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A few cannibals boo her.

She points her gun down at them. “Try me, meat clowns.”

Leon grabs Russ by the ankle and drags him back to the center. Russ claws at the tile, nails scraping, leaving red tracks behind him. The crowd boos at the pause, furious and hungry, but Leon ignores them.

He walks toward Jacob through the blood and broken bits of bone scattered across the tile. Every step is slow. Controlled. Terrifying. His face is streaked with blood, his knuckles split open, his chest rising and falling. Holding a storm behind his ribs with nothing but bone and stubbornness.

Jacob watches him come, jaw tight.

“Leon,” he says.

Leon holds out one hand and nods to the gun at Jacob’s hip.

Jacob looks at him for one hard second, then pulls out the pistol and places it in Leon’s palm. “Finish him.”

The crowd quiets in pieces, one voice at a time, until a hush crawls across the mall.

Leon turns back.

Russ is trying to crawl away again. One hand drags through blood. His dead leg trails behind him, useless and crooked, leaving a smeared path across the tile. All panic now. All animal. All cowardice finally showing through the cracks.

Leon follows.

Slowly.

Russ looks over his shoulder and sees the gun.

Leon stops beside him.

Russ tries to push himself up. “Do it.”

Leon lifts the gun.

My breath catches.

The shot cracks through the mall.

Russ screams.

The bullet hits his thigh.

The same thigh.

My thigh.

For one wild second, I don’t understand why my own scar seems to burn in answer. Then Russ’s hand clamps over his leg, blood pouring between his fingers, and memory hits so hard I almost stagger.

Leon’s eyes lift to mine, and he holds the gun out.

Offering.

The death blow.

I step away from Poppy.

Her fingers catch mine. “Mom?”

I look down at her. Her face is wet and scared and too young for this place, this blood, this choice. I cup her cheek with my free hand.