or former, he didn’t know. Somber faces, drawn in ghostly black and white paint, were stacked in a corner like skulls in a catacomb. Gravestones with crosses listed first names. Weeping civilians were drawn kneeling in prayer, guided by a priest, as if any of the dead thugs were actually mourned or the church endorsed their activities.
It was a gruesome reminder to the citizens of Valle de Lágrimas that the town was owned by violence.
Other than the rough dirt road that entered the village on the west side of town, there were three paths into the jungle—two of them off-road trails. Merc took the trail heading north. He’d check the others out soon, just not tonight. He wasn’t emotionally prepared to go where the trail to the east led yet. Besides, the north trail was where he was most likely to discover what he’d come here to find.
The jungle was very much alive and active at night. Noise from the constant hum of insects, the night monkeys in the canopy above, and the frogs that were everywhere kept up a constant hum.
The sound transported Merc back a decade to the training camps where he’d learned to use the genetic modifications he’d been given. He’d spent a year in there before Liege formed the Legion, and they’d left to do their own thing.
Those first years had cost Merc his family. He wasn’t the only one who’d lost everything—they all had. None of the newly minted mutants had been able to resume their former lives.
The fact that he’d tried had gotten his family killed.
That was seven years ago, just before his first visit to Valle de Lágrimas. This place held a host of bad memories.
He forced his mind back to the present. The path was narrow and uneven. Several animal trails forked off in different directions. Merc’s eyesight, enhanced by the mutations he’d received, served him well at night. He didn’t need a flashlight—in fact, using one would diminish his vision.
The jungle was heavy with the leftover energy of those who’d recently used the path he was on, like perfume trailing from a woman.
A couple of hours into his hike, the forest lightened. The animal sounds shifted from night to day. Birds became active. Merc listened to their different sounds, distinguishing dozens of them. It was a game he’d played while in the cages of the training camp—enclosures, it turned out, that had existed only in his mind.
He wondered what would have happened to him had Liege been assigned to a group other than his. Probably, he’d still be locked up.
The sun had fully risen by the time he made it to his destination, which was near a river, in the middle of nowhere. He couldn’t see the camp yet, but he could feel its energy. The emotions he sensed were a strange mix of happy and fearful. Beyond that was the caustic smell of a coca operation.
He turned off the path that had led him there, moving to another one that appeared to circle the camp. He came across a boy squatting down, burying something. Keeping himself invisible, he watched the kid carefully cover whatever it was, then scratch two parallel bars into the nearby tree, about waist-high. Merc figured he was planting coca seeds, but was surprised to see the kid move to another spot on the opposite side of the tree, pull a canister out of his canvas shoulder bag, and repeat the steps.
The boy looked up, then around nervously. Merc knew him. He was Pablo, the grandson of the woman he’d seen in town earlier. Even though it had been seven years since Merc last saw him, and he was no longer a little kid but a teenager, Merc knew it was him.
He allowed the kid to see him.
The boy’s mouth dropped, then he rushed over and gave Merc a hug. “It’s you! You’re here. I never thought I’d see you again.”
Merc set his hands on the boy’s shoulders and pushed him back a bit. “What are you doing here, Pablo? Surely your abuela worries about you.”
Pablo squared his shoulders and gave Merc a slight smile. “I am supporting her and my sister. What I earn here pays for their food and housing and Belén’s schooling.”
Merc sighed. He looked back at the little disturbances in the dirt, many of them as far as he could see. “Do you not remember how your mother died?”
Shadows darkened Pablo’s face. “Of course I remember.”