=== One Week Ago===

Luis stared.

Luis Delgado stared at the purple jungle. He stared at the sand, at the rough clothing he now wore, at the thirty-odd men who stood with him and stared at him and each other. They were all garbed the same, like farmhands from the field. None had even shoes for their feet. None had so much as a pocket knife for a weapon, where before they had all been armed with assault rifles and bandoleers of ammunition.

He recognized these men by type, if not by name. Sicarios. Cartel men, sent to take the Albright family, just as he had been told. Just as he had helped plan. And now…

And now things had gone wrong.

"What happened?" one of the Sicarios said, turning full circle to stare at the unfamiliar surroundings. "Where are our boats? Where are our clothes?"

"Where are we?" asked another, pointing at the trees and their purple trunks around them.

It was an excellent question. For which Luis had no answer.

Nor did anyone else.

=== Five Days Ago===

Driving rain

Cold, wet, miserable

This was not how it was supposed to be.

Luis Delgado huddled beneath the fronds of the strange purple-trunked tree and wiped his wet face with his wet hand and blew water from his moustache when that proved wholly ineffective.

They had been in this cursed jungle for two days now. Two days, without food, without shelter, without direction. The men, these sicarios, they were good at cowing peasants into giving them food. They were good at killing unarmed men and women. They were good at kidnapping and ransoming, at plunder and rapine.

They were utter shit at surviving in an unknown wilderness.

Some of the men had found berries to eat. They had not shared. Luis had held his tongue. He had no pistol to make himself the equal of these men, had no notches on his belt about which to brag, had no practical use to any of them. Esteban, their leader, had made that abundantly clear from the first.

"You! You are the hijo de puta who was supposed to disable the engines! You are lucky I do not kill you where you stand! Now get out of my face while my men and I try to figure out what to do next."

Luis ducked his head and tried to scoot himself further back against the treetrunk behind him, trying to block out even more of the driving rain that was soaking him through to the bone.

It had been such a simple plan. His cousin Tomas had been after him for years to get a job. And when he offered to get him a berth aboard the rich norteamericano's yacht, it had hatched an idea in his brain. Tomas was a fool. A peasant. He always thought small. Always thought to serve, to allow another to be master over him.

Not Luis. Luis had had other ideas.

The Sicario next to him, a big ugly man who even after three days together on this insane island Luis had never learned his name, grumbled something in gutter spanish and spat water off to the side, narrowly missing hitting Luis' feet. Not his shoes, for none of them had shoes. His bare feet.

"Cuidado!" The snarl left his lips before he could stop it.

The big man did not even look at him. His hand flashed out in a viscous back-hand slap that caught Luis full upside the head and knocked him sprawling, sending him into the rain where he was immediately drenched in the deluge. He gasped both from the pain and from the sudden rush of water, then he skittered back under the tree, keeping as much distance between himself and the sicario as possible in the tight confines–

"This tree is taken, puto," the Sicario said, turning to look at him. "Leave."

Luis goggled at the man for a half-second, then shook himself and retreated as the sicario's fists balled up. He went back out into the storm.

His rough clothing stuck to his skin like jelly, rubbing him raw and chafing whenever he moved. He stumbled away from the shelter of the tree and cast about for another one. All the ones nearby were occupied, two or three men sheltering beneath the orange fronds of a tree that pulled its fronds in close to protect its trunk, making an almost instant hut. His foot turned on a rock and he cried out in pain, collapsing to hands and knees in the mud of an alien forest.

It wasn't fair!

He fought back to his feet and stumbled into the shelter of a smaller tree, this one without the sheltering fronds, and huddled down as best he could in the lee of the storm as it lashed down. It must be one of those tropical storms Tomas had told him about. He had encountered on on his second trip to Hawaii with the americano bastards.

Fool Tomas. Why couldn't he have just listened to reason! It would have been so easy, and they would have been rich!

It had been so simple. It should have worked. Go to the cartel man in his village, let him know that he knew where a very rich americano family was going to be on the high seas. Take a transmitter to guide the sicarios on their boat in, sabotage the americano's engines, and poof. More money than he or Tomas would know what to do with!

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Instead that fool Tomas had gotten himself killed. Why had he grabbed for the gun like that? His cousin was a fool… had been a fool. And the gunshot had alerted the Albright puta, and…

He hunched against the tree, trying to sink further into its shadow.

She had beaten him like a whipped dog.

Shame burned in his chest at the memory. At the remembered pain as her fist crashed into his solar plexus. As her gun whipped against his jaw. As she hit him again and again, until the stars in front of his eyes flared and went out, leaving him in merciful darkness.

And then he had been here.

He had gotten the story in bits and pieces from the Sicarios. A nightmarish chase through a raging storm. A brutal order into boats meant for rivers and not for fifteen foot swells. Bullets coming out of the darkness for them. The beginnings of a battle on the americanos' boat. The final terrifying moments when the massive ship came into view, and ran them all down.

For a time, Luis believed they had all died and this was Hell. Or at the very least Purgatory. But soon it became clear it was neither of those things. It was an island. Somehow. One of the sicarios had climbed one of the tallest trees nearby and had reported he could see mountains and shoreline in the distance. Though what he expected them to now do with that information Luis did not know.

The next two days had been the worst of Luis's life, even counting the time he had spent as a labourer on his uncle's granja many summers ago. The Sicarios were like bulls on an iceberg, blundering around off balance and with no clue what to do. Some men found berries to eat, but Luis had heard stories from the farmers what happened when you ate the wrong kind of berry, and when the men became violently ill from both ends moments after consuming them, he knew he had chosen correctly.

At least their thirst could be quenched from the small stream they were fortunate enough to stumble across. But food was quickly becoming a problem. The men were becoming angry with Esteban, who kept trying to take them in hand and get them moving. But he was just as lost as the others, and it was a losing battle. These were men who were used to following orders, yes, but following orders from a man with power. And without his guns and his cartel, Esteban was just another man with a moustache and an ego.

The rain was finally starting to let up a little. Just enough that it was no longer life-threatening and now was merely miserable. Luis let out a soul weary sigh and hunched over again, trying to ignore the complaints coming from his belly. He was starving. He needed to eat soon, or he was going to become sickly and weak, and that was not a thing to be in the midst of thirty angry and miserable sicarios.

He shifted slightly, and his movement dislodged a small pebble from the mud under him. It was a small round thing, smooth like a marble. On a whim he reached down and took it, finding it rougher to the touch than it looked. Unbidden, an old memory from his younger days came swimming back to him. His uncle, in the field, popping a small stone into his mouth to suck on as a way to trick the body into producing saliva and to quiet hunger pangs. He had always been skeptical of it, and had never tried it himself. But…

He sighed and gently placed the pebble onto his tongue. It tasted of mud and grit, and the coppery tang of iron. He was probably going to get sick and die from some alien germ. But… He was already half dead. He just wanted to not feel hungry, just for a little while. And if the pebble could help accomplish that…

"What are you doing, puto," said a rough voice. "So hungry you are eating rocks now?"

Luis looked up. There was the sicario, the one who had hit him, who had nearly spit on him, standing over him, hands on his hips and legs akimbo. There was an ugly look on his ugly face, and Luis averted his eyes. He did not want to get hit again.

"Please just leave me alone," he said.

"You are going to want to move, puto," the sicario said with an ugly laugh.

"Why is that?" Luis asked, still looking away. It was not wise to make eye contact with a sicario when one was in this mood.

"Because you are sitting en mi bano, puto."

Luis blinked, his mind dulled by fatigue and hunger, not understanding.

Not until the warm wetness splattered across his chest, and the smell hit him.

Luis swore and jerked to the side, then choked as the pebble shifted and descended down his gullet. He panic-swallowed, and felt the little lump slide into his belly, but he didn't care. He scrabbled away from the laughing sicario and gained his feet, spread his arms, and stared in shock at the ugly yellow stain on his shirt.

"I warned you, puto!" the sicario roared with ugly laughter and turned away, continuing to urinate on the tree where Luis had been sitting.

Luis stared, not believing. He stared at the piss-yellow stain on his shirt. He stared at the stain that stank like urine. He stared.

And then something inside him snapped.

Luis's vision narrowed to a pinprick. He felt his heart rate erupt like a volcano, felt his muscles bunch and tighten, felt the very world itself draw a shocked breath.

He didn't remember choosing to move. The sicario was just suddenly there, his trousers still at half-mast as he finished his business. The Sicario started to turn, his ugly face twisting into something menacing, his ugly mouth opening to spout something threatening.

Luis did not remember choosing to move, but he would always remember choosing to hit the hijo de puta in his ugly slobbering mouth.

And he would always remember what happened next.

[Bonebreaker]

The voice was soft as distant thunder, but it could be heard even over the pouring rain. Something hot and fierce flared from within Luis. Power raged up from his core and coursed down his arm. Red light flared and limned his fist as it shot towards the sicario's face. Power flared as his knuckles connected.

The man's head snapped backwards and to the side–too far in either direction. Luis heard the snap of bone, felt the breaking of flesh and teeth beneath his fist, saw the light of surprise die with everything else in the sicario's eyes. The force of the blow sent the body lurching backwards to land in the mud.

"What? What? What was that?" A dozen voices rose up in surprise. They had heard the voice too. Esteban came rushing out from underneath his sheltering tree and into the rain, his face as thunderous as the overcast sky. Then he stopped, seeing the dead sicario, seeing Luis standing there over him, and seeing Luis' arm still wreathed in red light.

Luis stared at the body as well. Then at his arm. Dimly, he realized that he no longer felt the rock sitting in his belly. It was like it had never been there at all.

And then a small furry creatures sped out of the underbrush, dropped a scroll at his feet, and hurried back out of sight before anyone could do anything.

In a daze, Luis did the only thing he could think to do. He bent down and retrieved the scroll. The water flowed off of it like it was coated with plastic, obscuring nothing and damaging nothing. In a daze he unrolled the scroll. In a daze he began to read. He had to read the words twice before he began to comprehend them.

And as Esteban came storming up to him, hands balled into fists and the same ugly look on his ugly face…

Luis Delgado began to laugh.

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