“What is that s’posed to mean?”

Jack barely gets the words out before he feels himself sliding his backpack off and rushing headlong toward the two Umbrati grunts closest to him. Like the one that Zeke took out back at the Red Light, these two have the same extended arms and pale green-gray skin. But they’re not uniform. They each still wear whatever clothing they were wearing when brought into the horde. Well, what remains of that clothing at least. The tattered scraps that remain aren’t covering very much.

Also, their faces are certainly unique from one another. Jack had heard all the stories from the nomads and mercs who came through his bar. Apparently grunts are given a choice as to the specific technique they use for removing their own eyes. Further, they fabricate their own faceplates before they’re riveted on.

As for the two he’s currently running toward—weaponless and without any control over himself, by the way—one of them apparently stitched its own eyes shut with some kind of thread, poorly. At the end of its right arm, this grunt has a large spiked ball where its hand is supposed to be. As for the other grunt, it’s difficult to tell what it did to its eyes. That grunt’s entire face is almost totally covered with a steel plate. There’s just a single vertical cut starting at the top and going about halfway down, allowing just enough room for its nose to stick out.

Jack tries to stop himself from rushing the grunts, but his body doesn’t respond to him at all. He wants to turn his head, or even his eyes, to see what Lyia and Corva are doing, but he can’t.

Is this some Goat thing I never heard of? Do they mind control you to capture you?

His vision is focused solely on the two grunts ahead of him. He feels his hands curl open and close, squeezing into fists and then relaxing back to open hands, like they’re testing themselves out for the first time. His shoulders roll forward as he feels himself tuck his head down, protecting his neck.

Wait. Am I gonna fight them?

When he gets within a step or two of the grunts, his body jukes to the right so the two monstrosities are no longer facing him side-by-side, but instead now the eye-stitched grunt is standing in front of the one with a nosehole in its faceplate. Stitches swings down at Jack with its spiked-ball arm. At the same time, Nosehole steps out of line, trying to square up to Jack and cut off his path.

Jack’s body dodges the spiked ball by continuing his move to the right. He expects to hear the ball collide with the ground where he just was, but in the corner of his eye, he sees that Stitches has redirected its spiked-ball arm, mid-swing, right at Jack’s head. Shit!

Jack feels his body bend at the waist, slipping under the ball arm. His hands reach up to the arm and give it a push, adding enough momentum to its swing to bury the spiked ball right in Nosehole’s chest. Thick blood bursts around the ball as if it’d just crushed a bag full of dark red paint.

Before he can fully register what he’s done, Jack’s palms come together, elbows high, and he steps farther into Stitches, slamming the point of his left elbow into the grunt’s ribs. He can hear a pop and feels at least one of those ribs snap.

Stitches leans over from the strike, wordlessly grunting right near Jack’s ears. Jack’s hands reach up, burying fingertips on either side of the grunt’s neck.

No way. No way!

Jack’s fingers push deeper and deeper. He’s not sure if he’s grabbing muscle or the thing’s throat, but it’s a lot softer than he expects. His nails start penetrating skin and he feels a bit of blood trickle along the back of his hand. Then, suddenly, his thumbs jam right into the center of Stitches’ throat and Jack feels himself pull downward with as much force as his little body can muster. Whatever it is that Jack’s got gripped in his hands comes down with him, torn right from the grunt’s neck. It’s still connected, just torn and stretched like a bad loop in a knit scarf. All the same, blood sprays all over the back of Jack’s head.

Jack tries to make sense of what just happened as his feet pull the rest of him away. Behind him, he can hear Stitches slacken and collapse. The grunt’s carcass knocks over Nosehole’s equally limp body. Jack’s body doesn’t move after that. He just stands there. It’s not that he really wants to move at this point. He just can’t, not even his eyes.

A moment later, he feels his weight shift to a standing position he’s more accustomed to. He’s not sure why, but he thinks he somehow has control over himself again. Fingers, toes.

He looks down at his hands. They’re covered in blood. Bits of flesh and meat are still caught under his nails. The longer he looks at them, the more it seems that they start to shake. They won’t stop shaking. He reaches up to the back of his head and feels around. He can’t tell how much of the blood he feels was already there and how much he’s just smearing around from his hand.

He turns to look at the two dead grunts and tries to piece together how exactly he did that. Was it even him? It felt like he did it, but there was an overwhelming feeling of being a passenger in his own body.

Seeing the Umbrati corpses in front of him, he remembers that they aren’t the only ones that had surrounded them. He spins to look back where he came from, searching for signs of Lyia and Corva. He sees Lyia near two of her own grunts. They lay on the dirty rooftop, completely inert. She’s bent over on her hands and knees. It looks like she’s convulsing.

“Lyia!”

Jack runs to her side, sliding to a stop when he realizes that she’s not convulsing. Not really, anyway. Her body is shaking, but it’s because she’s vomiting, almost uncontrollably. Aside from that, she appears to be relatively unharmed, certainly faring better than the dispatched grunts on the ground next to her.

It seems that somehow the two grunts managed to get their hands shoved into each other’s faces. One has a hand plunged into the other’s temple, buried all the way to the last knuckles. The other has a hand jammed upward through the bottom of its chin. It lays with its face toward Jack, empty eye sockets staring into space.

Swallowing back his own immediate gag reflex at the sight, Jack waits for a moment between heaves and puts his hand on Lyia’s shoulder. “Hey. Are you okay?”

Lyia looks at Jack’s blood-covered hand on her shoulder and flinches. She appears to contain a scream, but at the same time she pulls herself away from his grip, leaving a smear of blood on her shirt and arm.

Realizing that he probably looks like a nightmare soaked in grunt blood, Jack hastily wipes his hands on his pants, trying to get them as clean as possible. He squats down to look at her eye to eye. “Hey. Hey!” He grabs her by the shoulders. “It’s me. You’re okay. Take a breath.”

Recognition spreads over Lyia’s face as she pulls free of him again and sits upright. “What the fuck was that?”

It’s Corva’s voice that sounds behind them. “I told you guys that you probably weren’t going to like it.”

Jack and Lyia spin to see Corva walking toward them, Zeke seated on her shoulder. It looks like she never even took her pack off. Jack peeks past her at the last pair of grunts in the team that had them surrounded. They lie on the rooftop in what looks like a disorganized pile of surplus body parts. There’s not a mark on her. Not even blood from her opponents.

She tosses Jack’s bag at the ground in front of him. “Here. Let’s get rolling.” She looks back and forth between the completely slack-jawed expressions on Jack and Lyia’s faces. “Look, I’ll explain as best as I can along the way, but we can’t stay here. We’ve gotta keep moving.”

Jack doesn’t move. “Wait. That was you? You did that to us?”

“It was Zeke’s idea. I didn’t even know I could do that. But yeah. It was me. Now come on.”

“Or what? You’ll just make us?” Lyia’s voice cuts through the air, almost shrill.

Corva rushes a couple steps forward and gets right in Lyia’s face. “Look here, sua puta. I’m sorry for saving you. I’m also tired of saving you. Tired of you being an ungrateful little bitch … especially now that I know where you’re from. You’re welcome to stay up here and die if you want. Seems to be the only solution you ever come up with. Me? I’m living.” She stands back up and looks over to Jack. “And you’re coming with me.”

Caught in the middle of picking up his pack, Jack looks up at Corva. “I—I am?”

“You’re the only one who knows the way down to Cliff City from Slim’s place. Zeke says even he doesn’t know the way you’re talking about. Also says he won’t leave without you.”

Jack straightens, bag in hand. “Well, I ain’t goin’ nowhere without Lyia. So—” He feels a hand on his shoulder.

“It’s okay, Pin. She’s right. We can’t stay up here.” Lyia looks over to Corva. “I don’t know what you are. I don’t care. If you talk to me like that again, though, I’ll end you.”

“Lyia, no.” Standing between Lyia and Corva, Jack can feel the tension mounting between the two.

“No, that’s fine. I’m alright with that.” Corva turns to leave. “Now let’s go.”

Jack jogs up to Corva while Lyia follows behind them. “Right. Slim’s building is right over there. We can drop in through the roof. I’ll grab what we need. Then on to Cliff City.”

“Right. What in the world are you getting from him, anyway?”

They barely take three more steps in the direction of Slim’s building before a large dark form drops from the sky, blocking their path. The figure stands from his landing position, regarding the group. The hood of his cloak shadows most of his bearded face, but it’s not hard to guess at who this is. The black wings, the giant scythe held in a bloody hand, and the albino rat peeking over his back give it away.

Thegn is back.

Jack’s chin drops to his chest and his shoulders slump as he lets out an exasperated sigh. “Really?”

Thegn’s attention is entirely on Corva. “I was almost worried that those things were going to dispatch you before I could.”

His giant wings fold behind him as he takes a step forward. “Now we can do this properly.”