Dwindle, Page 3

  Chapter Two: The Ambush

  “You don’t understand,” I said emphatically to the robot. “She doesn’t understand what is going on – how we do things!”

  “She will be made to understand,” the robot replied calmly. “Just like all the rest. She may be unique, but she is no exception to every protocol we have established up to this point.”

  “Show her to me,” I ordered.

  A hole in the wall appeared, as if it suddenly turned to water, and I saw her. Her mouth was fluid, and she leaned forward, lips moving rapidly. I blinked in surprise.

  “How did you get her to talk?” I asked, my voice shaking noticeably.

  “We told her to talk,” the robot said back plainly.

  I turned back to it.

  “And she didn’t fight?”

  “We exploited her fear. A thing easily done. You should be familiar with this.”

  It was a veiled question, and my stomach churned at the thought of its implications. The memories it dug up were painful. The haze of forgetting was now lifted, and I was back again to the only life I’d ever known.

  “Exterior?” it asked me.

  “I’m not an Exterior,” I said. “Don’t call me that.”

  “Your records indicate –”

  “I don’t give a shit,” I snapped. “I’m not an Exterior.”

  Through the silence, there was the distantly mechanically whirring of his parts processing this and analyzing it.

  “She has changed you,” it said.

  I said nothing and stared pointedly at her through the one-way mirrored window. I did feel different – changed for the better. I didn’t want him to call me an Exterior. It just didn’t feel right. Not anymore.

  “You’ve never let a subject bother you before, Exterior.”

  “If I corrected you again, would it matter?”

  “Probably not, no,” the robot replied.

  “Well, I don’t like what you’re calling me. And I sure as hell don’t like what you’re calling her.”

  “The term ‘subject’ offends you?”

  “Yeah,” I said into the one-way, watching her but not seeing. “Why do you do that? Call them subjects? They have names, you know. Feelings too, believe it or not.”

  “Feelings?” it said back with something close to disdain. “A Project has no more feelings than a dog or a horse.”

  I ached inside with the words.

  “I won’t be able to go in until we both tell you what you want, will I?”

  “Correct,” the robot stated.

  Strangely, it hurt to know that. I put my hand delicately onto the glass, feeling an even stranger, unpleasant sensation in the depths of me. Just the vision of her had an effect on me now. I felt almost sick, and I didn’t know why, but it wasn’t exactly unpleasant. It was a dull, aching agony I didn’t understand.

  The robot broke the silence again, asking,

  “Why now, Oliver?”

  “Why now what?”

  “What is physically affecting you? You shiver.”

  I shrugged.

  “Your temperature is approximately .06 degrees above normal.”

  “I’m tired,” I dismissed.

  “Your heartbeat increases when you look at her, and your pheromones spike,” the robot stated again.

  Finally, I turned to him, feeling panic to reject something I didn’t understand.

  “Okay, maybe I have the flu or something! What about it?”

  “She affects you,” the robot explained. “Is it because she is female? Attraction has been known to occur between prolonged exposure between humans and their Deviant counterparts.”

  “You think I’ve been exposed to her?” I asked, snorting.

  “I think you’ve been away from physical intercourse for a very long time,” the robot explained with that same painful honesty. “Unless, of course, you and she…?”

  “What?” I asked, all laughter gone. “No! No, of course not!”

  “Human beings are full of needs,” the robot pressed. “It’s possible that your need to mate is overcoming your –”

  “Woah, woah, woah!” I said loudly, feeling the shivers the robot described worsen. “You have no idea what you’re talking about!”

  “Well, then how do you explain the sudden shift in behavior? It isn’t possible for you to have feelings for her.”

  I said nothing now. I had also once believed it to be impossible. Right up until it wasn’t impossible.

  “She is just a Deviant,” the robot remarked. “A machine.”

  “She bleeds!” I snapped suddenly.

  There was a silence.

  “Do you want to make her bleed?” the robot asked delicately.

  “What do you mean?” I asked dangerously, turning to face it. “We’re not doing that! Not here! You asked for her to talk, so she’s talking! End of story!”

  “It was only –”

  “Nobody gets to touch her, least of all me!”

  “Your records merely imply –”

  “Whatever,” I said.

  I didn’t want to hear about what my records implied. It wasn’t like before. It would never be like before again.

  The words drove me to look at her once more. It made me uncomfortable again, seeing her so outlandishly anxious. She had the most infuriating poker face, but under the light, I saw everything. Fear. Pain. Sadness. Anger.

  “This is so different,” I said suddenly.

  “This is fairly obvious.”

  “But more than – I don’t know.”

  I watched her mouth move fast with the rhythm of her long story, and I knew it was far from finished. I didn’t want to hear some of it. I knew some of it, a lot of it, maybe, would be about me. I didn’t want to hear.

  “There are…some cases…after prolonged exposure, of course…” the robot began, “of Exteriors becoming what we call emotionally compromised.”

  “Yeah? So what?”

  “Have you been?”

  “Been what?”

  “Emotionally compromised.”

  I wanted to hide. The panic that had emerged at the mere suggestion of fostering any desire for her emerged once more, heaving inside of me, causing me to feel nauseas all over again with feelings I didn’t understand.

  But I couldn’t be. If I was emotionally compromised, she would be all alone out here. I couldn’t let that happen, no matter what I felt or how strongly I felt it.

  “I’m not emotionally compromised,” I stated – firm, like I had been before, I thought. “It’s just been a long time with her. Maybe I’ve been exposed, but its okay.” I forced a smile onto my face that savored strongly of poison. “I’m back now.”

  “Eleven months is more than the recommended duration of time logged with a Project subject,” the robot admonished.

  “Well, it wasn’t like we could just up and leave!” I retorted, but the anger wasn’t there.

  “Eleven months” rang in my head.

  It felt like such a short time with her, but I felt a kinship with those months. The time was beyond Probe order, beyond the pressure of what was right and what was wrong. Without Probe control, there were no obligations. There was freedom to do what I wanted – to know Fisher like I wanted. That was how it was supposed to be. That was how I wished it still was.

  “You are attracted to her,” the robot declared.

  “Look, what do you want to hear?” I snapped, beginning to pace to work off my nerves. “That I like her? Okay, yeah, fine! But are we involved? No! Hell no!”

  “This does not change the fact that she means something to you.”

  I rolled my eyes with a reluctant smile.

  “I blew every chance I had with her the second I took her off that rock.”

  And part of me deflated at the truth behind the words.

  “So you admit that you wanted this ‘chance?’”

  I sighed, even as my insides shook.

  “She seems to trust you,” it persisted. I f
elt something deep inside of me, something wonderful. “Can you tell me what you’re feeling right now?” I knew he could tell what it was, even if I couldn’t. “Can you explain that to me, what you are feeling right in this moment? That flighty feeling?”

  “No, because I don’t understand it!” I cried out with frustration.

  I looked back at Fisher, wondering what it was that I felt. I found myself drawn to the curve of her neck where I knew on the other side lied the mark. It looked warm there, and soft. I wondered, in a moment’s weakness, what it actually might feel like. I’d looked at her lips in that room, just half an hour before. They looked so much different, and I had wanted them.

  It had taken everything out of me when she flicked me away in fear.

  I realized the direction of my thoughts and slammed down the barrier, keeping all thoughts of her away from my fiendish impulses. I had always been good at that, severing ties to keep myself alive, and I felt confident that I was successful, even if, right then, I felt weak to do anything to defend myself against her.

  In Washington, I had to do it a few times a day to remind myself of what she was to me. If I let it be more, if I gave in to those impulses, she would instantly be nothing. I had to preserve this, at least. Even if we weren’t friends, I still wanted her to mean something to me. Besides, she was a Deviant, right? How could I of all people ever be interested in a Deviant?

  “We can help you, you know,” the robot said reassuringly.

  The sagging part of me perked up with hope.

  “Yeah? How?”

  “Someone else can come in to help you,” it said. “After your debriefing.”

  “Okay…” I said wearily, and I began:

  “I started this story as a petty murderer. A killer. A professional, of course, but a killer all the same. You bred me to kill, raised me for it, so I guess you should know this. But I guess your stupid records need thoroughness, so for posterity’s sake, here was my life before this.

  I hunted down beasts. Sometimes “unwantables.” Other times, most times, I killed Deviants. For record’s sake, Deviants are clones – and I assassinated entire camps of them in a matter of minutes. A professional killer of Deviants, actually. Oliver Dark, super soldier.

  Maybe I don’t have a right to look back at all the morally unacceptable things I had to do for our cause and question it, but I still do. Some of it was necessary. I took the muck others didn’t want to see and I buried it. I did the hard things so that other people don’t have to.

  Some of it, though, some of it was just…sickening.

  But I was compliant. I didn’t ask questions. I did my duty. Plain and simple. I did it not because I cared for the cause but because they were Probe’s enemies. I was told to do, and I did. I was nothing to them because I was invisible, a non-entity. I was a lethal weapon that couldn’t be seen or heard, if I didn’t want to be. I was a force unseen until it was too late.

  But I knew too much. I had left the Exterior force, elected to abandon the cause, despite the shadowy rumors that few would survive very long after that. In a way, my departure from their illegal program was like suicide. But a week went by then two then five then ten. A long time went by, and I didn’t die. I was good at hiding, I thought. I’d always been exceptionally talented. A diamond in the rough, I was told. But I stopped trying to hide when the guilt dried up my resolve, and they found me again, tucking me back into their little flock as if I hadn’t left.

  But it was different after my return. I wasn’t back in Probe’s arms. I was caught between its clutches, waiting for the worst assignment imaginable to be sent on to die. That was where Washington D.C. came up. The Dead Zone. And that was okay with me. Going out with a fight was better than drowning in beer somewhere dark, even if it was with a shady agency I knew I could no longer trust.

  But I wasn’t the only lucky winner to be sent on this fantastic vacation.

  The first on our little “team” was Alison Bright. She had a tendency to be extremely cruel and unreasonable. Something seemed off about her. She was cold, calculated, but she played the part of the selfish and greedy freelancer. I didn’t buy it, and I thought there was more to it right from the beginning. I just didn’t know how much more.

  The second was Pierce Tanner. I enjoyed his refreshing ability to deal with my surly antics. Needless to say, I don’t always play well with others. Most people were either offended or scared out of their minds, but then again, most of the people that I’d ever met in my life had seen me as nothing more than a suit of armor that was usually followed by death.

  Pierce didn’t care. He said it was because he was out of the Army, and I didn’t question it. I knew the Army was one of the few tough legal organizations left. I was part of an elite force very unlike that organization, a force weaker people might have even called terroristic, and I was employed under the utmost secrecy because my very existence was illegal. I was an Exterior, allowed outside the walls, allowed to work outside the law. Pierce and I clashed because of this disparity in philosophy, but I respected his courage, ethics, and leadership. Even if I wouldn’t show it.

  Paige was this man’s husband. Compared to the rest of us, there was, definably, nothing wrong with her. I wondered why she had come at all when I found out that she was a psychologist, not a soldier, who’d been studying the evolutionary emotional development of Deviants. I didn’t like her immediately when I found out about this, but I didn’t say anything. She could come and watch me exterminate D.C., but that didn’t mean I had to talk to her about it.

  Besides, she was more right than I want even now to admit, whether you think she’s radical or not. You haven’t seen what I’ve seen.

  Anyway, I was in charge of these soldiers probably because I was the only one who had ever been owned by Probe before. Usually, their oldest dogs retrieved the biggest bones, so I headed the expedition unto death.

  The official story was that we were sent just to look. To see if we could re-colonize it. It didn’t matter to me, really. If I was there to die, I would die. It was as simple as that. It wasn’t my call. I was the hand, after all, not the mind that used it.

  Besides, at the beginning, like I said, I willed death with open arms.

  We trudged on, trudging being a very appropriate word as we sort of meandered in a given direction, moving forward determinedly but with a resignation I found fitting for our situation. I walked beside Paige, and she turned to look at me occasionally. Long before she even spoke, I knew she was gearing to say something, so I remained by her and waited patiently for a chance to tell her to shove it.

  Finally, she asked,

  “Why did you take this job, Mr. Dark?”

  She didn’t look at me but waited just as patiently as I had been.

  “They told me to take it,” I answered.

  But then I scowled, caught in her trap of paranoid psychological questioning. There was little I could do because I broke the unwritten code of answering. That meant she could continue – whether I liked it or not.

  “Do you feel this is enough reason for you to take this job?”

  “They tell me to shoot, I pull the trigger.”

  I glared at her for daring to speak to me about such things. To question my authority had been taboo up until that point, and it was sort of like the beginning of the end after that.

  “You don’t feel anything about it at all?”

  “That’s how it is,” I snapped. “They told me to kill everything here. I’m good at it. You’re not. That’s why I’m here. That’s why you shouldn’t be.”

  “You don’t mind killing things?” she asked levelly, maintaining her nauseating judgment-free voice.

  “No, I feel numb,” I admitted bluntly.

  I hadn’t meant to sound so weak, I remember thinking.

  But I had, so I stopped talking, feeling what I could feel of discomfort at the time. I couldn’t really feel anymore at all, that was true, but, like I said, this was the beginning of the e
nd when all sorts of things started to unravel inside of me. But right then, I didn’t care about anything. The furthest I got to caring that I had no family, no friends, was…

  Well. I honestly don’t remember a time.

  “I suppose you’ve killed Deviants before then, haven’t you?” she asked. “You’re an Exterior?”

  “Who told you that?” I asked edgily.

  “You just did,” she said, laughing to herself.

  I just shrugged, hiding my surprise that she didn’t seem to be at all bothered by this.

  “I don’t have to be an Exterior to hate those things,” I explained.

  “The Deviants, you mean?”

  “Obviously,” I snapped, rolling my eyes.

  My hate created in me a cancer of ice around my heart that would not melt for anything or anyone. I thought it was good sometimes, even useful, but other times I secretly hoped and prayed for a single drip of happiness or sadness or fear to slip through the cracks.

  “Probe knows you well then – to send you here after…that.”

  She glanced at me, trying hard to surface a reaction.

  “I guess,” was all I said – curtly.

  “You’re not afraid of Necrosis, Mr. Dark?” she asked me quietly. “Of this place?”

  “It’s Ollie,” I finally said. “And if it happens to me, it happens to me.”

  “Necrosis, you mean?”

  “Yeah…”

  “You’ve seen it and you don’t even care?”

  I didn’t reply. I’d only ever killed a few Necros. The one I remembered most clearly was too far for me to notice. Probe had procedures to make sure nobody ever got within five hundred yards of them. It had been a woman – I think. I couldn’t tell.

  “I only know what they tell me,” I said dismissively.

  “And what is that, precisely?” she asked.

  I spoke exasperatedly.

  “The Great Deviants created a virus two hundred years ago. Necrosis. Five original clones – you know they’re called Great Deviants, right? The perfect models?” She nodded. “One of them went crazy and built more Deviant scum, created a virus that would kill us all, and then proceeded to drop bombs on Washington’s doorstep, invoking a war between man and machine.”

  “That’s the Probe version,” she corrected cautiously after a moment. “Now what’s the truth?”

  I snorted.

  “You don’t think they’re the same?”

  “They rarely are,” she said with wizened boldness that I had not expected out of the woman.

  “Okay,” I said, “so what do you think happened?”

  “I heard that the Great Deviants were invented to further human knowledge. They built Necrosis, which human interest groups then weaponized. One of them went insane and rebelled to stop it, but all but only a few were then silenced. To defend themselves, they were forced to weaponize the very knowledge they had helped create to protect humanity, and they used it against us to survive. We handed the world over on a silver platter just because we decided to end violence with violence.”

  “That’s a cute little story you have there,” I said nastily. “Tell me, does that justify the mass genocide that followed? Does that justify this?”

  I motioned around me.

  “Those things did this,” I said, my hatred so well-rehearsed and so deeply ingrained into my soul that it had been printed there. “We built them, and they got out of hand. And look where its gotten us. They deserve no mercy. None.”

  “Brutality in war is always on both sides, Mr. Dark,” she whispered quietly, but not submissively.

  “Whatever,” I said, flinging my hand out towards her as if to shoo her away.

  But she didn’t go.

  “What did they tell you was the mission’s purpose?” she asked abruptly.

  She probably sensed it was a good time to change the subject.

  “Why is it your problem?” I asked, looking down at her.

  “I’d just rather like to know why I’m being sent to die and figured I’d ask you.”

  I considered the question out of something close to pity.

  “They want to build a city here,” I said finally. “They want to re-colonize – we’re running out of room in Freedom’s Progress and we aren’t making much ground outside in the colonies, no matter how many we slaughter.”

  “Why?” she asked, sounding for the first time genuinely curious. “It seems impossible to come here, where it all started, to build a new city – I mean, look at this place.”

  “It’s a military move,” I said quickly, impatiently. “I just follow the Masters.”

  “You trust the Masters and your Council?” she asked. “Respect them?”

  “No,” I said flatly.

  To admit that I did would give away that I was an Exterior.

  “Have you ever even seen them?”

  “Not in person, no. I don’t need to to understand what they want from me.”

  “But you’re an Exterior. You’re the Master’s eyes and ears.”

  “I told you already,” I said exasperatedly. “I’m not an Exterior.”

  “You didn’t tell me that, no. Were you Army then?”

  “No.”

  “Then what were you? Deduction leads me to believe you are either a murderer or a liar. Which is it?”

  “I was young and I was stupid,” I said quietly. “That’s all you need.”

  “But you’re here,” she said pensively, almost like it was interesting to her.

  “I’ll support their crusade against the Deviants,” I conceded, feeling irritation that she was questioning me at all. “But I’ll never work for them again after this. The Council is corrupt. Arrogant. Ignorant. Wrong, even.” I looked to the horizon, where the grey sky met the rocky debris. “But they’ve granted me clemency, not that it matters to you.”

  “What did you do wrong, then?” she asked. “Did you defect?” She smirked. “Or you really are a murderer?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “You wouldn’t need clemency from Probe unless you’re the reject. And usually…they don’t let you live much longer after that. So…we’re obviously here to die.”

  She was right. It was obvious, after all. They wanted me to die on this mission. There was no real reason to send me in to such a dangerous place. Like I said, I was nonexistent, and I knew too much. And I was going to die. What was strange too was that the thought of death did not bring me fear. The wounds that I would receive were nothing. I could ignore the pain, like I always had. Sometimes, I almost willed it. I wanted my guilt to end.

  “We’re getting close to something,” Ali called back.

  “To what?” I asked impatiently. “Where the hell could there possibly be?”

  “How about we drop the attitude, princess?” Pierce asked me.

  “Just shut up and keep moving,” I ordered, nodding ahead of us unnecessarily.

  It was the only solid thing that stuck above the hills of rubble for miles.

  “What a brilliant plan,” Ali said. “Are you open for suggestions?”

  “No,” I snarled to her, turning around.

  She didn’t.

  My mind slowly returned to its own world as we trudged on the path to nowhere in particular. And the single thought rang deep within my head: I was going to die very soon. I couldn’t help thinking it over and over again, bitterly, almost indignantly. The world had done me countless injustices and I was still going to die like this.

  But I’d asked for this, I found myself thinking. I’d wanted it. I didn’t deserve to feel indignant or even bitter.

  I looked around at all of them, projecting the inner hatred I felt outwards towards the world. How weak my team was, gathering together – needing each other. Ignoring their fate. I didn’t need other people. I never had. I didn’t need home. I didn’t even have one. But, strangely, in that moment, I was honest with myself. I found I wanted to go home anyway – wherever that was.

  I
accidentally sighed. Paige was passing me.

  “You okay?” she asked quietly.

  “Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?” I was frustrated with myself. “Let’s move faster people.”

  It was an unfair request, but they obliged, as usual. Their compliance annoyed me. Hell, everything annoyed me.

  I kept telling myself that I was doing it for the will of the Masters. I breathed, I ate, I slept for my Master, and the strangest thing was, I didn’t even know why. He continued to ask things of me, demand them, and I never failed to disappoint. I followed him like a dog, an irrationally loyal animal that would fight and die to defend whatever it was that he needed me to defend. I hoped, before the end, I would just be able to see what that was.

  Especially when I knew the end he’d decided for me would be so soon.

  I just didn’t want to do it anymore. I had never hated life so much, never willed it so much to be over. I left Probe for a reason, and I hadn’t so much as stepped near it after I left the force. It had only been a couple of years, yes, but it was long enough for me to have forgotten what it felt like to be in their web. That I was back forced me to remember. And I didn’t want to remember anymore.

  I knew I would have to give up everything, or Probe would take everything. I just had so little to give anymore. I didn’t even have a will. I was pathetic, in a way, and I could only despise myself even more. I would fight the world until the end out of spite, but what happened didn’t really matter either way.

  But I didn’t want to fight death anymore. I was so tired of running.

  “What’s a P-2?” Paige asked beside me.

  I sighed audibly and looked at her exasperatedly. She was good at interrupting my internal conversations. I was so used to having them, being alone all the time, that I often had no idea how to speak out loud. So I mumbled,

  “What?”

  “A P-2. What is it?”

  “Outside Progress, there are two kinds of people. Priority Twos, who work mostly in intelligence, and Priority Ones, who work mostly in the field. That answer your question?”

  “I’m a P-2 then?”

  “Yeah, I guess, if you really want to be. I’m a P-1.” I sneered. “I’m your superior.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “I told you already,” I said, clenching my free fist impatiently. “I’ve already worked with Probe.”

  “Pierce is a P-1.”

  “He only worked for the Army.”

  “Only?” she said, with the first flash of anger. “He gave forty good years of his life –”

  “– to a cause that hasn’t gotten any further than the Master’s plans have,” I finished.

  She huffed and walked ahead of me a bit, obviously irritated and angry with my opinion. A flicker of internal panic made me consider apologizing, but I couldn’t, so the matter was quickly dropped. It kept her away from me anyway, which was as it should have been. She wouldn’t have to miss me when I was gone.

  “What time is it?” Ali asked from the front.

  “Four,” Pierce said. “We’re almost done for today. Keep your eyes open. The Necros come out at night, remember.”

  “Yeah, we’ve heard the bed-time story, old man, okay?” I rolled my eyes. “The scary things come at dark. We got it.”

  “I just love your sunshine, cupcake,” Pierce said sarcastically. Then he stopped us. “Watch your step here – there’s some sort of…”

  He trailed off. It was a contraption that hung from the ceiling of a house we walked through. It was only a piece of the frame, hardly two walls and a support, but it was a solid enough building all the same. I looked the contraption up and down.

  “Good thing this isn't a trap,” I said, setting it before the others could walk through it.

  I walked ahead of them, rolling my eyes at their awe.

  “Let’s move!” I ordered.

  We began to walk through an opening to the other side. There was a small valley in the rubble where walls rose and fell on either side. It went on like that for a long way, almost like a –

  “Is this a road?” Ali asked. “It looks cleared out, doesn’t it?”

  “We don’t have time to double back,” Pierce said, which was true.

  We had already walked for at least a good thirty seconds. Turning back was no longer an option. If it was another trap, we were already in it.

  “Let’s go,” Pierce said.

  He glanced at me for an okay, but I wasn’t listening. I looked around, feeling the air get colder and, with each moment, more and more dangerous.

  “I have a really bad feeling about this,” I whispered to myself.

  “Wait!” It was Ali. There was panic in her voice. We all stiffened to her – a soldier’s stance – and she was motionless for a moment before saying, “Do you hear that?”

  “Hear what?” Paige asked.

  They all cocked their guns at the same time. I didn’t because I didn’t care. I didn’t have the capacity to. I already knew my fate. It didn’t matter if I lived or died trying.

  “Bright, hear what?” I was the impatient-voice-of-reason-that-knocked-people-to-their-senses kind of guy. So I didn’t play with dramatic antics. “Hey! Bright! Respond!”

  “No, I hear it,” Pierce said.

  He tilted his head. I tried to hear it too, walking over next to Ali. We were surrounded by buildings, walls and falling frames. I looked about continually, hearing a faint shuffling noise. It came from above. It was sort of a rustling sound, but it wasn’t too far off. Maybe it was getting closer. And then I felt it. My sixth sense of tension kicked in. It didn’t matter if I valued my life or not, my adrenaline would punch me into doing everything it took to keep myself alive.

  “Something’s wrong.” I turned to Pierce. “Turn around.” We had walked a good hundred feet from the trap in the building. “Turn around – go!” I looked at the walls as we began to jog back to the trapped building. “Walk faster – go, faster! Go! Hurry!” I heard the noise again. I knew, if I turned around, I would have been able to see it. “RUN, MOVE, GO!”

  “LOOK OUT!”

  I jumped out of the way as a dog flung itself at the space where my head had just been. I stumbled and fell to the ground, my gun preventing me from catching myself, and my head bounced painfully on the ground. The dog recovered faster than I could have and it bit at my side. Immediately, pain exploded from me like it hadn’t in years. The dog tore a piece of my skin off with the sickening rip that I knew, and I immediately started punching at the place where it was. I heard it yelp as I did it, but it was determined not to let go.

  I heard gunfire and the dog fell limp. I began to bleed even more heavily at its release. Pain made me cry out a little and gasp as I tried to sit up, tried hard just to breathe. Throbs pounded through my head as I realized the sun would soon be setting and all the predators in the world would descend upon my bleeding flesh.

  I yelled out. There was no time. There was no medic. There wasn’t anything to help me. I was on my own. I remembered what my Master had said to me.

  “The Council does not expect you to survive this mission…”