Skipper had backtracked down into the wash at the bottom of the canyon and was in the general area under the ledge where the men had fought, concentrating so hard on getting to the weapon before night fell that she almost blundered into the feral dog that she’d been tracking for the last week. It jumped up from where it had been seated in the shaded sand, blinking at her with a startled little yip. It was a black and white spotted beast with some obvious cattle dog ancestry, maybe mixed with a little poodle or golden retriever.

Seeing the canine—he was scrawnier than the last time she’d spotted him—staring back at her in startlement, Skipper cursed herself for not paying attention and gingerly leaned her rifle against the rock wall of the canyon, reaching for her bow. The dog watched her nervously, its triangular ears up, one white, one black.

“Time to give me back my jerky, you pain in the ass,” she cooed, pulling her bow over her shoulder. Hunger was like a draining, horrible knife in her guts. She went to nock an arrow.

The sight of her raising her arm to the quiver on her back, however, broke the spell and the dog bolted, kicking up yellow-orange sand as it ran.

“Damn it!” Skipper shouted, kicking some pebbles at the sound of the retreating animal. “I’m gonna find you, you fucker! That was the only meat I’d eaten in months!” She kicked another rock, then, when it didn’t go far enough, bent and hurled it at the departing beast, the pebble bouncing against the rippling wall of the canyon and disappearing behind a rocky outcropping as she hissed her rage.

“Owww,” a voice moaned, deep in pain, somewhere up ahead.

Skipper froze, immediately ducking to the ground in panic. Several moments went by like that, Skipper afraid to breathe, listening to the pounding of her own heart.

She heard it again, a groan, and the distinct sound of a body grinding against the sand.

“No way,” she whispered, stunned, horrified. The fall had been, what, three hundred feet?

Could he have actually survived? She knew the current Changers were diluted blood, usually several generations removed from the terrifying feats of their ancestors. But what if he was one of the throwbacks? One of the super soldiers the government had made to withstand brutal physical punishment? Very, very slowly, Skipper put the arrow against the bowstring.

“Is anyone out there?” came the same pained voice. “Please…I fell from the cliff. My hands are…stuck.”

Bow tight, Skipper slowly got up off her belly. Still in a crouch, she slid closer through the sandy wash bottom, keeping an outcropping of rock and cacti between her and the speaker.

The Changer hesitated, clearly listening. “I can hear your footsteps,” he said finally. “You own that piece of shit dog?”

Skipper said nothing, still creeping towards him.

“It looked me right in the eyes, then went through my pockets like it knew what it was doing. Got my pemmican.” He hesitated. “Come on, I know you’re there. You don’t need to sneak up on me.” He sounded almost desperate.

Skipper’s heart was thundering in her ears as she rounded the outcropping and leveled her bow on the Changer, who was propped awkwardly against the opposite side of the canyon wall, arms still bound behind him, one ankle twisted backwards, his unnaturally pale, smooth skin covered in blood and bruises.

Their eyes met, then his yellow gaze slid to her bow. “Oh,” he said. He let out a huge sigh and leaned his head against the wall of rock behind him. “Fuck.”

“Tell me about the weapon,” Skipper growled. She glanced up at the ridge of stone above them, unnerved by the noise he was making, then warily climbed out of sight under the ledge, keeping at least ten feet between her and the Changer.

The man gave an unhappy laugh at the rock above him, then lowered his head to watch her face. “You’re prettier than the pictures.”

Skipper paused in glancing hastily around the corner, making sure others weren’t coming from the path down into the canyon. She squinted at him. “The weapon! How do you use it?”

“Huh?” He blinked at her like she were daft.

She considered shooting him and leaving him there. “Don’t play games with me. You’re wearing the patch,” she said. “I know they’re the ones who carry the weapons. How’s it work?!”

He winced. “Um. A…lot…of people…carry weapons.”

Skipper found herself shaking with anger. “If you had any idea how close I am to killing your right now,” she said in a whisper, “You wouldn’t be fucking around. Up on the cliff. The flash of light that melted the stone. I want to use it to destroy a Changer village.”

His eyes widened slightly. “Ah. Um.” He glanced down at his ankle, then up at the dying light. He swallowed. “Think, uh, you could build us a fire?”

She laughed. “No.”

He twisted and leaned awkwardly off the rock wall, his bound hands reaching out and touching a dried, withered yucca plant. “I could show you—”

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“Get your hands off that or you’re a dead man.”

He winced and dropped his hand and leaned back against the rock. “No fire,” he muttered. “Got it.” For a long moment, neither of them spoke, then he grimaced and tried moving his legs slightly, but whimpered and stopped.

Skipper watched him pitilessly, offering no assistance. “So why’d your friend try to kill you?” she asked.

He went still, a wary look in his eyes. “You were watching?”

“Saw the whole thing,” she said. In truth, she stumbled upon their argument while tracking that goddamned dog, and she had no idea how long they had been up there yelling at each other before she wandered to the opposite canyon rim and caught sight of them.

Instead of answering her, however, he gave another wary look at her bow, then at the exit to the canyon, like he was thinking about trying to crawl away.

“I could shoot you now,” Skipper offered, “…or later, after I put a few arrows through, say, what’s left of your legs and leave you for the crows to eat.”

She almost felt bad when he shuddered and went totally still, spine rigid against the reddish rock behind him. Almost. She saw the flicker of fear in his eyes as he brought them back to her face.

“How many of us have you killed?” he asked, after a minute.

“Enough. I blew your buddy’s brain all over the canyon the moment you went over the edge. Add you to the list and it’ll make it an even hundred and eighty-five.”

He nodded at that, solemnly looking at his ruined ankle like he could will it back into order.

“But that’s not even half the people you’ve killed,” she spat.

His soft, miserable laugh almost made her believe that wasn’t true. “No,” was all he said.

“No what?” she demanded.

“I…” He let out a deep breath through his perfect teeth. “I’m not very good at killing people.” He said it like a confession. “That’s why I’m stranded in the desert, ankle looking like it’s trying to wander away, a murderer aiming a freakin’ bow at my chest.”

“I don’t believe that for a second,” Skipper snorted.

His unnatural yellow eyes flickered back up to her, and for a moment he looked thoughtful. After some inner debate, he said, “You wanted to know what the weapon was.”

Skipper felt her gaze sharpen.

“I bet you’ve heard about it a lot, in your guys’ camps out here, telling stories back and forth to pass the time, how our bands of mauraders can level whole towns and everyone just starts bleeding out their eyes and keels over dead.”

“Just tell me how to use the gun he melted the rock with on the cliff.”

He gave a desperate little laugh. “Promise you won’t shoot me.”

“No.”

His eyes flashed quickly to the way her bowstring had tightened. “Okay. Um. I’m gonna make you a bargain, okay?”

Skipper laughed. “There’s no bargain. I’m about to beat you over the head with a rock and go get that thing before dark.”

He flinched. “Why a rock?”

“Don’t wanna waste the arrow.”

He grimaced. “Okay. So. Instead of beating me over the head with a rock—which sounds really messy, by the way—maybe just go get that gun, bring it down here, and let me teach you how to use it without blowing yourself into a necrotic pile of burning cancer tissue.”

“I’m not letting you touch the gun,” Skipper snarled, hefting her bow.

“I’m not asking you to!” he cried. “Look, I’m not going anywhere—just look at me.” He nudged his chin to indicate his bound, broken ankle, then relaxed back against the rock with a disgusted sigh. “I’ve got no one to call who won’t come kill me the moment they figure out I’m not dead. Just go get it. I’ll teach you.”

Skipper considered killing him, but, oddly, also felt a strange pull to keep him alive a little while longer. It was almost…pleasant…to have someone else to talk to who wasn’t trying to scam her out of a grenade or a few extra ounces of Changer hair.

“You need me,” he said, softly, with total sincerity. He must have been able to see she was thinking about killing him, because he flinched when her eyes narrowed.

“Why?” Skipper demanded.

“I know things you don’t,” he blurted. “Things you want to know. Things I’ll tell you, happily, in exchange for not bashing me over the head with a rock.”

That decided her. He was, after all, already a dead man because she could—and would—kill him at any time. Who was she to complain if he wanted to give her some much-needed intel in the vain hope she would let him live? “All right,” she reluctantly agreed. “I’m gonna go get it, and when I get back here, if you’ve moved from that spot, I’m going to track you down and jam your nuts in a fire ant hole before I break both your legs with that rock over there and let you bleed out in the sand for the insects to eat. Get me?”

“I won’t move,” he whispered, his eyes wide.

“You do you’re dead.”

He nodded, swallowing like a little scavvy kid tucked in his bedroll in a secluded desert crag as the men at the campfire told him he’d one day have to fight Changers. Skipper knew the look well—she’d made it so many times in her youth.

Skipper took a moment to look him over, once again thinking about just killing him there.

The idea she might need his help with the weapon, however, decided her. She turned to jog away.

“Use a shirt when you grab it!” he called at her back. “Don’t let it touch your skin or the AI will lock it down.”

Skipper hesitated, scowling back at him across the sand.

Belatedly, his eyes on her bow, the man said, “The AI’s calibrated to a specific fingerprint—it doesn’t get that biometric within thirty seconds of skin contact and the whole thing goes dead. You’ll need me to walk you through the unlock process. There’s a password…”

Skipper tensed at the word ‘need’, but she nonetheless left him under the ledge and went racing up the path that navigated the canyon wall.

It was beginning to get dusky when she found the dead man beside his weapon, sitting in a bowl of melted stone. She approached with caution and squatted beside the gun, looking it over. It looked normal enough for a Changer weapon, but had a bit more bulk in the back, almost like it was balanced with some extra weights added to the base. Some sort of battery casing? She could see a couple extra lumps under the barrel that looked almost like the pump on a shotgun, but aside from those differences, it looked pretty much like every other gun she’d ever plucked off a Changer corpse.

Probably made to blend in, she thought. Remembering what the wounded Changer had said, Skipper carefully yanked the dead man’s bloodstained, ash-covered shirt over his obliterated stump of a neck and gingerly wrapped the driest parts around the gun. Then, taking a moment to take the knife and cigarettes from his pockets and the key from around his neck, she picked up the backpack—from which dangled the soon-to-be-dead man’s boots and utility belt—and kicked the body over the edge, then rushed to get back down into the wash before pitch black.

The man was down there, exactly where she’d left him, eyes wide and staring at the headless corpse that had landed on its belly, three feet beside him, one limp and bloody leg flopped against his knee. If the man had twitched, it didn’t show, but the nervous tension in his body was clear as he watched her approach.

Skipper grunted and tossed the pack out of his reach under the shallow cliff ledge and crawled into the depression behind it. For his part, she left the man remained exposed to the sky fifteen feet away, back propped awkwardly against the opposite side of the crevasse, the corpse of his buddy bleeding on him, still apparently afraid to move.

Good.