"Tribute," Alexei repeated from three feet away, voice like a butter knife. "Your list was generous: trucks, supplies, and the woman."

The man flinched. "We don’t choose the list."

"Who does?"

"The General’s people," he blurted again, eyes flicking to the black flag like the paint might hide behind it. "Dogs South brings it through. We just—"

"Hold and bleed," Elias finished for him without looking up.

Zubair crouched on Sera’s other side and let heat tick the kid’s face without burning. "Where next?"

"Next?"

"The place you push everyone after this point," Sera clarified, patience a blade she sharpened with each syllable. "You drive men with trucks and women with pulses. Where do they go?"

The kid’s throat worked. "Gate Nine."

"Describe it."

"Big," he whispered, like the word had size. "Concrete. Two towers. You pull into lanes and give what you have left. If you don’t have enough you... you don’t go on."

"What happens to the ones who don’t go on?"

He closed his eyes.

"It depends on who’s watching," he rasped. "Sometimes they shoot them here and use the bodies to teach the next line manners. Sometimes Dogs South takes them. Sometimes they go inside and don’t come back."

"Dogs South," Alexei murmured, interest finally lifting the corner of his mouth. "Why name a unit after people you put on leashes?"

The kid stared at him. "They’re not dogs."

Lachlan leaned on the guardrail and flicked blood off his fingers like rain. "Let me guess. You call them that because it makes the screams funnier."

The kid swallowed again. "They don’t scream."

Sera didn’t let the pause stretch long enough to turn into pity. "How many on the next tower?"

The answer came fast now that he had a map where his fear lived.

"Ten... maybe twelve. It rotates by gas and hour. More if the General makes a call. There are ladders hidden inside the pylons. A tunnel under the west bank that goes to the machine room. We can flood the span if we need to. Or electrify the grid. Depends."

"On?"

"On whether the General needs the crossing or the company," he whispered.

Elias lifted his head at that, interest a precise click. "The General shows up in person for toll collections?"

"Rarely, but it does happen," the kid blurted out, too eager to not die, and then realized eagerness made him look like he had more to give.

He shrank into the concrete. "He likes the palace. He doesn’t like the river. He doesn’t like mud."

"Palace," Alexei echoed, savoring the stupidity. "Cute."

"Describe it," Sera commanded.

"Tall. Glass. Lights at night. More men than you can count. More guns. A wall, then another wall, then cars welded into a wall. He built it around the old capitol and the oil towers and—" He stopped, like saying too much would make it more real.

Sera let the muzzle fall away an inch. "What happens to women who get sent there?"

He worked his jaw. "They... they don’t go to the toll lanes," he admitted, voice getting smaller. "They go to the side gates. Some to the south building. Some to the labs."

"Labs," Elias repeated, his tone clean and empty of anything that would give the word teeth. He folded the map like the motion helped him not shoot the kid right then.

Zubair watched Sera watching the kid. The heat at his wrists took a half-step toward violence and then paused where her breath told it to stop.

"Names," she pressed. "The ones who bring the orders. The ones who carry his teeth."

The kid hesitated at that word. "Teeth?" he repeated, cocking his head to the side. "I don’t understand. No one carries the General’s teeth."

"The men with collars, leashes," Alexei clarified, rolling his eyes. "The ones who put hands on poles and call it power."

"Rafe," the kid whispered. "He was the one who... who checked the lists. Long coat. Scar on his throat. Laugh like gravel in a can. If you see him, you’re already on the wrong side."

Sera put that into the place where names lived until use. "What else?"

"Signal days," he offered, trying to be useful in a way that would outbid his life. "They run the lights in patterns. Green-green-red means tribute convoy inbound. Two whites means Dogs South in the field. If the tall mast blinks blue, the General’s moving and no one stops anything until he’s past."

"Where’s the mast?"

"O.K City," he breathed. "You can see it for miles on a clear night."

Zubair’s hand hovered over the kid’s throat, waiting for her.

She weighed the question without flinch.

Dead men didn’t talk.

But leaving him breathing meant mouth and radio and cousins. He watched her with the eyes of a thing that had learned begging works sometimes if you pick the right human.

Luci’s nails clicked once on metal.

Alexei’s radio hissed a burst of static, then a broken phrase: "...Bridge Five—Bridge Five—do you copy?" Elias took the handset and made it forget how to transmit with a small twist and a cable pulled clean.

Sera looked at the kid a last time. "Turn over."

He blinked.

Confusion took the place of terror the way fog takes a field.

He rolled over.

Zubair’s gaze never left her face as his palm closed on the base of the skull and twisted with the quiet, exact force of a man breaking a bad habit. The body went still.

Lachlan didn’t cheer. He never did when the choice wasn’t play. He toed the fallen Cartel flag and dragged it to the guardrail. "Trash day," he grunted, and pitched it into the water in a neat arc.

Elias tapped the crate with his boot and then flipped the lid. Rounds. Newish. Not stolen from the bridge; delivered. He checked the markings as if they were a language.

"We load what fits and spike the rest," he concluded, tone practical. "They don’t get this back."

"Let’s get to work," Sera ordered with a sigh, the word ’lab’ still rubbing her the wrong way.

And her horde did.