He was a vast hulking brute of a man, seven feet tall and with a face that could have been carved out of stone—age lines and taut skin pulled thinly over hard-edged muscles and bone. His eyes were a pitiless grey, and when he looked at someone it was easy for them to imagine he was painting a target reticle over their face.

It didn't help Stannis' ability to answer the man's questions that he was a Coation of Ordered Governments soldier, either. They weren't as bad as Locust, that was for certain, at least they were human, but still—when the Locusts had come up out of their holes and taken whole cities prisoner, the COG hadn't flinched; they'd struck back. They'd sent lasfire down from orbiting satellites and wiped out every major human population centre themselves, just to deny the Locust the resources they could have used against the COG. When the COG had retreated to the rocky Jacincto Plateau, the last safe haven from the Locust, and built their massive forttress-city, hundreds of thousands of civilians had been left abandoned to the Locust across the continent and even more overseas. And the Locusts didn't need slaves, they needed food. Stannis had heard the COG hadn't tried to help, hadn't seemed to care. It said a lot for the validity of this rumor that the Human-Locust War—the Last Stand, some of the Stranded called it—had been going for 14 years now, and Stannis hadn't seen one COG even come near his settlement for 10. The COG looked after its own, up on the Jacincto Plateau, but if it had the resources to take care of anyone else it wasn't showing it.

14 years, and now the COG was back. Stannis wondered what had done it.

"I think... ah, hell, I don't even know."

The man glared at him, and shifted his armored bulk slightly. The datapad he was cradling in one hand was made for a normally-sized man's, and against the COG's steroid-enhanced musculature it looked like a knotted bandanna covering the top of his head wavered a bit in the wind. "Guess," he spat.

The COG next to him stirred. He was nearly as tall as his friend and sported a small silver earring on his left lobe. For all that the bigger one seemed to be the leader, he'd spoken twice as much. "Look, we don't need exact numbers here, but if we're going to relocate you guys to Jacincto we need at least a general idea of the layout of the land around here. Satellite's given us major roads to use, some nice ruins to stay close to if we need to duck and cover from Locust, but if there're some bigger Stranded settlements around that we can use to resupply at along the way, so much the better. You've got to have some idea."

"We don't talk much." Stannis shrugged. "We helped each other out, back 7 or 8 years ago, but that's over now. The Locust—" He felt his voice break a little. C'mon man, keep it together..."We found out they could track supply shipments, radio. They came up and..." Stannis felt a wave of embarassment as his voice died in his throat, and he was left standing speechless in front of the two men. The fractionally-smaller one nodded. Bandanna-COG said nothing, but his eyes narrowed a little and for a moment Stannis thought he was going to crush the datapad into pieces. It seemed to take him a few heartbeats to get his composure back.

"Nowhere? You're saying there's nobody else around here? How far? How many kilometers out from here, in any direction, can you tell me that there's nothing?"

Stannis tried to say, and found he couldn't. The smaller one said, "Marcus, stand down."

"Dom. Do you even want a safe exit strategy, or just a Locust attack while we're babysitting these fuckers all the way to Jacincto?" 'Marcus' waited for another few seconds, and when he was sure Dom was finished he said, coldly, "How. Far."

Stannis swallowed. "Te-ten kilometers. That's as far as we could get, might still be a couple settlements about that far out, northeast and north of here, but I don't know for certain. There were other settlements, closer, but they all—" Stannis tried again. "Our settlement's radio was down, so they didn't know we were here, but they found the others and—"

"We get it," said Marcus, quietly. He turned away. "That's all we need for now. Get everyone around here together at noon next week. We'll bring in three APC's, load you guys in, and make for Jacincto."

"Th-thank you."

Marcus walked away, back to the matte black APC the COG soldiers had come in on. Dom stayed, and moved forward a little, conspiratorially. "Uh... Listen, there's not much chance of this, but...I'm looking for someone. Wondering if you've seen her."

Stannis watched him, warily, as the six-and-a-half foot killing machine that could match a Locust Grub blow for blow brought out a tattered wallet from the depths of his powered armor. He flicked it open. A tattered bill of money, useless these days for everything except making fires, floated out and Dom didn't bother to pick it up. Instead, fingers clumsy inside the heavy gauntlets, Dom pulled a small mangled photograph out and showed it to him.

She was beautiful, Stannis admitted to himself. Blonde hair that floated down to her shoulders, framing an open, smiling face. Dom cradled the photograph in two hands and looked at him, and Stannis saw a shade of desperation in his eyes.

"Her name's Marcia. Have you seen her? Someone like her? She'll be older, now." Stannis shook his head. "Different name? Hair a different color...?"

"No, man. Look." Stannis groped for words. "My wife, some of my kids, were over in Yanjan, that was one of the places close by before the Locust...The radio went down and I never... I like to think they're still alive, you know? I get it."

Dom put the photo back, face hardening. "She's not dead. I swear she's out there, she's fucking out there somewhere—" His hands were tightening into fists, and as he began to crush the wallet he looked down in alarm and the hate melted away again, thawing him. "Thanks. Anyway. I know she wasn't around here, now. Thanks. We'll be back in a week, get you guys out of here."

"We'll be ready," said Stannis. Dom walked away, to where Marcus was waiting. Stannis stood where he was and watched until Dom and Marcus' APC turned a corner in the ruined cityscape and vanished, all out of a strange quasi-respect for the military that had managed to survive in him for 14 years despite everything that had happened. When they were gone he picked up the bill Dom had left.

Noon in a week. Couldn't forget. But in the meantime they all needed to survive, and even fuel for fire was getting hard to find. Stannis clutched the bill close, and began to pick his way back along the ruins toward the Stranded settlement.