Another artillery round hammered into the building. Masonry fell from the ceiling.

“I got to get to my boys,” Ocho said suddenly. “They’re dead if they don’t got someone to tell them what to do.”

“Indeed,” Tool rumbled. Mahlia was surprised to see the half-man hold out a huge hand to Ocho. “Thank you,” he said.

Ocho looked at the half-man with an expression of shock on his face. For a second, Mahlia thought he was going to flinch away. But then he took the offered hand, his own smaller one disappearing in Tool’s grip.

The sergeant looked down at Mouse, then at Mahlia again. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save him,” he said. “I tried. If I’d known what they were going to—” He broke off, took a ragged breath. “Anyway, I’m sorry.” He turned and limped toward the door.

Mahlia watched the sergeant go. He was just a kid. They were all just kids. All of them waving guns and killing one another, while a bunch of men who claimed they were older and wiser pushed them around. Maggots like Lieutenant Sayle and Colonel Stern and General Sachs.

He was just some kid who’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. A kid who turned out to be useful to men who didn’t give a damn about him, except to make sure he did what he was told. Just like Mouse.

“Hey!” she called to him. “Soldier boy!”

Ocho turned. “Yeah?”

An idea was forming in her mind. A gamble. A big one. It wasn’t the way she’d imagined it, but she thought it could work. She could make it work. She just needed to believe, and reach out to this soldier boy.

“You want to get out?” she asked. “Get out for good?”

She held her breath, praying that she wasn’t just some civvy to him. That he didn’t see her as a peacekeeper castoff or a traitor, any more than she saw him as a soldier. They were just two people, victims of something bigger than either of them. There weren’t any sides, and there weren’t any enemies.

She just needed to make him believe it, too.

“Out of here?” The sergeant smiled. “No way any of us is getting out. There’s nowhere to go, and no one to take us. Blockades all around. AOG gunning for the triple hash.” He touched his cheek. “There’s no way out, not for any of us.”

“Scavenge companies go in and out,” Mahlia said.

“We ain’t scavenge.”

“What if I know where we could get some?” she said. “Rich stuff. Can you get us to the blood buyers? Can you get us and some scavenge to the docks?”

“That treasure room of yours?” Ocho hesitated, then said, “I can’t leave my boys.”