks, doing
everything in his power to get the loser tag to stick.

“Yeah
I’m about as happy about this as you are,” he replied. He did, Sarah noticed,
look genuinely upset. “But you will do every, god, damn, thing I say out there,
or you will get all of us killed. Understood?”

“What
about Hutch?” asked Gillie. The others perked up at this. They would all rather
have Hutch as their leader than Dylan. They could trust Hutch. Dylan was likely
to leave them in a ditch as bait.

Dylan
looked murderous but Hutch intervened. “I have the same amount of training as
you guys, Gillie,” he said. “Dylan’s, well, Dylan, but at least he’s been
trained.”

“That’s
right,” said Dylan, straightening up a little. “So, understood?” he repeated
forcibly.

They
nodded their heads dejectedly. Who were they kidding? Dylan was the best hope
they had. And if he was leading them, then he relied on them as much as they
relied on him to get out alive.

“So,”
said Sarah, “do you know anything about what’s going on over there?”

“Not
yet,” said Dylan. He stood up, gave them one more look, and then walked away to
join his friends in a different carriage.

Well,
thought Sarah, this is just great.