“No. The girl has forsaken you. Your kind has always been garbage. Willing to run when you should stand. Willing to kill one another for nothing other than scraps. Your kind…” Pain racked him, left him panting. “Worse than hyenas. Lower than rust.”

“She’s coming!” the boy insisted, but his voice had turned hysterical.

“How long for her to reach this doctor and return?” Tool asked. “Half a day? Two?” He hauled the boy closer.

“Why don’t you just let me go?” The boy was starting to struggle, the strength of a gnat against the strength of an ogre. “What difference does it make? You’re dead already. It’s not my fault. I didn’t do nothing to you.”

Tool ignored him and started sinking the boy into the swamp’s embrace. Strength was pouring out of him, gushing out like water from a shattered dam, but still, he had enough for this. Pay the girl back. Make her pay for her treachery. Make her know that when the Fifth Regiment is betrayed, nothing is left standing. The general and the trainers, whispering in Tool’s ear, urging him on.

The boy started to thrash and cry. A tiny bundle of bones and scars, freckles and red hair. Just another human who would grow up to become a monster.

“Please,” the boy whispered. “Let me go.”

Again with the mercy. Humans were always begging for mercy. So willing to do their worst to others, and always begging for mercy at the end.

“Please.”

Pathetic.

13

“MOUSE?”

Mahlia eased into the swamp. It had taken her all night and part of the day to find her way back. First to rendezvous with the doctor without getting nailed by the many soldier patrols whom Lieutenant Sayle had sent out in search of them, and then to make her way back to this isolated place of moss-draped trees and stagnant green pools.

Mosquitoes whined in her ears, but nothing else moved. Nothing at all.

“Mouse?”

“Do you see him?” the doctor asked.

Was this the place? Mahlia thought so, but it was hard to—

There. The gator.

“This is it!” She dashed toward the dead reptile.

“Wait!” the doctor called, but Mahlia plunged forward, heedless.

“Mouse!”

She skidded to a halt, scanning the swamps. It had taken too long. Too long to get away, too long to find her way. She fought down tears.

“Mouse?”

Too long to avoid the patrols of the lieutenant as he quartered the wilderness, hunting for her and the doctor, intent on revenge. And now there was nothing.

Where was the half-man? It should have been there, at least.

“Mahlia…”

She turned at the doctor’s hesitant voice, and saw what he was looking at.

A small form floated in the water. Arms spread out. Red hair fanned in the water. Floating quiet and still in the emerald pool.

“Fates, please. Kali-Mary Mercy. Oh, Fates. Noooo!”