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Trying to not drop my spoon, I inspect the white blobs that, until a second ago, tasted like the most tender chicken I’ve ever had. I probe my mouth with my tongue to make sure nothing’s left stuck to my teeth, else I might retch. I’ve seen drawings of mussels in biology class and they looked like grandma pussies to me. Not that I’ve ever seen one. I mean old…vulvas.

I gulp down the wine and instantly feel better. And nope, the stuff doesn’t taste like vinegar. But its flavour still doesn’t justify Runner’s dreamy expression when he moved it around in his mouth and said, ‘Excellent!’

He puts his spoon down, stands, and looks at me. ‘I’ll wash. Then we talk.’

Hurray!
I think, but I have problems believing it’s finally going to happen. He might fall asleep in the bathtub or something.

———

Regina has set up a room for Runner and me. I’m surprised he isn’t sleeping in her bed. She’s wiped down our ground pads and sent both sleeping bags out to the cleaners. All our stuff, including ourselves, will smell like daisies by tomorrow morning.

Alone in the room, I lie down and roll up in one of the blankets, happy to rest my full stomach. The façade of another building shows through the window — black with yellow rectangles, a few are divided by curtains. Quiet muttering seeps through the walls, rumbling feet on stairwells, shouts down on the streets. Not one moment of silence. How can anyone live like this? I’ll happily leave the luxury of a bathtub and a warm bedroom to sleep in a tent somewhere in the snowy woods.

My mouth can’t stop yawning and my eyes burn. It must be close to midnight. To stay awake, I sit up and lean against the chilly wall.

The guard’s words ring in my memory.
Mr. McCullough, the rooms are prepared.
The rooms — plural. I doubt he meant Regina’s apartment. Rooms prepared for what? The sound of
Mr. McCullough
tasted of…fear? I roll my tongue around in my mouth, press it against my palate, but fail to identify what it was the man might have felt, seeing us. Harshness is what this city tastes of. Even the woman, Regina, has a harsh aroma. She’s on edge. Her hands are hardened, but not from work in the fields. The cracks in the calluses of her fingers aren’t darkened from soil and plant juices, but from something else. Her hands are… I hold my own hand close to my nose and suck in air to define what is missing. Machines! That’s what she works with. She smelled of grease, machine oil, and metal shavings. Why did I not identify them at once? My favourite odours. I guess I didn’t expect them on a woman.
 

The thought of my turbines makes me smile. I miss them.
My turbines
. Bullshit. They were never mine and would never be—

Runner rumbles through the door. He holds a candle, places it next to his ground pad, and sits down. ‘Do you want to hear it or do you want to sleep?’

‘Hear it.’

‘Okay.’ He crosses his legs, folds his hands in his lap, and says softly, ‘I’m known as
The Executor
.’

‘The what?’

‘As a member of the Sequencer council, my responsibility is to provide an expert opinion on anything related to warfare. I’m a strategist who sets the goals and determines actions to cripple the BSA. And I’m a sniper; I kill BSA leaders and soldiers. I execute decisions and people.’

The Executor. With every word he speaks, my skin is growing colder. I don’t know what to say. All the questions I have evaporate. Strangely, he doesn’t appear any different. The same gentle, but firm face, stubbly cheeks, olive skin, black hair dripping water on lean shoulders. I can’t imagine him running around killing people.

‘Cacho told me you were a boy,’ he continues. ‘I don’t know why he lied. Taking a female apprentice is probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.’

So he is taking me? But… I clear my throat. ‘I don’t understand.’ My chest hurts. I wonder if my heart has stopped beating. I put my hand there and I’m surprised to feel the familiar
thump thump
. ‘You saw I’m a girl. But you…you…’

‘You whacked me on the head pretty good, and that impressed me. I didn’t expect it. Quite a revelation for a man trained in combat. You taught me to never again underestimate bony young women.’ He smiles.
 

‘I got curious and decided to take the next step,’ he continues. ‘I went to your home, and then I saw it. I knew that expression. You looked like I felt when I tried to drown myself. I knew if I left without offering a probation, you’d be dead in hours. You’re a cutter. You’re not afraid to run a knife through your flesh. I decided to give you a few weeks. I told myself you could be someone else’s apprentice, that I’d get rid of you and then find a suitable young man. I almost congratulated myself at such a brilliant idea.’ He rubs his face. ‘I’m an idiot.’

‘So you have a problem with me not being male. Thanks very much. You probably forgot that it was a
bony young woman
who dragged you through the snow.’ I yank my blanket up to my chin and grace him with a cold stare. He probably doesn’t even see it, what with the little light the candle provides.

‘So you want to kill people,’ he says coldly.

‘You’re killing people. There must be something good about it,’ I retort.

He groans. ‘I know of only a handful of female snipers. Two of them are still alive. The other four have been captured, tortured, and killed. Cacho knows what I do. He knows the risks. I have no idea why he would want this for you.’

‘What’s the mortality rate among men?’ I snarl, almost proud of recalling the term.

‘A little lower. Micka, you are a good shot and you have a lot of grit. But you have no clue what it’s like to pull the trigger and watch a man or a woman die. That part is hard. I can teach you most of what you need to be an excellent sharp shooter, but no one can teach you to brush off repeated gang rapes, amputations, and whipping. If the BSA captured you, they’d make you watch all of this before they did it to you. You’d cry with relief when they finally showed you a beheading or stoning, because then you’d know your torture would soon come to an end. Men are shot. Bullet to the head at close range and that’s it. Women are seen as harbingers of all that is evil. They are made to suffer for weeks, sometimes months.’

I nod, but understand little. Images of corpses, piles of them, of dented bones and of torsos leaking innards, burn themselves into my eyes. I can’t even imagine gang rapes. My breath is heavy. Runner is silent.

‘I thought it’s called The Brothers and
Sisters
of the Apocalypse?’

‘Very few women work for the BSA. As long they are heterosexual virgins who believe in the BSA’s cause, they are comparatively safe. But only as long as they are of use and no one takes interest in them, sexually. Because it proves that she wants to lure decent men into evil.’

‘That makes absolutely no sense. How can anyone be so…stupid?’

Runner huffs a laugh. ‘Who knows?’

We are silent for a long moment. Then he lies down and pulls the blanket up to his shoulders. The candlelight reflects in his black eyes. ‘Don’t decide now.’

‘No. I mean, yes. I won’t.’

‘Is there anything else you’d like to know?’

Uh, yeah. Distraction would be great now. ‘Your last name, McCullough. I read that name in the first book you gave me. It was mentioned in connection with a study on bone injuries.’

‘Yes, I wrote it during my apprenticeship.’

‘You wrote and published a standard work during your apprenticeship?’

‘What’s wrong with that?’ he asks.

‘Nothing. Tell me about that study.’ I have to hold back a yawn.

‘I studied the casualties of acts of war, and the reasons why humans turned on each other during a time of great suffering — the Great Pandemic. The results were…sobering.’

‘Why? Because you found that one cannot trust people?’ I try to not sound too sarcastic.

‘No. Because I found that, as a species, we have no swarm intelligence whatsoever.’

‘A what?’

‘Bees… You’ve heard about honey bees, haven’t you?’

‘I’ve seen a hive once, in a tree. I’ve never told anyone about it.’
 

I was eight or ten then and watched the bees whenever I could sneak away from work in the fields, from homework or household chores, and if the turbines didn’t need attendance. I knew people would try to steal the honey and the bees would die or move away. I loved the scents the insects spread and the taste their buzzing produced in my mouth.

‘Honey bees,’ he continues, ‘are intelligent in a swarm. They are highly organised and every individual has a task. In emergencies, they act as one, despite their miniature brains. Humans, on the other hand, have a large and highly developed brain. We fancy ourselves the most intelligent species on Earth. We compose music, we build spacecraft…used to build spacecraft,’ he adds when he hears my shocked cough. ‘Long ago, Micka. But as a mass, we often act much dumber than if we’d acted alone. It gets worse with panic and distress. During the Great Pandemic — when every family had someone dying of disease, and medicine that once worked wonders didn’t do its job anymore — theories began to spread: The Jews caused the pandemic. The Gypsies caused the pandemic. The government took away our effective antibiotics and replaced them with powdered sugar. The Russians poisoned our air. The US Americans poisoned our water. God is eradicating all that is evil.
 
The Christians are guilty. The Muslims are guilty. And so on. The results were endless variations of witch-hunts that spiralled out of control. What began as a fistfight ended in bombings on a large scale.’

I press the heels of my palms against my eyes until I see lights popping. ‘The people in the train seemed to be afraid of you.’

‘Because they know what I do, and what it means to take a girl as an apprentice. They disapprove.’

‘The cook believed I was a boy.’

Runner snorts. ‘Yeah, that guy’s half blind. You might have been correct about the rat in his stew.’

Ugh, great. My stomach gurgles to remind me of the mussels I ate. ‘What’s wrong with this city? Why all this
death
?’ I ask.

‘It was occupied by the BSA for decades. They erected statues, carved and painted death everywhere. A few years ago, rebels took back the city. The people who live here are warriors who keep to themselves, who have their own tricks and secrets. And so do we, but the people here call us “meddlers.” They open their gates for us only as long as we keep killing BSA followers. Other than that, you’ll find little help in this city. Regina is a friend and she wants to help, but everyone else only tolerates us. Keep that in mind.’

‘Only a few years ago?’

‘Yes. The BSA is thriving again.’

That’s why he wanted a male apprentice. To help kill people who kill people. My head spins. Would I be able to pull the trigger? Not a thing one decides within minutes, I guess. But then, wouldn’t I have to decide within a fraction of a second when it comes to it? ‘What did you do before you came back for dinner?’

‘I organised our next leg and talked with the council. Next time, you’ll join me.’

I yawn quietly. ‘Where do we go?’

‘Far away. I’d rather show you. Tomorrow we’ll be taking a train from here, and then you’ll see.’

I’ll have to keep in mind never to ask Runner another question when I need a distraction from the awful things he’s only just told. I’m dead tired, but my brain races in circles. Murdering? Dying? Gang rape? Beheading? Next destination?

Chance is a bitch. She can suck my…whatever.

‘Runner?’ I whisper

‘Hmm.’ A sleepy answer.

‘What’s
heterosexual?
’

We enter the last wagon. Music pumps through my ears and into my body. The beats mess with my heart. My chest goes
woooomp woooomp woooomp
. The onslaught of flavours is overwhelming.

Only minutes ago, Runner had knocked at the door to my compartment, handed me my negative TB test and told me to come and have fun. With the corners of his mouth curving upwards, he’d said, ‘We might be a serious bunch most of the time, but when you find four or five of us in one spot, you can be sure we’ll throw a party.’

‘Why?’

He didn’t seem to understand my question. ‘A party or two before humanity goes down the drains cannot be such a weird idea, Micka. Wouldn’t you want to shake off hard work once in a while, forget all the good-byes you have to say, and enjoy the company of whoever managed to hang around?’

When I gave him a single nod — not my most affirmative one ever — he grinned, leaned closer and said, ‘There’ll be smoking, drinking, dancing, and love-making until sunrise.’ Then he turned around and strolled ahead.

The moment he mentioned that “make love” thing, my legs decided to walk in the other direction. My imagination keeps showing me a hundred writhing, naked bodies.

‘What’s wrong?’ Runner calls. He squints down at me, and I pull myself together. Writhing naked bodies? Who gives a shit. I’ll be shooting people soon.
 

Did I just think that?

Men and women fill the wagon to the brim. Their laughs and chatter trickle down my throat and demand a response. I clamp my mouth shut. The floor rocks from the moving of the train and the wild dancing. Smoke wafts through the air and mingles with scents of sweat, fruits, and…I don’t even know what else. There’s so much. So many word-flavours mix with scents and music, I have to focus to tell them apart. I strain my eyes but I can’t find anyone without clothes, not a single naked person. I’m so relieved, I begin cackling like mad. Runner has a sense of humour I totally don’t get. Next time I’ll think twice before I tell him I’m a virgin.