Chapter 23.2

The next week, Nick and Vicki brought me down into the woods outside the town and set a duffle on the ground.

“What are we doing?” I asked.

“We are teaching you to fight and shoot,” Vicki said. “Even if it means pulling teeth to do so. You need to be able to rescue yourself in a fight.”

“Considering you’re injured right now, we’re--I am--going to start with shooting,” Nick said pulling a rifle out of the duffle and throwing it at me. I caught it and noticed the suppressor on the end. He started walking with an awkward gait, almost like he was pacing. He got to a certain point stopped and then walked over to a nearby tree and started pacing back towards us. When he reached a certain point he motioned me over. “Stand here,” he said.

I did what I was told as he returned to the tree and pulled a paper out of his pocket. Two knives pinned the paper to the rather fat tree. A human silhouette with various numbers marking different parts.

“I have errands to run,” Vicki said. “See you back at the room.”

She left as Nick returned.

“You need to be able to at least hit three center mass shots in a row, before we move onto any other kind of weaponry,” Nick said walking back. “This is a pretty standard axis battle rifle, you should have trained on it. Remember how to use it?”

I nodded.

“Show me,” he instructed. He began listing various parts of the rifle and telling me to do certain things. I did as he asked, pointing out the difference between the stock and forestock, turning the safety on and off, field stripping it down and putting it back together. Nick nodded and handed me a magazine. “Load it, chamber a round and stop,” he instructed.

I did as he asked, the rifle instantly feeling heavier in my hands. Not like heavier physical weight wise, but like morally. Now, I could kill someone with this, the inert hunk of metal turned into a killing machine with a single instance of muscle memory.

“Good,” Nick sounded pleased. It was definitely better than the last time I learned to shoot. “For a hacker, you at least know how to use a rifle.”

I have never been lulled into a falser sense of security about anything. Three hours, a hundred rounds and six paper targets later, I flopped down on the ground. My shoulder screamed from taking most of the recoil and my vision was starting to blur from focusing on the same point for so long. Nick returned from tacking up another target and stared down at me.

“I’m fairly sure you weren’t allowed to do this in boot camp,” he said.

“I’m a hacker, we didn’t need to be good at shooting,” I said.

“You made special forces deadhead hacker, you had to be better than this,” he said motioning to the pile of swiss cheese papers with no consistency in anything.

“You mean before I jumped out of a plane and my commanding officer sabotaged my jump suit?” I asked. “I’m sure I was a marginally better shot.”

“Get up, last target for today,” he said.

“One minute,” I said. I rolled onto my stomach and pushed my arms up, feeling the splits of pain in my back as the stitches strained. The muscles underneath complained as their newly healed areas were pulled at. I pushed to my feet after that, picking up the rifle where I’d laid it down. Nick handed me another magazine and motioned down range at the tree.

I tucked the rifle into my shoulder and set the sights on the center of blurry target. I rested my finger outside the trigger housing until I was ready. I took a deep breath and squeezed down on the trigger as I released it. The rifle kicked in my grasp and three holes appeared in the center of the target, as least vertically center. The first round struck the target in his stomach, the second in the neck and the third over his head.

“This is impossible!” I cried.

“Not impossible,” Nick said.

“Yes, it is! We’ve been at this for three hours and I still can’t get anything resembling three shots within a foot of each other!” I said. “This is impossible.”

Nick looked around at the ground and picked up a large nut from one of the trees. “Trade,” he said.

I handed him the rifle and took the nut. “What am I supposed to do with this, throw it at the tree?” I asked.

“Throw it straight up,” Nick said. “Make sure it gets a few feet above your head.”

“And the point of this is?”

“To show you it’s not impossible,” he said. “Now throw it and keep your eye on it.”

I threw the nut up into the air and in a split second, Nick had the rifle to his shoulder and had fired. The nut exploded into a cloud of dust and Nick lowered the rifle. “Not impossible,” he said and held the rifle out to me.

I took it and resumed a shooting position.

“Relax,” Nick said. “You’re tense, you need to relax your shoulders and upper body. It’ll lessen how much you shake. Hold the rifle steady. Breathe. Don’t close your eyes! If you close your eyes you can’t see your target and you don’t know where you’re aiming!”

“I don’t know where I am going to hit in the first place,” I muttered in Tzi.

“And don’t sass me in another language,” Nick responded in Tzi. “Now, shoot the target.”

I fired and my shoulder with a spasm of pain down the length of my arm, causing my grip to loosen. I let go of the forestock, my hand going to my shoulder as I grit my teeth.

“Follow through,” Nick said. “Always follow through.”

“We need to stop,” I wheezed. “My shoulder can’t take much more of this.”

Nick walked over and pulled my shirt aside to look at my shoulder. A bruise already blossomed on it, poking out from the bandages.

“Fine,” he said. “Clean it when we get back to the room. Safety it and help me pack this stuff up.” I did as he asked and we returned to the hotel room where I cleaned the rifle before curling up and promptly falling asleep.