Pretty Little Weapon

Kill Or Be Killed

With a gun to my head, I splutter out. “I-I'll join.”

“What’s that?” Felix presses the gun harder into my cheek. “I can’t hear you.”

“I said I’ll join your gang!”

Felix lowers the gun and drops his arms around me.

I move away, shaking from fear.

He just threatened to kill me! A gun was so close to shooting a hole through me! And the man is grinning at me.

“It’s settled then.” He says. “And if you try to escape or leave this place without my permission, I promise I will hunt you down and kill you.”

I gulp, and nod, the understanding, reaching me.

And so, my training begins.

The first week, I am terrible.

Genuinely, embarrassingly terrible. The trainer Felix assigns me, a tall woman named Bex, does not coddle me about this.

“The boss has assigned me to your training. And I will be frank with you.” She folds her arms, and drones on. “I do not condone excused and weakness. Each time you fail, I will not correct you. I will only correct you.”

Before I can say anything in response, she knocks me flat on the mat.

“Ugh.” I groan, and try to get up.

I’m about to protest about her sudden assault, when she knocks me down again.

“Your stance is too open. And you’re too weak. You need some muscle.” She says, frowning at me sprawled on the floor.

By the end of the first week, I realise that Bex can randomly throw me to the floor. So I remain on alert, my senses heightened.

The second weak, I’m able to avoid being flipped over. We begin to spar, which is mostly Bex throwing punches at me while I whimper in pain.

“You lack fast reflexes.” She notes, and adds some more segments into our training.

At the end of the third week, I’m able to block Bex’ punches. By the fourth, I land my first clean hit. Bex steps back and looks at her arm where I caught her and gives me a single nod.

It is the highest praise she has given me, and I feel it like sunlight.

The next month, I’m trained at shooting.

The first time I hold a gun, my hands shake badly enough that Bex takes it back.

“You can’t shoot someone while quivering like a chicken.”

My face goes pallid. “I’d be shooting someone?”

Bex shakes her head disapprovingly. “Why else would you need to know how to handle a gun? For fun?”

She must see how the idea sickens me, that she grips my shoulders in a vice-like grip.

“Hazel. In this world, it’s either kill or be killed. If you want to be killed, it’s perfectly fine with me that we skip this.”

When she says this, I think about Vanessa's smile as I was dragged out. I think about Alessandro's eyes who’d used me then disposed of me like a tool.

Kill them, or be killed by them right?

The thought, makes me take back the gun from her.

Unfortunately, when I load it and stand in front of a target, I miss every shot.

But by month two, I hit centre mass seven times out of ten.

Most of my time is spent in the training room. I barely leave.

When I do, is to go to bed, or have lunch with the purple haired lady who’d come into my room my first day here.

Her name is Lara, and she becomes a close friend, and a source of information, telling me everything about the Viper Gang.

“If Paul, can warm up to you, your life here will be easier. As the Don’s right hand he has massive influence.”

But each time I come anywhere near Paul, he either grunts or looks at me with a frown.

He watches my training from the doorway sometimes, arms crossed, expression unchanged. He only complains when I make mistakes, but never says I’m improving, even when it’s obvious that I am.

By the time I’m able to hit ten out of ten targets effortlessly, a new training is introduced.

The art of seduction.

This, I am thought by Felix himself.

“There are some fights you can’t win with violence. Fights that require psychological control.”

As he says this, he leans in so close I can feel his body heat. I freeze, as his lips press on the shell of my ear.

“You need to observe your target, and know to manipulate their weaknesses, so they’d obey craved you.”

He brushes a strand of stray hair, away from my face, then leans back, smirking. “You need to know how to make a person feel chosen and seen. And slightly off-balance, all at once.”

This feels like the most dishonest part of the training.

Then I remember Alessandro.

The way he looked at me in private, like he’d move the sky and the earth for me.

The way he measured exactly how much warmth to give me, to keep me exactly where I was. The whole four years, performed for an audience of one.

Understanding the mechanism, makes it easier to practice it.

During each physical session, Felix checks in.

He appears at the edge of the training room sometimes, watching for ten minutes, before stepping forward and giving his critique.

Seven months in, on a particular rainy day, he stays longer and watches me run a full drill.

Hand to hand, I spar against Bex. Then transition to the shooting range, then a scenario Bex sets up in the padded section involving a mock negotiation with an enemy.

When I finish, breathing hard, I look up and find him watching with an expression I haven’t seen on him before.

He doesn’t say anything that day. He just leaves.

But the next morning, my training schedule has three new additions.

Months move the way they do when you are too busy to count them.

I’d long stopped measuring time by how long it has been since the ceremony. Instead, I start measuring it by what I can do that I couldn’t do the week before.

I’ve stopped looking at the ground when I walk.

I’m not sure when exactly it happens.

One day I simply notice that I have walked the full length of the main hall without my eyes dropping once, and nobody said anything, and the world did not end.

A year passes.

I am standing in the training room when Felix walks in.

Not to observe from the edge this time. He walks to the centre and stops in front of me, hands in his pockets, looking at me.

I look back at him without flinching, no longer intimidated by his presence. The girl who used to shrink back, is so far behind me, I can barely find her when I look back.

He nods once, with something that looks like satisfaction.

“You’re ready, Hazel.” His tone is serious. It that tells me this is the moment everything had been building up to. “It’s time.”

“Time for what?” I ask, even though I already feel the answer in my gut.

His green eyes hold mine.

“To go back.” He says. “You’re going to infiltrate the Crimson Gang.”