The first order of business was ammunition.Soren went through the pockets of the man whose AK rifle he'd taken, found a full magazine, and swapped it in. The other bodies yielded two more magazines, a folded wad of local currency, and a set of identity documents he couldn't read but pocketed anyway. Then he grabbed the nearest pair of ankles and started dragging.Evan watched him for a moment, then grabbed the other ankle without being asked. They worked without talking, pulling the bodies one by one into the banana grove on the right side of the road, pushing them far enough into the broad-leafed shadow that a passing vehicle wouldn't catch them in a casual glance. The blood on the asphalt was a different problem. There was too much of it and too little time, and Soren made the call quickly: leave it. Anyone who stopped to investigate a bloodstained stretch of highway in the Frontier Republic was already the kind of person who wouldn't be deterred by a clean road."

By six in the evening, the light coming through the windows of the small house had gone amber and low, and Evan had finished telling his story.Noah sat across from him with his elbows on his knees and his jaw tight, the kind of stillness that comes from trying very hard not to say the first several things that come to mind. When Evan finished, Noah let out a long breath through his nose."Those absolute sons of," he said, and left it there."I'm not planning to come back," Evan said, with a short, humorless laugh. He wrapped both hands around his tea and looked at the table. "Ever, if I can help it.""I'll contact the consulate," Noah said, reaching for his phone. "Get them to send someone for you. In the meantime, don't go out. The Blake family has people all over this district. If they're looking for you, the street is the last place you want to be.""Hold on." Evan put a hand on his arm. "There's something else. Soren can't go back home. He's got a situa

The squad leader looked at the bodies on the corridor floor and made the only rational decision available to him."We're pulling out. This is above our pay grade."No one argued. Six men in under ten minutes, and they still hadn't seen the man who'd done most of it. Just the sound of shots in the dark, the shapes of their teammates going down, and the single round that had come through the window glass from somewhere outside with the kind of precision that didn't belong to an amateur. Half the team was gone. Whoever was in that building had trained for this kind of environment and was using it against them with methodical, unhurried efficiency. Staying inside to find him wasn't courage. It was arithmetic, and the arithmetic was bad.They moved out through the kitchen, past the two men on the floor, and back through the gate in a tight, quiet group that was considerably smaller than the one that had entered.Soren watched them go from the second-floor landing, one

The Boss looked Soren up and down with the practiced appraisal of a man who had spent years sorting people into categories: threat, mark, or irrelevant. The young man at his stall fit none of them cleanly. He was speaking Mandarin, which in this part of the Frontier Republic was not unusual. The border with the mainland ran close, and the city had absorbed enough of its northern neighbor's population over the decades that Mandarin was as common on these streets as the local tongue. Mainlanders came to work, to trade, to disappear. They came with money, sometimes, and occasionally with more money than they were careful about.The Boss stood up from his chair with the enthusiasm of a man who had just revised his morning upward."My friend, take your time, take your time. Everything here is fresh, and our scale is the most honest on the street. Ask anyone." He gestured broadly at the stall with the pride of a man who had never weighed anything accurately in his life. "What ar

The bullet missed his skull by inches.Soren's eyes had barely opened when the crack of the shot snapped him fully awake. Instinct took over before thought could, and he threw himself sideways, rolling down the muddy embankment in a tangle of limbs. He hit the bottom hard. Cold, filthy water splashed across his face, cutting through the fog in his head like a blade."Snyder! Get up!"Around him, soldiers in weathered field-grey uniforms crouched along the ridge of the embankment, working the bolts of their G98 Mauser rifles and returning fire toward the tree line. The air reeked of gunpowder and wet earth, and somewhere ahead a machine gun was hammering in long, merciless bursts. A German officer in a lieutenant's coat was shouting his name, firing between words. Then a shot from across the field caught the man square in the head. He dropped without a sound.He was calling me. Snyder. That's supposed to be me. A stranger thought followed immediately: How am I und