They are like a creature with a thousand eyes, hungrily tracing every outcome, showing me innumerable realities, too many for my mind to bear.

I am dead in the desert, the child driving the mule away. I throw her off with such force that her head strikes a boulder. I am dead, the wind drying my corpse to leather. I drag her across the sand, me, her, each of us the victor, the victim…

I shoot out an arm and I see every conceivable movement gather around it, a blur of limbs and chaos, impossible to track, until – like a clear signal from static – I see my own hand grab a fistful of dust and fling it into the girl’s face.

She falls back. Before I can get to my feet she lunges again, this time with the knife in her hand. I scramble away, body a mess of adrenalin and not enough air as she attacks in frenzy, aiming to kill.

But they have shown me this path, and as I crash into the dirt mule, I know what to do. I reach behind me, groping for the medkit. Metal meets my fingers and the moment the girl leaps, I strike.

The knife falters two inches from my heart. The girl’s lips twitch in a snarl, before a convulsion shakes her body and she glances down at the syringe protruding from her neck.

‘Y—’ she begins before the knife falls from her grip and she crumples, lifeless, to the ground.

* * *

I don’t allow myself to sit and breathe until the child is restrained and tied as securely as I can manage, even though she won’t wake for hours. In my panic I gave her enough tranquilliser to suppress a grown adult, and there’s a chance that it could kill her.

Her small face twitches as the drug makes its way through her system. Cursing myself, I fetch the canteen of wastewater from the mule. My brain thuds with questions, with the thin air and the ebbing adrenalin and the lingering horror of their presence. Wetting a rag, I begin to wipe the dried blood from her face.

At first, her features appear unremarkable: skin sallow with blood loss, round cheeks, pointed chin. But as I clean the mess away, I see the undeniable evidence of what she is. Although she’s young, thirteen at most, her face is deeply lined. Between the heavy brows and around her mouth are creases usually seen on someone who has lived through years of hardship. Her physique too, is unnatural. She’s lean, but not through malnutrition and labour and ill health, like most on Factus, but sinewy, with hard muscles beneath the skin of her arms and legs.