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Benedikt rolled his eyes. They were strolling the streets, ears perked for chaos but otherwise on low alert. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t expected this. Their searches had been futile every time. Those who fell to the madness were either resisting until the very last second or already dead.

“This was a waste of time,” Marshall whined. “A waste, Ben! A waaaaaa—”

Benedikt pressed his hand into Marshall’s face. This motion was so familiar that he did not need to look; he simply extended his hand outward as they walked side by side and smashed his fingers into whatever flesh he could find.

Marshall only put up with it for three short seconds. After that he was prodding at Benedikt wildly, cackling as Benedikt yelled for him to stop, his words unintelligible in his effort not to laugh while his ribs ached.

He would have been content to laugh, to fill the night with good spirits even if the night would give nothing back. Only then he heard it.

A strange, strange sound.

“Mars,” Benedikt gasped. “Wait, I’m serious.”

“Oh, you’re serious, are you—”

“I’m serious. Listen!”

Marshall stopped suddenly, realizing that Benedikt wasn’t kidding. His hand slowly loosened from his deathly grip on the other boy’s wrist. He turned his ear to the wind, listening.

Choking—that was the sound.

“Excellent,” Marshall said, rolling up his sleeves. “Finally. Finally.” He charged forward, shoulders folded like he was barging into battle with a shield in one hand and a spear in the other. That was Marshall. Even when he had nothing with him, he could carry the guise of something.

Benedikt ran after his friend, moving on his toes in his attempt to see over Marshall’s shoulder, trying to locate the victim. It was a silhouette that Benedikt saw first—a primordial thing hunched over in two, looking more like an animal than a person.

They were dead center in White Flower territory, in the easternmost section of the eastern half of the city. Benedikt had expected one of their own to be dying. But it wasn’t a White Flower coughing in the alleyway. As the figure lifted their head in apprehension over Benedikt’s and Marshall’s nearing voices, swinging back a long rope of black hair that reflected silver in the moonlight, Benedikt caught sight of uniformed shoulders: the clothing of the Nationalist army.

“Grab her,” Benedikt commanded.

The woman took a step back. She had either understood Benedikt’s Russian or she had heard something in his desperate tone.

She didn’t get very far. Her foot staggered one step in reverse and then she was pressed against the brick wall, backing into nothing. If she had had more control over herself, she would have pivoted on her heel and run out the other end of the alleyway. But she was lost—delirious to the insects working against her nerves as they instructed for her to tear at her throat.

“Are you joking?” Marshall hissed. “She’s a Nationalist. They’ll come after us—”

Benedikt surged forward, his hand going for his gun. “They won’t know.”

Usually it was Marshall making the erratic decisions. Marshall was only ev

er sensible when he was trying to keep Benedikt away from trouble.

“Ben!”

It was too late. As hard as he could, Benedikt slammed the butt of his revolver against the Nationalist’s head, arching his shoulders forward to keep his own skull far away. Once she dropped to the ground, her neck lolling back on the concrete and her hands splayed outward with blood coating the first inch of her fingers, Benedikt hauled her up with a grunt, carrying her around the waist like a rag doll.

There was blood dripping down her forehead. More rings of blood stained the space around her neck, but at least there wasn’t any leak around a major vein. She would stay alive until they could get her to the lab.

This is a person, a voice in the deepest corners of Benedikt’s mind was hissing. You cannot abduct a person off the streets for experimentation.

She was going to die anyway.

Do you get to decide when?

More people would die otherwise.

You have killed too many people to claim you care about human life.

“Help me,” Benedikt said to Marshall, struggling with the woman’s deadweight.