He shrugged his shoulders, then leaned heavily against the wall. It happened at least once in each new group. Bullets started receiving doses of Silt around twelve or thirteen turns. After that, they got it every day with few exceptions. Caledonia had learned that withholding the drug was sometimes used as a punishment, a reminder that Bullets needed Aric and should do exactly as he asked. But some had received it so regularly for so long that their bodies simply didn’t know how to function without it.

“More made it through than didn’t,” Ares continued. “But that doesn’t make it any easier. For them.”

Caledonia understood what he wasn’t saying. Whether or not they’d chosen this was irrelevant. They’d lost some of their own and they were bound to resent Caledonia for that.

“Take me to Remi.”

They followed Ares down the dimly lit corridor past rows of doors that looked exactly the same. Each was locked from the outside and made of a single piece of hard wood with a small window the size of a fist punched through at eye level. Given more time, they might have installed self-healing glass over the windows, but that was a luxury, not a necessity.

Ares stopped, then pulled the keys from his pocket and unlocked the door. “Incoming, Remi. Captain’s here to talk.”

The door opened on a figure that was not quite what Caledonia remembered. She seemed smaller now, huddled at the edge of her cot with her back in the corner and knees pulled up in front. Her auburn hair was cut short and it curled tightly toward her scalp. When she smiled, her mouth was wide and sharp.

“Morning, Captain.” Her voice was raw but determined. “Come to count the bodies?”

“Good morning, Remi. I was very sorry to hear about your people.” Caledonia ignored the sneer that curled Remi’s upper lip. Sledge had told her once that this stage of withdrawal was sometimes worse than the pain of detox. Aric’s emotional claws bit much deeper than his physiological ones.

“Just the ones you let die here? Or all of them?” Remi asked, a dangerous challenge in her eye. “Seems to me you only have room for sorrow when there’s no glory to be had.”

“There is no glory in this fight,” Caledonia countered. “There’s surviving and there’s dying, but I’ve never seen glory on the Bullet Seas.”

“I have.” Remi’s voice softened and her eyes unfocused as she let a memory pull her away. “I will again.”

Glory. Always glory. Aric had used that word so effectively it had galvanized his entire army. The deadly combination of glorious rhetoric and Silt had given his Bullets the justification they needed to take children from their parents and turn them into soldiers. Aric’s glory was a promise. One as violent as the guns he put in their hands.