that a fault in the ship’s gravitational systems may be to blame. Accord Scouts were able to recover the body of the General by 0900 on the day of the crash. There were no other reported survivors.

The words blur across my eyes as the bulletin automatically skips to the next page. There’s a photograph – it shows a girl, unsmiling, looking older than her years. Her black hair is pulled back to show her tattoos of rank, her chin raised above the collar of a uniform thick with ribbons and medals. It’s her. It’s undoubtedly her.

‘What the hell is this?’

Falco’s head whips up. I follow her gaze to see four Accord soldiers step through the airlock.

‘You tell me,’ she says.

* * *

The place falls silent. Slowly, Falco’s G’hals rise from where they are sitting, their hands creeping towards belts or sleeves. Pegeen shifts, ready to step in front of Falco.

The soldiers look about the place, seemingly unbothered by hostility in the air as thick as burning tar.

‘Looking for a medic named Low,’ one of them demands.

Every fibre of my being wants to hide, to lower my head and cower until they are gone. But I can’t. They have my payment, the supplies I need to do the work the tally demands.

I stand. For a second, my vision clouds and I swear I feel them, the empty rushing feeling that heralds their approach. But as my eyes clear, the sensation fades.

‘I’m Low.’

Every person in the place watches as the lead soldier inclines her head and gestures outside. ‘We got your goods.’

The cherry and benzene stick to the sides of my throat as I try to swallow. I wish I hadn’t drunk it.

‘Fine.’

Three of the soldiers turn and leave, but the lead one remains in the doorway, her eyes locked on mine. Sweat breaks out on my neck beneath the tightly wrapped scarves as I turn back to the table. Falco is staring at me hard.

‘Let me pay you for the drink,’ I say loudly, nodding to the bottle of benzene, and the half-empty tins. ‘Though I will need change.’

‘Of course,’ she says. ‘I’ll see to it myself.’ She strides towards the bar, throwing a smirk at the soldier as she passes.

I try to breathe. The delivery is here, just as the General promised. But if the General is dead, who the hell had made me that promise? Who the hell have I escorted across the plains?

Something laughs inside my head. You brought one version of her. But what of all the others? The General Ortiz who died in the wreck, the one you murdered in the desert? The one you left for the Seekers…

‘Here.’ Falco is back, tossing a handful of metal pieces down onto the table. I stare at them. I thought she’d understood that I was asking for more than money. ‘Next time, Doc, don’t bring the filth to my bar. If you were anyone else, I’d kill you for it.’

‘Falco—’ I begin, but the other woman seizes me around the neck in a tight embrace. As she does, I feel something slide down the front of my shirt, landing hard and heavy against my belt. A weapon.

‘Whatever you’re into, be careful,’ she hisses.

I squeeze her back, before letting go. Then, I have no choice but to pick up my hat and my kit and follow the soldier out of the airlock, the gun cold against my belly.

* * *

‘Where are we going?’

I know it’s useless to ask, but at the same time, I can’t just passively follow a quartet of Accord soldiers through the streets of Tiger Town; not when every third person spits in our wake.

‘The goods are being held up ahead,’ the lead soldier says evenly. ‘We did not deem the bar a suitable place for the transaction.’

I glance at her, looking for any trace of deception. For all her stiff words, the soldier is young; she can’t be a day over sixteen. Had she once been a Minority Force candidate? Had she been weeded out from the ranks of children for being too weak, for having too much of a conscience, for being unable to bear the mental pressure of enhancements? Her black hair is neatly clipped at the neck and ears and shaped flat on the top, her uniform correct to the last button. I feel like a desert toad next to her, dusty and croaking, my breath hot with benzene. And all the while, beneath my vest, the gun thuds against my belly…

‘How many boxes did you bring?’ I ask.

‘Four,’ the answer is immediate. ‘Corporal Toulio has the details.’

‘Eight packs of immune boosters,’ one of the other soldiers reels off. ‘Sixteen of antibiotic compounds. One crate of bandages. Five hundred analgesic ampules. Thirty packs of assorted sterile dressings…’

The list goes on. If what they are saying is true, I wouldn’t need to scramble for supplies for a year or more. And the drugs would be army-grade; I could water them down and still they’d be more effective than anything I could buy on the black market. I walk faster, keeping up with the lead soldier.

‘The General sent these herself?’

‘We were ordered to deliver them without delay.’

‘By the General?’

‘By our commanding officer.’

‘And that is who?’

The soldier stops. I think she’s going to reprimand me, but instead, she points.

We’ve reached the edge of Tiger Town, where the ramshackle houses made from shipping crates and old vehicles fall away into a wasteland of century-leaf fields that adjoin the base. There, guarded by an Accord soldier, sits a pristine mule with a neat stack of tarpaulin-covered crates upon its back. Hardly able to believe it, I take a step forwards.

Before my foot touches the dirt they are with me, showing me my own back as I am shot a dozen times, showing me Falco’s face as she watches my body being dumped into the municipal boneyard, showing me the General, a corpse in a cellulose coffin…

The instant my foot lands I drop, rip the weapon from beneath

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