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But all I do is stretch my aching limbs and make my way to debriefing. I know I fucked up the heat signature cloaking. He’s shown me how to do it, but I thought I knew better.

Who would have guessed it? At noon, I dropped into my bunk, not once imagining Yi-Ting in my arms. I was half-dead. That’s how it felt, at least. I slept until nine o’clock this morning when Runner rapped his knuckles against my skull. Now, I’m following his orders yet again. There’s no time for breaks. The
Brothers and Sisters of the Apocalypse
don’t wait for my sorry arse to be ready. Truth be told, they are only the Brothers of the Apocalypse. Don’t know if there have ever been any “sisters.” To the BSA, women are the birthplace of all that is evil, useful only as slaves in the kitchen and in the bunks. I call them the Bullshit Army.

The hollow, gas-filled pearl sitting on my tongue is a constant reminder of what the BSA is capable of. Runner’s one condition to take me as his apprentice was that I get a toxic implant I can crack with my teeth if the BSA captures me. I can take one or two men with me when I exhale the gas into their faces. That won’t be too hard, for they’ll be very close then — between my legs, raping me. I shudder, trying to push the thought away. Women have inherited the shitty end of war. Not only do we get killed, we get raped until we beg to die. Sometimes, I hate humans and I can relate to the BSA’s motives to get rid of us all. But then I have to remind myself that it’s only the BSA who acts like that. Well, mostly.

I’m an irregularity. Runner has never had a female apprentice, and neither he nor his fellow Sequencers think it was a particularly good idea to take me in. Since the night he told me exactly what he does, I think he and his friends might have a point. Not that I regret my decision. I love it and hate it at the same time. I’ve never been more alive than I am now.

Should I survive my apprenticeship, I’ll be a Sequencer and join the ranks of the guardians of humankind. Sequencers have existed ever since the Great Pandemic snuffed out three billion lives, and the remaining seven billion took up weapons and murdered each other — sometimes in hand-to-hand combat, sometimes by pushing a button, dropping a bomb, and ripping apart thousands while radioactively contaminating vast stretches of land.

The pandemics aren’t gone yet and I doubt they ever will be. Tuberculosis has had a grip on humankind ever since we began crawling around on this planet. The disease kept spreading until antibiotics were discovered, then it slowed down for a while until tuberculosis bacteria learned to neutralise the drugs. After all, it was microorganisms that invented antibiotics, so why shouldn’t they invent countermeasures? Sadly, humans were slow to realise this and now, with multiple drug-resistance genes in all kinds of pathogens, many diseases cannot be cured. The cholera pandemic — the seventh in human history — hit some time in the 1960s. I can’t even imagine how the people lived back then. Cars, a moving-picture-thing they called “movies,” and food in such abundance that vast amounts were thrown away every day. I grew up with a donkey cart being the fastest way to travel, and with turbines and solar paint as the only means of energy production, besides wood from the surrounding forests to heat our houses. Even if we had had “movies,” there was no time to sit idle and watch them. School was somewhat of a luxury for kids from well-to-do parents — although I never considered it as such. To me, school was torture. Kids from poor parents had to work in the fields from dawn to dusk to put enough food on the table. When winter came, it often proved insufficient, though.

I think of the first day of my apprenticeship and almost stumble over my own feet. What a shock it was when Runner led me to an aircraft the size of…of…heck, I don’t even have a comparison. The thing was at least fifty metres long and produced so much noise that my ears screeched for minutes after I climbed into its belly. When it took off, I thought I would die from terror. And all Runner did was to calmly place his rifle on the floor and show me how to aim, how to hold the stock steady, and how to exhale and pull the trigger.

I’ll have to shoot people soon. I know it’s going to be members of the BSA — a bunch of sickos with the goal of eradicating all humans. They believe that God (or whoever wants us all gone) sent the Great Pandemic to get rid of us, because apparently he believes his latest job — the creation of humans — has turned out to be sort of unsatisfactory. Since the course of the Great Pandemic was unsatisfactory as well, considering three million of us survived the disease and the ensuing wars, the BSA feels compelled to help God bring an end to all human life. I don’t know what they think God will do after that. Start from scratch and have another unsatisfactory result?

So…to save lives I’ll have to take lives, and that’s what Runner teaches me. I don’t want to think of my first time. I really don’t. But I can’t help it. He’s told me that his custom-built suppressed .50 calibre rifle doesn’t just plop holes into people — it rips them apart at a maximum range of two-thousand five-hundred metres and a muzzle velocity of one thousand metres per second.

My own rifle is a suppressed .357 calibre highly accurized rifle with a maximum range of one-thousand five hundred metres. The thing can punch voids into folks. A shot to the head would tear half the skull off. I don’t know how I’ll keep my eyes open when a man is in my finder and I squeeze the trigger.

Although my rifle is much lighter than Runner’s, the thing weighs heavy in my hand now. My pack carries fifteen kilograms, and half of that is a bag of the rice Yi-Ting packed with a grin. No, I’m not attempting to suffocate my enemies with grass seeds. I’m exercising. Endurance, Runner calls it. Fuck it. I can endure a lot of shit. I’ve starved every third or fourth winter. I’ve seen people die from bloody coughs and infected wounds no matter how much I helped our physician with infusions, cold wraps, and broth. I’ve had my hands in blood up to my elbows when I saved Runner’s life. And I saw my brother die.

I wipe the last thought away and focus on running. He wants me to run a certain distance in a certain time. No idea which numbers he mentioned precisely and I don’t really care. I give my best and that’s all there is. He knows that, anyway.

I’m not complaining. I had a whole night’s sleep and the sweetest girl on the island is with me. She thinks Runner is treating me too harshly. He can treat me much harsher if it makes Yi-Ting run with me.

Her bare feet tread lightly in the sand. I stare at the swing of her narrow hips and her long black hair that is so shiny one would think it’s bathed in oil. Maybe she can guess I’m watching.

As long as the ground isn’t freezing, I prefer to be barefooted. Here in the subtropics, there’s no reason for me to squeeze into footwear. Boots make my toes useless for balancing and my footfalls get loud and clunky. But in moments such as this, I’m reminded of how much more vulnerable naked feet are — I have to watch out to not break my ankles. The dark-grey rocks are round and slippery. The sea washes over them, allowing algae to grow on the surface and mussels in the cracks between. I’m pretty slow and can’t focus on anything but my feet and where to place them. Once I reach soft sand, I increase my speed and let my mind wander.

So here I am, at the edge of the Indian Ocean, chasing a beautiful girl while carrying combat paraphernalia on my back, a sniper rifle in my hand, a .40 calibre pistol strapped to my thigh, and a large knife at my hip. Yi-Ting wears her loose cotton pants and shirt, she’s unarmed, smiles a lot, and is as fast as a deer. The two of us must make for a curious sight.

‘Are you okay climbing this?’ I huff when we reach the cliffs.
 

‘Are you kidding me?’ She rolls her eyes.

I love the lilt of her voice and how her words taste. Sometimes, I beg her to speak her wild mix of languages for me, and when she does, it makes my tongue prickle. The dominant Min dialect tastes of a handful of berries tumbling through a wooden bowl — round, soft, and quick, with a tardy sweetness and a slight rasping across my palate. The Japanese fragments mixed into it are softer, strewn with grating
dshee
sounds that spread flavours of unripe plums in my mouth. When she speaks English, her linguistic flavour seeps through and I find myself adopting her speaking patterns just to taste her from a distance.

I dig my fingers into the rock and begin pulling myself up. I’m not allowed to sling my rifle over my shoulder, Runner said. If not for the weapon and the weight on my back, I’d be up there in a flash. But one-handed and with a shitty centre of gravity, the wind could probably blow me off the cliffs.

I climb and kick very inelegantly, scraping a chunk of skin off the side of my right hand, until finally I scramble over the edge.

Yi-Ting stands with her hand on her hip, her pants showing a pale gap between waistband and shirt. My heart pounds a double beat. I long to see more of her smooth skin but right now I’m dirty, sweaty, and ridiculously red-faced. She’s too pretty, anyway. She’ll never let me kiss her, even if I polish myself.

I inhale a deep breath and tackle the final stretch of the run. Only two kilometres on flat terrain left: stupid muscle-producing exercise. After that, sharp shooting. Runner wants me to be exhausted, trembling, and hypoglycaemic to see how my aim is under simulated battle conditions. I’ll probably plop my bullets into some poor gull high up in the sky instead of the targets on the ground.

After half of the final distance, my legs and lungs burn, but I don’t slow down; I’m probably too slow anyway. Yi-Ting runs like a dancer. She doesn’t appear the slightest bit tired.
 

‘Yi-Ting?’ I manage through elaborate breathing. ‘Tell me about your flights. I need a distraction.’

She chuckles and slows until we run next to each other. ‘I’m both Ben’s and Kat’s apprentice and in my third year.’

She always begins her stories like this. You can tell she’s proud having two mentors; she keeps them both busy and happy with her performance.
 

‘I switch back and forth between the two, but this is the first time the three of us are working together. Kat teaches me everything about communication and intelligence. It’s exciting but too much sitting on my bum for my taste. With Ben it’s much
much
more fun.’ She grins. ‘I love flying.’ Then, the corners of her mouth pull down. ‘Only…the bombs.’

The bombs. I still can’t wrap my head around this gentle girl throwing huge packs of explosives down at BSA camps. Or Ben! Compared to the serious Kat, he’s a fun guy. I’ve never seen him angry or sad, and the mop of tight blonde curls make him look like a small boy, harmless and funny.
 

Ben and Yi-Ting pull off all kinds of dangerous things with his small solar aircraft. The machine is so quiet you hear it only when it’s about to slam right into you. I once saw her fly a loop while Ben cheered from the ground. My stomach was about to blow lunch just from watching.

‘What about the cooking?’ I grunt. I need a break and probably shouldn’t spend the little air I’ve got left on chatting.

‘My dad is a cook. I was raised in his kitchen and soaked up all his secret recipes.’ She shows me her white teeth. ‘Cooking is second best to flying. Besides, someone has to feed you crazy people.’

On my first day, I mistook her for kitchen help until she smacked the towel at Ben’s butt and made him do the dishes. Then I thought there was something going on between the two, but soon Ben started flirting with me for some bizarre reason, and Yi-Ting didn’t seem affronted. We are only three women on the island, me, Yi-Ting, and Kat. I’m guessing Ben tried his luck with his apprentice and she told him off. And no one in his right mind is going to mess with Kat. So that leaves only me and the ants and bees.

The wind is whipping salty air into my face. I can see Runner far ahead. He stands unmoving and watches my progress. Maybe I should be faster? I pump my legs and spend the last bit of energy I didn’t know I had. Puffing and grunting, I run up to him, and drop my ruck next to his rifle.

‘No, you’ll be fifty metres to my left. Put your earbud in. Move.’

‘See you later,’ Yi-Ting calls and I’m not sure if she means only Runner, or both of us. I pick up my stuff and make my legs run a bit farther. Then I drop my ruck, take the earbud from my pocket, plug it in, and make myself comfortable on the ground.

‘We’ll practice synchronised sniping,’ sounds in my left ear.
 

Okay, so we’ll be aiming at the same target, alternating shots, calling out corrections, and acting as each other’s spotter to make sure the target is very very dead.
 

‘We begin on the far left,’ Runner says. ‘Total of four shots per target. I get the first shot.’

I gaze through my scope, blink in confusion, and check the set angle. ‘Runner? Did you fiddle with my scope?’

‘I might have
bumped
against it.’

‘Asshole,’ I growl.

‘It’s your responsibility to never let your rifle out of your sight and to check its functionality before you even think of walking into battle,’ he reminds me.

‘I’m sorry,’ I mutter.