Colt slashed through the thicket keeping the other group from accessing the breaker. Love Lost jumped through the first gap that was visible, and tackled the breaker, who was only now getting shakily to her feet.

Claws impaled the woman by the shoulders. Love Lost brought her masked face close, then swiped her arms out to the sides. The claws didn’t break contact with the woman’s arms, as Love Lost raked her bone-deep from each shoulder to the respective hand.

A kick with clawed toes to the chest separated the two, knocking the breaker to the ground.

“What the fuck, Love Lost?” I asked.

She tilted her head, then pointed a bloody claw past me.

I turned to see the brute I’d hit was getting to his feet. His mass was lopsided, and what remained was decay and pus in a vaguely human silhouette, with a single arm, part of a chest, and the legs that had belonged to a six hundred pound pile of muscle and ugliness. The two thralls had been disarmed, one slumped against the wall, another cradling her arm.

“I know he’s alive,” I said.

The woman who had been a breaker lay on the ground, arms at her side, bloody smears beside her like she’d been trying to make a snow angel, her back arching as she struggled to move in a way that didn’t elicit agony.

The strength went out of her pretty fast, all considered. I looked away.

“Finish him off. He’s too dangerous,” I heard Gong. I saw him step into view, bedraggled.

Closer to me, Love Lost was pulling off her mask, head hanging down. She wiped gobbets of snot and what might have been vomit away from her nose and mouth.

“The thralls called him the Leper. He killed four of ours,” Gong said. “We can’t let him heal, we can’t bring him with, and we need to move. It would be best if you ended this now. Getting to you and getting back would take too long. We need to help other groups. All of us are struggling.”

Sure enough, the Leper was recovering. A hole yawned in the center of the vaguely head shaped mass of congealed human sickness, the beginnings of a mouth. I could see nuggets that might have been congealed pus or nascent teeth.

“Please,” Gong said. “In the interest of getting this done.”

“I’d like to hear a voice I know and trust say to do it,” I said. “Sorry Gong, I don’t know you.”

“Do I count?” Rain asked.

“Yeah. But do you really want to make that call? Because I really don’t.”

“I don’t either. But I think it’s necessary. This guy won’t stop unless he stops for good.”