"Uh—" Jack frowned at the guns as he picked them up. They were a lot heavier than he'd expected. "Grip how?"

"Come on, come on, move along," the man snapped, already pushing the next recruit's weapons across the counter.

Fumbling the guns into an awkward grip, Jack moved away. At the end of the room ahead was one final door, with glimpses of daylight shining through each time one of the new recruits went out. He looped the rifle sling over one shoulder, just to get it out of the way, and slid his hand into his right-hand pocket. The man had said there was a holster somewhere in there?

"It goes like this," a girl's voice said from behind him. Jack turned, to see the dark-eyed girl who'd had the brief run-in earlier with Jommy Randolph. "What?" he asked.

"I said it goes like this," she repeated. She patted her right hip, where her Moray was already nestled in its holster. "You pull the tab and it folds out into shape."

"Oh." Jack located the tab and pulled. Sure enough, the holster folded out. "Right. Thanks."

"The rifle goes like this," she added, looping the sling over her right shoulder with the gun pointed down and the top of the barrel facing forward. "This way you can just grab the grip and swing it up on its strap into firing position." She demonstrated. "See?"

"Yeah," Jack said, tucking his Moray away and redoing the rifle. Gingerly, he swung it up. "Yeah, I see."

"Don't worry, it won't bite," she assured him, her face somewhere between contempt and amusement. "See the red spirals along the barrels? These are candy canes."

"They're what?"

"Candy canes. Non-functional guns."

Jack frowned down at his rifle. "What are they giving us non-functional guns for?"

She shrugged. "Get us used to carrying the weight, I suppose."

"But why not use real ones?" Jack persisted. "They're going to give us those before we go into the field anyway, aren't they?"