He shoved the wrench into his waistband and threw himself into an elegant backflip (he maybe wanted to impress Bigsby a little). He landed fourteen feet back from his prior position. In the same continuous motion he picked two fist-sized chunks of concrete off the ground, flipped back again, and launched both improvised missiles at the retreating Martyrs.

The rockets impacted, one after the other, in spaces Roland had been a millisecond before. Shrapnel from the detonations tore at his skin and penetrated his less critical organs. Roland’s hindbrain registered at least thirty new injuries. None of them were serious enough that he felt actual pain. He back-flipped again, definitely show-boating, and landed eight feet ahead of the last rocket, and right in front of Bigsby’s fighting position.

Right as he landed, the chunks of concrete he’d thrown impacted the face plates of both Martyrs at around eleven-hundred feet-per-­second. That impact wouldn’t be enough to kill men in Ares armor, probably, but it was enough to break most of their suit sensors and shatter a lot of the bones in their faces. Roland fixed Bigsby with an evil grin as the last two power-armored men staggered back, wavered on their feet, and collapsed.

“Son-of-a–” Bigsby started to curse in a low, awed voice.

“Guess I’ll be taking that nipple now,” Roland interrupted him.

Chapter 9

Sasha.

They unloaded her in Plano. The porters who cracked open her crate, two men in dirty jumpsuits, seemed disappointed she wasn’t food. One of the men was tall and balding, the other shorter and still fairly young. They had white skin, burnt reddish by the sun, and neither of them looked liked they’d bathed in quite some time. Their faces were gaunt. Sasha didn’t see any extra fat on either of them.

“Aw dang,” said the tall man.

“Welcome,” said the short one. “I hope yer ready fer what this is.”

They were not exactly the welcome crew she’d expected. Saul had told her a man named “David” would be waiting. But neither of the porters knew who David was. They seemed much more frustrated than joyous at her presence. The building wasn’t what she’d expected either. It looked like an old FedEx facility, with all the branding covered by red spray paint.

There was trash everywhere, mostly food waste from crates of aid supplies that had been opened too late. The spoiled food had been shoved into large piles and left to rot in one corner of the large room. Sasha guessed this had once been a loading dock, where delivery trucks would’ve dropped off and received packages. The room was filled with a mix of aid crates and miscellaneous boxes, stacked into piles by a ragged army of tired-looking men. Like the two men who’d greeted her, they all looked malnourished and skinny.