The Drowned Cities (Ship Breaker #2)(33)

Tool slowly turned his head, his whole body stiff with infection, neck muscles congealed like taffy. Flies rose off his body in a cloud as he dipped his face to muddy water. He lapped, then lay back again, panting, his tongue thick in his mouth. The heat of the jungle felt like a great hand pressed upon him.

“Your sister has left you,” he croaked.

“She’ll come,” the boy insisted. “Just wait a little longer.”

Tool almost laughed at that. He wondered how humans could go on trusting one another. Such a fickle species. They always said one thing and did another. It was why his kind had been created. Augments always followed through on their promises.

“It’s time,” he said. Slowly Tool dragged the boy off the bank and into the swamp. He took the boy’s head in his huge hand.

“Just a little longer!”

“No. The girl has forsaken you. Your kind has always been garbage. Willing to run when you should stand. Willing to kill one another for nothing other than scraps. Your kind…” Pain racked him, left him panting. “Worse than hyenas. Lower than rust.”

“She’s coming!” the boy insisted, but his voice had turned hysterical.

“How long for her to reach this doctor and return?” Tool asked. “Half a day? Two?” He hauled the boy closer.

“Why don’t you just let me go?” The boy was starting to struggle, the strength of a gnat against the strength of an ogre. “What difference does it make? You’re dead already. It’s not my fault. I didn’t do nothing to you.”

Tool ignored him and started sinking the boy into the swamp’s embrace. Strength was pouring out of him, gushing out like water from a shattered dam, but still, he had enough for this. Pay the girl back. Make her pay for her treachery. Make her know that when the Fifth Regiment is betrayed, nothing is left standing. The general and the trainers, whispering in Tool’s ear, urging him on.

The boy started to thrash and cry. A tiny bundle of bones and scars, freckles and red hair. Just another human who would grow up to become a monster.

“Please,” the boy whispered. “Let me go.”

Again with the mercy. Humans were always begging for mercy. So willing to do their worst to others, and always begging for mercy at the end.

“Please.”

Pathetic.

13

“MOUSE?”

Mahlia eased into the swamp. It had taken her all night and part of the day to find her way back. First to rendezvous with the doctor without getting nailed by the many soldier patrols whom Lieutenant Sayle had sent out in search of them, and then to make her way back to this isolated place of moss-draped trees and stagnant green pools.

Mosquitoes whined in her ears, but nothing else moved. Nothing at all.

“Mouse?”

“Do you see him?” the doctor asked.

Was this the place? Mahlia thought so, but it was hard to—

There. The gator.

“This is it!” She dashed toward the dead reptile.

“Wait!” the doctor called, but Mahlia plunged forward, heedless.

“Mouse!”

She skidded to a halt, scanning the swamps. It had taken too long. Too long to get away, too long to find her way. She fought down tears.

“Mouse?”

Too long to avoid the patrols of the lieutenant as he quartered the wilderness, hunting for her and the doctor, intent on revenge. And now there was nothing.

Where was the half-man? It should have been there, at least.

“Mahlia…”

She turned at the doctor’s hesitant voice, and saw what he was looking at.

A small form floated in the water. Arms spread out. Red hair fanned in the water. Floating quiet and still in the emerald pool.

“Fates, please. Kali-Mary Mercy. Oh, Fates. Noooo!”

Mahlia splashed to Mouse’s body and yanked it up, mindless and desperate. There were ways to breathe life into the drowned and dead. She could still save him. The doctor was good.

But even as her mind told her stories, she knew that they were nothing but silly little licebiter prayers, wishes that would never be answered.

Mouse’s head came up out of the water, and suddenly he spit a stream of mud in her face.

Mahlia leaped back with a yelp, trying to understand how the dead spit, all her mother’s stories of war dead rising making her skin prickle, but suddenly Mouse was laughing, and now he was standing, and she finally understood that he wasn’t dead.

The damn licebiter was laughing.

Mahlia lunged for him and grabbed him and Mouse’s skin was warm with life and air, and still he was laughing. Mahlia sobbed with relief and then she slugged him.

“Owww!”

“You maggot! I’ll kill you for that!” She shoved him under the water. “You faked me?”

Mouse was laughing and trying to fight her off. Tears blurred Mahlia’s sight. She was laughing and sobbing and hating him and loving him, and all her terror that she’d kept bottled up inside came flooding out.

“You maggot!” She hugged him. “Don’t ever do that to me! I can’t lose you. I can’t lose you.” And as she said it, she knew it was true. She’d lost too many. She couldn’t take any more. Every part of her old life had been ripped away. In its place, there was only Mouse.

Mouse was untouchable. He had the Fates Eye on him. Soldier boys didn’t see him. Bullets missed him. Food always found him. Mouse was a survivor. He had to survive. And Mahlia was terrified to realize that she would do anything to make sure of it.