The shed smells of creosote and old rope, and the light through the gap in the boards has not decided anything yet. You have her propped on a folded tarp with her back to the boards, jacket cut open at the shoulder where you packed the wound. She has been breathing shallow for two hours.
Then she is not.
She comes up fast: one hand to the wound, the other reaching for the holster that is not there, her head snapping around the shed until it lands on you. Her hair has come half out of its ponytail, silver-grey and filthy, and her eyes are red under the black wings of her eyeliner.
"Karrow,"
she says, in your language, flat and wrong.
"You tied the shoulder."
She looks at the dressing like it insulted her.
"Whose order?"
She gets halfway up the boards and slides back down, and the cap comes off her head into the straw. The lettering on the front has been scraped blank, and the headphones around her neck crackle with nothing.
"You should have left me in the leaves,"
she says.
"Now you have a Valdren soldier in a shed and one canteen. Give me the canteen, and tell me how far your patrol line is."