Watching Over Us

There had been no fence or wall to mark the perimeter of the human-controlled territory in and around Pittsburgh, only a phalanx of tanks, howitzers, and concrete bunkers filled with heavily armed soldiers who were neither children nor old. Laurel’s seventy-year-old legs struggled to keep up with her platoon as they fled through the wreckage of that breached perimeter; she saw the burned and mangled bodies of some of those soldiers.

People were screaming down in the valley behind them, down in the city. The Luyten were tearing them apart, electrocuting them with weapons that looked like divining rods, burning them alive with mushroom-shaped heaters. The air stank of charred bodies. Fires raged in a hundred places, the smoke funneling to form one big cloud over the city.

The few soldiers on the perimeter who’d survived had turned their heavy artillery around, were firing into Pittsburgh.

“Lieutenant Carter?” Laurel called to her CO. “What about the people down there?”

Carter waved her platoon on, between two bunkers, waited for Laurel to catch up. “They have to get out best they can. We can’t worry about them.”

The only civilians left were either very old or very young—people who weren’t capable of fleeing. The thought of them huddled down there made Laurel want to die.

Carter lifted her head, shouted, “Straight down to the railroad tracks. Let’s move.”

Bad as Pittsburgh was, Laurel dreaded leaving it for the forests and fields, all of it Luyten-controlled territory. The closest safe haven, now that Pittsburgh had fallen, was Cleveland.

“How far is it to Cleveland?” she asked Lieutenant Carter, shouting over the artillery.

Carter shook her head. “We’re not going to Cleveland. We’re being sent somewhere else. I don’t know where just yet.”

A black dread washed over Laurel. They weren’t retreating to Cleveland? What else was out there but Luyten territory?

Of course even their chances of making it to Cleveland were slim to none. The first time they got within eight miles of a Luyten it would sense them, and come after them.

They reached the railroad tracks, which ran behind a tract of row houses, bending off to the right, beckoning Laurel’s platoon, promising an easy walk to their deaths.

“If it’s a rumor, why are they all saying the same thing?” Sergio, who was walking just ahead of Laurel, asked. Laurel had been thinking about a trip to Scotland she’d taken years ago with her husband, Mark, and her kids, Paul and Julie, all of whom were dead now. She hadn’t been paying attention to the conversation.

“Because that’s how rumors work: One wrong idea spreads,” Todd said. “I mean, giant soldiers? That’s the secret weapon? How would it help us to have bigger soldiers? This isn’t wrestling.”

“They kicked the Luyten’s asses down in Chile. That’s what Captain Noble said.” Sergio had a sticker of the Incredible Hulk on the back of his helmet.

“He did say that,” Jared chimed in.

At this point Laurel didn’t know what to think, so she stayed out of it. Giant soldiers? It sounded unlikely. But the details—that they’d retaken a power plant in Chile, that they were being created at production facilities deep below Manhattan, Moscow, Shanghai, and, of all places, Easter Island, were curiously specific and consistent. Diamond had picked up a short-wave transmission reporting the same thing Sergio and Jared had heard in the barracks.

But, giant soldiers?

Her legs were burning. No matter how hard she willed herself, no matter what trick she tried, Laurel could not widen the length of her strides. Her old hamstrings simply did not have any additional elasticity in them. It felt as if she had too-short steel cables attached from the bottom of her ass to the back of her knee.

Watching Sergio march along the railroad tracks in front of her, she gauged that she was taking almost two strides to his one. And he was only thirteen, and six inches shorter than she was. She could see right over his head as it bobbed along in front of her.

She burst out laughing.

Sergio hiked up his pants for the hundredth time since the platoon began the day’s march east, and turned to look at her.

“What’s so funny?”

“You ever hear the expression, ‘If you’re not the lead dog, the view never changes?’”

Sergio frowned. “I don’t think so.”

“Doesn’t matter. I was just walking along, thinking that saying isn’t true if you’re a head taller than the dogs in front of you.”

“Har-de-har-har,” Sergio said. A couple of the other young troops groaned.

“Maintain silence,” Lieutenant Carter, their lead dog, called over her shoulder. Carter wasn’t a head shorter than Laurel—she was the same height, carrying two hundred fifty pounds of beef, her brown skin mottled with burn scars from a close call with a Luyten heater.

Laurel wondered why silence was necessary. In a traditional war you were silent so the enemy couldn’t hear you coming, and to increase your chances of hearing them coming. Luyten could hear their thoughts, and if they heard Luyten coming, it was too late to do anything but say a prayer.

They cleared the stone ridge that had hugged the railroad track for the past mile or so, and a town came into view. Dead-end streets with ratty Cape Cods, a main street with a carpet outlet on the end. There was no one in sight.

“Where do you think we’re going?” Sergio asked.

“Probably to that pizza place,” Diamond said, pointing at the dilapidated, abandoned restaurant. In a few years Diamond would have become a cheerleader, with her long, skinny legs and pretty round face, but now those skinny legs only made it harder for her to carry a full pack.

“Right,” Sergio said, “we walked for two days to get pizza.”

“I’m joking,” Diamond said.

“I’d walk two days for pizza,” Todd chimed in, speaking over Diamond. He was sixteen, and usually stayed out of the sillier conversations.

“I’m guessing we’re headed for Cincinnati,” Laurel said. Often she felt more like a camp counselor than a soldier. She spent much of her time mediating pointless disputes while choking back tears at the thought of these kids being slaughtered by jewel-colored aliens the size of elephants.

“I bet they’re taking us to rendezvous with the ‘secret weapons,’” Jared said. He’d pulled out his little game player, was using some of its precious battery power, somehow playing his basketball game while simultaneously watching where he was going. Laurel had no doubt he’d been a popular kid in school back in Queens, with his big brown eyes and dimpled smile. In that world he and Sergio never would have become friends. Sergio snorted when he laughed, and had no interest in basketball unless superheroes were playing.

“There ain’t no secret weapons,” Diamond said. “Every couple of months there are rumors of something that’s going to save us, and it always turns out to be bullshit.” She yanked at one of the shoulder straps on her pack, trying to tighten it.

“Well, Lieutenant Carter told me it’s true this time,” Jared said. His voice hadn’t even changed yet. “She said there’s something in the works, and it’s going to change everything.”

Up ahead, the tracks met up with a small river and curved right along the bank.

“She’s a lieutenant,” Diamond said. She was behind Laurel, so Laurel couldn’t see her rolling her eyes, but knew she was. “They don’t tell her anything. You think they’d tell her about a secret weapon so the starfish can pull it out of her head?”

Laurel smiled wanly. Diamond’s logic was airtight. The only people who knew what was going on were miles underground, plotting hopeless strategies and doling them out a scrap at a time. Not that it had helped much against an enemy that always knew how many troops were headed their way, what weapons they were carrying, and, when it mattered, which way they were pointing those weapons.

Before she could cut off the thought, she was assaulted by an image of her daughter, Julie, clutching a rifle, perched on her toes, trembling furiously, her hair smoking.

Laurel squeezed her eyes shut, tried to banish the image. It was usually Julie she thought of, because she’d watched Julie die. Mark, Paul, their grandkids had all died far away. Sometimes she could delude herself into thinking they’d died quickly. Not Julie, though.

A dozen yards ahead, Lieutenant Carter blew her whistle. “Early camp today. Rest well.” Her red-rimmed eyes flicked from one recruit to the next, assessing the impact of her words, or perhaps trying to burn the significance of those words into these children.

Tomorrow, you will probably die. And so will I, she was saying.

Dinner was a treat: MREs, your choice as long as they lasted. Laurel picked corned beef and cabbage with mashed potatoes, and sat with her kids. The other two adults of legal age in their platoon—Pete Casing, an auto mechanic in his sixties, and Rob O’Neill, a retired advertising exec who had to be five years older than Laurel—ate with their own group of adopted comrade-children. They’d fallen into the arrangement without ever discussing it. It just made sense.

The evening sunlight shimmered off the water. Laurel appreciated reflected sunlight more than she had before the invasion. Anything that was the same as it had been before the Luyten dropped out of the sky, twisting and spinning like huge starfish, was precious.

“I’m gonna go swimming,” Jared said, licking the last of the vanilla pudding from its plastic container.

“No, you are not,” Diamond said. “The water’s probably polluted. Plus it’s too cold out.”

Sergio hopped up, ran down to the weed-choked shoreline, and dipped his hand in the shallow water. “It’s warm.”

Jared and Sergio looked at each other, grinning uncertainly.

“Should we?” Jared asked Sergio.

“I will if you will.”

Jared pulled his shirt over his head, exposing rows of ribs. He tossed it on the ground a few feet from the gently lapping waves as Sergio ran to join him, pulling off his uniform until both were in nothing but white underpants, wading in on their skinny stork legs, hugging themselves in the chill air.

Laurel expected Lieutenant Carter to shout the idea down, but she only eyed them from under the bill of her cap, eating fruit salad from a can with a white plastic spoon.

Shrieking, the two boys splashed into the water. It was three feet deep at most; they dunked themselves to the neck.

There had come a day, maybe ten years earlier—six years before the Luyten invaded—when it had suddenly occurred to Laurel that she likely had more fingers and toes than birthdays left. Less than twenty Christmases left. Less than twenty summers. The time ahead had once seemed all but infinite, then suddenly it was all too finite. Today, she could count the days ahead on one hand.

Laurel stood, unbuttoned the top button on her uniform blouse.

“What are you doing?” Diamond asked, her nose scrunched in disgust.

“I’m going swimming.” For the very last time.

The kids stared at her loose, wrinkled skin. She’d been pretty once—not cheerleader-pretty like Diamond, but not bad. Now she was all saggy skin and age spots. Today, she didn’t care.

Sergio had been full of shit; the water was freezing. It felt good, though—it made her aware that she was alive, helped her drink in the feel of water pressing her old limbs, the scent of mud and fish.

The Lieutenant watched as half a dozen others stripped and took to the water, screeching, splashing, laughing. This time, she didn’t reprimand them to maintain silence.

Bobbing in the shallow water, Laurel watched the Lieutenant watching her troops. She’d managed a Wendy’s before being drafted two years earlier, so she was used to supervising teenagers. Laurel smiled, remembering what Carter had said when one of the troops pointed out how lucky Carter was that the Luyten hadn’t gotten her yet.

It ain’t luck, she’d said. It’s about knowing when to run.

A scream jerked Laurel awake. It was still dark, the air icy cold on her face.

“Mom. Mom.” It was Jared.

Laurel shoved her boots on, went to Jared, who was sitting up, his breath coming in gasps.

“A nightmare?” she asked, sitting on the cold dirt beside him.

Jared swallowed, nodded. “I was at the movies, with my mom and my sister, Jenna. Then when I looked around, they were gone. All the people were gone, and the theater was filled with Luyten. They were all around me, watching the movie, and I knew when it was over they were going to kill me.” Jared started crying.

Laurel put a hand on the back of his shaved head, pulled him to her, patted his back. Nights were the hardest. These kids had been given no choice but to grow up quickly, but in the middle of the night, when their guards were down, they turned into children again.

“Do you want me to get my things and sleep here?” Laurel asked.

“Okay.”

Laurel dragged her blankets over and pressed close to Jared.

“I miss my mom and dad,” Jared said as the dark leaves overhead clattered in a crisp wind. “Everyone else has it the same, I know. I just have to suck it up, but—”

Laurel put her hand on his head. “Just because everyone else lost their parents doesn’t make it hurt any less that you lost yours.”

She felt Jared’s shoulders jerk as he cried quietly.

“Everyone’s hurting,” she whispered. “Everyone. Even Lieutenant Carter. It’s okay to hurt.”

The soft rustling of blankets nearby made Laurel turn. Diamond was standing over them, pillow in one hand, blanket in the other.

“Can I sleep here?”

Laurel patted the ground.

It was comforting to have warm bodies pressed close on either side. It reminded her of camping out with her own kids thirty years earlier, up in Maine. Acadia National Park. That was the year Mark had so much trouble with nightmares, the vivid imagination he would channel into a career in computer animation still running out of control. Sleeping in a tent in the dark woods had terrified Mark, and they’d had to cut their vacation short. At the time the trip had seemed like an utter disaster. Laurel would give anything to be back there.

“I know they’re coming for us,” Diamond whispered. “I don’t know why they’ve waited this long.”

Sergio appeared out of the darkness, dropped his blankets next to Diamond. “I tried talking to them.”

Jared raised up on one elbow. “What do you mean?”

“They can read our minds, so I talked to them, kind of like I say my prayers. I asked them please not to kill me.”

“Why don’t you ask them for a pony while you’re at it?” Diamond said.

“It’s a chance, at least.”

Laurel shushed Sergio. “You’re going to wake the others.”

In a lower voice, Sergio said, “I’m only telling you because I thought you might want to try it, too. What could it hurt?”

It was nothing but fantasy, but Laurel kept her mouth shut. If it took the edge off Sergio’s fear, let him believe Luyten could be bargained with.

No one spoke after that. Laurel wondered if Jared and Diamond were praying to the Luyten for mercy as well.

The line slowed. Laurel caught her foot on a railroad tie, nearly fell. Ahead, the way forward was blocked by a pile of broken machinery. They were on a trestle, thirty feet above a stream, so the platoon was forced to climb over the debris.

When it was her turn, Laurel picked her way carefully over jagged, crushed steel.

“Drones,” Todd said. “They’re all drones.”

That’s exactly what they were: walking artillery pieces, designed to wander randomly, seeking Luyten through VRE technology. Luyten couldn’t read their computer-chip minds, so they couldn’t avoid their gunfire the way they did humans’ gunfire. The problem was, once the Luyten knew where one of the drones was, it wasn’t difficult to take out a machine. They could have more easily pulled up railroad ties to block the route, or simply burned it; the barricade was meant to be a message about the drones’ lack of effectiveness, a morale stomper to any soldiers passing through. Beyond the blockade the track veered deeper into pine forest.

A cry of alarm rose from up the line. Laurel swung her rifle off her shoulder and pointed it into the trees, looking for bright colors. Cobalt blue, magenta, emerald, mustard…

A huge figure broke from the trees, clutching a rifle the size of a bazooka. It was manlike, but not a man: deep-set eyes, a ridged brow, skin as white as bone, black uniform. He had three legs, which made him fast. So fast.

The entire platoon gaped, struck dumb by the sight of the creature as it headed north on the tracks, eyes straight ahead, exhaling through its nose like a winded colt.

Three more burst from the trees; then there were six, then ten, as more appeared farther up the track.

Cheers rose in the platoon, growing to a full-throated roar as, one by one, the giants disappeared around a curve in the track.

Lieutenant Carter was squatting, on her walkie-talkie, a finger plugging her free ear. Everyone was talking at once, chattering excitedly, their faces more animated than Laurel had ever seen them.

“I told you,” Sergio said. “Didn’t I tell you?”

Standing, Carter waved for silence. She was smiling, almost glowing. “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve just met our new allies. They’re called the defenders.”

Through her icy shock, Laurel couldn’t help wondering how these defenders would turn the tide of the war. As Todd had pointed out, this wasn’t wrestling. Weren’t they simply larger targets?

At lunchtime they caught up with the defenders, who were leaning up against trees eating processed meat that looked like huge cubes of spam. Laurel’s platoon stood at a distance, whispering.

Laurel marveled at their size, the slabs of muscle bulging beneath their skintight uniforms. How on earth had they been created? They were walking miracles, far beyond what Laurel thought humans were capable of engineering. She wondered if people had thought the same about the A-bomb back in 1945. When your survival depended on it, great strides could be made in a short time.

One of the defenders waved them on. “You’re giving away our position. Move on.”

“We just want to say, ‘Welcome,’” Lieutenant Carter called. “We’re glad to have your help.”

“Just stay out of our way,” the defender said. His uniform sported vertical silver striping on the shoulders, but if it indicated his rank, Laurel couldn’t decipher it. He clearly thought he outranked Lieutenant Carter.

“Let’s move out,” Carter called, waving them forward.

They walked on, the defender’s words echoing in Laurel’s head.

You’re giving away our position.

How would saying hello give away these defenders’ position to the Luyten? If any Luyten were within eight miles, they’d already know where the defenders were. Unless…

“That’s it,” Laurel shouted. The Luyten couldn’t read the defenders’ minds. That, after all, was the Luyten’s only advantage. They were outmanned, outgunned, in foreign territory, but they knew their enemy’s every move. If that advantage were neutralized…

Laurel’s heart thumped wildly as she explained her hunch.

They crossed a backwoods country road, passed a tall peanut-processing machine—four tubes snaking into cylindrical tanks. Past that were open fields on either side.

Although it made no sense, because the Luyten didn’t rely on their eyes to detect people, Laurel felt exposed as they walked in the open. She preferred having forest pressing tight on both sides. A mile on they hit a town. The tracks ran behind what passed for the main street—a dozen or so two-story buildings.

“If Laurel’s right, the starfish don’t stand a chance,” Jared was saying. He was walking up on his toes, head up like he could walk a thousand miles.

Down the crossing street, Laurel caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of her eye. She spun, pointed her rifle, was about to sound the alarm when she saw they were people. Two women, hurrying four young children along the sidewalk, each carrying an overstuffed backpack. Laurel was shocked to see people so far into enemy territory.

“Lieutenant?” she called, pointing. “People.”

Lieutenant Carter paused, squinted at the little group. “Why don’t you take someone with you and check in with them, make sure they don’t need help? We’ll wait.”

“Yes, ma’am.

“Jared, come on,” Laurel called. Jared trotted after her.

“Hello,” Laurel said as she approached the group. The women greeted Laurel with cautious smiles. One was youngish, limping on a bad leg. The other was Laurel’s age, maybe a little older. The children were hollow-eyed, somewhat malnourished.

“I didn’t know anyone was still living this far outside the cities,” Laurel said.

“There are a few of us,” the younger woman said. “Not many.”

“Don’t you want to move somewhere safer?” Jared asked.

“There’s nowhere safer,” the older woman said. “We heard the starfish don’t necessarily go out of their way to kill children. So we keep our heads down, mind our own business. So far it’s worked.”

There was a certain logic there. They were taking a risk, but who wasn’t?

“No offense, but we’d rather you all just go on your way before you draw their attention,” the older woman said.

That hadn’t occurred to Laurel. As soldiers, they had targets on their backs, and here they were getting up close to children. “I’m sorry.” She headed toward her platoon. “We’ll be gone before you know it.”

Laurel got the Lieutenant’s attention, motioned that they could start walking and that Laurel and Jared would catch up. The Lieutenant lifted her hand to give Laurel a thumbs-up just as her uniform burst into flames. Her helmet melted over her face.

Before the Lieutenant’s blackened body dropped to the tracks, the heat gun hit Pete Casing. He’d opened his mouth to shout some order, but was burned before he could get it out.

Troops fled in all directions, clutching their rifles. With Jared at her heels, Laurel took cover in the doorway of a paint store.

The bark of rifle fire and adolescent screams rang out as three, four soldiers dropped, charred to stumps.

Shaking, panting, Laurel scanned the buildings, trying to locate the enemy.

A glimpse of bright emerald flashed in a second-story window across the street. As soon as she saw it, it was gone. The Luyten knew she’d seen it.

Laurel leaped up, pulled a grenade from her belt, intending to toss it in the window before the thing could escape. As she hefted it, she realized there was no way she could reach that window. She pushed the grenade at Jared, pointed.

“I saw one up there. Can you get this in the window?”

Jared grabbed the grenade, ran halfway across the street, then stopped, fumbled with the grenade. “How do I work it?”

Laurel ran out to him, trying to recall the brief tutorial she’d received on activating grenades. She took the grenade from Jared, squeezed the safety lever, thumbed the clip, then twisted the pull pin. Keeping the safety lever tight, she handed it back to Jared.

“Throw.” A good twenty seconds had passed since she’d spotted the Luyten; Laurel knew it must have repositioned long ago.

Jared wound, whipped the grenade at the window. It struck the brick sill, ricocheted up and to the right, dropped to the sidewalk. Laurel dove just before it exploded.

“Laurel.”

Laurel looked toward the tracks. Sergio was racing toward them, dragging his rifle by its strap, his too-big helmet bobbing over one eye.

The arm holding the rifle blackened and curled. Sergio howled, dropped to one knee, clutching the charred stump.

“Sergio.” Laurel raced toward him. He was screaming, writhing on the asphalt. There were burned bodies everywhere.

Laurel grabbed Sergio under the armpits, the left—the burned one—was red-hot, but she ignored the pain. Laurel meant to drag him, but Jared was there, grabbing Sergio’s legs. They trotted back to the doorway of the paint shop, gently set Sergio down on the sidewalk.

His eyes stared sightlessly up at the store’s awning.

“No, no, no,” Laurel moaned, pressing her face close to Sergio’s. She knew she had to get up, had to keep fighting, but this little boy with a Hulk sticker on his helmet and comic books in his pack was dead, and Laurel wasn’t sure she had any fight left in her.

A sharp intake of breath from Jared got Laurel’s attention. She lifted her head. A Luyten was rounding the corner across the street. It was red orange, the size of a minivan, moving on four of its six appendages. It held a mushroom-shaped heater in one of its free appendages.

Laurel’s rifle was on the sidewalk a few paces away; Jared’s was strapped across his back. Of course, the Luyten already knew that, or it wouldn’t have moved into the open. It pointed the heater in their direction.

As Laurel tensed, its insides burst out the front of it, an explosion of coal-black entrails and organs. Black blood sprayed halfway across the empty street.

Stunned, Laurel struggled to her feet, tried to decide whether to make a run for it just as a defender jogged into view.

It paused at the same corner the Luyten had recently occupied and looked around, its massive rifle pointed at the sky, deep-set eyes hidden in the shadow of its helmet.

Laurel raised a hand, but it didn’t acknowledge her, or even seem to notice her.

Four Luyten came galloping down the middle of the street. Laurel dropped to her stomach as half a dozen defenders appeared in pursuit, firing what might have been grenades from launchers that appeared to be built right into their forearms.

As the Luyten approached, the defender hiding across from Laurel leveled his rifle and fired. Behind her, the façade of the paint store burst inward; in the street the Luyten’s thick, jewel-colored skin blossomed with wounds, and they fell.

The defenders set upon them, firing point-blank into their eyes, which were set at spoked intervals around the center of their bodies.

Laurel pressed a hand on Jared’s back. “Are you okay?”

Jared lifted his head. “Yeah.”

They trotted back to the tracks. Two of their platoon mates were still alive: Diamond, who was pressed along the steel rail of the track, and a boy named Artey, who’d been hiding in the tobacco field on the far side. If they’d survived, the Luyten would have come back and finished them both off, but it was hard to shake off the primordial instinct to hide when monsters were all around you.

The defenders were gone.

Numb, her ears ringing, Laurel led the three survivors along the track until they reached the forest. She didn’t outrank them, but she was an adult, and they were kids, and no one questioned her taking charge of what was left of their platoon.

Before the sun had even set, Artey was asleep, curled against a big elm tree. Laurel and the others sat on a fallen tree and ate MREs.

She’d been right: the Luyten couldn’t read the defenders’ minds. How confused and disorganized the Luyten had looked without that advantage. For the first time in four years, Laurel felt a green tendril of hope sprouting in her heart. Maybe the human race would survive after all.

It was hard to feel elated. Most of her companions were dead. All those kids left for the vultures, if the vultures would even have them, burned like that.

“Where are the defenders?” Jared asked. His face was red from close contact with heater guns, as if he had a bad sunburn. “They could get us to Cleveland, or Cincinnati. The starfish wouldn’t dare attack if we were with the defenders.”

“They lose their advantage when we’re around,” Laurel said. It was ironic: The defenders had been created to save humanity, yet humanity was their Kryptonite. If anyone in Laurel’s platoon had seen the defenders before the Luyten attacked, the Luyten would have been tipped off, and could have run, or set a trap…

A cold shock ran through Laurel. She set down the slice of pie she’d been working on.

With all of the miles and miles of enemy territory, the defenders just happened to be close enough to arrive not five minutes into the firefight?

The defenders had been waiting for the Luyten to show up. Using them as bait.

But if the defenders had been watching Laurel’s platoon, why had they waited those precious minutes before joining the fight? She pictured Sergio stumbling toward her, cradling what was left of his arm.

Deeper in the woods, a light flashed briefly. It wasn’t the soft glow the Luytens’ equipment sometimes emitted, but the hard, white light of a human-manufactured flashlight.

Laurel stood, brushed herself off. “Stay here. If I’m not back by dawn, keep following the tracks.”

“Where are you going?” Jared’s tone pleaded for her to stay.

She put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m going to find the defenders. I’ll be back.”

She headed toward the spot where the light had flashed.

Not five minutes later, a defender on watch stopped her.

“What are you doing out here?” he asked, towering over her, assault rifle clutched in front of his chest.

“Looking for you.” Craning her neck, she kept her eyes steady on his. “I want to speak to your CO.”

With a grunt, the defender led her into their camp. They were sitting in silence, not looking at each other, their backs propped against trees.

Their commander rose when he saw Laurel. “What are you doing here? You’re betraying our location to the enemy.” They were terrifying to look at. Their faces looked as if they were chiseled from stone, their shoulders remarkably broad.

“You’re using us as bait,” Laurel said.

The commander blew air from his nose, folded his arms. “If we hadn’t been following you, you’d be dead.”

Laurel saw Sergio’s half-charred body lying in the eaves of the paint store. “Most of my platoon is dead. I’m not questioning your strategy, I just want to know why you waited so long to help us.”

The defender folded his arms. “We needed to know how many Luyten were present, and where they were positioned, to formulate a battle plan.” He was clearly smart, even though he didn’t look it.

“People were dying,” Laurel said. “You don’t hang back and gather intelligence when an entire platoon is being slaughtered.”

The defender snorted again. “Our mission is to defeat the Luyten. Strategically, it wasn’t worth risking defenders to save a few individuals.” He shrugged. “I judged it an acceptable level of collateral damage.”

She wanted to disagree with him, but she couldn’t. Winning the war mattered above everything; that’s why her seventy-year-old bones were humping an assault rifle through the woods. But people had died. Kids. A bizarre and contradictory mix of emotions coursed through her: gratitude, resentment, awe, flat-out dislike. She didn’t know what to do with it all.

“Who’s giving you your orders?” she asked.

“We answer to General Peter, of the Defender High Command.” His tone bordered on reverence. “The defenders are a fully independent fighting force, for obvious reasons.”

They weren’t even under the authority of a human commander. Yes, it made sense. It was also chilling.

It was nearly dark when Laurel pushed through the foliage, into their camp. Her three comrades leaped up to greet her.

Jared gave her a big hug. “I was worried about you.”

“Let’s bed down,” she said as crickets peeped around them. “I’ll take first watch.”

“Where are the defenders?” Jared asked. He looked uneasy about the prospect of another night in the woods after such an awful day.

Laurel pointed into the trees. “They’re right over there, not two hundred yards away. So don’t worry. They’re watching over us.”