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jumping into the back. The scent of gasoline burned her throat as she watched Eli vault over the wall and onto the sidewalk, headed straight for a shapeless, bleeding heap hanging halfway into the canal. He made a lightning-fast assessment of vitals, then wordlessly pulled a black tag from the thigh pocket of his uniform and slapped it on the victim’s back. Their first fatality.
    Eli shot to his feet and ran to the next body.
    Reassured he knew how to triage, Cacy sprinted past him, scanning back and forth for threats. Her tranq gun rattled at her waist as she hopped over a severed leg to land beside its owner, a gray-lipped middle-aged woman. The lady’s eyes went wide with terror at the sight of Cacy, and she shook her head frantically. Her hands fluttered helplessly at her sides, weakly trying to ward her off.
    “Shhh,” Cacy said softly. She tapped the insignia on the front of her uniform. “Medic. Hospital. You’re safe.”
    The woman’s hands went still. She nodded.
    Cacy did a quick vital scan, checked the woman’s airway, pinched an oxygen minipump on her nose, and slapped an automatch skin-bandage over the stump of her left leg.
    “Three black, two orange, four reds.” Len’s voice echoed from across the canal. He and the other two units had docked on the other side, where the ass end of the overturned amphibious SUV jutted up onto the sidewalk.
    Cacy yanked an insta-cold limbsack from her med kit, carefully bagged her patient’s left leg, and left it lying next to the woman. She pulled a red tag from her pocket and stuck it to the woman’s chest. She could survive if she got to the med center soon. “Got a red here,” Cacy called.
    “Me too,” Eli said calmly as he injected self-perpetuating saline gel into a male victim with a nasty head wound. Eli lifted his head and met Cacy’s eyes, then nodded to his left. A young woman lay on her side, crumpled against the door of a shuttered storefront, her arms and legs canted in the wrong directions. “Another red?”
    Cacy scrambled over to the girl and checked her vitals. She was still alive, but only barely. Cacy did some quick mental calculations. They had seven reds in all—victims needing immediate and intensive medical care. And two oranges—those who needed care but weren’t as critical. But they only had four rigs, which were meant to transport one patient at a time, two if they were desperate. And this area was too dangerous to leave anyone behind.
    Time for the Ferry brand of triage.
    Cacy kept her back to Eli and unsnapped the Scope from the platinum chain around her neck. Her thumb brushed over the disk’s surface, opening a tiny window to the Veil. She held it to her eye like a monocle and looked at the now-shadowy-and-transparent girl at her feet. Across the girl’s chest lay a jagged cross within a glowing orange circle.
    Theta, symbol of death.
    The girl was Marked. She would not survive. Cacy wondered if Trevor had done it, or if another Ker was responsible.
    She kept the Scope concealed in her hand as she turned around. Eli had retrieved the body board from the rig and was hunched over his patient, carefully positioning a head and neck brace in preparation to transport. Cacy put the Scope to her eye and scanned his patient’s body. No Mark.
    The woman who’d lost her leg was also un-Marked. That made two reds on this side of the canal who would live—but if they didn’t get immediate and intensive medical care, the rest of their lives might not be worth living. On Len’s side, there was a sea of glowing orange Thetas. At least three Marked bodies lay on the sidewalk, but they were already tagged black. One more floated at the edge of the canal, his clothes snagged on the splintered wreckage of the NMOB. And from the shattered window of the SUV hung its driver, his fat, ringed fingers dangling in the water. The driver’s Theta mark covered his entire back, as if the Ker who did it wanted to make double sure the guy was