The cold was already seeping into him but he ignored it and slid slowly toward the stream. The quiet gurgle as he entered it would be filtered out as background noise by the Merge worn by the men bearing down on him. One of the units’ few weaknesses.

The water was cold enough that his chest caught when he tried to breathe. A moment of concentration allowed him to get in enough air to go under, and he gripped a partially submerged sapling to keep himself hovering just inches beneath the surface.

A shadow passed near the bank and he watched it, trying to calculate how much time he had before hypothermia set in. Not until long after he’d drown or been shot, most likely. How comforting.

The water’s uniform temperature would fool the Merge’s heat detection and the reflection of the moonlight would dazzle the night vision, making the stream a complete blank to the man creeping slowly past it. As expected, he didn’t consider the water at all—another example of the Merge-induced overconfidence that he himself had fallen prey to on more than a few occasions.

There wasn’t much time. He wasn’t as desperate for air as he had been back in Randi’s safe room, but he wasn’t far off. The man crouched to get a closer look at the tracks in the mud. There would be no better chance.

Smith slipped smoothly out of the water and managed to grab the man before his Merge could make sense of the sound. His hands were numb but the oxygen flooding his lungs cleared his head enough to recall the education that Star thought was so wasted on him. Killing the man would immediately register on his teammate’s Merges. He had to be more skillful than that.

Smith barely managed to clamp a hand over the man’s mouth before he felt himself being pushed toward the water. As they toppled, he inserted the thin blade into the back of the struggling man’s neck, severing nerves he hadn’t thought about since medical school.

They hit the ground in unison and Smith wrapped his legs around the man’s waist, holding him tightly as his body jerked wildly and then went limp. A quick check of his pulse confirmed that it was still strong and racing, but that wouldn’t last long. He was completely paralyzed and that paralysis extended to the muscles that controlled respiration. The clock was ticking as he suffocated.

Smith searched beneath the man’s camo shirt and confirmed what he already knew: that the Merge he was using was military-issue. And ironically, that was what just might save them.