Giza often dreamed about tomatoes, or at least what she imagined them to be. Her mother had described them as round, red, and filled with liquid. Over the years Giza’s mind had conjured dozens of potential tomatoes -varying in size and shape and density and liquidity. For a girl who’d never seen a fruit, it was hard to imagine a specific one. She wouldn’t know a tomato if she saw one.

  What she did know, however, was the feeling of a hand shaking her awake. She got up with a start and bonked her head on the top of her sleeping tube.

  “Ow!”

  “Sorry,” Eiffel mumbled.

  “Is it shift change already?” Giza mumbled. They had no clocks for her to check, but her internal clock said she had not gotten nearly enough sleep. Her internal clock said that a lot, but she was more confident in it this time.

  “No, it’s not,” Eiffel said. “It’s just, we’re, uh, getting close to the Hub.”

  “Yeah, and?”

  “And Marcus is here.”

  Giza was on her feet in seconds, crawling up to the top of the sleeper hauler to get a better view. When it came to Marcus’ mech, she barely needed to. An unusually large number of mecha were parked by the city outskirts, but Marcus’ towered over all of them. Were the makeshift city not already permanently shrouded by the dreadnought hovering overhead, Marcus’ mecha would have cast a shadow over it all on its own.

  “Where’s Rush?”

  “Sorry, Giz,” Jack said. “Your dad beat you to him.”

  Giza hopped down from the sleeper hauler with a grunt of frustration. She paced up to the head of the convoy, passing by hordes of cowering veterans on her way. Most of them kept their heads down, as if averting their eyes could somehow keep them safe from the bloodthirsty colossus. Only one person glared at Marcus’s mech with even half as much hatred as Giza. She strolled past Jen, her scarred face bent into a harsh frown, and felt one of her rare moments of kinship with the older woman. Then she was past, and that moment was over. Jen was still kind of a bitch.

  Just as Jack had said, Hartwell had a hand on Rush’s shoulder, clearly mid-conversation. Giza went up and leaned on Rush’s other shoulder.

  “Hey guys,” Giza said. “What’s going on?”

  “We just finished a conversation on the clan’s history,” Hartwell said pointedly. “Some of our more unpleasant chapters, specifically.”

  “I’d already heard about the attack,” Rush said. “I was still surprised to hear the scale.”

  “Yeah, well, Marcus wanted loot, but we only had enough to feed ourselves,” Giza said. “So he cut our numbers in half.”

  “We’ve been over it, Giza,” Hartwell snapped. “This conversation is done.”

  “Why?”

  “Because vengeance is a pointless errand.”

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  “How about justice?”

  “Enough,” Hartwell said. “Can I even trust you to be alone with Rush right now?”

  “I won’t fight Marcus,” Rushmore said. He nodded to the towering mecha, which bristled with weapons. No one knew if Marcus’ mech was some kind of experiment, or a one of a kind superweapon, but it was undoubtedly the most heavily armed mech on the sunward side of Scrapworld. “I don’t think I could win.”

  “And I’m not going to ask him to try,” Giza said. It was even true. She just wanted him to know the facts. The entirely negative, murder-worthy facts. But if Rush said he wasn’t ready, Giza was not going to push him. She wasn’t about to lose anyone else to Marcus.

  “Good. Go and get ready for processing,” Hartwell said. “Keep yourself busy.”

  “I’m not going to-”

  “Giza! We need to get ready anyway,” Hartwell said. “We’ve got more material spread over more haulers, we need to redo our entire moving process. Go get ready.”

  Giza grunted again and helped the clan get set up to move and process scrap. It took a while to lay out the new system for everyone, but soon they had their scrap moving, and could get themselves moving through decontamination as well. Giza reluctantly joined the rest of the clan’s women in stripping down and moving through the mass decontamination chamber. She stayed towards the center of the group and tried to think about tomatoes until their entire unpleasant process was over. As she got hit with the cold spray of cleansing chemicals and water, another distraction presented itself.

  “Kid.”

  Jen strolled around naked as casually as she did fully clothed. The scars had afforded her a degree of freedom from modesty. Anyone who wanted to ogle the half a breast she had left was welcome to do so, according to Jen.

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to know if your pet is doing anything about Marcus,” Jen grunted.

  “He’s not- he’s not,” Giza said. “I didn’t ask.”

  “Oh. Hartwell beat you to him?”

  “That has nothing to do with it,” Giza said.

  “Keep telling yourself that,” Jen said. “And loosen up your elbows a bit. We’ve got room.”

  Jen walked away, and Giza dared to lean forward and peer between bodies. As Jen had said, everyone else in the decontamination chamber seemed to be avoiding their group, even the men. While the Caelum clan divided their decon groups by gender to avoid awkwardness, the Republic refused to segregate anything by gender. That usually meant the women’s group was beset by unwelcome attention, to say the least, but all Giza could see now were nervous glances in their direction. People lowered their heads and averted their eyes.

  Just like her own clanmates had been looking away from Marcus. The decontamination chamber filled with a gale of warm air to dry them off, but Giza still felt a cold chill down her spine.

  Once she was dressed again, Giza headed for the cantina, where the most Junkers would be concentrated. Though most remained focused on their food, Giza did catch people looking at her, then averting their eyes and trying to hide the fact they’d ever looked her way. Giza frowned and headed back to processing. Rush was sitting on the ground not far from the conveyor belt that moved scrap, examining the gauntlet of his suit for any sign of tampering.

  “Rush, have you noticed people looking at you funny?”

  “Not more than usual, no,” Rush said.

  “Even people outside the clan?”

  Rush popped his head up to look around.

  “Not more than usual, no,” he repeated.

  “Well, people have been looking at me weird,” Giza said.

  “We did show up with new haulers,” Rush said. “That’s a rare find. They’re probably jealous. Or wondering if they should try to ask where we found them.”

  “Huh. I guess that makes sense.”

  Giza felt exactly five seconds of relief before Notre Dame came barreling around a corner, skidding to a halt in the dirt a few feet away. That wasn’t exactly a surprise, but it was a surprise that he came to a halt facing Rush rather than Giza. Dame didn’t even glance her way.

  “Hey! Hey, I heard Caelum was heading in, glad I caught you.”

  “Is this about the fight from last time?”

  “No,” Dame said. He looked down at Rush, and the metal gauntlet he was currently toying with. “So, it’s, uh, it’s true, then? What everybody’s saying?”

  Giza felt that cold crawl down her spine again.

  “Saying about what?”

  “About the suit,” Dame said. “About the mech-killer.”

  The gauntlet and the hands holding it both froze in place. Rush’s eyes went wide as he seemed to stop in time for a moment. Giza looked around, at all the nervous eyes glancing their way, and at the army of mecha towering over them in the distance.

  They knew. Everyone knew.