Between her frantic scramble back to the cave, Obelus escaping, and making it all the way back down to the battleground without getting lost, it had to have taken at least an hour. She had thought her quest futile, that one or both of them would have regained consciousness and whoever got there first would be the victor. But while, to her shock and amazement, Ampersand and Enola had not regained consciousness, the third party had. She found him crouched over the two unconscious aliens, wincing at the light of the flashlight in his eyes as she approached.

“Get away from him!”

He shot to his feet. “What?”

At a loss for what else to do, she gun-pointed the pulse emitter at him. “I said, get the fuck away from them.”

“What the—”

“Shut the fuck up,” she spat, her mouth sticky from dehydration and her eyes prickling with exhaustion. He backed away as she approached him, head high, back straight, exuding the aura that yes, she could take his life away, and she’d do it, too. “You saw what this did to them, imagine what it would do to a human.”

“I didn’t see what ‘this’ did to them,” he said carefully, like he was talking to a crazy person. “I was unconscious. Did that thing . . . ?”

“Yes, I said, shut the fuck up, or I’ll fucking shoot you, too. Hands up.” She continued toward him, and he put his hands up. Keeping the pulse emitter leveled at him, she turned the flashlight away from him, illuminating both Ampersand and Enola. Enola’s eyes were open. Ampersand’s were not.

“Don’t move, don’t say anything,” she said, putting the flashlight down, but keeping the pulse emitter leveled at him. She took the pill bug out of her coat and pressed it to Ampersand’s upper back, not taking her eyes off the man. “Get on your knees. Keep your hands up. Don’t say a fucking word.”

By now, his expression had turned cold. His eyes were striking, the color of jade coated in frost, even more menacing with the flashlight illuminating him from below as if he were telling a scary story at a campfire.

Ampersand stirred, and she nearly choked on her relief that he moved before Enola did. He regained himself much more quickly than she’d seen him do in the past after an energy pulse had taken him out. He hoisted himself to his feet, and Murderguy’s cool demeanor broke. He took short, frightened breaths as his eyes darted back and forth between Cora and the alien monster that she had deliberately revived.

The moment his eyes came back into focus, they found Enola, and Ampersand practically fell on top of him. With zero delicacy, Ampersand ripped the shell off Enola’s back. Then he started frantically extracting bits of his body, welding his fingers together and jamming them into his back like trowels into the earth.