“I want to finish the meal,” he said.

He shook his head. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a small, lead-lined canister. Inside was a sample he’d taken from the culvert—a slurry of heavy metals, industrial runoff, and something else. Something he’d found in the soil beneath the facility’s oldest holding tank.

“I was made for swallowing,” he whispered, the words fogging the wire. It wasn’t a boast. It was a specification.

He heard boots behind him.

And he began to walk toward the main reactor, where the real poison was stored. Because John Thompson—GGG-7, the gastro-grade golem—was made for swallowing.