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“Girl,” someone whispers. “Girl.” A woman stares at me from a cracked door. She opens it more. And I see it was the woman who watched me run from the burning house. She motions me toward her. I’m not sure why or how, but I find myself inside her house. I pull out my gun and point it at her. She flinches away. A man on the far side of the room looks away from his HC to see me. Then looks back as it shows bodies falling over a city. Brea lies on their kitchen table. Her blood has been cleaned away, and she’s wearing a dress, her face surrounded by winter berries. It looks as if she is asleep.

She is their daughter.

* * *

—

“Red Hand came a year ago,” Brea’s mother says as I warm myself by their fire. Her name is Maeve. A young boy watches from a back room. “Moved into the mine north of town. Started using the old base for transmissions and the mine up the coast as a redoubt. It was fine at first. Our Gammas had already fled. But then the Obsidians came and things got bad. More Hands started showing up as the Obsidians chased them north. So many hangin’ on by the thread of their bones.

“They’ve got a field outside the mine where they’ve done and buried thousands. Their men started fightin’. Started killin’ each other. Guess they thought they had nothin’ to live for. So then we was told they’d be takin’ wives of our clan.” She stifles a sob. “They took me baby. She was not on thirteen. Too shy of wedAge, but they took her still. Said Mora was too young yet. But…” Her lips quiver. “But they took her to the base anyway. They’ll take her away.”

I sit in the chair feeling exhausted as Maeve tells me her tragedy. The rag I used to clean the blood from my arms languishes in a tepid bowl of water. The old soup she gave me doesn’t steam anymore. I’ve not even lifted the spoon. Outside, there’s occasional gunfire or shouts. I cradle Ulysses in my arms.

“Mora?” I ask. “Who is she?”

“Me youngest daughter. Not yet twelve.” She sobs.

“And you just let them take her,” I say, watching Ulysses’ dead face. “After you knew what they did to Brea?”

“What were we to do?” the woman says. “They’d kill us. There’s hundreds up there in that mine. That man Cormac…he’s a beast. Killed a boy who tried to…” She shakes her head.

“He’s dead now. My friend made sure of that.”

“He ain’t the worst of them. There’s Picker—man that chooses the wives. He chose Brea and now…” She can’t even say her youngest daughter’s name. “And there’s the woman.”

“Harmony.”

The woman nods and looks at Brea. “They’re roundin’ up new girls at the base. Gonna take them to the mine to be wives after they been inspected. Said we helped the Gold.”

“And no one has tried stop them,” I say. “You just watched.”

She convulses sobbing. She tries to speak. To give another excuse. But then she looks at her girl and just runs back to the bedroom to her other children. Fear lurks over this village.

Maeve’s husband looks at me now. The light from the HC bathes him sickly green. The color is the only life in his eyes. “You Gamma?”

“Why? Did Gamma rape your daughter?” I snap.

His jaw flexes. “Talk about my girl again, I drag you to the Hand meself.”

“How you gonna do that from your knees?” I ask. He looks back at the HC, swallowing. “Your last daughter ain’t there, old man.” I point out the window to the squat base on promontory. “She’s over there.”

“You can stay till dark,” he says quietly. “Then you go.”

In the dim light of the fire, I watch Ulysses’s cold face as I watched that of my sister and her children. I pull the jacket over his face. I’m tired of watching.

Through the walls I can hear the whispers of the orb.

* * *

—

That night, I dig through the rubble of Cormac’s house as the snow comes down. The north wall has crumbled inward from the heat and the metal roof has warped. Coughing from the soot, I pull blackened timbers off the remains of the kitchen table. There sitting by the stone frame of the hearth lies Fig’s black orb. Wrapping my hands in my sleeves, I pull it out and crouch in the remains of the house.

Despite the heat of the fire, the orb is undamaged, as I suspected it would be. There is no lock. No hinges o

r any gaps in the metal to show where it opens. I tap it with a naked finger. It’s cool to the touch. Like river stone. I hold the orb in both hands, turning it over to figure out how to open it. Maybe it doesn’t open. I rap it with my knuckles. Whatever is inside was worth Fig risking her life to get. It must contain something that can help me.

If it’s hollow, I can’t tell. But if it’s not, it should be heavier. I saw Volga break rocks on it, and Victra’s razor slide off without leaving much more than a scratch. Fig seemed to be able to call it with the implants in her fingers. Maybe I need those to open it. But if I need those, why would it call to me? I lower my head to it, hoping the proximity to the parasite in my head will open it. Nothing happens except the blood in my brain thumps louder.