Nona decided to go along with this. It seemed important to Hot Sauce.
“Yes, you made it up.”
Hot Sauce’s hand was still trembling a little. She didn’t seem like she’d been hurt, but she was shivering. She tugged up her shirt so that Nona could see, along with the soft watery ripples of the burns down her belly, what she had tucked into the waistband of her trousers. It was a handgun. Nona said, alarmed, “Hot Sauce, don’t carry it like that, Pyrrha says everyone who carries guns in their pants ends up shooting off their balls, and it sounds incredibly rude but I believe her.”
Hot Sauce’s face wavered and softened.
“You’re sweet,” she said.
From down the corridor and a little beyond, there was a big crash, and then a really astonishing huge noise like ZZZAT—the kind of whipcrack sound Pyrrha could make with the dish towel—and a very short scream. Hot Sauce sat up so quickly that it was all Nona could do to wrestle her down again. She struggled against Nona toward the door and Nona had to go full deadweight on her, pin her to the floor, wrap her arms and her legs around her as though she were Hot Sauce’s baby who lived in a pouch. They both fell to the floor and were a little stunned, but when a huge, resonant BLAM—BLAM—BLAM—percussive gunshot rattled down the hall, much bigger and deeper than the normal peppery gunfire noises, Hot Sauce went quiet and limp. She shuddered in Nona’s arms.
She said, “I made it up? All of it?”
“Yes, all of it,” said Nona, and then in a fit of honesty, she said—“Only, what did you make up, Hot Sauce?”
“The bullet went into your head,” said Hot Sauce.
Nona tried to remember everything Honesty had ever told her about lying, lies, porkies, and untruths.
“You think it did,” she said cunningly, “but it didn’t.”
“It made a hole,” said Hot Sauce.
Nona, exhausted from lies, was saved from having to think up more by another BLAM—BLAM and a long, cut-off scream, and then a terrific tinkling glassy smash. A yell seemed to briefly come from outside, somewhere, and then there was no yell at all. Nona held Hot Sauce very tightly, and after a while she felt Hot Sauce’s arms go around her, and she knew that Hot Sauce was going to be all right. They lay there together in the sweltering, gross-smelling dark, listening to the sounds coming from down the hallway.
Ever since she had known what fighting was, Nona had yearned to see Camilla fight; Camilla mostly wouldn’t. She had sparred with Pyrrha a couple of times, briefly and violently, always on Pyrrha’s critique, with Nona barely able to follow what was going on: sometimes on the beach, in the dark, away from the hot stripe of the lone yellow light still functioning in front of the harbour pier. Now as she listened as hard as she possibly could to noises she could not understand, Nona shivered all over and could not work out what she felt or what she wanted. She kept savagely biting at the inside of one lip so that the blood would come out, and then it would seal over. She heard noises that sounded as though people were throwing furniture around the classroom—rude when they were already low on chairs for anyone who wasn’t a tiny, older kids were sitting on all sorts of things—and then one last, long sound that wasn’t a scream, but a huge whimper. Then nothing. Hot Sauce’s gun poked into Nona’s thigh.
After a long time in the silence she whispered, “Is it over?”
Hot Sauce didn’t answer.
“We should stay here, I guess,” said Nona, answering herself: it was always nice to be answered, even if it was just you.
Hot Sauce was so still and quiet that Nona thought she must have fallen asleep. When someone rapped lightly at the generator-room door though, she rolled away from Nona with her hand at her waistband, and it wasn’t until the Angel’s voice said, “Nona? Hot Sauce?” that she took her hand away.
Nona stood as the door opened, and there was the Angel. It was too hard to see clearly in the dimness of the room, but she didn’t seem any worse for wear, not limping or anything. Noodle followed on her heels, still cringing a little bit, but he headed straight to Nona and Hot Sauce when he saw they were lying down: Noodle loved it when people were lying down. He sniffed Nona around the mouth and licked her until she said, “Eugh,” and she had to sit up in a hurry.
The Angel said, very gently, “We need to leave now.”
Nona said, “How is Cam?” Feeling this was unfair, she added hastily, “And—Pash?”
“They’re fine. Cuts and scrapes.”