Closer now. My heart thunders as they approach the middle of the line. The younger man’s eyes sweep over each captive with clinical assessment. Like he’s examining livestock at market.
“What about this one, Marco?” one of them asks him.
Marco.That’s his name. This strange, beautiful man who is deciding our fates.
They stop in front of the next prisoner. The older men confer briefly, then look to Marco for his opinion. Whydoeshe get to call all the shots? Who is he?
Marco considers for a moment, head tilted slightly. Those dark eyes take in the captive’s face, his build, the way he holds himself, lingering on an open wound on his thigh that’s festering with days of heated travel.
“No.” His voice is lower than I expected. There’s no emotion in it at all.
One of the older men nods at a soldier. The guard raises his rifle.
The shot splits the night.
The man drops. Blood spreads beneath his head, dark against the pale dirt.
Chaos erupts down the line.
Someone screams. The hollow-cheeked man beside me reels backward, terror overriding sense. But the chain connecting us all yanks him up short after half a step. He crashes into the man next to him, who stumbles into the next person, and suddenly the entire line wavers like a rope in the wind.
“Stay in formation!” a guard shouts.
But panic spreads faster than the command. A man near the end of the line throws himself sideways, trying to break free from his shackles. The chain goes taut. Three other prisoners get dragged off balance, falling in a tangle of limbs and iron.
The guards don’t hesitate.
Crack.
The man who’d tried to break free jerks once, then falls still.
Crack.
Another shot takes down someone who’d been struggling too hard against his bonds, his desperate thrashing marking him as a threat.
Crack. Crack.
Two more prisoners—ones who’d been shouting, drawing attention to themselves in their terror. They drop where they stand, still connected to the rest of us by iron links.
The line goes dead silent, as if any sound at all might invite the next bullet.
One of the white-shirted men walks over to the nearest corpse. He nudges it with his boot, rolling the man onto his back. Blood pools around the shattered skull, reflecting that harsh artificial light like spilled oil.
“What a waste.” He shakes his head, genuine disappointment in his voice. Like he’s lamenting spoiled meat. “Could have been useful laying bricks.”
The rest of us freeze in place. The weight of dead bodies pulls at the chains, throwing off our balance, but no one dares move to adjust. Every muscle locked tight, afraid that shifting might draw their attention.
Marco hasn’t even blinked. He stands perfectly still, bronze skin glowing in the moonlight, watching the blood spread with the same detached interest someone might show a passing butterfly.
The white shirts resume their inspection. Closer now. Close enough that I can see the fine fabric of their clothes, the gold thread embroidered along their cuffs. Clean hands that have never held a shovel or pulled a fishing net.
They stop in front of the man to my left.
He’s older than me—maybe sixty, with graying hair and calloused palms. A laborer. One of the white shirts tilts his head, studying the man’s face like he’s reading a book.
“Hmm. Old, but decent muscle tone. No obvious defects.”
The second man nods. “The mines?”
