As she decided that first night under the Foghorn Bridge, Sammy did not return to the Camp again. That did not, of course, mean the Camp left her alone. No way that would happen. However, Sammy had in fact learned quite well from her old mentors, including even Sanda. So, for a time, she actually managed to keep a mostly low profile.

“Well, if it isn’t little Sammy,” the elderly Ryf said, his hand blurring for a moment as he eyed the child. He was one of the section leaders in the Camp proper and should not have been anywhere near this part of the city, in Sammy's humble opinion. “Ye be alive, huh. Been, what, few months you not been ‘round?”

Sammy stiffened as a shock of dread made her whole body tingle as the man greeted her. She had so been trying to avoid anything and everyone from the Camp since one-sidedly cutting ties with the bunch of hooligans. In fact, she had been avoiding all the places she knew the Camp held any sway at all, sticking mostly to the upper city. But today had been a particularly bad luck kind of day, right from the moment she stepped on that pen getting out of bed. She was still limping from that dastardly thing.

“Hey Ryf,” she said with a glib tongue after the slight hesitation. “What ya doing this part the city?”

“Business, business,” the old man said, narrowing one eye as he waved a hand dismissively. “Old Dawson be' missing ya, kid. Should visit. Thought ya dead or some’tin.”

Sammy looked away from that narrowed eye. She could not even squint with one eye, let alone glare from one while keeping the other completely normal. “Don’t want to. I got nothing to do with the Camp. They got nothing to do with me, long as I ’bide the secrecy.”

“Hmm. The Old Man worries about ya. Ye be but a tad pole, not even flowerin'.”

“I’m doing just fine on my own, and I'm already twelve,” she said defensively. “I can take care of myself.” She hesitated again, but then added, “Look, I got to go. I don’t mind you telling the Old Man ya saw me, but not the others. Not everyone in the Camp is upstanding and honest like you, Ryf.” Hopefully the bit of flattery would help her out here.

The elderly man scraped the stubble on his chin with a finger, the scritch-scritch rasping loud in her ears. “Hmm. Well, da Camp be worrying about ya, know like. Only fair they knows da child be living.”

“Fair’s not got nothing to do with it, Ryf. Don’t tell 'em.” After a long pause, she added, “Please, Ryf.”

“Hmm. Let’s the Old Man decide.”

Sammy frowned. She could still feel the dread tingling throughout her body. Maybe she should try to kill Ryf now. She discarded the thought immediately. Her mom and dad had been honorable and she fully intended to follow their example, not the ugly fluff the Camp tried to force on her. In fact, she had yet to kill more than a few sewer rats, the actual rodents, mind, despite the bent in the Camp proper. Still, she absolutely had no interest at all in following their ways, her mentors had stressed that she be ready to do just that, as a member of the Camp. The four had even taught her assassin skills enough she would know how to kill cleanly without leaving evidence.

They also taught her how to case a target’s threat level, and the wiry old man could probably take her apart and eat her for dinner without breaking a sweat, even if she was under full stapha. Besides, she kind of liked the bedraggled old coot. He had almost been nice to her since the four disappeared.

“Well, I have to go,” she finally said and backed away, not trusting Ryf enough to turn her back on him until a fair distance separated them. But then she turned and ran as fast as she could. I’m going to have to find a different part of the city to pillage, she thought. Still, she felt there enough time to finish her current pillaging rounds so continued the rounds with an extra eye open.

Despite that attitude of perseverance, the loot for the day never exceeded abysmal and ultimately Sammy gave up when the sun was merely half visible touching the horizon, finding nothing at all even behind the old antique shops on Lazy Satchel Ave. They were always tossing broken junk, but, nope, nothing. Walking down the busy street dressed in her filthy pillaging clothes, most around her pretended not to see her in the dim twilight. She preferred it that way and began to relax.

A new spat of dread shot through her body, almost making her stumble. She stepped into an alley before glancing back around the corner. She spotted two older boys hurrying in her direction. They were the really creepy ones that had been stalking her around the Camp even before her mentors went missing.

Darn it, she thought, this is the worst day ever. She bolted down the alley and out into the next street, dodging carts and trucks as she ran. Darting down another alley and then into a dead-end alcove, she glanced behind again but could not see her pursers yet. The alley contained three doors, two on the right, one on the left, so was not a true dead end, but that served her purposes even better than if there were no egress. It would give the jerks more options to follow, right? Sammy activated her full stapha, taught by her parents and reinforced by her mentors.

Raw energy filled her legs and she jumped, clearing the two-story building with a little too much arch. Stumbling on the roof, she fell. Her palms dug into the gravel on the roof, rasping them raw. Not believing for a moment she had lost her pursuers, she scrambled to her feet while running across the roof. Reaching the edge, she jumped to the next, continuing such for seven full blocks before pausing.

A quick glance told her no one was following her, at least visibly across the roofs. Still, she knew the Camp had ways of tracking not necessarily dependent on direct line of sight. Orienting herself in the city, she climbed down to the streets again. She did not have the confidence in her control to simply jump down like she had up.

Running down one street after another, she finally came to the sewer drain she wanted. Rolling through the street drain, she caught the lip and hung for a moment before dropping to land soft on her feet, her knees absorbing the impact and a hand touching the ground for added balance.

Bolting down the sewer on the side walkway, Sammy’s flashlight bobbed and roved all over the tunnel. Stopping at a specific length of tunnel, she clicked off her light. She was almost home. All she needed to do was get through the barrier that protected the entrance and she would be safe. A light flared down the tunnel, and then a second on from the other direction. “Damn it,” she cursed. They had her cornered since she had no intention of even hinting that the entrance existed

“Well, well, little Sammy,” one of the creepy boys said, his voice rough from exertion. The girl could not see his face at all, just his flashlight. “We figured you'd be here soon enough. You always, always disappear around this spot, annoying brat.”

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“You've caused us a bit of trouble, you little twerp,” the other boy said, talking over the end of the winded one's little speech. He was not out of breath, nor did it sound raspy at all, but Sammy felt unclean from its oily sweetness. “Our boss wants to play with you, but you keep slipping away even after those nuisances disappeared. But now we got you.”

“We got you, and, you know what, the boss' fine with a bit o' damaged goods.”

“Indeed, long as you're still alive, it's all good. So don't worry, we won't, wah?.”

Sammy had frozen for a moment as the boys continued advancing as they talked, but not anymore. It was clear now that these guys weren't trying to recruit her or bring her back to the Camp. They were predators out to feed their own bellies. Well, she wasn't exactly a prey animal herself, she decided this right then and there.

Stapha filled her body to the maximum she could hold. As the boys kept trying to distract her with their words, she crouched and launched herself at the boy of oily speech. He seemed the more dangerous, a fact hinted at by a number of subtle things, but mostly because he was not out of breath from running to intercept her.

The surprise attack brought out a startled inhale from the oily boy's words, ending his prattle. Sammy came at him high, but then dropped low just before engaging, her unsheathed dagger slicing through the tendons at the back of his ankle, hamstringing him.

Crippling her first target, Sammy sprang and landed with all fours against the wall. She rebounded back towards the other boy. Standing in front of him the next instant, she slashed the wrist holding his light before sweeping behind him low and slicing the tendons on the back of his right knee.

She then danced well out of their reach and stood looking at them. She let out a sigh and dropped stapha. “Don't ever bother me again,” she said in a weary voice. “Tell your boss to just drop it and we're all good.”

“You bitch,” the oily voiced boy snarled, furious beyond reason. “We will come back in force and take you so many times and ways you'll.”

Stapha surged through Sammy and she took a step, her feet sliding a foot past the boy as he struggled to stand with one hand reaching out to the wall. Her hand still held her dagger jammed through his eye and she force his head to arch backward. The last thing the boy saw with his one remaining eye was the ceiling as he died.

Sammy ripped the dagger from the dead boy's eye and turned to look at the other boy. His eyes were wide in shock, but then they narrowed and he started reaching behind him. Sammy once more moved in the blink of an eye to slide on the scummy sewer ground, her knife not quite long enough to leverage a full decapitation. Still, almost decapitating accomplished her intent and the second boy died even quicker than the first.

Sammy stood in the dim light of the tunnel with her back to the two bodies. The light the second boy dropped stopped moving and the flickering lighting steadied. She stood there for several long minutes as tears of rage and horror filled her. She wanted to be like her parents, not the foul beasts of the Camp's underworld. She wanted . . .

The girl let out a big sigh and turned around to face her deed. She stared for a long moment of dread but then jerked. Why the heck was she still tingling with dread? A bit of self-inspection later and she said a bad word. Someone had put a tracking device on her. It was embedded in her shirt just below the belly button. “Ryf, you bastard,” she growled, remembering back when that weird tingling had started. She could just kick herself since that had obviously been glyph magic.

Which strangely sent her mind on a strange tangent. “Sorry Mom,” she muttered. “I didn’t mean to say a bad word. I'll, um, I guess? Yeah, that's a good idea. I'll pay a curse-fine, because Mom would not want me getting into a habit of cursing, no matter what.”

Even though she wanted to keep thinking about her wonderful mother, she released another big sigh, because her dad would definitely demand she finish what she started. She proceeded to strip the two boys naked and then fully decapitated both, stuffing the heads into one of her empty pillaging sacks. She then dragged one headless body to another tunnel and pushed it into the fast-moving water before dragging the second body to a completely different tunnel and discarding it as well.

Finally, she went to a third tunnel and stripped completely naked and discarded all of her clothing into the channel. Running barefoot and naked back to her hidden entrance, she collected her loot bags and slipped their draw strings over her shoulders like improvised backpacks.

She then moved to the wall with the active barrier and mashed her bare flesh against the stone, splaying her arms with palms touching cool stone. The stagnant smell of pooled water filled the air, which told her she was inside the barrier's influence. Inching her way against the wall, she waited for the itch that would indicate the entrance itself. She actively ignored everything save that anticipated feeling.

She had yet to figure out a different way of finding the tunnel entrances to her home. The crazy glyphs concealing them worked nigh flawlessly even when she knew exactly where the entrance lay. And once again she almost missed it, except the itch warned her and she forced herself to stop, even though her body and mind totally wanted her to keep going.

Running her hand over the glyph, she tapped it once to activate it, the engraved lines and marks flashing with a subtle light. She then punched it, willing it to let her in. It glowed gently for a moment, as if resisting, but then the entrance dissolved into a semblance of smoke, which pulled back to reveal an opening. Sammy dashed in and it solidified again as soon as she cleared the portal.

“I have to figure out how that works,” she said, the ritual words spoken every time she came home. She walked down the tunnel to the circle junction and then into the main room. She went over to the stove and activated its glyphs to their highest setting, going so far as to override the safeties so the oven compartment burst into flames. She threw the sack containing the heads and all the other worthless loot contaminated by their blood into the flames. She then slammed the door shut and backed away.

After a moment of staring at the device, she left it fully on, threw the rest of her loot sacks into the bin reserved for them, and headed to the bath. She managed to hold herself together just long enough to fill the tube and submerge herself in the hot water. Despite the facade she showed the streets above, she really hated feeling all grungy, but today she was covered in the blood of other people.

Sinking to the level of her eyes and blowing bubbles in the water for a moment she suddenly surged up and screamed, and screamed, and wept, and screamed some more. Her arms flailed and water cascaded over the bath's boundaries for nearly five full minutes. Finally, wearily, she sank back down to the level of her eyes and in bubble speak, she said “Stupid jerks.”

After venting her pent-up emotions in the bath, she put on a large t-shirt as a nightgown and fixed herself dinner. She then forced herself to go through her loot bags, and that truly solidified the abysmal nature of the day. She did not so much as restock a single of her consumables, no bandages, no toothpaste, no toilet paper, no nothing.

She definitely did not have enough to meet with Jimmy to sell. Jimmy and the Camp did not like each other and did not talk, which was why Sammy currently used him to pawn her loot. Still, the Camp operated heaven compared to Jimmy’s demon ways. If she met that villain on a day like today, she'd probably end up someone's slave or something. Thank you, but no thank you. Sammy ultimately decided to just go to sleep for a whole week and then poke her head out to see if the world had reset itself for her.

As she lay on her bed, clean blanket pulled over her head, she started thinking about her parents again. She definitely would start up that penalty-jar for when she cursed. She was absolutely sure her mother would have instigated something like it. But she also started wondering why they died.

She knew a little bit of course. Her parents had worked for Baron Kormag as his special guard or force or something. One day they had gone out to meet some other noble and never returned, instead the dreadful social worker had dragged her off to hell.

“I'll start researching,” she muttered to herself. “Maybe in a week or so, after, you know, the world has a chance to reset.” So deciding, she fell asleep to nightmares of killing her beloved parents, perverted jerks and maybe a stupid noble or three that did not protect her parents like he ought to have.