Strange Dogs
Chapters - James S. A. Corey
Story: Strange Dogs
Ten-year-old Cara lives with her family among the first-wave scientists on Laconia, where the Laconian military under Admiral Winston Duarte has established control. After accidentally killing a sunbird by feeding it Earth bread, Cara encounters a pack of strange doglike creatures that emerge from the forest following the activation of the orbital platforms. The dogs take the dead sunbird and return it to life, albeit changed - waxy-skinned, with unfocused black eyes and jerky movements. When Cara's younger brother Xan is killed by a drunk soldier's transport vehicle, she steals his body in the night and brings it to the dogs, who carry him into the forest. After a day of hiding from search parties, Cara finds Xan returned to life but visibly altered - grey skin, pure black eyes, and an unsettling stillness between movements. When she brings Xan home, her parents react with horror and violence, her father attacking the changed boy with a knife and locking him in the pantry while her mother calls the soldiers. Cara creates a diversion, frees Xan, and the two children flee into the Laconian wilderness together, running toward the dogs and away from a world that cannot accept what they have become.
POV: Cara·On page: Xan, Winston Duarte, Santiago Singh