Skullfucker Mike and Reggie were both clearly drunk, and just as clearly not as drunk as they planned to be by the end of the night. Mike flashed a grin at Manny and offered a hug that the fixer accepted awkwardly.

“Guy, it’s good to see ya,” Mike said. “I gotta tell you I’m kinda jealous of your nap. I miss sleep like that. With all this chrome in me,” he waved a hand vaguely over his head, “I can’t get exhausted like that anymore. You miss it when it’s gone. I gotta drink like, thirty of these fucking things—” Mike gestured to the half-full drink in front of him. It looked like a pina colada. A strange incense-y odor wafted up from it—“just to pass out like a normal person.”

Reggie was drinking the same thing. He offered his half-full glass to Manny.

“These things are the best man. Vodka and opium coladas.”

“They got a liiiiiiiiiiil’ bitta THC in ’em too,” Mike added in a high, sing-song voice.

Manny waved them off.

“I’m good, thanks. I just woke up a minute ago. I probably shouldn’t immediately take three different drugs.”

Reggie and Skullfucker Mike both looked at him like he was an alien.

“Weird,” they said at exactly the same time. Mike laughed, and Reggie looked back at his screen as a push-notification popped up with a cheery “ding.”

“Shitting tits,” he cursed.

Manny and Skullfucker Mike leaned into the screen. The notification was a newswire update from a journalist who must’ve been embedded with either the SDF or Austin’s forces. The title said it all:

As the Heavenly Kingdom prepares for another assault, SDF and Austin abandon Waco.

“I’m not surprised they’re pulling out,” Mike said. “Your people are good enough fighters on a normal day. But the SDF’s built to dominate a buncha squabbling militias. They were never gonna hold off a sustained assault from a real army.”

The sleep was fully banished now. Manny was awake, and the gravity of what had happened over the last few days sank in again. Hamid and DeShawn were probably dead. So was Mr. Peron. And Alejandro. And Oscar. Oh holy shit, holy shit, what am I going to tell Aisha? And then the darker, more selfish thoughts: Am I going to have time to fly out of Austin?

“How the hell did the Martyrs turn into a real fucking army overnight?” he asked, with more fear in his voice than he meant to display.

“Well,” Reggie said, as he gestured to a series of curated social media posts from people in and around ciudad de muerta. “Best as we can figure, they sorta stole most of the Republic’s army. There are a lot of reports of entire units of Republic soldiers, thousands of fighters, turning at once.”