I look around blindly, backing away.
“Now,” Kenji barks at me. “And I want your hands where I can see them.”
I hardly hear the conversations around me as they swell and retreat, voices clamoring, bodies surging, but I can feel the tension in the room shifting again: relief reorganizing into fear; easy whispers rising into terse warnings. There’sa collective rush of sound, the soft clatter of weapons lifting to meet my heart again.
James drags a hand through his hair.
“Do you know how to count, Rosabelle?” Kenji cocks his head at me. “Let’s count together, okay? I’m going to give you five whole seconds before I show you how this gun works. You ready to learn math and physics at the same time?”
I feel like I’m somewhere outside of my body. Heat prickles along my skin, my nerves flaring and fading with sensation.
“Five—”
“Bro, c’mon, this isn’t necessary—”
The pounding in my head grows louder.
“—four—get the fuck out of my way, James—”
My mind coils tighter and tighter.
“Just let me talk to her for a second—”
I move slowly, as if in a dream, unhooking the rifle from around my neck. My feet seem to sink into the ground, the heft of the cold metal hitting my palms just as I begin to form the rough shape of a desperate plan.
Last chance.
“Three—”
Five bullets.
“Two—”
Clara.
Clara—
13
James
“I’m sorry,” she says desperately.
I hear her voice as the pain explodes across my chest, the force of the bullet knocking me backward as she sprints off at full speed on a fractured ankle. A deafening hail of gunfire erupts almost instantaneously, sparking as it pings off steel surfaces. I make out muted shouts and footfalls, the blur of bodies taking off after her. Others reach for me, steadying me, but I can’t make sense of anything right away, not while the sound of my own blood rushes between my ears.
She shot me at close range.
I stagger forward, trying to bear my own weight as my vision briefly flares, cold sweat breaking out along the nape of my neck. Blood seeps warm and fast through my shirt, snaking down my torso, then my arms. I watch, breathing hard, as it drips off my fingers, splattering red across the white skin of my sneakers. I mutter a roughthank youto the soldiers bracing me, then release myself from their collective grip, taking a single moment to steady my head and assess my situation:
The bullet is lodged in my shoulder, just below the clavicle. I’m guessing it shattered bone.
I can’t move my arm.
“Son of a bitch,” I hear Kenji hiss, then turn to see him half lying on the ground, applying pressure to a hemorrhaging wound in his thigh. “Why does she always go for my legs?”
I blink, clearing the haze from my vision, my breathing stabilizing slowly. The pain recedes by degrees as my body tries to heal itself around the bullet. This is going to need surgery.
Fuck.
