That’s how people get killed. If you did like them, you would’ve been dead a hundred times over.

She’d seen it often enough as she tried to escape the Drowned Cities, after the collapse of the peacekeepers. She’d seen people stand up, determined to hold on to principles. People who thought there was right and wrong. People who tried to save others. People like her mother who had died so horribly that even now Mahlia’s mind shied from the jagged memory. Only Mahlia had survived. While all the other castoffs were getting cut down by Army of God and UPF and Freedom Militia, Mahlia had taken Sun Tzu’s principles to heart, and survived.

The problem with surviving was that you ended up with the ghosts of everyone you’d ever left behind riding on your shoulders. As she stood in the cool jungle dawn, it felt like they were all there with her. School friends. Teachers. Shop owners. Old ladies. Families. Her mother. And now, Doctor Mahfouz and Mouse.

No one else could see all the bodies she’d left behind, but they were there, looking at her. Or maybe that was just her, looking at herself, and not liking what she saw. Knowing she could never escape her own judging gaze.

“I’m going back,” Mahlia said suddenly.

The half-man turned at her voice. In the dawn, he showed as something stranger and more alien than she had understood before. He was eating something that looked like it might have been snake, but he gulped it down before she got a good look. For a brief instant, it was like she was seeing the entire unnatural melding of his DNA: the tiger, the hyena, the dog, the man, all smashed together.

“It is too late,” the half-man said. “If there are any survivors, they will not thank you for your return. The ones you care about are dead.”

“Then I’m going to bury them.”

Tool regarded her. “You increase your danger if you circle back.”

“Why’re you always afraid of things? Don’t you want to fight? They hurt you, too, right? Why don’t you got any fight in you? I thought you were all blood and rust and killer instinct.”

Tool growled. For a second Mahlia thought he was about to attack. Then he said, “I do not fight battles that cannot be won. Do not confuse that with cowardice.”

“What happens if you don’t get to choose the fight? What if it just comes for you?”

Tool regarded her. “Is this such a case? Do I have no choices? Is this battle preordained by the Fates?” He pointed northward. “There are more than enough battles ahead of us, and those ones at least have the merit of being to some purpose. Going back to your village is pointless.”

Mahlia glared at his mocking words. “Fine. Do whatever you do. I’m going back.”