The Drowned Cities (Ship Breaker #2)(5)

In the dim recesses of its tiny brain, perhaps the alligator was pleased to have its teeth sink deeper into enemy flesh. But Tool’s other arm, engulfed in the monster’s maw, was free to work. Not from the outside, but from within.

Tool turned the shattered chunk of mangrove root and began methodically ramming it into the roof of the monster’s mouth. Ripping through flesh, driving the wood deeper and deeper.

The alligator, sensing something was wrong, feeling the tearing within itself, tried to open its jaws, but Tool, instead of letting go, now clamped the monster tighter.

Do not run away, he thought. I have you where I want you.

Blood misted from Tool’s shoulder, but battle fury strengthened him. He had the advantage. He might be running out of air and life, but this ancient reptile was his. The alligator’s bite was deadly, but it had its own weakness: It lacked the muscle strength to open its mouth easily.

The mangrove root ground to dust, but Tool continued, using his claws, ripping deeper and deeper.

The alligator thrashed wildly, trying to shake free. Decades of easy killing had never prepared it for a creature like Tool, something more primal and terrifying than even itself. It writhed and rolled, shaking Tool the way a dog shook a rat. Stars swam in Tool’s vision, but he held on and tore deeper. His air ran out. His fist found bone.

With one final heave, Tool rammed his claws through the lizard’s skull and tore into its brain.

The monster began to shudder and die.

Did it understand that it had always been outmatched? That it was dying because it had never evolved to face a creature such as Tool?

Tool’s fist crushed the lizard’s brain to pulp.

The great reptile’s life drained away, victim to a monster that should never have existed, an unholy perfection of killing, built in laboratories and honed across a thousand battlefields.

Tool’s claws carved out the last of the brain meat of the ancient lizard, and the alligator fell limp.

A rush of primal satisfaction flooded Tool as his opponent surrendered to death. Blackness swamped Tool’s vision, and he let go.

He had conquered.

Even as he died, he conquered.

3

“THAT’S ENOUGH, MAHLIA.” Doctor Mahfouz straightened with a sigh. “We’ve done all we can. Let her rest.”

Mahlia sat back on her heels and wiped her lips of Tani’s dying spit, giving up on breathing for the girl who had already stopped breathing for herself. Before her, the young woman lay still, empty blue eyes staring up at the bamboo spars of the squat’s ceiling.

Blood covered everything: the doctor and Mahlia, Tani, the floor, old Mr. Salvatore. Ten pints, the doctor had taught Mahlia in her studies; that was what filled a human being. And from the look of it, all of it was out of their patient. Bright and red. Rich with oxygen. Not blue like the placental sac, but red. Red as rubies.

What a mess.

The squat stank. Burned vegetable oil from the lamp, the iron spike of blood, the rank, sweaty smell of desperate people. The smell of pain.

Sunlight speared through cracks in the bamboo walls of the squat, molten blades of day. Doctor Mahfouz had asked if Tani and Mr. Salvatore preferred to do the birth outside, where it would be cooler and they’d have better air and light, but Mr. Salvatore was traditional and wanted privacy for his daughter, even if she’d been anything but private in her love life. Now it felt as though they were swaddled in the smell of death.

In the corner of the squat, tucked under a pile of stained blankets, Tani’s killer lay quiet. The infant had nursed for a second, and Mahlia had been surprised at how happy she’d been for Tani that her little wrinkled baby was healthy and that the birth hadn’t been as long as she had expected.

And then Tani’s eyes had rolled back and the doctor said, “Mahlia, come here, please” in the way that told her something was really bad but he didn’t want to scare the patient.

Mahlia had come down to the doctor where he knelt between Tani’s legs and she’d seen the blood, more and more of it, his hands covered with it, and the doctor had wanted pressure on her belly, and then he’d wanted to cut.

But they didn’t have any drugs to knock Tani out, to make the cutting easy, nothing with them but his last black market needle’s worth of heroin, and then he’d had his scalpel out and Tani was gasping and asking what was wrong, and the doctor had said, “I need you to hold still, dear.”

Of course, Tani panicked. Doctor Mahfouz called for her father, and Mr. Salvatore climbed up the ladder into the squat, and when he saw the blood he shouted, demanding to know what was wrong, and of course he panicked Tani even more.

The doctor ordered him to her head, to hold her shoulders while he sat on her legs, and then he asked Mahlia to help him even though all Mahlia had was a right hand stump and her lucky left—which didn’t seem so lucky when she needed both hands to get the job done.

The doctor set to work by the flicker of the single vegetable-oil lamp and the burn of candles, and Mahlia was forced to lean close, using her eyes to tell the older man where to set the scalpel. With her guiding voice, she helped him make the bikini cuts low across Tani’s belly. The cuts that he’d taught her from his medical books, because he couldn’t see so well, with Mahlia handing him the implements as quick as she could with her one good hand until they were in Tani’s belly and found where the blood was coming from.