And so, by the dim glow of a chemlight, we plotted the downfall of the Sweepers. We spoke softly, as if the uncaring wilderness looming outside Bobby’s tent would find a way to sabotage our plans if it overheard them. At first our minds were buzzing clouds of nervous electricity, but with every action, reaction, and fall back we dreamed up, they coalesced into something confident and solid.

It was a good scheme, but I will omit the details. Apologizes if that frustrates you, but you’ll be seeing it unfold soon enough.

Less than an hour after we’d begun, we had the meat of our plan, and I decided to try and recover some of my lost sleep. I fell into unconsciousness almost as soon as I’d curled up in a corner and, thankfully, did not dream.

We set off at first light and made good progress, not stopping for more than a few minutes at a time until dusk, when Kross managed to shoot a wiry, magic-riddled, deer. She and I butchered it at camp as the sun set, and everyone ate well that night.

“Any sign of them dogs?” she asked me, around a mouthful of blackened venison.

“Mari and I sensed… something following us. It could be anything, but it stayed far enough back that it was still… erm, very faint. Fuzzy.” Back then, I wasn’t as accustomed to explaining the mental landscape to normal people.

“If it’s hovering back, it’s intelligent at least.”

I shrugged. It wasn’t too unusual for scavengers to stalk groups of humans. We tended to kill more than we could carry. “Animals seem to understand how magic works. It’s just one more sense to them. Like how a cat knows not to approach prey from downwind.”

“All the animals?” Bobby interjected.

“Um, yes,” I answered.

“Fascinating!”

“Anyway,” Kross said slowly. “You notice anything weird, don’t keep it to yourselves.” Her eyes flitted between Mari and me. “Even cats grow big out here.”

We set off at first light the next day once again. Our stalker kept up with us, always out of sight, always at least two blocks back. We could only really sense it when we stopped and concentrated, and then it was like a tiny distant firefly compared to the raging bonfires of our companions’ minds.

Hunting opportunities were scant on that day, and we made no new kills, but had enough in our packs to get by, and were still making good progress. By the next sunset, I expected to be crossing the railway bridge to the Sweepers’ island.

On the way, we collected the bike Kross had stashed that first day of our exodus. It’s fuel gage rested a hairsbreadth from empty, and we needed what remained for our assault on the Sweepers, and so began taking turns wheeling it through the streets.

We also passed Bobby’s island. They cast a somber look at their home as we passed, but the ferry still seemed to be where we’d left it, stranded on the far side of the water, the mechanism still broken.

“We don’t have time to stop,” I said, as gently as I could.

They sighed. “I know. It’s all right. I brought most of my irreplaceable things with me anyway. The things I had to stash when we lost Thunder.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“Stop.” But they smiled. “How many times have I explained you’re not to blame.”

As the sun set behind us, the tall overgrown towers of Sniper Town began to glow with golden light, prompting Kross to say, “if we push on a bit longer while it’s dark, we can camp at my place. Would be nice to collect some of my gear.”

No one argued. Sniper Town was the fastest route back, and perhaps the safest, too, now that the sniper was our traveling companion.

We trudged on for two more hours, our flashlights lighting the way, before we reached the sanctity of Kross’s home base. There were so many sky-scraping ruins in that place, it would have taken me weeks of methodical searching to find the one inconspicuous room on one middle floor of one tower that had a dark gray plastic airlock across the entrance.

“Ah, home sweet home,” Kross announced, and then lent down to inspect the floor. “Don’t touch anything without asking me first.” As if to illustrate her point, she flipped up a loose tile on the floor, which revealed some sort of clockwork looking contraption. She fished around for a moment, and then produced a glass jar full of scrap metal and black powder. “At my age, sometimes I forget where the traps are.”

She was the only one to laugh.

Beyond the airlock, her base camp was similar to how I’d imagined it: spare, stark, utilitarian. A wide open room with a bar and a kitchen toward the back that suggested it might have once been a canteen of sorts. Wooden crates, metal boxes of ammunition, diesel cannisters, and dried animal carcasses took up one corner. What can only be described as loot filled another: shattered filter masks, blood-stained backpacks, a dozen different weapons in various stages of rust. It was impossible to say how many people had died to fill that corner.

The walls were not decorated, and a single bedroll lay in the middle of the barren floor. It was the lair of a solitary apex predator. A stark reminder of the sort of person we had forged an alliance with.

Kross couldn’t read my thoughts, but something flashed in her mind when she saw my grim expression. Only for a moment. A glimmer of something hot: rage, or shame, or guilt, or a mix of all three. Mostly the first one, I assumed.

“Well, what did you expect?” she snapped, her humor vanishing. “Stop gawking and find a spot to lay your bedroll. Bobby, come here, I’ve got a present for you.”

The present turned out to be a gun. Though unlike our Sweeper-made weapons, this one had clearly been scraped together from more accessible technology. It was essentially a thick metal pipe bolted to a crudely carved wooden handle.

“It isn’t much,” Kross said, holding the weapon up for inspection, “but it’s reliable and you can learn to use it in about thirty seconds.” She wrenched aside a lever, and the gun fell open. “Shell goes in here. Then snap it closed and pull the hammer back. Make sure this lever is back in place before you pull the trigger.”

“Um, thanks…” Bobby said, taking the gun as if it might explode any second. “I hadn’t actually planned on shooting anyone.”

“Eh? What’s with you people?” She flapped a hand at Mari. “The baby is the only one with any killer instinct.”

{What’s she saying about me?} Mari asked.

{Only good things,} I responded.

“I’ve killed people,” Bobby said, their voice gaining an edge. “With the gas though. Never… face to face.”

“Never too late to start,” Kross said. “And trust me, a chest full of lead is a lot more merciful than a lungful of that nasty green shit you sling around.”

Bobby took a long inhalation, their shoulders rising as they braced themselves for something, but that something never came. I stepped up behind them and dared put a hand on their shoulder. They didn’t flinch away the same way I might have.

“No one is going to force you,” I said. “I know how you feel. Technically, I’ve never killed anyone dead face to face either.” Though I had tried, several times now.

Bobby’s dark eyes studied my face, then drifted down to where the machine gun hung in its sling.

Metal scraped, and we turned to find Mari had picked up a rusty gun with a jagged spear sitting in the barrel. There was an air tank along the side with a gaping crack in its hull. She was turning the weapon this way and that, her mind bright with curiosity.

“Ah, what did I say about touching stuff?” Kross said, hurrying over, though there was no reproach in her voice. “That one doesn’t work anymore. Was a fun one though.”

Mari put the weapon back down gently, then her opaque black visor on Kross. “Do ewe—” She stumbled, starting over. “Do you have a…” She balled up her small hands in frustration, then made a gun sign from two pointed fingers. “For me.”

It was the first completely coherent thing she’d said out loud.

Kross made an approving noise with her throat, not quite a laugh. “Of course dear, come on let’s find you something.”

Bobby and I stared as the girl eagerly followed the sniper on a tour of her ill-gotten gains.

“Mari certainly doesn’t share our reservations,” Bobby said.

“No,” I said slowly. “No, she does not.”

* * *

The shortest path to the Sweeper’s base lay through the old railway yard. The site of the massacre that had started this all.

I plotted a route around it, and neither Kross nor Bobby objected. I couldn’t bring myself to ask Mari her opinion. I was too worried the mere mention of the place would hurt her.

I should have known better by then.

{I know what you’re doing,} she announced, when we were close.

We’d been walking most of the day, the afternoon sun warming our backs.

{What am I doing?}

{You don’t want me to see it.}

I could have lied, insisted this route was faster.

{I didn’t think you’d want to see it,} I admitted. {It’s only a short detour to go around—}

{No.} She cut me off. {I want to go there.}

{Are you sure?}

{I need to.}

And so, we changed course.

“You two been brain-talking?” Kross asked when I explained why.

“Of course.”

“Still think it’s a bit rude,” she said. “Doing that in mixed company.”

The maze of rusted rail cars blocked our view of the massacre site, so we smelt the bodies before we saw them. The Sweepers had left them where they fell, and the scavengers had feasted. Magically twisted dogs, rats, cats, crows, all scurried away at our approach.

Bobby made a retching noise, then audibly swallowed. “Are you sure this is a good idea? It doesn’t seem very healthy, mentally or… otherwise.”

“Up to the girl,” Kross said. “Got no preferences either way.”

They were both right. It probably wouldn’t do Mari any favors, but we weren’t her parents. It felt like an overstep to deny her this. I had never returned to the library after that night, but I often wished I had. She stood next to me, her mind was the chill thick fog of deep grief, but it was surprisingly still.

“Take your time,” I told her.

She took a long breath through her mask, then with some audible effort forced out three words we could understand. “Wait here. Please.”

She walked off into the railyard. We waited.

I couldn’t avoid sensing her mind to some extent, but to give her some privacy I tried to concentrate on other things. Kross, Bobby, the animals around us, lurking just out of view, all the tiny particles of sentience that were insects, and our stalker. It was still there, that faded pinprick, lurking just on the edge of my perception.

Kross had been right to be suspicious of the thing. A dumb animal wouldn’t be so consistent, not for days in a row. It should have disappeared occasionally as it fell behind or got distracted. It didn’t feel like a person though, especially not a Gold Robe.

As hard as I tried not to intrude on Mari’s grieving, it was unavoidable. You can’t force yourself not to hear a loud noise, can you? Can’t not listen to strangers shouting in the next room?

I had expected that foggy grief to spill out of her. The way tears spill out like rivers when finally allowed to flow. Instead, she drew it back into herself, the fog thickening until it became a viscous liquid, then a hard shell. There were cracks in the surface, and red heat began to glow from within.

Not healthy. Not healthy at all.

When she returned to us, there was something about her posture… she might have stood a little taller, her entire body under tension.

“Are you…” I stopped myself before I asked the stupid question.

“Yes,” she said. {I got what I needed.}

I realized I was leaning back from her a little, from whatever was burning within that shell.

{They took most of the horses with them,} she told me. The thought was tinged with hope. {There are still bits of people all over, but only a few horses.}

{Perhaps we’ll find them.}

“You’re doing it again,” Kross said.

“Sorry.” I cleared my throat. “We should get going.”

The Sweepers’ base lay on the large island at the mouth of the river, across the rail bridge. I’d never dared set foot on the bridge myself, never even got close. None of the other Loners I’d spoken to had either. There was no cover and no escape route except a long fall into the cold waters below. With incredibly trigger happy murderers guarding the other end, crossing had always seemed like suicide.

We scouted the bridge from the third floor of a building on our side of the river, assessing the defenses. Through my red plastic binoculars, I could make out a wall of scavenged metal. Bits of car, crumpled tin sheets, what looked like it might have once been a billboard, all piled high and riveted together. When I was a child, I used to build forts just like it for my toys to garrison, though the trash I’d used was much smaller in scale. Perhaps the architect had been inspired by the same medieval castles of movies and storybooks that I had. Probably not.

Castle was the right word to apply to the fortress though, it even had something like a portcullis.

“Three sentries,” Kross commented from beside me. “More will come once I start shooting. Can drop one real quick, probably a second one before they know what’s going on, tricky part will be keeping them off those big machine guns.” She nudged me and I looked over to see a humanoid bush pointing to a spot on the ramparts, her rifle’s scope used as a telescope. “There and there. You see them?”

I followed her finger to where large black tubes protruded from two squat towers built upon the wall— one on each side of the gate. Thick metal plates had been bolted around the firing holes to protect the concealed gunners. “I see them. Are we in range?”

She let out a single nasty laugh. “Those things shoot proper bullets. If they can see us, they can hit us. Anyway, doesn’t look like anyone is manning them yet. Once I start shooting and they know roughly where I am, those guns will start spitting thousands of rounds in my general direction. You’ll lose my cover at that point, and if they spot you on the bridge you’ll be cut in half.”

“So, nothing to worry about, then?” I tried to sound relaxed for the benefit of Mari and Bobby, who were waiting in the shadows behind us. I don’t think I succeeded.

“Worrying ain’t useful in my experience.”

“No. No it isn’t,” I said.

Minutes later, I was still trying to keep that in mind as I sat in the saddle of the dirt bike and stared down the bridge. I took a deep breath and clenched my gloved hands around the handlebars. “Everyone ready?”

We’d stashed most of our heavy kit, but it was a tight squeeze with three people crammed onto the vehicle. The minds of Bobby and Mari hummed behind me, pressing into the back of my consciousness. Mari’s was still ominously crackling behind it’s imperfect shield. Bobby was plainly terrified.

“Ready as I can be,” they said, a tremble in their voice.

“Hey, isn’t this all fate?”

“Maybe. You believe what I told you, after all, then?”

“Don’t you?”

They paused, then said, “of course,” but their guilty mind betrayed them.

“Good,” I said, suppressing the fresh doubt they’d inadvertently injected into me. It wasn’t the time to interrogate them.

“Mari?” I asked, craning my neck to get a look at her.

“Ready,” she responded flatly.

“All right then, here goes nothing.” I reached forward and turned the ignition key that sat behind the handlebars. The engine beneath me roared into life. Somewhere on the wall, the sentries would have heard us, perhaps began to peer in our direction.

Perhaps in retrospect, riding the bike was the most dangerous part of the plan. I’d ridden a bicycle, but never a motorized one, and as much as Kross assured me I wouldn’t need to turn, I couldn’t shake the image of swerving out and crashing off the bridge from my mind.

I hit the throttle and we lurched forward. The bike listed to the left as we got up to speed, threatening to topple. The bottom fell out of my stomach, and I jerked the handlebars in the opposite direction. We careened to the right, all three of us screaming. A second jerk of the handlebars ripped us back upright, the bike getting more stable as it sped up. My heart almost exploded in my chest.

We sped onto the bridge, its support columns whipping past in a blur. I tried to count them. Less than five seconds into executing our plan, I’d already nearly killed everyone.

I dared not look at anything other than the road, and the roar of the bike drowned most of the world out, but I heard the first gunshot. Singular, loud, from behind us. Someone had just died.

The wall of the fortress ballooned in size as we careened toward it. We whipped past what should have been the eighth column, and I began to ease on the brake. We were close enough to make out figures on the wall now, or would have been if there were any to see. They must have all had their heads down.

Kross fired again. Whether at someone or just to suppress the sentries I didn’t know.

No one fired back: the plan was working.

The bike came to a halt near the wall, and we jumped off, letting it clatter on its side. We scurried into the shadow of the fortress and crept along until we were just beyond the right-most machine gun nest.

When we’d stopped at Kross’s to collect gear, a climbing hook and rope had been the most important thing we’d taken. Bobby unslung it from their shoulder, threw high, and with a thunk the hook latched onto something on the ramparts.

A third shot from Kross’s rifle split the air. Someone screamed. Orders were being shouted somewhere above.

Bobby tugged on the rope to make sure it would hold fast then offered it to me. “Good luck, Alan.”

“Thanks, wait for me to give the all clear bef—”

I was cut off as above us the nearest machine gun finally blared to life. It fired so fast that individual gunshots merged into one continuous buzzing roar. Bright red tracer rounds tore through the air, shattering and ricocheting off the facades of the buildings across the river.

Kross would be falling back now, looking for another angle to fire from. Or, if she’d been unlucky, she’d been ripped apart by a hail of lead.

I started my climb just as the second machine gun blared to life. The storm of gunfire masked any noise from me that the Sweepers might have heard. Soon, I had pulled myself inelegantly over the rusty metal ramparts and landed on a mesh walkway. There were two minds in the fortified machine gun nest, though the thick metal walls that protected their sides obscured them from sight.

They were afraid, but their cold fear was receding more with every peal of gunfire, the electric charge of excitement rising to take its place.

On this side of the wall, I could see a train station of some sort, just on the other side of a road, and beyond that a number of low blocky building that could have been warehouses or factories of some sort. An ancient sign above the road read: Port Smith Industrial District.

The district, the island, looked abandoned. There was no second army of Sweepers waiting for us.

{It’s clear,} I sent to Mari.

{On our way.}

When they were still halfway up, first one, then the other machine gun finally sputtered out. The stench of spent gunpowder permeated the air, and it became possible to hear things once more.

{Should we keep climbing?}

I pointed my gun at the entrance to the machine gun nest. {Yes. Very carefully. I have my eye on them.}

“Goddamit. You think we got them?” a man shouted, far too loudly. He was probably half-deaf from all the shooting.

“I fucking hope so. Barrel’s just about melting. Grab a new one for me.”

Metallic clicks and clanks came from the nest, and the two kept chatting while they work. “How many did we lose? Five?”

“Three, I think. I heard three shots.”

“Swear I heard five.”

“Maybe four.” A bigger click than the rest. “New belt too, this one’s nearly done.”

“Shit man, if that sniper’s still alive… there’s not many of us left man.”

“You see what happened to that bike? Looked like they were charging us.”

“No. No idea. That was one of our bikes wasn’t it? The fuck is going on?”

Metal creaked as Bobby dropped to the walkway behind me. They helped Mari over a moment later.

I held up two fingers, then pointed toward the nest. Bobby nodded, and with a grim expression unshouldered the homemade pipe-gun Kross had given them.

{We’re going to kill them?} Mari asked privately. {Right, Alan?}

She checked her pistol was ready to fire. Kross had given her a small hunting rifle from her collection, but we’d left that behind. The bulky handgun would be better suited for the task ahead.

{We’ll probably have to,} I replied.

{Probably? Why gamble? Let’s just shoot them.}

It wasn’t the first time we’d had the argument, and I didn’t want to go over it again. So instead, I stood and moved toward the door of the machine gun nest. I waited for the others to get in position behind me, then stepped through the doorway.

The Sweepers both had at least one sidearm strapped to them, though neither had a weapon in hand at the moment, and one wore only underpants and a filter mask. As I entered, they both stopped and stared at me, gawking at the stranger with the machine gun trained on them. Bobby and Mari filed in behind, pipe-gun and pistol both raised.

I tensed, fearing that Mari would just start shooting, but she perhaps wasn’t as ruthless as she wanted me to think she was. For a moment, no one did anything. I tried to find my voice, sputtered out a ‘h’ sound, grimaced, tried again. “Hands up. Drop your guns.”

“Who the fuck are you?” the man in his underpants shouted. He did his best to sound fearless, but his fluttering mind betrayed him. Behind his armored mask, his eyes slid to Mari. “You’re the ones the yellow boys are after.”

“It doesn’t matter who we are,” I said. “We have guns pointed at you. Drop your weapons and get on the ground.”

“Yeah?” the fully clothed man said. His voice cracked a little. He might have been very young. “And if you shoot us, everyone’ll know you’re here.”

{We don’t have time for this.}

{Just wait, okay?} “Look. I know there’s not many of you here, and my friend out there just killed… five of you. You really think we’re worried about stealth now?”

The Sweepers shared a glance. “Told you it was five,” the mostly naked one muttered.

I’d made a mistake by lying. I knew that immediately.

Suspicion bloomed in the man with the accurate shot count. I’d bluffed. Bluffing was a sign of weakness. A sign that I really was desperate to not pull the trigger.

And he was right. But so wrong.

Mari and I sensed the aggression coming before he began to move. We’d already begun to fire as his hand twitched toward a holster. The combined bursts of gunfire made his corpse spasm, before it fell limply to the ground.

“Shit!” his companion screamed and went for his own holster. Because of course he would, he’d just seen us execute his friend in cold blood. I turned my gun on him.

Bullets have a much more visceral effect on naked flesh— when you could really see the damage.

“What the fuck?” Bobby shouted. “What the fuck was that?”

“He was going to shoot,” I gasped. “The idiot. The absolute moron.”

It was first time I’d directly, unambiguously, killed another human being. I had expected it to destroy me. Everything I’d been taught growing up, everything I’d been raised to believe, told me that this was the one act a person couldn’t come back from, the act that would traumatize anyone who wasn’t a monster.

Whether that would turn out to be true in the future remained to be seen, because with my adrenaline up every negative emotion was converted into fear or rage. Mostly rage. How dare this foolish person make me kill them? Corrupt me. How selfish!

Bobby stared at the two of us wide eyed. “Magic stuff?”

“Magic stuff,” Mari confirmed, half-butchering the words. Her mind was still a fortress, but I doubt the killings shook her too badly.

“Eugh,” I groaned, “all right, next one.”

“They know we’re here now,” Bobby said.

They were right. I looked to Mari. {How many can you sense? I’ve got three.}

{Yes. All together. The next nest.}

All three minds were bristling with fear, anticipation, hostility. If I was judging their position correctly, they were standing in the doorway of the second machine gun nest, which meant if we tried to leave, they’d have clear shots on us.

I cursed. Which sent Bobby’s worried brows up.

“We’re pinned, I think,” I explained.

“Who’s in there?” a shout came, loud and throaty. “We have grenades. If we don’t hear from our guys by the time I count to five, we’re chucking them in.”

They weren’t bluffing.

Cold fear flooded me, mingling with Bobby’s, and even the flames within Mari’s new emotionless shell began to cool. My mind raced through our options.

“Five!” the Sweeper boomed.

“Um, guys?” Bobby pulled their one last grenade from its satchel. The one marked with green paint.

{Use our gifts?} Mari interjected.

{Yes. Like with the dogs. You shatter, I pour in?}

“Might be time to use this?”

“Four!”

{Yes. The one at the back.}

{The one at the back.}

“Guys?”

“Three!”

Bobby curled a finger around the pin of their grenade.

“Wait,” I snapped. There was no time for more than that. My eyes pleaded for their trust. They held my gaze, even as I slipped away to the mental realm.

“Two!”

I extended my consciousness out to the mind at the rear of the formation, spreading like liquid across its surface. It wasn’t trained, it had never experienced this before, but it still curled up and hardened on instinct. Some of me got through, tasting the fear and confusion first hand.

{What’s happening? Who’re you?} The consciousness cowered from me.

Then Mari smashed into the unprepared mind like a bullet, tearing a hole through it, and I flooded in.

Sights and sounds that weren’t mine enveloped me.

I was being loaded onto the back of a truck, my family watching on in despair. I remembered their faces but not their names. I was holding a gun for the first time, firing it for the first time, not long after, killing for the first time. I saw Kat for the first time without a mask, and that smile of hers, and the first time we fooled around after dark. I felt the stab in my gut when I heard she’d been killed. I heard those stupid horse people jabbering in their dumb language, felt the thrill as I unleashed my wrath upon them.

Somewhere far away, a familiar voice said a word. It took a moment to decipher it through the haze. But when I recognized it, everything snapped into place.

The word was, “one.”

I had the comforting weight of my gun in my hands. Robbie on the right, Hector on the left. Hector had a grenade in his hand. He’d already pulled the pin. He was going to use it to kill my friends. Not my real friends. These other friends I didn’t know.

I needed to shoot him. But why, again? It didn’t matter. I just needed to. My gun moved as if through honey, my finger moving as clenching as easily as if all the tendons had been cut.

But my gun did fire, not just once but many times. Hector screamed, but it was muffled and distant. The grenade fell from his hand, the striker lever flying loose with that distinctive ‘ping’ that was for some reason not so muffled and distant at all.

Robbie turned. And pointed her gun. And shoved me in the chest. She was screaming.

I didn’t like that. I didn’t want to be here anymore. I didn’t want to be me anymore. I left.

I, me, Red, Alan, flinched back to reality. The real one. Where I was me and Bobby was Bobby and Mari was Mari.

An explosion split the air, and three minds were snuffed out at once.

I slumped against the wall, breathless and suddenly very tired. Half my strength had been expended at once by what I’d done.

“What just happened?” Bobby asked, their voice still tight with stress. “Did we get them all?”

I didn’t respond at first. The implications of what I’d just done began to sink in. I could control people. Not for very long, and with a lot of difficulty, but I could do it. Perhaps Mari could too? Perhaps the Gold Robes? Was that how they’d managed to get the Sweepers to work with them? Had they enslaved Metalhead with some sort of mind magic?

“Alan.” Bobby stepped in close, staring into my eyes the same way they had when I’d just woken from that coma. “Are they all gone?”

“Yes,” Mari answered for me. “All dead.”

I searched for more minds nearby and found nothing. We were alone on the wall. We’d taken the castle.