Mistletoe almost pointed out the capsule that slipped from the side pouch of the professor’s bag as she pulled it through behind her. Instead, she reached down and scooped it up, slipping it into her pocket as she climbed out and landed in the soft grass beside the gray monument. She turned to survey the campus and found herself staring down the bright orange barrel of an armed disruptor. The weapon was attached to a man wearing a shapeless brown hat, bobbing gently on his idling ESCPD scoot. Next to him, his redheaded partner brandished an identical disruptor, rather than the nonlethal stunner baton he’d used during their subcanopy chase.

Mistletoe clenched her fist. The disruptor slid out from beneath her sleeve and closed around her hand. She thumbed it to full power and tried to hold her arm steady.

Hat licked his chapped lips. It was strange to see him do something so natural and human. Mistletoe wondered if these men had families at home, wives and kids for whom they’d tell the exciting story of hunting two fugitive kids. She pictured them sitting down to a dinner of juicy roast chicken and whatever topside people got out of those silver boxes.

Red nodded at her disruptor, which had turned a sickly shade of yellow as it struggled to maintain the full-power charge. “Might be time for a tune-up.”

Mistletoe waited for Deirdre to reveal the high-tech weapon she surely had hidden beneath her shirt and say something like This oughta even things up a bit. She glanced sideways at the professor, who was just standing there, hands up next to her head to show they were empty.

Hat sniffed the air. “You smell that?”

Mistletoe didn’t smell anything, but she got a hint of the stopped-clock feeling she’d had on Aunt Dita’s street in the seconds before the explosion. The eerie stillness of that moment seemed to infect the two cops, so that even their scoots hung motionless in the air.

Time sped up with two quick glints of silver, followed by two wet, choking sounds:

Shlurnk. Shlurnk.

Red’s nondisruptor hand went to his throat, while Hat just slumped in his seat, gasping for breath, twitching like a frantic rabbit. Mistletoe and Deirdre backed against the stone wall. Embedded in each man’s neck was a circle of metal shark’s teeth.

Mistletoe turned away. She didn’t want to see the final slackening of their features. It was too much like Jiri’s last moment. The leaves of a nearby tree rustled, catching her attention. Feet dangled, legs appeared, and then an entire boy hung for a moment before dropping to the ground.

Sliv.