“Help.”

  Colt heard it from his left. A soft voice, barely there.

  He turned. A woman lay curled up near one of the display cases. Her dress had gone dark around the middle and her hands were pressed against her stomach. She wasn’t moving much, but her mouth was open and she was trying to breathe.

  Colt let go of the katana. Plucked out the blacks from his side, they didn’t get too far past his coat. He ran to her and dropped to his knees.

  “Hey. Hey, stay with me.” He rolled her onto her back and saw the cut across her gut. He could tell it was deep. Blood was coming out fast between her fingers.

  He pressed his hands over hers and pushed down hard.

  “Clay!” He didn’t look up. “Check for more people! Anyone still alive!”

  He heard Clay’s boots move away, heard him calling out across the room.

  The woman’s eyes were open but they weren’t looking at him. They were looking past him, up at the ceiling, at nothing.

  “Stay with me, lady. You hear me? Stay with me.”

  Her mouth moved. No sound came out.

  “I found one!” Clay yelled from somewhere near the covered wagon.

  Then Colt heard footsteps, lots of them. Coming in fast.

  Colt’s head snapped toward the entrance. Beams of light cut through the smoke and dust, bright enough to make him squint. Men poured through the doors with their lights pointed straight ahead.

  “Put your hands up! Now!”

  Clay threw his hands in the air. The sawed-off hit the floor with a thud.

  Colt stayed where he was. His hands were still pressed against the woman’s stomach. Blood was soaking through his fingers.

  “I can’t,” he said. “She’s bleedin’ out.”

  “Put your damn hands up!”

  Colt looked down at the woman. Her eyes had gone still. Her chest wasn’t moving anymore. The tension in her body had let go all at once, the way it did when there was nothing left to hold on to.

  He lifted his hands slow and held them up.

  The men swarmed in. They wore dark blue uniforms with badges on their chests and caps on their heads. They were coordinated.

  “We need an ambulance! Now! Get EMS in here!”

  One of them grabbed Clay by the shoulder and shoved him down hard. Clay hit the ground on his chest and his face scraped the tile.

  “Hey!” Colt started to stand. “That’s my—”

  A gun came up in his face. Not a revolver. Something with a shorter barrel and a bigger grip. Colt didn’t know what it was called but he knew what it would do if the man behind it pulled the trigger.

  He knelt back down slow.

  “On your stomach. Now.”

  Colt laid down. The tile was cold against his cheek. He could see Clay a few feet away, getting his arms wrenched behind his back. Metal clicked around his wrists.

  Another cop walked past them toward the bodies. He stopped and looked around the room. His voice came out thin.

  “Jesus Christ, Charlie. You seein’ this?”

  The cop standing over Colt didn’t answer. He grabbed Colt’s arms and pulled them back. Metal bit into his wrists and locked tight.

  “You work here? Huh?” The cop’s voice was thick. “What happened? What the hell happened here?”

  Colt didn’t answer. He didn’t trust these men. Didn’t know their uniforms or their guns or why they talked the way they did. But he knew law when he saw it. The badges. The way they moved. The way they expected you to do what they said.

  He kept his mouth shut.

  The cop hauled him up by the arm. Another one was patting him down, hands moving fast over his coat. He found the revolver in Colt’s pocket and pulled it out.

  “Got a piece here.”

  Then the satchel.

  “The hell is this?” The cop held up the satchel and looked inside. His face twisted. “Ammo? Knife? What’s that?” The man lifted Colt’s shinki crystal out of the satchel, looked it over and tossed it back in.

  Colt’s jaw tightened but he didn’t say anything.

  Clay was talking. Colt could hear him from across the room.

  “C’mon, guys. Listen. It was ninjas, alright? They came outta this magic thing called a portal and—”

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “This guy’s fuckin’ nuts.” One of the cops shook his head. He had the same thick way of talking as the others.

  “I ain’t fuckin’—”

  “Clay.” Colt’s voice cut through. “Stop.”

  Clay went quiet.

  Colt knew how this looked. Two strangers dressed like they’d walked out of one of these displays, standing in a room full of dead bodies, covered in blood. Trying to tell these men that ninjas came through a hole in the sky and killed everyone. That was hard to believe. Hell, Colt had seen it before and he barely believed it.

  The cops walked them toward the doors. More of them had come in now, spreading through the room, checking bodies, talking into little boxes on their shoulders.

  They got to the elevator. The doors were closed.

  One of the cops reached for the button.

  A yellow gold light started leaked through the seams on top the doors, then a purple flash.

  The cops didn’t seem to notice.

  Colt noticed, he looked at Clay. He didn’t see it either.

  The doors slid open.

  Two men stepped out. Dark suits, white shirts, ties pulled tight. They moved like they belonged there, like they’d walked through a hundred crime scenes and this was just another one.

  One was older, maybe fifty, with gray streaking through black hair that hung past his ears. The other was younger, built thick through the shoulders, his hair cropped short but still dark as coal.

  They looked at the bodies on the floor. At the blood. At display case forty-seven.

  Their faces didn’t change.

  “Who the hell are you?” one of the cops said.

  The older one reached into his jacket and pulled out a badge. The younger one did the same. They held them up without a word.

  The cop who’d asked squinted at the badges, then stepped back.

  “Feds,” he muttered to the others.

  The older one’s eyes moved across the room, then settled on Colt.

  Colt’s breath caught.

  The man’s skin was weathered, lined around the eyes. And those eyes. Dark brown, almost black. The same eyes Colt had seen in the wolves.

  Shoshone.

  The younger one had the same look. Same bone structure. Same way of standing, still and watchful, like a hunter waiting for game to move.

  “Take them in,” the older one said. His voice was flat. Official. “We’ll be at the station once we’re done here.”

  The cops didn’t argue. They shoved Colt and Clay into the elevator.

  The doors slid shut. The room lurched down and Colt’s stomach went with it.

  When the doors opened again, they were on the main floor.

  More bodies here too. People who hadn’t made it out. A man in a gray suit lay face-down near the front doors. A woman was slumped against the wall with her eyes still open. The tyrannosaurus skeleton stood in the middle of it all, bones reaching up toward the ceiling.

  The cops pushed them toward the entrance.

  Outside, the sun had gone down. Red and blue lights flashed across the stone steps and the street beyond. More of those metal boxes, on stands, bigger ones this time, pointed at the building. People crowded behind ropes, their faces lit up by the flashing from the small ones.

  “Where are you takin’ us?” Clay said.

  Colt and Clay both squinted against the flashes. The lights popped over and over, too many to count.

  Two cars sat at the bottom of the steps. Black with white markings on the sides. The cops pulled Colt toward one, Clay toward the other.

  “Hey!” Clay twisted in the cop’s grip. “Where are you takin’ my brother?”

  A hand shoved Clay’s head down and pushed him into the back of the car. The door slammed shut.

  Colt didn’t say anything. He glanced at Clay, then they pushed him into the other car and the door closed behind him.

  The inside was small. Metal grating separated him from the front seats. His hands were still cuffed behind his back and the position made his shoulders burn.

  The car started moving.

  Colt stared out the window at the buildings sliding past. Lights everywhere. People on the sidewalks. More of those metal cars rolling through the streets.

  He kept thinking about the boy. That cowboy hat tilted on his head. That toy revolver raised with both hands. That smile that was there one second and gone the next.

  He kept thinking about the one-eyed ninja. The way it had moved. The way it had cut the boy down, no second thought. The way it had stood there afterward with that violet light spilling out of its empty socket.

  That one was different from the others. Colt could feel it.

  The boy’s face flashed in his mind again. Big brown eyes. Dark hair sticking up in the back.

  Will you take a picture with me?

  Colt closed his eyes.

  The car stopped.

  The door opened.

  A cop leaned in, “Let’s go.”

  Colt slid out. His boots hit pavement. The building in front of him was big, made of brick, with a sign over the door he couldn’t read from this angle.

  Another car pulled up beside them. The door opened and they hauled Clay out.

  Clay’s eyes found Colt’s.

  The cop that had Colt got to the door first. He waited for the one with Clay to catch up.

  They went in together, walked Colt and Clay down a hallway with green walls and floors that squeaked under their boots. Doors lined both sides, all of them closed. The lights buzzed overhead.

  First they stopped by a room that had lockers in it, the cops whoever their stuff in the furthest one to the left.

  Then they stopped at a door near the end. A cop unlocked it and shoved them both inside.

  The room was small. A table in the middle. Two chairs on one side, two on the other. No windows. The walls were the same ugly green as the hallway.

  The door slammed shut behind them. A lock clicked.

  Clay turned around and kicked the door once, hard. Then he faced Colt.

  “Okay. Get us the fuck outta here, man. Get us back to the HUB. Do your little map thing. Say yes. Then we get are damn mole-cues outta here.”

  “Relax.”

  “Relax?” Clay’s voice went up. “We’re locked in a damn cage, Colt. In case you ain’t noticed.”

  “Those agents.” Colt sat down in one of the chairs. “Those are Shoshone. I could feel it.”

  Clay stared at him. “Shoshone. Here?”

  “Yeah. Why not?”

  Clay rubbed his face with both hands, the cuffs clinking. “I guess.”

  “They said they’re comin’ here. We should talk to ‘em.” Colt leaned back in the chair. “Maybe they know somethin’. Maybe where they took the compass.”

  Clay started pacing. Four steps one way, four steps back. The room wasn’t big enough for more.

  “Plus that fuckin’ cop took my damn gun.” Colt’s jaw tightened. “My bowie. My satchel. I ain’t leavin’ without those.”

  Clay stopped pacing. “So we just sit here?”

  “We sit here.”

  They sat.

  The minutes dragged. Colt couldn’t tell how long they’d been waiting. His side ached where the stars had hit him. The blood on his shirt had dried stiff and the fabric pulled at his skin every time he moved.

  Clay sat across from him with his arms crossed, staring at the door like he could burn a hole through it.

  An hour passed. Maybe two. Colt’s eyes started to get heavy.

  Then footsteps in the hallway. More than one set.

  Colt sat up straight.

  The lock clicked.

  “Both of them are in here,” a voice said from outside. One of the cops.

  The door opened.

  The two agents walked in.

  The older one closed the door behind them. The younger one stayed by the wall, arms crossed, watching.

  Nobody spoke for a second.

  Then the older one pulled out a chair and sat down across from Colt. He set something on the table between them.

  The brass disk with the strange markings. The compass.

  His sleeve had ridden up when he reached across.

  Colt saw a mark on the inside of his wrist. Dark ink, old and faded.

  An animal. Long snout. Pointed ears.

  Not a wolf.

  A coyote.

  Toyahdoh’s voice came back to him.

  Esa’s brother, Isapa. The one who didn’t control his fire. The one who let it burn.

  Every world before ours burns because of what he did.