“Please stop telling me this.”

“I’m not telling you for fun. I’m telling you because it’s important.” Kyle was trembling, but his voice was steady. “My foot,” he continued. “I know you’re pretending it’s okay, but it’s bad. You know how infections work. I don’t have long before it hits my blood. If it hasn’t yet. So you’ll need to make a very tight tourniquet around my calf. Then find where the swelling is and cut beyond that. Make sure you’re past any redness, and if you’re not sure, cut higher. Sanitize the knife, and cover your mouth so you’re not breathing on me while you do it. Try to cut through the muscle quickly, so I don’t have much time to fight you. You’re going to have to saw through my tibia and fibula. Otherwise you could try to break them off, but I think sawing is better. If you heat the knife in the fire, you might be able to cauterize blood vessels as you go.”

“Even if this was a reasonable idea,” Mara said, “and not a terrible one, you’d still end up with a whole new wound to get infected. A much worse one. And you’d have no fucking leg.”

“It might buy me a few days,” he said.

“Do you hear yourself?”

“I feel it, Mara.”

“I think you have blood poisoning already and it’s gone to your head.”

“Maybe.”

Mara felt suddenly very angry that Bullfrog and Ashley had left her to deal with this.

“So tell me,” she said, “Mr. Expert, how many field amputations have you performed?”

“Eight,” he said. “Maybe nine.”

“Did they go as well as your deadfall traps?”

“You’re joking, but I’m serious.”

“You joked first.”

“I’m allowed to. It’s my foot.”

“Well, I wish you wouldn’t.”

“Mara,” he said.

“What now?”

His hand found hers, and he was shaking harder. She squeezed his hand back.

“I’m scared,” he said.

That was what chilled her most. Not the conversation but those two words, the tremor that reached his voice at last.

“I know,” she said. “But you shouldn’t be. You’re gonna be okay.”

For some reason she imagined her father there, in the shelter beside them, and the words in her mouth were his. “It’s a game, remember?” said her father. “This is all a game. We’re just playing, to see what happens. If it gets too real then the game is off. That’s the rules.”

“You think they’re really watching? They’re coming?”

Neither of them believed it.

“Yes,” Mara said. “I don’t just think it. I know that it’s true. If the game’s going on, that means they know we’re safe. There’s probably a doctor watching us on a live screen right now, gauging when to step in.” She waved at the air. “Hey, Doctor! Thanks for looking out for us. Shit’s scary, but we’re trusting your judgment on this.”

“I’m tired,” said Kyle.

“I know,” said Mara. “You should probably rest.”

It had been half an hour since Kyle’s last nap. He spent more time now sleeping than awake.