The little girl didn’t speak when they dropped her off. She screamed in anger, in frustration, fear, confusion, and she did cry, but didn’t make many other noises. For now, she sat on the cement floor of the small bunkhouse and just stared, absently chewing her fingers.

“Simple or traumatized?” Ron wondered.

Glinda’s lips pinched together. “Not clear. And we don’t really have time for either.” She leaned back on one of the wooden planks that they called beds. The grubby bunkhouse had four and when they were promised a fourth member to replace Oscar they hadn’t expected to be given a ghost-child, barely a toddler.

“Alright little one,” Vallery said, scooping her up. “You’re gonna sleep in this bed. We get up early tomorrow so you have to be well rested.”

But she didn’t rest and she didn’t sleep and she cried all night until Vallery crawled into bed next to her and sang the only tune she remembered from before.

---

Ages were a shot in the dark but the younger you got them, the easier. No one ever remembered to keep track of their age til they had no clue they should have cared. Vallery was maybe nine or eleven or thirteen when she joined the unit. Skinny as a twig, she was hard to gauge and likely late developing her cycle, as most the women were. It was always a crap shoot, talking to a girl that could be fourteen or eighteen.

The little girl was easier to guess. Definitely three or four when they got her and they reminded her well as she pushed past that to five. It was anyone’s guess if she understood what they meant when they told her, but Glinda maintained it was important. She may not be with them forever so she had to be the one to remember her age.

“We oughta name her,” Ron said. “Kid needs one. ‘Little one’ just isn’t a name.”

The four stood outside, taking their allotted ten-minute lunch break. The little girl, pale as a ghost indoors but red as hell once exposed to too much sun, was sticking her nose up at her protein soup. It was hell getting her to eat even a bite.

“Eat, little one,” Glinda commanded.

“She’s not so little that she wouldn’t know her name,” Vallery said. “I want to try to get it out of her. Her given name is important. Might be the only thing she has from before.”

“You’re nuts,” Ron said, voice sharp as Glinda ever heard it. “Cut out that shit.” Then he hoisted himself to his feet. “Alright then, who’s looking after the little one this shift?”

Vallery, still smarting from the reprimand, offered to take on their charge. After all, she herself was small and often given smaller loads. “Alright little one, over here.”

---

Little one merged to “lil’ one” or “litl’un”, depending on who was talking and how much time they had when shouting her away from something dangerous or reckless. Whether it was carrying too many rocks, crawling into an empty minecart, or climbing some sheer cliff face, she easily took more work than she was worth. Children on units often did but it wasn’t so often they got one quite this little.

“Weird kid,” Vallery said one afternoon, when they had their hour-long break. It was a rarity, promised once a week and rarely granted. The unit sat around a stream about a quarter-mile away from their encampment. With the girl, it took probably ten minutes of their hour just to get there, but it was worth it to cool their heels in the water. The girl was chasing squirrels with Ron.

“She’s a walking disaster,” Glinda said, “and she’s gonna get herself hurt one day, mark my words. Oi, out of the water, little one! Those clothes won’t dry easy.”

As Ron splashed after her, he tripped in the stream, soaking himself through and through. It was nice hearing him laugh and his misfortune even coaxed a giggle out of the girl.

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“Hurt herself or someone else,” Vallery said, as the girl ran off again after a squirrel.

“You trying to teach her to hunt again?” Glinda asked.

“Sure am,” Rom said. “Wager she hasn’t had a real meal since she joined us. Meat of any kind’s gotta be good for a growing child.”

“I don’t know how that man can go so hard. And for something so futile as teaching a baby to hunt,” Glinda said. She leaned back against the stump of a tree, sure she could hear her bones creaking. “I gotta save it all for mining, I’m not chasing a child around. That’s what we’ve got you for, Val. You're a workhorse.”

The teenager laughed. “I didn’t have someone to look after me like she did. My first unit was all men, older men.” Her laughter trailed off abruptly and she hugged her knees, smile still a little frozen.

“And they died, right?” Tended to be the only thing that got you moved from unit to unit was death.

“Mmm. Taken out by a mining train with a broken horn. I wasn’t as fast as them and lagged behind. Turns out there’s something good about being weak and slow.”

“You were just little though.”

Vallery laughed again, eyes with a little spark left in them. “So’s the baby but she could probably outlift me. She’s definitely faster. I bet you she catches a squirrel one of these days.”

Ron paraded by a few minutes later, singing, the girl on his shoulders howling along. She still didn’t have words, but she did seem to understand them.

“Do you s’pose Ron had kids?” Vallery asked.

Glinda shrugged. “You think they breed him? Don’t suppose he’d know then.”

Vallery squirmed uncomfortably. “No, I mean, before this. He wasn’t-”

Glinda shook her head, sharply. “Val, enough of that. It’s just best not get int before, and that’s that! We’ve told you now. You’ll get us all in trouble, not just you.”

“You’ve said.” Vallery’s eyes shone. “But we can talk about it still. Among the unit? With no one listening-”

“Look at that.” Glinda pointed to an object on the ground, a rock, maybe, or some dry wood.

Vallery pursed her lips. “It’s just some rubble.”

“No, kick it up. Do it girl.”

So Vallery obliged. “Holy shit,” she whispered. Glinda didn’t need to go over to see the wirings on bottom of the ‘rubble’.

“This place, this whole damn state, it’s all wired and bugged. I don’t know how the Deathless got it done so fast but they did. It’s why they don’t mind slaves often coming out where they can’t see us, is cause they can always see us.”

Vallery looked down at the bug. “But then that means they know everything bad that happens here. Fights and stealing and… They know.” She swiped at her eyes. “I don’t know why I thought they’d give a damn if they knew. Not after what they did to this fucking planet.”

“Alright then girl, don’t get too weepy over it. What’s done is done. Go put your feet in the water, we got maybe five minutes left.”

Then suddenly, they heard a noise they had never heard before.

“Got it!”

It wasn’t Ron’s drawl; it was definitively a child’s voice, very muffled. The next thing they knew, the girl came bounding through the scrubby underbrush of some nearby foliage, a wriggling, dying squirrel between her teeth.

“Ron!” bellowed Glinda as Vallery lasped into giggles. “Ron get your ass over here and show this child how to properly take out her food. She’ll catch her death of dysentery without knowing what’s what.”

The butcher job was shoddy and rushed, Ron’s hidden knife clumsily scrapping the squirrel’s meat til his hands were body. The twenty-minute whistle sounded just as he’d started up a tiny fire, coaxing it up a bit.

“Hurry that up. We need to be heading back soon or we’re gonna be wishing we’re that squirrel.

Ron waved Glinda off, crisping the squirrel’s meat as fast as he could, burning it so as to be safe in the hot weather.

“Alright then, lil’un. Try a mouthful of this.” His voice couldn’t’ve been prouder as he gave her a morsel from her prize.

The little girl’s eyes practically rolled back in her head as she tasted it, first real food in probably a year. The rest disappeared soon, as she made quick work of the rodent.

“More,” she demanded.

Ron laughed. “Gone for now.”

She crossed her arms, a small curl of the lip accompanying the pout on her face.

“So you talk now, huh?” Glinda asked.

The girl stuck her tongue out.

Glinda knocked her up the side of the head. “No sass from you little one.”

The girl growled, still not speaking.

Glinda knocked her again. “You just gonna-”

The girl grabbed Glinda’s hand and bit it. Glinda snatched the offending limb back, fast as can be.

“No sass from you,” the girl snarled.

At this point, Ron was chuckling and Vallery was staring wide-eyed, to see what Glinda would do. But Glinda just tossed her head back with a loud laugh.

“Alright then, you don’t take guff, do you, little one. Fine then, you talk when you want but you gotta promise to take no shit. When some assholes knock you down, you make them bleed for it.”

“Don’t take no shit.” The girl then perked up, spotting a rodent scamper across the path. She froze, fingers twitching by her side, watching it move through the underbrush.

“Nah, let it be, lil’un,” Ron said. “We only got about five minutes left til we walk back.”

Glinda shook her head, waving his concern off. “Then she’s got five minutes to go at it. Alright, then, git,” she said to the girl. “Hunt, little one.”