“Get her legs.” Cayden spoke from Claire’s body, shoving off the dead hunter that still lay on top of her. “Come on! We’re running out of time here!”

Michael walked over quickly, dragging her out the rest of the way before lifting her with Cayden, the two of them walking her towards the exit of the forest. “I don’t know who this woman is, or what she was doing out here, but I’m not just going to leave her to die.”

Farah ran ahead of them, making sure the way was clear for them before running further, exiting the forest and seeing their cars ahead of her. She opened the back door to the nearest one, pulling out the bags and throwing them into the trunk before running back to them.

“How is she?” She said once she reached them, finally getting a clear look at Claire’s body. “Oh merde, she looks terrible.”

“She’s hurt bad, really bad.” Cayden smiled, a hint of fondness in the expression. “If it was anyone else I’d just leave them there or put them out of their misery, but she isn’t exactly like everyone else.”

The rest of the group caught up to them, eyes wide as they looked over her condition for the first time as well. Iggy had a look of hunger in his eyes, but he looked ashamed of the instinctual reaction, his eyes black as he saw the hunters blood covering her neck. “There’s no one else moving in this forest, we don’t have to worry about anyone coming to attack us.”

“Cayden, she recognized you,” Skylar said, walking alongside the two men. “Who is she?”

“She’s an old friend, haven’t seen her in a couple of years. I sure as hell didn’t think tonight of all nights would be the night we reunited.”

They reached the cars, Cayden carefully maneuvering himself into the car to lay her head down softly on the seat. “Have you got her?”

Michael nodded as he slotted her legs in as comfortably as he could. “Not my first time having to get someone out of a bad place in a car, can’t always shift and do it myself.”

“Good, that’s good.” Cayden jumped out, closing the door slowly and moving over to the rest of them. “We need to get going, she’s fading fast.”

“Cayden, who is she?”

He looked at the ground awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck. “She’s a hunter, like I am. Or I guess it’s more appropriate to say was, on both counts.”

“She’s a hunter?” Iggy turned icy, his fangs extending and his fist clenching. “Then why are we helping her?”

“Because she’s a friend of mind, and I don’t leave a friend behind in the dirt, no matter what they’ve done.”

“Even if that friend is on the same side as your worst enemy?” Iggy took a step towards the car, growling at the hand the Cayden placed in the middle of his chest.

“No matter what. You don’t like that then you can walk.” Cayden leaned in, almost snarling, “If you try and lay a single finger on her I’ll feed you your own insides, are we clear?”

Farah pulled them apart, rolling her eyes. “This big masculine display can wait, no? We have a woman dying in the back of our car, that is a problem that we need to solve soon.”

“How bad is she?” Skylar walked with Farah towards the back, instinctively taking Claire’s hand when she saw her bloodied form again. “She looks bad.”

“She is bad, her shoulder is miraculously not shattered, but she still has a bleeding hole in a place that needs mobility.” She ran her hand along Clare’s side, taking no notice of the blood starting to coat her hands. “She likely has a concussion, possibly a burst eardrum, but what I’m worried about most is her stomach. She’s clearly been bleeding a while, it’s miraculous that she’s even still breathing, but she won’t be if we don’t get moving.”

“What are we even doing with her? She’s the enemy.” Iggy snarled looking into the back seat where they had loaded Claire. “Are you all forgetting that? That she spends her life hunting down people like us?”

“Did you notice that she was underneath a hunter that she’d just finished stabbing to death?” Cayden pushed past him, walking towards the driver’s side door. “When I did that it wasn’t exactly a move that I thought would mean I kept being a hunter.”

“But-” Iggy stopped when he felt Liam’s hand on his shoulder, not squeezing down with malicious intent but possessing just enough power to be clear who was in charge.

“Let it go Iggy, you can talk all you want about it but we’re taking her with us. I trust Cayden’s judgement on this.”

“Enough to save a hunter?”

Liam shrugged. “His judgement is the only reason you’re here with us, I was considering just letting you go. The girl comes with us, if she’s against Christian then she has potential to be a friend.”

“Oh right.” Cayden slammed the door shut, winding his window down and looking at the group. “Might have to tell you guys something about that.”

“What is it?”

Cayden looked to his right, nodding in satisfaction when Farah buckled herself in. He turned the car on, looking out the window and shouting, “She’s Christian’s sister-in-law!”

“What?”

Cayden didn’t hear the reply, peeling out and rocketing off, engine roaring and carrying them along the road.

“Shit!” Hayley ran over to the other car, throwing open the door and jumping in. “Everyone get in! We need to keep up with them! We can’t afford to split up out here.”

They all piled into the cars, racing off with no hesitation to follow Cayden and Farah. Skylar sat in the back seat, head in her hands while she thought over things.

“That’s Christian’s sister? What kind of man is he that he would even order his own sister to be killed? What kind of heartless monster is he?” She ran a hand over her mouth, stifling a giggle. “Moreover, what kind of woman is she that she can fight of that many hunters and still be breathing? I think I might have another friend at this rate.”

---

They caught up to the other car in no time, Cayden having found a motel that wouldn’t ask questions about a half dead woman being loaded out of a car lest they become a fully dead clerk buried out behind the back of the building.

By the time the others had gotten out of the cars and stepped into their room for the night, the bed had already been covered in plastic and Claire laid on top, Farah carefully cutting through her ruined clothing to uncover her wounds.

“Is there anything we can do to help?” Hayley asked, stepping forward with Michael.

“I need you to sterilize some tools for me, unless you happen to know any healing magic?” Farah frowned when Hayley and Cassandra shook their heads, before chuckling to herself, “We always have to be strong armed into learning about that don’t we? It just isn’t as fun as being able to move things around the room with a flick of your wrist.”

“Three witches between us and not one of us knows how to heal a sprained wrist…” Hayley filled a pot with water, throwing the tweezers and the scalpel from their medical kit before heating the pot with a snap of her fingers. “We’re good to go here, do you know what you’re doing?”

“Of course I do, I had to learn pretty quickly given that Cayden decided to get shot again.”

Cayden groaned, gathering up the bloodied clothes and putting them into a plastic bag. “Don’t blame me, blame Christian. Trust me, given half the chance I leap at the opportunity to not get shot.”

“I suppose I can believe you, so long as you don’t make a habit of it.” Farah leaned down, taking a closer look at Claire’s stomach and wiping the blood away with a damp cloth. “This is bad, the bleeding can be stopped easily but I want to get those bullet fragments out of her.”

Hayley stepped forward with the pot, handing her the scalpel and standing by her side. Skylar walked over, taking the cloth from Farah’s hands and resuming cleaning the blood away. “Good,” Farah said, “I’ll need you to keep the area clean, I’m going to need to see exactly what I’m doing the entire time I do it.”

Skylar nodded, trying not to gag when Farah sliced a small opening in the wound. Farah grabbed the tweezers, carefully pulling out each shard of the slug slowly and dropping them into the ashtray next to the bed. “It’s amazing that she was still walking around like this, most people would have dropped a long time ago.”

“Yeah,” Cayden said, “She always was stubborn when it came to injuries. Must have been a pride thing, she’s been like this since she was little.”

“How long have you known her?” Liam stood next to him, tilting his head in curiosity. “When did you first meet her?”

“I met her about five or six years ago, so probably when she was fourteen or fifteen, something like that. I’m not surprised that she got involved with hunting, that kind of goes without saying when you’re raised around them, but it’s still pretty sad.” He smiled down at her, eyes flicking back and forth under her closed eyelids, breath slow and steady in her unconscious state. “She really is just full of love, she always has been. You should have seen...”

“What? Should have seen what?”

“How she was with her sister.” He grimaced. “I think I have a feeling of why she decided to leave Christian’s group.”

“Why-” Liam froze, sighing to himself, “Oh. This is going to be a very awkward talk when she wakes up. If she wakes up.”

“I wouldn’t doubt Farah, she fixed up my shoulder pretty good.”

“My fears don’t have anything to do with Farah, she worked with me for years I know how skilled she is. I’m worried that her body has just gone through too much, you saw how many she’d taken down by the time we got to her, you can see her injuries. For all we know she may just not wake up again.”

“No.” They turned to Iggy, who was watching over her wit obvious hostility, but clear admiration as well. “Her heart is beating steady, she is hurt, and she’s lost a lot of blood, but she will probably recover from this.”

“See?” Cayden said, “Even Iggy thinks she’ll make it through, and he doesn’t even want her to.”

With a clink, Farah pulled the last of the shards out of Claire’s wound, reaching over for a bottle of disinfectant and wincing in sympathy. “I really hope she doesn’t wake up for this.”

She tipped the bottle slightly, a generous splash of liquid coating her wound and falling in, Claire’s eyes shooting open at the sudden burning. “Fuck! What are you doing!”

“Calm down!” Hayley placed her hand on Claire’s shoulder, pushing her down to the mattress and holding her in place. “We’re making sure that you don’t get infected, I know it hurts but just push through it for now.”

“You could have… Warned me… Fir…” Claire’s head fell back against the mattress, her body going slack and her breathing slowing again.

Hayley stepped back, shrugging. “Or I guess you can do that.”

“Your bedside manner could use some work, but thank you for that.” Farah threaded a needle, preparing to sew the wound shut. “The hard part is over now, I can do this bit alone. I have a feeling all of you need to talk about a few things.”

“Yeah.” Cayden looked nervously between Claire and Skylar. “Looks like we do huh?”

---

They moved outside, leaving Farah to take care of sewing up Claire and making sure that she wasn’t in anymore danger. Noticing that Cayden still couldn’t quite look at her, Skylar cleared her throat, “Um, Cayden? Why do you still look like that? Have I done something wrong?”

“I wouldn’t say that, it’s more of… An unfortunate coincidence?”

“What do you mean?”

Liam nudged him, looking at him pointedly. “Just tell her, or I will.”

Cayden sighed, “You remember that hunter that was… Holding Abigail?”

Skylar felt her blood heating up at the memory, clenching her fists and squeezing her eyes shut in anger. “Yes, I remember her pretty vividly Cayden, why do you bring her up?”

“Well, I don’t want you to get angry or freak out when I say this. Are you going to stay calm?” When she nodded impatiently he took a deep breath, wincing as he said, “That hunter was Claire’s sister.”

She froze, looking slowly back towards the motel room where the sister of the woman who had almost killed her child was laying, under their care, being brought back from the brink of death. “Oh.”

“Yeah, ‘Oh’.” Cayden ran a hand through his hair, groaning up at the sky. “I don’t know how this is going to go now. Claire and Laura were always close, sisters are always close but these two were pretty much joined at the hip.”

“Do you think there’s a risk that she might try and get revenge for us killing her sister?”

“Honestly?” He looked back at the motel door, shrugging. “I don’t know. My first thought was yes but… She idolized Christian, you couldn’t have a conversation with the kid without hearing her going off about her hero. For him to put a kill order out on her, and for her to kill that many hunters, something very clearly went wrong with them.”

“How shocking, that psychopath can’t keep ahold of his family without alienating them,” Leah said, “He’ll even try and kill his own family, because wiping out other families en masse isn’t nearly enough for him.”

Leila looked distracted, as though she was thinking of something completely different, but she shook her head and said, “Poor kid, she couldn’t control who her sister decided to marry. It’s always the things that you have no control over that end up ruining your life.”

“That raises another question…” Michael stepped forward, looking between all of them. “She was part of the inner circle, right? Her sister and her brother-in-law organized that whole thing to kill all of us. So, where was she? If she was so close to everyone then why would she stay behind, why wouldn’t they involve her?”

“You think that she might have been there that night?” Hayley said.

“The thought crossed my mind.”

Liam and Skylar thought back to that night, Cayden recalling who he was dragged past before entering the parking garage where everything went to hell. There were many faces that they remembered, ones that had escaped and ones that hadn’t, but they couldn’t recall seeing her face among them. “I don’t remember seeing her there,” Skylar said, “Could they have left her outside while everything happened?”

Cayden shook his head. “That’s not how his group works, if you’re involved then you are involved, there’s no half-assing. Which means that they probably froze her out so that she wouldn’t realize what they were up to.”

“They would do that to someone so close to them?”

“With Claire?” He chuckled, “Yeah, they would definitely do it with her. When I knew her, she didn’t have an evil bone in her body, always talking about protecting people and saving the day. The first time you do a job with Christian, a proper job, you start thinking that being a good guy is a bunch of bullshit. I don’t really see her outgrowing that part of her, at least not to the point that she does the sort of shit I used to do with Christian.”

“Oh my god...” Hayley leaned back. “This is just making more questions, can we trust her, or can’t we?”

“I want to say yes, but I honestly won’t know until she wakes up.” Cayden looked between all of them, gauging their expressions. “And she is waking up, right?”

Iggy scowled, but he reluctantly nodded. “I don’t like the idea of helping a hunter, but… If she’s anything like what you’re saying she’s like, then I guess she deserves a chance. You gave me a chance, and everyone else in this group gave you a chance when you came from the same place as her, it’d be majorly hypocritical to not give her the same.”

Hayley and Michael nodded. “We want to see where this goes, we shouldn’t punish her for something that she didn’t even have a proper part in.”

Nods went around the circle, Cassandra and Leah adding their approval before Skylar and Liam did the same. When all heads turned to Leila they all expected to see their first refusal, but to their surprise, especially Skylar’s, she nodded, saying, “The girl deserves a chance to explain what she’s about, I’m sure there’s more of a story to us finding her in the aftermath of a knife fight in the middle of the forest than we realize.”

She looked at her daughter, smirking at the look of shock still on her face. “What’s wrong Skylar?” She asked, “You seem surprised by something.”

“I just… Didn’t expect you to be advocating for someone to keep living.” Skylar said, ducking her head in embarrassment. “It hasn’t exactly been top of your priority list in the time I’ve been travelling with you.”

Leila shrugged. “We don’t have to kill everyone, especially those that may not have even done anything wrong in the first place. Besides, she probably knows some very valuable things if she was close to the two people in charge, probably knows where their safe houses are, what their plans for escaping would be, it’s just smart to keep her around to ask.”

Skylar was waiting for the “But”, and when it came she could only sigh.

“But if that doesn’t work out and she is after revenge,” Leila said, “We can always just kill her then.”

---

Christian hadn’t stopped staring into the mirror for the last hour, the still bloodied bandages mocking him with the knowledge of the horror show that lay underneath them. He didn’t have to have the wound uncovered to know that his eye was completely destroyed, Claire having made absolutely sure that he wasn’t able to get up once she had attacked him.

“That little idiot.” He growled, staring into his one working eye. “If she had let me explain, if she hadn’t let her emotions get the better of her… We could have ruled together, we could have ushered in a new world, a better world for humanity. I would have taken her to bed every night, I would have given her everything.”

Christian ran a hand down the bandages, wincing at every cut and stitch that he put pressure on, teeth clenched and his skin on fire. “I’ll make her feel what she’s done to me, I’ll string her up and introduce her to the parts of us that she was so horrified to discover. She has no idea the things that I’ve done to make this world a better place, but she will find out.” His hand dropped limply to his side. “She will find out.”

He stepped away from the mirror, walking across the still ruined and shattered room, boots crunching on glass that had saved Claire’s life and taken his eye. Placing his hands on his desk, he took a deep breath, head bowed and back rising and falling. “Just be patient Christian, you have your best men on this, she can’t hope to get away, not in one piece at least.”

He looked to the side, the picture of Claire, Laura and himself staring back at him. Picking it up delicately in one hand, he looked down at it sadly, tracing a finger over Laura’s face. “Oh Laura… I’m sorry about my indiscretion with her. She was a mistake, I should have seen that earlier. I’m sure you always saw the way that I looked at her, you were right to have your worries, you knew she wouldn’t be good for me.”

He growled when he looked at Claire, then a few years younger and smiling widely, no indication of the betrayal that she would commit years later. “How could you do that to her Claire? How could you betray your sister like that? How could you turn your back on everything the two of us built, what Laura died for, all for your own selfish desires.”

He tossed the picture back onto the desk, sitting down with a grunt and closing his eye, hoping that some good news would await him when he awoke. The problem was that luck just wasn’t on his side that day, he neither got the chance to sleep, nor was there good news awaiting him when he was interrupted.

“I’m sorry to interrupt Sir.” His underling walked in, clearly nervous to be speaking to him in such surroundings and in his condition. “I can come back if you would prefer me to.”

Christian waved him in, not making any effort to disguise his irritation at being intruded on. “It’s fine, you’re already here. Just say whatever it is you need to say and then leave me be.”

“Y-Yes Sir…” He stepped forward, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. “We… Have some news on Claire.”

Christian looked up, recognizing the fear on the young man’s face. “Given that you look like you’re going to shit yourself any second now, and you keep glancing between me and the door like you’re guessing how long it would take to make it out, I have a feeling that the news isn’t good.”

“N-No Sir, it isn’t.”

“Oh?” Christian stood, his chair pushing out from under him and hitting the wall behind him. The messenger jumped at the sound, watching with bated breath as Christian advanced on him. “Go on, tell me what you have to say.”

“Claire she…” He gulped, fighting the urge to shudder when Christian leaned in, the bandaged face almost pressing against him.

“You see this?” Christian pointed at the bandages. “She did this to me, she abused my trust and my hospitality, and she injured me. She wounded my flesh, and she scoured my soul, and that is an offence that I cannot forgive. Now, stop stalling, and tell me exactly what you came here to tell me.”

“Claire has escaped again Sir.” The messenger closed his eyes, not wanting to see the growing rage in Christians good eye. “She was wounded last we heard, but we have lost contact with the teams that we sent out. We’re trying constantly but… We might have to assume that they’ve been killed.”

“Let me get this straight…” Christian clenched his fist, looming over him. “Not only did you fail to catch her when she first escaped this compound, sending two men to the infirmary and another one into a hole, now that she is also wounded you see fit to let her slip through your fingers?”

“I’m sorry Sir, we underestimated how good she was.”

“You underestimated?” Christian scoffed. “Of course you underestimated, and that is profoundly insulting. Do you think some garden variety amateur could do this to my office? Do you think any regular piece of ass could take my eye from me and just walk away? Is that what you think of me you little shit?”

The messenger put his arms out, trying to placate him. “No sir! Not at all we just… We thought that she would be less of a challenge once she was wounded.”

“You fucking imbeciles...” Christian turned around, placing his hands on his desk again and trying to regain his composure. It was not working. “If I had twenty soldiers like her then I wouldn’t have to worry about anything ever again, if I could secure their loyalty then nothing would ever stand in my way.”

His fingers brushed against the half empty bottle of scotch on his desk, hand winding around the glass and clutching it tightly. “Instead I get you!”

He turned around in the blink of an eye, slamming the bottom of the bottle into the messenger’s jaw, teeth splintering and shattering underneath the heavy glass. He went down to the ground in a fit of coughing and sputtering, spitting blood onto the carpet and groaning. Christian slammed his foot into his stomach, teeth falling onto the ground with a click while he tried to curl up into a ball.

“I try! So hard! To train you!” He stomped down over and over again, stitches in his face starting to tear from the strain on the skin from his shouting. “All I get! From you! In return! Is nothing!”

The man groaned and whined pathetically, hands trying desperately to protect his head to no avail. “Please Sir,” He tried to say, his ruined jaw slurring every word, “Please! I’m sorry!”

“You’re sorry?” Christian paused his onslaught, looking down at him in disbelief. “You’re sorry? Sorry doesn’t bring your comrades back, sorry doesn’t give me back my eye! Sorry,” His head snapped back from Christian’s boot. “Doesn’t bring Claire to me on her knees, begging for my forgiveness!”

The man had stopped moving, only the shallow movements of his chest giving any indication that he was still alive. Christian fell back against his desk, the moment finally over and his temper starting to uncloud his vision. “Jesus,” He said, “I lost it there. Hey,” He nudged the man with his boot, scowling at the lack of a reaction. “No wonder she got away, look at what she was up against.”

Slowly, he started to drag the man out of his office, not paying any mind to the glass he was dragging him through or the cuts that he was getting in its wake. Callously, he tossed him out the door, whistling to the nearest guard to come collect him. “Get this piece of shit out of here will you? I don’t want to be disturbed until I say you can, you got that?”

She looked down at the messenger, nodding nervously. “Yes Sir, I’ll pass on the message.”

“Good, you’re already smarter than he was.” He walked back into his office, slamming the door behind him and pausing in the doorway. His fist started shaking, roaring at the top of his lungs and slamming it back into the door with as much fore as he could muster.

Stomping over to the desk, he snatched up the picture of his wife and sister-in-law once more, hurling it into the wall and watching satisfied as it shattered to pieces, glass slicing apart the photograph and the frame collapsing in on itself. Stomping on it for good measure, he looked upwards and breathed deeply, only just aware of the blood starting to fall down his skin.

“Shit...” He said, fingers coming away damp with scarlet. “One thing after a-fucking-nother isn’t it?” Peeling off the edge of the bandage slowly, he looked back into the mirror, watching with grim anticipation as his face was slowly revealed to himself. Each inch that was revealed only made him want to look away, but he forced himself to keep his eyes glued to the mirror, knowing that if he couldn’t stomach the sight then he had no right to call himself a leader.

Dropping the dressing to the floor, he took in his appearance properly, looking from side to side and touching the stitches that had torn. “Why should I have to hide myself away?” He said, gently touching one of the new valleys carved into his cheek. “Why should I have to cover this up just to be taken seriously by those lower than me?” He stood back up, knocking the mirror out of his way and walking towards the door, popping the top off the bottle of scotch as he went.

“Hey, you!” He shouted out, the guard from before turning and gasping at his appearance.

“Oh my god, Sir are you ok?”

He waved his hand in dismissal. “Yeah, I fine. What I want you to do is gather everyone in the courtyard. We need to have a very serious talk about training and organization, and I want it to be done sooner than later. Can you do that?”

She snapped to attention, nodding her assent. “Yes Sir, I should have everyone gathered within the next five minutes.”

“Good. Finally, someone competent. What’s your name?”

“April, Sir.”

“April, good. Congratulations on being smarter than the others.” He walked off towards the courtyard, taking his time and sipping generously from the bottle every few steps. In no time at all the bottle was empty, the alcohol burning the inside of his cheek, seeping into the countless cuts and gouges that had been scored into the skin both recently and in the past. Even after a half bottle of whisky he didn’t feel anything more than slightly tipsy, only the faintest of buzzes giving him a slight bounce to his step.

By the time he made it to the courtyard everyone was gathered, lined up in a perfectly disciplined grid waiting for his arrival. “If they’ve managed to get this down then how have they managed to slip so badly?” He shook his head while he approached them, raising his voice to boom across them all. “Listen up!”

Everyone snapped to attention, their eyebrows still raising when they saw his uncovered and bleeding face. “I was delivered a message by one of you regarding the traitor Claire. In this message they informed me that the teams sent off to apprehend her have not only been unsuccessful, they have also not been able to report back. In fact, I have been told that it would be best to assume that they are dead, and that Claire is still on the run.” He stomped his foot into the ground, hurling the bottle away and shattering it. “I want you to tell me how you have allowed yourselves to get this lazy and stupid!”

“Sir, if I may…” One of the men in the front row stepped forward, pivoting on his foot to face him. “I would like to speak up for the men.”

Christian looked him up and down, “And who are you?”

“I’m James, the man in charge of training these men.” He put his arm out, sweeping over everyone gathered. “These men are well trained, and they work hard every single day of their lives. It has been a long time since they came up against an opponent who has gotten the upper hand on them.”

“Well James, who has been in charge of training these men, it is your job to make sure that they are not just prepared for the run of the mill paranormals that we can kill in our sleep, but opponents that will actually put up a fight against us.” Christian grabbed him by the collar, pulling him in to snarl in his face. “So why is it at the first sign of trouble that they crumble and fall like they’re made from paper? Isn’t it your job to make sure that doesn’t happen?”

“We can’t prepare for anything! We can only prepare as best we can to try and not be overwhelmed.”

“That’s bullshit, no wonder they’re losing at every turn.” Christian tossed him back, looking towards the back where April was standing. “April! Come over here.”

“Yes Sir?” She said, coming to a stop in front of him. His face was still hard to look at, but she was getting used to it rather quickly.

“Have you been paying attention in these lessons? You know how to control the men and what I want from them?”

She nodded. “Yes Sir, I do.”

“Repeat it to me.”

“You want a force of men that can face off against any opponent and still have the upper hand, who don’t get complacent and find themselves overwhelmed by a single opponent.” She cleared her throat, “Sir.”

He nodded, impressed. “Good, I think you’ll do really well.” Drawing his handgun, he pressed it to James’ forehead and squeezed the trigger before anyone could so much as breathe, the deafening crack of the gunshot making them all jump before they saw his body collapse lifelessly to the ground.

Christian holstered the gun, wiping the flecks of blood of his hand onto his pants. “I hope that’s a good example to everyone here. I won’t tolerate anyone slacking anymore, no more letting the man next to you pick up your slack while you focus on which companion of yours you are going to sleep with that night.” He pointed down to James’ body, blood rapidly pooling around his head. “Anyone I catch doing that, end up like this. Are we clear?”

“Yes Sir!” The response was instant and unanimous, his extreme example drilling into them the important of their cooperation and the danger of their disobedience. Christian smirked at the display, clapping April on the shoulder as he passed her by.

“Good luck with all this, you have your work cut out for you.” He stopped in his tracks. “Oh! I’m giving you that authority as well. If anyone slacks off or they just don’t seem like they’re going to improve, just shoot them and save us all the trouble.”

“Y-Yes Sir.” He walked off, her eyes watching him the whole way. “I’ll… Do that.”