“Yeah. And those soldier boys you sicced the coywolv on are pissed. They had Tua up against a wall when I was there, and just kept asking him questions. Even Auntie Selima was up on me, asking about where you’d gone, and what I knew. Thought she was going to turn me over to them.”

“Figures.”

“Stop it, Mahlia,” the doctor said. “Your actions are costing others. Right now, innocent people are paying a price for your rashness. You’re the one who stirred that hornet’s nest, and now everyone but you is getting stung.”

“You mean because I saved you?” the girl answered testily.

The man didn’t answer, but Tool could smell the tension between the two. The boy broke the impasse.

“I told people I hadn’t seen you, or the doctor. Said you must have bailed, ’cause you’re castoff and got no loyalty, but they barely let me off even so. You made a big stir with that coywolv stunt.” A pause. “The soldiers are looking for the dog-face, too. They don’t say it outright, but they’re asking if people have seen any big kills out in the jungle. Pigs. Panthers. Coywolv. Bet they’d be real interested if I said I’d found a huge dead gator out here.”

Of course.

It was all coming back now. Tool knew this boy’s scent, and the girl’s as well. Pieces were clicking together in his mind. The castoff girl, the boy called Mouse, and a doctor with medicines.

The young ones hadn’t been liars after all. They really did have medicines and a trained physician. And now, close by, the reek of rotting lizard made sense as well. Another piece fitting into place. Tool’s last opponent. That massive reptile, now dead and bloating, six days gone judging by the stench and frenetic buzzing of flies around it. It was dead, and Tool was still alive.

Astonishing.

“So? How much longer we got to stick?” Mouse asked.

An uncertain pause followed.

“Don’t look to me, Mahlia,” the man said. “You chose this path. Don’t look to others to save you from your rashness.”

“Maybe a couple more days,” Mahlia said finally.

The boy let out a slow hiss of breath. “Dunno if we can keep hidden that long.”

“We just need a little longer,” Mahlia said. “It should wake up soon.”

The doctor broke in, exasperated. “You can’t be certain it will ever wake up, Mahlia. At least be decent enough to Mouse to speak honestly to him.”

“I thought you weren’t going to say what you thought.”