When she woke, he was right where she’d left him, watching her.

“Morning.”

Skipper got up, tense, and, once she had ascertained that he hadn’t moved in the night, packed away her bedroll and grabbed another tiny piece of jerky to chew on until midday. She pulled the canteen from its side holster and took a careful swig.

“Can I have some water?” he asked.

Skipper paused in swallowing, eyes narrowing as she lowered the canteen and wiped her lips.

Seeing her scowl, he swallowed. “Maybe it’ll rain or something.”

“Not gonna rain,” she said, capping the bottle and putting it back in its holster on her pack. “Rainy season’s over.”

He glanced dubiously up at the sky. “I dunno, looks like maybe rain to me…”

She slapped the canteen home, glaring at him. “It’s not.” She nodded at the weapon. “How do you use that thing?”

“Oh, well, we just need to activate the AI. I can do it verbally, from here.”

She nodded and pulled the gun from where she’d leaned it against the underhang and, still careful to keep the cloth between her fingers and the metal, held it up. “Do it.”

The man cleared his throat. “Okay. Um.” He looked uncomfortable as he raised his voice. “AI of the dragon tongue number Five-Five-Four-Six-One. This is user Ptahmohtep, your lord and master, badge number Eight-Romeo-Charley-sixteen-Tango-eleven hereby calling upon you to activate user-exchange protocols and receive a new operator.”

Immediately, the gun in her hands started to glow a soft green, and Skipper gasped and almost dropped it.

“Okay, it activated, now quick!” the Changer said, “You’ve gotta put one hand on the underside and one hand on the grip—that’s command points A and B. Then hold it up to your face and let it take your picture, then speak your name into the receiver, which is that thing disguised as the bullet feed. It’ll glow a different color to let you know it’s ready for your blood and a piece of hair to complete the biometric sequencing.”

Skipper’s heart was pounding as she held the weapon, thinking of all the things she could do with something that could literally melt stone. “Like this?” She grabbed the gun in the two places he had suggested. The color didn’t change.

“A little further up,” he said, indicating with his chin. “If you untied me, I could—”

“I’m not untying you,” she snapped. She moved her hand. The gun’s wispy green glow took on a smoky purple hue.

“Okay, that’s it!” he cried. “Now you’re on a timer. Thirty seconds before the shutdown triggers. You need to hold it up so the top of the gun can look right at you and let the AI capture your image.”

Skipper squinted at the top of the gun. “I don’t see a camera.”

“It’s AI,” he said. “High tech stuff out of the Silver. I don’t know how it works, it just does, you’re running out of time!”

Skipper hastily held up the gun to her face, not knowing where to look. “Like this?!”

“Yep. Now you gotta make up a password of at least eight numbers and letters and tell it your name.”

“Skipper Stax,” she said, automatically. Then she hesitated. “I don’t…uh…”

“Don’t what?!” he cried. “We’re on the clock!”

“I don’t know the letters!” Skipper cried back, his panic starting to infect her.

“You told me you could read!” he screeched back, thrashing like he wanted to get the fuck out of there. “It’s gonna abort. You don’t want it to abort!”

“Just pick something for me!” Skipper cried, heart thundering like a mine collapse.

“Her user ID is B-A-D-A-S-S-B-I-T-C-H-0-0-7.”

“I’m not going to be able to remember that!” Skipper cried, her panic ratcheting up as the smoky green glow immediately shifted to red.

“It’s okay, I will!” he cried back. “Quick—you just activated the final phase. You’ve got like fifteen seconds. Hurry, you need to get some of your blood on it. And give it a piece of your hair. Hurry!”

Fifteen seconds! Skipper grabbed her knife and, without even thinking about it, cut herself along the top of her arm and hastily rubbed the wound against the weapon. The weapon’s color shimmered, but stayed red.

“It needs your hair!” he cried. “Hurry, hurry!”

She yanked out a cluster of hair from her scalp and dropped them on the bloody weapon, heart hammering at the strange pact she was making with the gun.

As soon as she did, the Changer weapon flashed an eye-searing red, then began to shimmer with a foggy gold.

Immediately, the man let out a relieved breath and collapsed against the stone. “Fuck. I thought it was gonna shut down there for a sec. Those AIs get so twitchy.”

“So it’s mine now?” Skipper panted, looking down at her prize. Even now, the golden shimmer was fading, leaving it, once more, looking like a normal gun. “I can use it to kill Changers?”

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“Now I have to teach you to use it,” he said. “They make us go through six years of training to do that shit back in Hope.”

She snorted. “You’ve got six days.”

He sobered. “Has that thing got a bullet in the chamber?

She squinted at him, but then reluctantly checked. “Yes,” she muttered.

“Get rid of it,” he said. “Pop it out, set it aside. It’s a decoy. And get rid of the magazine. The bullet is a failsafe that shuts down the main properties of the gun for five minutes and makes it impossible to use the real weapon if it’s in the chamber—and it’s loaded automatically by the AI the moment it senses a non-operator within three feet. The AI can actually transport a bullet into the chamber, so it doesn’t even need to be in the magazine to screw you up. I’d stash them somewhere up the canyon, just to be safe.”

“Is my pack too close?” Skipper asked, already pulling them from the gun and popping the bullet back into the magazine. They wouldn’t fit her own rifle, so it wasn’t going to do her any good to keep them.

He squinted at the pack, then back at her. “You plan on carrying your pack around you with the gun?”

“Okay hold on, I’ll ditch them.” Skipper said. She had already jogged a good ten feet, bullets in hand, before she realized what she was doing. Thoughtfully, she turned. “If this thing doesn’t blow something up when I get back and this was just some ploy to get me to get rid of the bullets,” she said, holding up the magazine, “I’m going to kill you.”

He nodded at her, and, a little troubled, Skipper jogged off to hide the bullets. She found a crack over the water line, stashed the magazine, hid it with a rock, then came back before he had a chance to free himself.

She shouldn’t have worried. The Changer—Ptahmohtep, if what he had told the gun could be believed—had shifted slightly, but he remained on the ground, patiently waiting for her to return.

He better not be lying to me, she thought, that old rage simmering just under the surface. She opened her mouth to tell him to show her how the gun worked.

“Okay, so you want a demonstration,” he said, before she could get it out. He nodded at the rock wall opposite the canyon. “You wanna melt a hole in that?”

Skipper hesitated, looking up at the canyon rim overhead nervously. “Yeah.”

“Okay. Put your hands on ports A and B, like you did earlier.”

Carefully, Skipper took the gun into her hands as she had when activating it. Immediately, the gun began to shimmer with gold energy.

“All right,” the man said. “Point it at that rock wall and concentrate, you get me? You need to believe that rock wall is gonna melt.”

“Believe?!” Skipper cried, lowering the weapon in disgust. “What kind of crap is that?!”

“You ever heard of quantum physics?!” the man demanded.

Skipper hadn’t.

Seeing that, he grunted and his expression softened a bit. “Okay, well, it’s a set of rules to the universe that some old dead guys dreamed up, but in it, the observer has power. Our ancestors just figured out how to harness that power—and then the world immediately went to shit.”

“The gun works on belief?” she demanded, still not able to wrap her head around that.

“The AI takes the intent of the observer and harnesses it, then focuses it. What you need to do is grab that gun and with every ounce of your concentration, tell that gun to make it burn. When you think you’re ready, pull the trigger.”

Skipper glanced back at the rock wall, then, hesitantly, brough the gun back up and sighted down the barrel. She concentrated as hard as she could on making the rock melt, then pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

Skipper narrowed her eyes, lowering the weapon. “You’ve been conning me from the start.”

“No, you’ve gotta believe,” he insisted. “Don’t pull the trigger until you believe.” At her narrow look, he sighed. “Look. I told you it took six years of training. There’s a reason why we’re rare.”

Skipper made a face, then, grimacing, brought the gun back to her face. She concentrated on the section of rock. It was banded orange and red sandstone, the wavy pattern still in shadows because the sun had yet to crest the rim of the canyon.

“It helps if you have something that drives you you can focus on,” he said gently. “You got anything you remember that’s particularly strong?”

“Changers murdering my family,” Skipper said, still squinting down the rifle barrel at the rock. The gun continued to glow golden in her hands and she could feel the power there, waiting.

“Yeah, uh…focus on that. Grab that feeling and concentrate it into the rock and—”

Skipper pulled the trigger, and, a moment later, the gold glow cut from the gun and there was a weak flash of light and a puff of smoke and the rock started to melt before it solidified again, leaving a cup-sized impression where she had been concentrating.

“Nice!” he cried, sounding honestly enthusiastic.

“I did it!” she cried, ecstatic. Skipper lowered the weapon and jogged up to check. She burned herself on the rock, finding it surprisingly hot to the touch. Grinning, she spun back to the man, who was still grinning. “So that’s all I need to do? Just point and concentrate?”

His grin faded a little, as if he were only then realizing his usefulness was outdated. “Um. Mostly, yeah.”

Skipper pulled the gun up and aimed at him. “What about if I used it on you? Like you assholes used it on my brother?”

He went rigid, watching the gun warily as it started to take on the gold glow of her intent. “It works on people,” he said. It came out quiet, without the confidence of earlier.

Skipper scowled at him down the barrel for a few moments more, then spun and focused again on the rock wall further down the canyon, thinking of exploding the man’s head.

This time, when she pulled the trigger, nothing happened.

“It doesn’t work like it should!” she cried, lowering it in frustration.

“You have to concentrate,” he said, sounding subdued.

She had to try thirty more times, finally focusing on the hatred that burned within her for all Changers until it was a burning fire within her before Skipper managed to get the rock wall to smolder and melt again.

“You learn quick,” the Changer said, still sounding dispirited. He’d been watching her antics in silence for hours, offering advice only when asked.

“It’s difficult,” Skipper admitted. “Harder than it looks.”

He nodded, though he was watching the stone, not her, looking distracted.

Skipper glanced back at the new indentation in the stone, then glanced up at how the sun was even then rising over the rim of the canyon. From where he sat facing the rising sun, the Changer would broil, the heat in direct sunlight unbearable for very long. Surprisingly, the man hadn’t complained. He hadn’t even asked for water again.

He’s resigned to die, Skipper thought, feeling a brief pang of guilt.

There was something, she decided, bothering her about the man, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on, and it had to do with that camp with the women. His black eye was darkening half his face now, and clearly had been hit in the head with something heavy—and his version of events—getting beaten with a rifle butt—did fit. But the rest of it didn’t. He’d woken up with a concussion, and then proceeded to, what, kill seven of his crew while the last one got away?

“I thought you needed to concentrate to use this thing,” Skipper said, after she had casually moved back out of the sun to get another drink of water.

“You do,” he said.

“You said you had a concussion when you killed your buddies.”

His yellow eyes widened and he jerked to look at her like a startled coyote.

He’s not telling the truth about something, she realized, seeing the fear in his eyes before he hid it away. She needed to get back up out of the canyon and go looking for their tracks before the elements washed it away. If she could correlate his story…well…that might change things. If she couldn’t, well, killing one more Changer wasn’t a loss. Tracking him back to camp would put it to rest one way or another...