He found what was left of Baby by the door.

In spite of everything, Holloway was momentarily confused. Baby hadn’t been in the cabin when he’d left, and he’d closed all the windows to keep out the lizards as well as the Fuzzys. It didn’t make sense for Baby to have died in the cabin.

Then he remembered the bullet in Pinto. Baby didn’t go into the cabin. The fuzzy had been put there.

Holloway glanced down and saw the remains of his hat, melted against the security camera.

The gears in his head jammed down hard again. Holloway stalked away from what was left of his cabin and went directly to his skimmer, snatching his infopanel almost violently from its cradle before forcing himself down into his chair. He played his fingers across its surface and opened up the feed for his security camera. The last few hours of recording would be cached there. And the last time Holloway had touched the security camera, he’d tilted the hat so the security camera could see outside.

The security feed popped up, the interior view of the camera obscured by the hat but the view out the window clear and open. Holloway impatiently fast-forwarded through an hour of nothing going on and had to backtrack when a skimmer landed on the pad, and a man got out.

Holloway froze the frame and zoomed into the man’s face. Nothing; it was obscured by a ski mask. Holloway wondered who the hell would have a ski mask on a planet dominated by jungles, but then remembered that ZaraCorp did have alpine-level mining operations far south. You could get ski masks at the store, as this man must have. Holloway unfroze the video.

The man strode across the landing pad toward the cabin and stopped at the door, going partially out of frame as he did so, the wall of the cabin blocking the view. The man moved back and forth slightly, clearly trying the door, which was locked. He then moved over to the desk window, which was also locked. The man’s bulk obscured most of the camera’s view, but behind him Holloway saw movement, and then in the extreme right of the frame, Holloway saw Baby walking across the compound toward the man.

Holloway ached at the sight. Of all the fuzzys, Baby was the one who was the most trusting of humans. The other fuzzys seemed to grasp the idea that humans, like any other animals, could be dangerous. But Baby, for whatever reason, lacked that intuition. Baby liked people. Holloway, his heart falling, knew what it was about to lead to.

The man turned for whatever reason and saw Baby walking toward him. He broke off from his attempted breaking and entering and instead walked toward the fuzzy, eventually stopping and kneeling down in front of the smaller creature, reaching out eventually to touch and pet the fuzzy, who cuddled right into his hand. Holloway couldn’t hear what he was saying—he had never gotten around to unmuting the security camera’s microphone—but he could guess well enough. The man was a predator luring his prey into a sense of trust.

The man suddenly stood up and raised his boot.

Holloway had to turn away.

But he turned his face back in time to see what happened next: something flinging itself out of the trees and onto the man’s face, tearing and biting into him through the eyeholes and mouth hole of the mask. The man howled, soundlessly on the video but no doubt loudly in real life, trying to fling off whatever it was attacking him.

It was Pinto.

Holloway let out a small cheer in spite of himself. Pinto, the reckless fuzzy, hadn’t hesitated a single moment to defend Baby—its sibling? Its friend? Its mate?—and was now wreaking holy Hell on the man, taking vengeance on the human for its inhuman act.

The man flailed and hit at the fuzzy, but Pinto danced and held fast, constantly tearing at the man’s head and face. There wasn’t any doubt that the little fuzzy was making the man pay for his actions.

The man finally got a grip on Pinto and lifted the fuzzy off his face. Pinto scratched and bit at the man’s hands. The man raised his hands and with full force hurled the fuzzy to the floor. Holloway felt the fuzzy’s impact in his gut.

Pinto scrambled up from the ground and prepared to attack the man again.

The man pulled a handgun out of his waistband and shot the fuzzy.

The little creature spun around from the impact and was flung across the compound floor. Alarmed and running on whatever was the fuzzy equivalent of adrenaline, Pinto sprinted away, running past the cabin to the spikewood behind, the man shooting after the fuzzy. One of the bullets punched through the window; it was possible it further ricocheted inside the cabin, setting up the conditions for the fire. Holloway found he was utterly unconcerned about any of that now.

The man dropped his handgun and then clutched his face, dancing in pain. He stopped when he saw Baby lying there, unmoving from his earlier attack. He stormed up to the fuzzy, brought his boot down on it twice more, then grabbed the handgun off the ground and shot it. Then he yelled at it, silent and furious.

Holloway realized he knew exactly who this man was.

By this time smoke from the cabin was beginning to obscure the camera feed. Nevertheless, Holloway saw the man reach down, grab the body of Baby, and stomp over toward the cabin door, once again going partially out of frame. The man’s body jerked spasmodically, and Holloway had a couple seconds of confusion before he realized what was happening: The man was kicking in the dog door. It must have given way, because the man’s body moved in a different way. He was flinging Baby’s body through the door, to burn up in the fire.

That accomplished, the man moved away from the door, holding his face, heading toward his skimmer. He got halfway there before the fire suppression foam kicked on, blasting out of its canisters to coat the landing pad and whatever was on it, including the man and his skimmer. The man jumped away from the foam, tripping over himself as he did so and falling to the floor, coating himself with more foam. It would have been comical, had the man not just killed two people. Eventually the man made it to his skimmer and launched off, going out of frame nearly simultaneous to the charred remains of Holloway’s law school hat draping themselves over the camera, obscuring its view just before it was destroyed in the heat.

Holloway set down the infopanel and burst out of the skimmer, seeing nothing but Pinto’s body. He knelt down next to the body and reached out to the fuzzy’s hands, looking at their very ends, to the nails there, sharper and more conical than human nails, probably the better to catch insects and pry open fruit.

There was blood on them, and tiny shreds of skin.

“Yes,” Holloway said, holding Pinto’s hand. “I’ve got you, you son of a bitch. I’ve got you and you don’t even know it.”

Holloway looked up at Papa, Mama, and Grandpa Fuzzy, who were looking at him strangely, or at least in a way that Holloway thought was strange.

“I know you can’t understand me,” Holloway said to the three fuzzys. “But I know who did this. I know who did it and I am going to punish him for it. You have my word on it. I am going to get this son of a bitch. I promise you that.”

And then Jack Holloway let go of Pinto’s hand, collapsed on the floor on the skimmer pad, closed his eyes, and cried.

He cried because he knew, beyond certainty, that his maneuvering and plots had killed Pinto and Baby, two creatures who no matter what else they might or might not have been, were innocents. Sentient or not, it didn’t matter to Holloway. No one deserved the deaths they were given, by his actions. Jack lay there and cried, racking his body in his guilt and shame.

He knew the other fuzzys were watching him. He didn’t care. He lay there for a good long time.

Eventually, there was a touch on Holloway’s cheek. Holloway opened his eyes and saw Papa Fuzzy staring down at him. Holloway looked at him, curious.