u/Sufficient_Leave144

"Rise and shiiiiine, Oakhaven! It's Saturday, and you all know what that means!"

The Narrator's voice, pure unadulterated sunshine, echoed from shimmering auroras draping over the valley like silk ribbons.

"It means it's time for the MORNING JUBILEE! Check your pulses, boys and girls - if they aren't beating to the rhythm of 'Happy-Go-Lucky-Polka', go see Dr Fizzlepop for a dose of Liquid Laughter, baby!"

In the village's heart, within her ivory tower, Little Witch Little popped out of a duvet like a jack-in-the-box, bounding atop her giant marshmallow bed.

"Good morning, Mr Narrator!" She shouted, saluting the ceiling.

"And a good morning to you, Little! Our resident ray of light!" His voice crackled with the warmth of cosy hearths. "Tell me, Little - the watchers at home are dying to know - did the Dream Fairies bring you anything special last night?"

Little hopped onto her feet, boots sparkling like pink glitter-pops. "They sure did! A parade where the floats were real clouds, and the rain was diamonds!"

"Ah! A classic!" The Narrator laughed. "Keep that wonder locked tight, Little. Today's a big day for a strong Witch."

Little skipped to her kitchen, where Igni, a friendly fire in a cast-iron belly, gave cheerful crackle pops and puffed out a plate of golden, smiling waffles.

"Whimsy Waffles?! My favourite!"

The syrup swirled in mesmerising patterns, whispering compliments and humming sugary quartets as Little ate away. Once full, she bounced out onto the stones of Sunbeam Lane and sang a morning melody.

"Look alive, folks!" The Narrator boomed. "We've got a celebrity singing down our streets! Little Witch Little is on the move, and she's looking like a million dollars! Let's check in with the lane - how are we doing, shopkeepers?!"

"Fantastic!" Shouted a baker from a giant loaf of bread, breathing yeasty scents down the avenue. "The doughnuts are bleeding, and another lamb is-"

"Splendid!" The Narrator cheered. "But wait, who's that turning the corner?! Is it a bird? A plane? NO! It's Mayor Merryweather and his Majestic Moustache!"

The Mayor approached, riding a bicycle made of light and trailing rainbows, his moustache so long and silver that two bluebirds perched the ends, holding up the tips.

"Little! My dear, sweet girl!" He hopped off his bike, and it poofed into a pile of confetti. "The village is buzzing! The air is thick with anticipation! Surely you've heard the news?"

"A quest?" Little squealed, her hat flapping its brims.

"Of course, girl! A coronation of talent!" The Mayor drew a scroll, and it unfurled with a hundred trumpets. "The Grand Muse Theatre - you know, that palace on the hill - has finally found a centrepiece. The Virtuoso has spent years crafting a Star that will unite the arts. Pitch! Rhythm! Soul!... but..." His face turned pouty, and his moustache drooped.

"But what, Mayor?" Little asked, clutching her wand.

"The Star is shy, Little. He lacks the 'Spark of Life' that only an esteemed Witch can provide. He's perfect in form, but he needs that-... that zest. That little bit of magic to wake his heart."

"I have plenty of zest!" Little declared, striking a pose. "I have enough zest for a whole lemon grove!"

"That's our girl!" The Narrator's voice was triumphant, and the entire village began to clap in perfect harmony. "The quest is accepted! Oakhaven, raise your voices! Send our hero off with a song that'll shake the heavens!"

And off, off she went, zipping out of the village to a fiesta forest path.

"Now, watcher," The Narrator's voice took on a softer, intimate tone, like a bedtime story told by a giant. "Let's follow Little as she passes through the Meadow of Mirth and-hey, Little! Don't forget to say hi to the Giggle Grass!"

As she skipped and twirled through tall, neon-green blades, the snickering grass reached to brush her legs.

"Stop! That tickles!" She laughed.

"It sure does!" The Narrator chuckled. "And look! Here come your best friends for the road!"

From the trees emerged a duo of creatures. There was Barnaby Bear, whose fur was made of chocolate, and Pip the Pig, with her beautiful flower dress, that rode up just high enough to expose her-

"Are you going to the theatre, Little?" Barnaby asked, his voice like a soft hug. "Can we come?"

"Yeah!" Pip said. "We want to see the Star!"

"The more the merrier!" Little cried.

And they marched together, arm in arm, a carnival of colours against a glowing world. Every flower they passed bowed its head; every stream they crossed played a jaunty tune.

"This is the life, isn't it, folks?" The Narrator quietly asked his invisible audience. "No shadows, no sorrows, just a girl and her friends on a path paved with joy. The Virtuoso is waiting, Little. He's been waiting a long, long time. He says the Star is hungry for your arrival."

"I brought snacks!" Little shouted. "I have ginger snaps, and pears, and-"

"Oh, I think he wants something much, much more substantial than that." His voice scratched, like a needle clawing a record.

Little paused. "... what?"

"Providential!" His voice bounced back, brighter than ever. "A providential meeting! Keep moving, Little! The quest is just ahead! Let's not keep the masterpiece waiting!"

As Little and her animal friends reached the Cliff of Echoes, the music began to thin and the Singing Willows were silent, their leaves hanging limp.

"It's getting a bit quiet, isn't it?" Pip whispered.

"That's just the Dramaturgy." The Narrator reassured. "The theatre demands a hush. A moment of silence before the big reveal. Go on, friends. Open the doors. Show the watchers what's inside."

The Grand Muse Theatre loomed over them, a towering achievement of white stone; bone bleached by a thousand suns. Little pushed on giant stone doors, and they slid open with a wet schloop, to a lobby of curated stillness. Along the walls stood rows of marble statues; dancers caught mid-leap, singers in eternal high notes, and Little reached out to touch a ballerina's twitching hand. Waxy skin, feverishly hot; a muffled sound came from the statue's throat.

A whimper, buried under inches of polished white resin.

"Mr Narrator?" Little pulled her hand back, fingers stained with oil. "I... I don't like this place."

The lobby curdled.

The Narrator's voice did not return.

An electronic hum began to vibrate the floor, like a trapped swarm of bees.

"Let's get out of here, guys!" Little turned, seeking the comfort of her friends.

But the Bear and Pig's faces had gone flat, their textures smoothing into featureless, unpainted clay. Without a word, they turned in perfect, mechanical unison and walked into the dark throat of a stage wing.

"Guys?! W-wait! It's dark in there!"

Little pursued them, her sparkly boots clicking on the floor, but the faster she ran, the longer the hallway became, stroking and tasting her with wet, velvet tongues until she burst through a set of curtains and stumbled onto a stage.

A grand auditorium; a sea of empty seats, all skin-tone leather that shivered in dim, amber light, and in the centre of her stage stood a single, wooden chair... seating The Star.

A vertical crime of anatomy; blessed with the internal hardware of a god. She could hear it, the perfect pitch of stacked larynxes whistling in the dark; the keen, metallic rhythm of a bolted silver metronome imitating heartbeats. The potential to move the world to tears.

A fabrication of pieces that didn't quite fit.

It had no legs; its torso ended in a jagged, splintered mess of wood and wires that hung like frayed rope. It had no true voice; its throat an open pipe that mimicked song. And it had no face... only a slab of raw muscle, pinned back with tacky iron.

"... hello?" Little whispered, wand trembling.

Shadows in the rafters began to shift, uncoiling like a spider.

The Virtuoso descended.

An idea. Impossibly tall, his form flickering like bad static, dressed in a suit so insultingly black that it resembled insect chitin. His hands were abnormally long, ending in grey thimbles that clicked like a ticking clock.

"... what... what are you?" Little quivered.

The Virtuosoo glided forward, thimbled fingers reaching to stroke her face, and he did not speak with a voice; he spoke in frequency that vibrated skulls.

"... Star, not shy, Little One... incomplete... function without form... song; no mouth... dance; no limbs." It leaned closer, its porcelain face reflecting the terrified expression of one whimsical little girl.

"... outside messy... but here... reach the sublime... I have harvested the rhythm from your trees, girl; the pitch from your birds. Yet I require something still so, so very specific."

"I don't like you!" Little sobbed, backing away. "I... want my friends; I want to go home! I-... I want my Mom."

Its fingers twitched, and the curtain threads behind her reached out, wrapping tight around her ankles, yanking her to the floor with a crunch.

"NO! NO STOP, I-"

The Star lunged out of the chair with jerky, uncanny grace; its wired limbs twitching in ways flesh wouldn't allow. It pinned her to the stage, its slab face pressing against her own, broken bloody nose and all. The Virtuosos leaned over them and watched her fight and wail and scream and cast her useless magic as her essence unravelled. Her laughter was ripped from her throat and spindled into pipes; her limbs were braided into copper hips; her face, freckles and wide-eyed wonder and such raw terror were scraped and projected onto false tendon.

A distorted boom ruptured the sky, devoid of sunshine, a thousand voices roaring for an encore, as the lights of the Grand Muse became blinding.

Little was gone. Only a heap of ash remained, and The Star stood on new legs, opened its mouth, and began to sing in a stolen voice. The pitch rotten; the rhythm disgusting, flaunting a warped face and a clipped hat.

And it began to dance. The most heinous dance the universe had ever seen.

The Virtuoso dwelled into the wings, its fingers finally still, and watched its soulless, infinite loop play, envisioning a future gallery of frozen perfection, as The Star sang of dirt and death and defects with such vigour for no one to hear; an audience of empty seats.

And the curtain did not fall.

For this show would never end.

Time is no river; too cruel to flow with intent. No, time is a stomach. A slow, acidic melting that softens our grief until we forget why we wept, only to replace that pain with the hollow rot of age. They will spend their youth like drunkards, convinced the wine is bottomless, until they learn our universe keeps a meticulous ledger. Never to offer credit.

I sang to stones and made them sob once. I braved the sunless halls of Hades; charmed the King of Ghosts and lost my soul's half for my heart was louder than faith. But the dead are too rigid. The dead follow rules. To find a true undoing of time, the undoing, I sought fouler, up to the world's navel... where the Usurper's father waited.

Through the crumbling, bowed slopes of Mount Othrys, my feet waded through a marble graveyard of shattered lesser gods, face down in the silt, and above us the final war raged; a cacophony of thunder and the bronze scream of eagles. I saw Ares plummet from violet clouds, a falling star encased in blood, howling as arrows of a desperate sun dwindled in encroaching shadow - all drowned by the patter of falling seconds.

He stood amid temple ruins, older than the sky.

A titan of fractured night, a jagged colossus carved from black glass. Broken. A fissure ran across his back, and from that rift where Zeus struck him down, a steady stream of pale, golden sand hissed over the tiles. An hourglass bleeding the infinite cosmos.

An obsidian held tilted on my approach. He would not start with a turn; he waited, my reflection shimmering in a dozen dark facets on his glazed skin.

"Seven minutes late," he said, his voice a dry, rhythmic grinding of clock gears. "Though in the grander scheme, you've been seeking this spot since you first looked back. No need to ask what brings the Great Musician to my scenic view, for I have watched you make this decision a century before you were born, boy."

"Lord Chronos," I began, my lyre-calloused fingers trembling. "Accept my trade, for a moment of doubt." I held out the memory of Eurydice; the song of her name. "Take my years. The ones I haven't lived yet. Take the breath from my lungs; the music from my hands. Unwind your grand thread... and put me back in that tunnel. One foot from the light."

He hummed, and the sand at my toes danced. He reached out a finger, tracing my jaw, turning my skin translucent like aged parchment.

"Of course, the tunnel. How very 'mortal' of you," he sighed, more sand spilt from a cracked shoulder. "Yes, I can do that. Rewind the world until your heart is warm again, and young, and your precious bride is but a shadow behind you. Barely a scuff in the splendid tally." He leaned closer, a golden glow deep in his chest pulsing a cruel light. "But let us be clear, little bard. Once I drink these years, they are gone. You can go back, keep your eyes fixed on the sun, but you will do so with a spent soul; a ghost haunting your own victory until you meet the Fates themselves.”

The Adamant Sickle shifted in his grip, its blade a sliver of moonlight.

"No refunds. Do you understand? Or do you wish to waste the very thing you're here to beg for?"

"Strike," I whispered.

"Right then. Mind the drop."

He raised his blade like a mechanism, and it shattered my world.

My melodies, the weight of my fame, the memory of Olympus - playing in the halls of deities and tyrants - all sucked into his mass. I felt myself untangle, my very being ripped and poured down the Titan's neck until it was mere sand.

And as his shape filled the horizon, over the dismantling empire of his tedious kin, I heard one final, casual dismissal.

"Do try and keep your eyes forward, Orpheus. It'd be a bore to do this a third time."

[Part 1]

----

My world was small enough once to fit inside a fortress of mismatched linens and stolen sofa cushions, retreating from a thunderstorm that assaulted her bedroom window, tucking a torch into tunnels of floral patterns and plastic princesses, where the paperbacks waited.

Our little alcove, the monsters in the pages filling the guest list; the shadows on the walls only as scary as imagination allowed.

Sarah sat cross-legged, tucking the light under her chin, turning her face into a landscape of ghoulish goblins.

"Ah, young knight. Welcome." She'd whispered, tiny eyes reflecting in the torch.

I'd shivered, pulling a quilt over my knees, listening to the thunder growl across the roof.

She'd grinned something fiendish.

"Pfft, are you scared?!"

"No!"

"No?"

She clicked the light off, plunging us into a heavy dark. I'd squeaked, reaching out, panicked, finding only the rough fabric of her pyjamas. She didn't flinch, but she damn sure laughed and took my hand, her grip calloused; an anchor in the black, as the light returned.

"Pussy."

"That's a bad word, Sarah!"

"'That's a bad word, Sarah'... shut up."

Between giggles, she didn't read the stories so much as she challenged them, scoffing at wayward heroes who tripped over roots or hid in caves as ogres and dragons came sniffing, believing her snarling teeth were bigger.

"You'd be scared too!" I'd challenged.

"Nuh uh. I'd poke them in the eye!" She'd said in a low, steady vow that seemed to push back every wall of night. "No monster's ever gonna get me!" Her triumph wavered and softened into gentle kindness. "Or you... Ethan?"

The dark remained, but the warmth abandoned us; a freshly washed bed evaporating into a biting, chemical sting of scorched wiring and the wet, heavy rot of a garden that had deserted decency.

Ethan?

A dim swathe of navy-blue light bathed our sanctuary like an underwater coffin.

"Ethan?"

The light was anaemic, pulsing with the throb of a dying heart, turning spilt booze into pools of ink. Sarah's face was a mask of jagged shadows, standing in the wreckage, her chest heaving, knuckles on one hand split and weeping a bruised violet; other squeezing my arm as I stared blankly out the veranda window, where a waiting jungle pressed against the glass.

"You okay?"

"Yeah..." I managed, "yeah, I'm here-"

A sharp, frantic clack-clack echoed through the lodge, and Caroline emerged, a ghostly shroud in the blue gloom, leaning heavily on her cane, her expression a terrifying blend of aristocratic fury and calculated assessment. Behind her, Weiss hovered in the doorway, clutching a trembling Theo in her arms - too big for her; cuddled in a provided t-rex onesie - eyes darting from us, to Jaune, to the flickering red flare still burning like a scar on the horizon; a pillar of flame standing proud behind it.

"Oh, fuck me."

Caroline's gaze swept over the ruined room, then lingered on Jaune as he rose from his heap, a pathetic silhouette of groans and broken pride, wiping his mouth.

"What happened to you?" She asked, truly unbothered by the spectacle outside.

"I fell," he grumbled, tipsy sway still in his legs, glaring at Sarah like an ill omen.

"Really? A boy of your talent?"

Before he could retort, a mass passed the glass; broad and quick to smear the light as it flew on. Wet leaves whispered, timber creaked, and in its wake, a crack split in the distance

Another followed, farther off. Then two more in succession; pops muffled by the trees.

And the silence that choked the preserve began to wilt at the edges. Clumps of tentative insects and night-birds returned first as some beast called once from the undergrowth - a warbling note that raised hairs - answered by a shriek so ugly and brief it could've been a person.

Theo made a tiny weep into Weiss's shoulder, threatening to burst into tears. She gathered him higher against her chest, cradling the back of his head.

"Hey. Hey, no, no, you're okay. I've got you." Her voice was steady, but a tiredness dragged her words. "Cover your ears. It's okay. You're okay."

A kind lie.

Jaune, unsteady, pushed himself and started toward them, perhaps chasing forgiveness or desperate to look useful.

Sarah cut him off.

"Don't."

He stopped.

"I just wanted to-"

"Stay the fuck away from them."

He looked to Weiss, as if hoping she might overrule the verdict. She didn't even raise her eyes, rocking Theo, her face blank with effort, as Sarah reached them.

"Give him here."

Weiss hesitated.

Not distrust, but a refusal to admit her limits.

Another crack sounded. Then five more.

"I've got him, Weiss," Sarah said, stepping closer with her arms out. "Take a break."

"... Theo," Weiss murmured, as the boy turned his face. "Sarah's gonna hold you for a bit, okay?"

"... okay."

She passed him over a bit clumsily, still sniffing; dinosaur tail flopping, into Sarah's wiry patience. She held him with such ease.

"Hey, bud."

"... hi, Sarah." He hiccupped.

Freed of his weight, Weiss slumped against the wall, eyes shut, shoulders sagging with a painful fatigue that never left her.

Jaune hovered a moment, uncertain what shape to make himself before slumping back to the floor, as Caroline neared the window, her cane planted neatly before her, and watched the smouldering exhibition beyond.

"God, what a mess," she said. "How very embarrassing, Mara."

As her hand shifted on the cane's handle... I heard it. Not quite a tap, or a click, but a small metallic note that didn't quite belong.

She found my curiosity.

I looked up before she could open her mouth.

"You don't sound worried," I said.

"Or surprised," Jaune muttered, still tending his lip, shooting a look of understanding my way.

One immaculate brow rose. "Don't I? Would you rather I started flailing at someone’s catastrophic blunder?"

"I thought that 'someone' was your friend-"

"Oh, please. I have a very low opinion of women who build shrines for their own control, just for it to catch fire-"

"Especially if you've paid for it," I said.

That caught her attention, Jaune smiled, and something faint shifted in her expression; a brief allowance that I might be worth talking to.

"Perspective one, aren't you?"

I looked at her cane again.

"Force of habit."

"And a very dangerous one, at that."

A tremble rolled up from the trees; the growl of an engine driven too hard, and through the trunks, headlights burst into view and swept the undergrowth, bouncing wildly with the pitch of rough ground, swallowed and spat out by stands of black foliage.

A horn blared - a sharp, ugly honk that cut through the living racket.

Theo startled in Sarah's arms.

Another honk, lights swinging broad enough to catch the armoured SUV tearing along the service track; mud spraying from its tyres, one side striped with leaves and grime, hitting a rut to lurch, recover, and charge on with the grace of a drunk rhino.

"Is that Joel?" Jaune asked.

The car skidded to a stop, headlights raking the stilts, and the horn shouted a final time - sharper; impatient. The driver's door flew open... and Joel stumbled into the spill, a broad and frantic Ranger, wrenching something with him.

The first flare ignited in his hand with a savage hiss and a flood of white fire.

He hurled it to the brushes, and the jungle answered with a violent rearrangement of shadow; moving trunks flashing bone-pale, leaves stretching like tendons of muscle, the fauna writhing with startled depth.

Another flare.

A third.

Then a fourth, bleaching the clearing so harshly it hurt to look at it, and in that glare... I caught movement; lean shapes slipping into ushering shadow, weaving long tails and sickle-quick limbs, low and deliberate and silent, too fast to name or identify, but their intent unmistakable.

Fearless.

Stalking.

Pacing the edge of light.

Caroline was first to the steps, cane striking wood with furious taps, and she descended with startling speed, gathering herself through switchback staircases and rope ladders to the forest floor. The rest of us clumped after in an inelegant procession, hands on rails and shoulders, half-sliding final turns with frightened recklessness.

Another flare burned in Joel's fist, a silent sentry awaiting his cargo, throwing a last, ruthless white missile into the trenches. He gave us no attention as we came down, his eyes fixed on the trees, jaw taut, chest pumping.

Caroline went straight for him.

"Quite the show! Where's Mara-"

We crowded behind, forming our own fragmented questions, almost tripping over each other.

Joel turned.

And any queries died.

A heinous rake scored across his face, three deep furrows dragging from brow to cheek, carving straight through his eye. Blood had sheeted down and dried in a black, glossy mask, still wet at the edges where fresh red caught the flare-light; more of it soaked the front of his shirt, darkening the fabric from collar to ribs, mixed with dirt and shredded green stains.

He looked past us, over us, through us; listening to the wild with a dreadful concentration and a trembling grip around his sidearm.

"In," he winced. "Now."

No one argued.

Joel hauled open a rear door, and we crammed; Sarah got a whimpering Theo inside, then climbed in after, and in one small deliberate movement, set herself between Weiss and Jaune before either of them could settle. I climbed in opposite, Caroline following with a brittle hiss of annoyance, joining the knot of knees and breaths.

Sarah snatched my hand.

Not warm enough, this time.

Joel slammed the door as the first flare, his white judgment, began to dwindle. Such savage brilliance faltered, collapsing inward to a sputtering glow, and with its surrender, the jungle found a voice.

A clicking started in the black yonder.

Wet, arrhythmic sounds, like soggy teeth knocking together; like talons tapping glass; like a failed mimicry of the mechanics of speech, all from different points in the void, hopping nearer in horrible bursts.

Yelps followed.

Shrill and hideous, strangled almost like laughter; a manic pitch of hyenas forced through throats not built for it, panting and eager, worked into a demented, anticipatory frenzy.

So, so many.

But they were polite. They waited, and waited, and would wait still until the light was vanquished before announcing themselves, introducing us to their mercy.

Joel gave them no such honour. He was behind the wheel, the engine coughing, as the last flare bled out, and he tore down the road like it'd insulted him. A juddering assault, bounding wildly over ruts and roots, branches lashing the sides; shaking our chariot, rattling every gasp. Theo cried softly against Sarah as she all but folded him into her chest, her other hand crushing mine, his sister doing her damnedest to soothe him while tears streamed down her face.

And behind, in pieces, the jungle gave chase.

Fluid hooked masses vanished between the canopy with impossible speed; flashes of scales and fur and feathers and amber eyes, locked in pursuit, caught under the dim glow of our rear lights... Until a whole body, only briefly, kept pace beside the road... a velociraptor, frankensteined together with scarred reptile hide and matted tiger stripes, salivating with a hungry, bloodshot gawk, long claws fidgeting for the door handle, before the brush swallowed her spasming form whole.

Fast.

Just not fast enough.

We hammered on and began, by brutal, precious inches, to outrun the amalgamated fiends, but no one seemed willing to believe it.

"What the fuck's happening?" Jaune cracked first. "What are those things?!"

No answer.

"Joel?!" He demanded.

"You're not helping!" Sarah hissed.

Not even a glance in the mirror. Joel's ruined, bloody profile stayed fixed ahead, bullying the vehicle through each bend. And his silence beat down any further questions, as the road became a corridor of catastrophe.

Dead herbivores lay in the mud; huge, slack masses, hides torn open, innards tarred in the headlights, gazing up at where would-be stars might hang. And smaller wildlife littered verges in broken heaps as we passed the wreck of a jeep; windscreen punched through, one wheel still spinning in a ditch.

Farther on came another vehicle, ravaged beyond recognition; its doors peeled back, bodywork shredded, and beside it lay what remained of two Rangers, sprawled and dragged, leaking thick smears that vanished beneath us.

Caroline, still furious in that noble way of hers, watched a rigid Weiss grow paler and paler, staring out the window, and opened her mouth to speak. Whether to comfort or taunt, I do not know, as something struck the rear of the car. One of those things rose at the back window, dragging a nail across the glass in a screaming arc, its face lunging into view, staring at us like we were a savoury display. A narrow skull, slick with mud, jaw working in agitated snaps, eyes aflame; filament along its neck and arms - feathers or some mockery - quivering in the slipstream, as it tried to sink its claws... but its grip soon faltered, and it tumbled away into the dark.

"Where are you taking us?!" She barked. "Is it far?!"

The road curved: a cattle haulier was tipped on its side, trailer torn open like a tin toy; the inside a confusion of blood and snapped restraints.

Another scraping thud came from above, denting the roof.

Claws scratched and shrieked over metal, weight shifted with ugly balance, followed by a panting snarl... as a second creature peered its head over the windscreen and blinked with curious delight.

"Oh Christ," Weiss whispered, as Joel tried to shake it loose, but it anchored itself firm, and slammed its head into the reinforced glass; the impact booming through the cabin, birthing a spidering mark.

"SHOOT IT!"

The creature battered its skull, each blow punctuated by its own frantic pants and yelps of exertion, veining creeping fractures across the window like frozen black water.

Again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

One tiny chunk gave way with a spray of safety grit, as the thing wailed in triumph and snapped its jaws at its work, blood and saliva smearing the pane as it shook a torn scalp.

Then the trees erupted.

A herd burst onto the track in a crashing wave of flesh and panic; limbs churning, eyes white with terror, as they flung themselves into and over us - a flood of stampeding bodies with no pattern.

"Fuck!"

Joel slammed the brakes, and we slewed sideways as one animal slammed against us. Another clipped the bonnet, meeting our feral stowaway, who pounced on the poor thing and ripped into its neck as if it were paper. Then we were boxed in entirely, swallowed by the stampede, crowded in a flowing frenzy of muscle and mud.

A bellow ripped through the night.

Not from the herd. From behind it.

The fleeing animals split as a larger force charged through, and in the wash of headlights... a triceratops staggered into view; enormous and wounded and mad with pain. Blood caked down one shoulder, one horn was cracked, great strips of hide hung loose along its body, and it heaved with the turmoil of rage outrunning death.

We were simply in its way.

"HOLD ON TO SOMET-"

Joel tried to wrench us free, but the impossible mountain of horns bore down without mercy, without acknowledgement, and ploughed into us like a freight train.

Metal tore and glass burst, as the world retched in a storm of white and flying bodies, crying and shouting and screaming... until it all went dark.

-

I'd been in a car crash once.

Not a real one, not really; didn't count.

Just my dultz of a mum half-dozing at the wheel after a late shift, drifting at a junction and clipping the back of some miserable prick's Volvo. Enough to make her cry from fright and shame; scared the shit out of me at the time.

Young enough for the fear to feel giant. My measure for disaster.

Seen a dead body before, too.

Fifteen, led out there by a boy with bad skin and too much deodorant, hoping to get his dick wet; said he knew a quiet place. Real romantic little outing, that. Poor fucker was by the old train tracks; half down the embankment, one shoe missing, flies all over the mouth. Boy screamed and bolted like he'd been shot at... but I stayed. Far longer than I should have.

Plenty of time to know some sights stick in your skull like a hook.

I watched consciousness snap back to him in fragments, and I knew my job.

Same as always.

He did not need to see.

He couldn't.

What was left of the SUV was nose-down in a ditch, tangled in vines and roots thick as rope, creaking every few seconds with the nasty settling sound of twisted metal, stinking of petrol and gore. He was half-folded in the back seat, belt locked across him, face gone grey under bloody smears, blinking slow like he'd been dug up. A wound at his temple tightened my stomach, split and pumping lazily down his face, and his lashes were wet; stunned, dazed, too soft for this shithole.

Pretty, though.

Annoyingly so.

His eyes found me - a dirty mess of loose hair and cuts. He made some rough little sound in acknowledgement. And then, because head trauma wasn't enough to cure him of being a sucker, he lifted one unsteady hand and reached for my face. His fingers brushed my cheek, clumsy and light, smearing blood I hadn't realised was there.

"Sarah..." Ethan mumbled, words dragging. "You're-you're bleeding."

For a moment, I stared at him.

He'd seen me gush before; split fingers, busted eyes, knees skinned raw. One fight behind the liquor store opened my eyebrow up once, and he'd hovered in the bathroom doorway as I picked glass out, looking green enough to faint. And I sneered through it all.

Christ, I'd seen him just as bad!

I'd seen him cry, even when he tried not to, yet still, half conscious with his pissing head open... he was worried about me. Always worrying about me.

Something sharp and awful tugged in my chest as I fought his seatbelt; the latch twisted sideways. My fingers were slick, everything was slick - blood, mud and sweat - the whole night greased up and sliding faster into Hell.

"Sarah... Sarah what's wrong?"

"Shut up!" I caught his wrist, and his arm dropped uselessly.

Blood started running down his throat, dripping off his jaw, slicking warm on my hands. His temple pumped harder, each sluggish beat pushing fresh red through the mat of his hair.

"Sarah-"

"Stop talking!"

Outside, an orange flare burst through the heights. Then Joel started shouting.

"The grounds! Now!"

Another flare hissed, closer and white, bleaching our ditch silver, and I saw the whole mess of us. Weiss cradled a shell-shocked Theo by a stump, blood soaking one of his sleeves; a flare gun and a radio at her side, fiddling with the dials, muttering half-remembered orders. While Jaune limped through the mud with an armful of flares and Caroline's cane; Joel propped against the driver's side, still somehow alive.

His legs were ruined.

One chewed; the other bent wrong. Didn't matter. He snapped something to Weiss - a breach, assets loose, civilian survivors, 'say it proper' - and she flinched, but she tried with shaky breath.

Ethan stirred at the noise, and he felt it then. The weight on his leg.

Shit.

His eyes flicked down.

Then up.

I caught his jaw and turned him back to me before he could settle on the woman beside him... where Caroline sank.

The windows were gone, smashed out in the roll, and the ditch had reached in with eager, pitiless hands. Thick branches had lurched through and impaled her like the jungle had a debt to collect, skewering her into a frozen scream, still glaring at the windshield with her ravaged face. One hand had fallen into Ethan's lap, cool and elegant; rings still shining, nails gleaming, obscenely normal compared to the rest of her clawed frame.

What I would give to have her complaining instead.

His breathing changed fast. Each inhale came thin, catching in his throat, as his eyes kept trying to focus and failed; huge and glassy with terrified, crawling realisation.

I braced myself, hauled with both hands, and his seatbelt finally cracked, and he collapsed into me with a groan, all cold and dead weight.

"I've got you."

He mumbled into my shoulder, too weak to lift his head.

"What?"

"It-...mph... hurts." He said it like an apology; almost did me in.

"I know," I said, my voice coming out wrecked. "I know, I know-fuck, come on."

I dragged him toward the broken door, and he tried to help, pushing with the wrong limb, choking and slurring on a pain so hard his whole body jerked. I shoved us out into the ditch, away from the corpse... and agony detonated through my leg.

White-hot. Sudden. So vicious it snatched my breath.

Hadn't felt it before, my knee buckled, and my grip went loose. Ethan slipped from my arms with a broken sound and plummeted straight to the mud.

But Jaune was there.

He lunged, dropping flares and a prized cane, to catch him.

"Fuck," he hissed, hugging his head. "Warn me next time."

"I didn't-" I groaned, the words snagging as I tried to put weight on my leg and almost crumbled. Fire roared down my calf, throbbing, warm blood seeping into my shoe.

Jaune's eyes flicked down, took it in.

"Ouch," he whispered. "That's worse than a split lip, huh."

"Jaune-"

A mass skimmed quick through the trees above; a violent shake of branches and a string of clicking notes hopping limb to limb.

"Bring him here!" Weiss called, shifting a mute Theo higher, first-aid kit appearing.

We painstakingly hobbled over, Jaune lowered Ethan into my lap, and my whole thigh started screaming at me.

Weiss scrambled through the kit. "Clot pack. Gauze. Pressure on the temp-"

"I know how to use a fucking bandage, Weiss!"

"Then hurry up." Her voice softened. "And talk to him. Keep him awake."

Jaune reclaimed his flares as Joel raised a pistol toward the tree line.

"You got another gun?" He asked, striking another flash.

"No."

"How many bullets?"

"Enough."

Another burst of clicking from the trees, close enough to chill bones. I tore gauze and tape open with my teeth, my hands shaking too much to hold it all.

Weiss gave what aid her oversized toddler would allow.

"Ethan." I pressed dressing to his temple.

He cried out, body trembling.

"Fuck, stay still-please, just stay still."

Blood welled hot through the pad, then slowed. His face had gone waxy; his lips were almost colourless. He looked so unbearably frail... and dear.

Click. Rustle. Wail. Cackle.

Closer.

His hand twitched against my thigh.

"S-... Sarah?"

"I'm here." I caught his hand and squeezed until it hurt. "I'm here. I'm here."

"I can't...I-" He swallowed. "Can't-....

"Yes, you can." I leaned over him, clamping his head and cupping his cheek. His skin had gone colder than any winter. Fuck, my voice broke so bad I didn't recognise it. "You can. You stay with me, alright? Stay awake, and I'll-... I'll fucking bully you until we're fifty."

A faint smile touched his mouth.

"F-fifty?"

"Mmm, minimum."

His eyes fluttered, then found me by sheer effort.

"S-... Sarah... I-"

I could feel the fleeting warmth of his breath.

"Yeah, I'm here. I'm-"

"I-mm... I-... I love you."

Every nerve stopped.

Not shock.

I knew. Always had.

Every careful look, every soft apology, every stupid, earnest act of devotion he thought I didn't notice.

You fucking idiot.

My hand shook against his face.

"I know, dummy," the words came out small and shattered. "I know. I've always-"

His face warped.

Peace.

A tiny, tired peace, beyond all surprise and relief, as if he'd been carrying that love so long it'd worn grooves through him, and now he'd finally laid it at my feet, there was nothing left in him to prop him up.

He breathed... and then he was limp, heavy in my hands.

Not my silly, stubborn soldier-please, please God.

I grabbed at him, the dressing slipping, blood slick between my fingers.

"Ethan?"

His head lolled against my palm, mouth open, eyes drifting shut like he was only sleeping, like this was mercy, like this was anything but the most monstrous dread.

"Ethan?!"

Nothing.

"Ethan!"

My voice tore itself out, and Weiss came closer, saying something urgent I couldn't hear. Jaune turned, Joel shouted, another flash of white over the ditch, and I saw them beyond the trees, crept nearer through the dying light, shifting and waiting rejects stitched together out of nightmares and hunger.

Yet all I could feel was him.

A hand slack in mine, a terrible softness of a body that couldn't try, dreaming of what might've been had I never stolen a silver ticket from a neighbour's box, and ahead... a taloned foot stepped into the light.

A siren then split the canopy, but it was no animal. Mechanical and enormous, blaring through the trees with a force that shook the world.

Every head snapped up, the clicking stopped, as the lights came - bursting through the foliage in barbaric washes of orange and red. An APC smashed into the ditch, roaring and howling, floodlights cutting merciless paths through the pit, scattering the ghouls in the dark; their shapes flinching back, hissing in sudden agitation. One bolted low into the undergrowth, another sprang for the branches; a third lingered, caught in the full blast of light, all twitching feathers and blood-bright eyes.

The vehicle braked.

Doors blew open.

Men poured out in black.

Armed. Masked. Efficient.

Rifles came up in one clean swing.

And the first burst of gunfire cracked so clean and sharp it punched holes in the gloom. One of the creatures jerked sideways mid-lunge, blue blood spraying cold across the ferns. A dozen more took rounds through the throats, tails thrashing, claws tearing mud before final shots put them still, as the air filled with the stink of lead and opened reptile, painting the ditch blue in gruesome stripes.

Boots hammered toward us, figures fanned out, weapons tracked and lasers traced red lines through drifting smoke and flare-haze. One man dropped a knee near the wrecked SUV, tilting his head at Caroline's ruined remains, reaching for her cold hand, as another strode closer, red-tinted lenses in his mask, looking us over - to the crippled Ranger and the boy bleeding across my legs. Then he pressed two fingers to a comm in his ear.

"We have eyes on them, ma'am."

Last time I got loaded into the back of a truck, I was drunk enough to think running from the police counted as a personality, hauled into a council wagon by men who looked more tired than disappointed. I'd laughed so hard I nearly vomited; fierce little pride in being an expected fuck-up.

If I ever become a Mom, maybe I'll do a little better.

We tore through the jungle, watching the trees whip past through slats, trying not to be sick.

The lights caught it on occasion. More death on the road.

Big things. Small things. Scaled things. Feathered things. Some as old as the earth; some wrong in newer ways, made by a brain too rich to fear God. And when we reached the gates, there were enough prehistoric corpses to stock a hundred museums.

The HUB sat in the middle of it all - a prosperous woman's spa built in this warring tangle.

Spotlights, fences, concrete barricades, towers with glass fronts; black guards and lab coats everywhere, moving in clipped patterns with weapons ready. And behind them bathed polished stone, warm windows, manicured walkways, all under soft gold lighting.

A fucking resort, wrapped in enough steel and firepower to survive the apocalypse.

We rolled through a checkpoint, big gates and bigger guns; men shouting codes across an estate I didn't understand or care to. I was busy watching Ethan.

They had him on a stretcher.

Black guards had cut his shirt open, kept an oxygen mask to his face, held pressure to his head. Every bump rocked him, and every time he shifted, looser and heavier by the second, something under my ribs seemed to widen.

I kept waiting for his eyes to open. Never did.

They pulled me out first into a buffer zone, and I nearly ate concrete.

A woman in scrubs caught me by the elbow, sat me on a bench, cut my trouser leg open and started flushing the gash in my calf.

Fuck, it hurt.

"Weight-bearing only if necessary," she said, clinching a bandage tight. "Please enjoy your stay." She handed me a crutch, and I looked past her to see them wheeling Ethan away.

A bright corridor, white floor, more boots and orders; the stretcher rattling over clean tiles.

"Hey!" I shoved up, nearly went over again, but I caught myself and kept going. "Wait!" I started after them, half hopping, half falling, thumping the crutch hard enough to jar my shoulder loose.

Had to be with him.

Next to him. Right there.

When he opened his eyes, I had to make sure that he heard, that he knew, I had to-

One of the guards stepped in front of me, same red eyes in his mask, and I went face-first into his armour. He put an arm out. Gentle, but final.

"Stay." The word came flat as paperwork.

"The fuck I will-" I tried to shove past him. Failed.

"He's being taken to treatment. Personnel only."

"Please, I-"

The stretcher disappeared through double doors, medics around him.

Then he was gone. Out of sight.

Behind me came the others.

Weiss reached me, resting a hand on my back; Theo fused to her side, but walking now, hustling in his onesie. He looked up at me, tiny and grey, bandaged along one arm; a cookie in the other.

"Is he dead too?" He asked, blank-faced.

Weiss closed her eyes.

"No," she said, before I could speak. "No. They're helping him-are you good?" She aimed at me.

"... fine."

Joel next, wrangled onto a wheelchair by two medics while he argued like a dying ox. One of his legs was already wrapped in something soaked through, but he had enough life left in him to look furious.

"Take me to her!" He barked.

Jaune came last, pale and limping, eyes refusing to settle, still carrying Caroline's cane like an heirloom. He didn't huddle too close.

They'd left her where they found her, in her perfect coat with her perfect rings, cooling in the world she'd paid for. Her absence was deafening.

Red Eyes spoke. "Doctor wishes to see you all."

Joel spat blood. "Good."

Weiss scrubbed a hand down her face. "Right now? Can't we-"

Jaune gripped Caroline's cane tighter. "Lead on, sir."

They marched us, and the HUB opened in layers as we moved deeper; less resort, more machine. Polished lounges and pretty little attractions thinned out in favour of reinforced doors, keypads, pressure locks, and black steel ribs in the walls. Hallways widened and ceilings climbed; more guards and more staff, speaking into tech, faces pulled taut by a fear there was no procedure for.

Up and up until, at the end of a corridor wide enough to carry a tank, a pair of doors opened... onto The Bridge.

A mammoth surveillance chamber, or a command deck from some glossy sci-fi shit; metal balconies and layered banks of screens climbing the walls. Camera feeds covered every surface they could; roads, paddocks, fences, lifts, gates, lodges, labs, holding pens, catwalks, corridors, jungle trails, treetops, river crossings, every fucking angle of the preserve.

Every avenue of the lie.

Maps glowed across central tables in soft greens and hostile reds. Status feeds dragged, camera windows blinked in and out, sections of the jungle flashed with warning icons... one quadrant had gone null. And people worked every station, headsets on, fingers dancing, fear stuffed down into the motions of competence, drowning out a low pulsing alarm like a giant trying not to shit itself.

And there she was.

Mara Archbishop stood at the centre in the same green attire, one hand braced on the rail of a command pit; other resting near a holstered magnum as if she'd been born expecting to need it.

She turned when we entered.

No tablet, no flourish, no warm little greetings.

The woman who'd welcomed us into her wonderland had been shed, like theatre makeup after curtain call. This Mara was stripped, contained, and I thought at once that this might've passed for Caroline's 'friend'.

Her gaze moved quickly and precisely; blood and bandages, half-asleep, tempers held together, and the missing shape where Caroline ought to have been. Her face tightened.

"Sit down," she said. "You're safe here."

Safe.

I nearly laughed.

Weiss lowered Theo into a chair. I took the seat beside them, and Theo leaned against her immediately.

"The other boy?" She asked us, gentler, pitched toward our corner of the room.

"Treatment," Red Eyes said. "Infirmary."

Mara smiled at me. "No finer care on Earth."

"Better be."

Red Eyes approached her, Joel in tow.

"Repot."

Joel spat. "Your pens failed!" He shifted in his chair, twisting with anger and pain. "Site-wide breach; your lovely little pets are all over the preserve, chewing through payroll."

"Numbers?" She asked.

Red Eyes stepped in.

"All of them, bar the apexes, ma'am."

Joel gave a harsh laugh. "I'd write that down. Save it for the next board meeting."

One of Mara's eyes twitched.

"I told you this would happen!" Joel bit harder. "But no, you kept breeding them. Too aggressive, too clever, too damn many, and now everybody gets to act surprised because someone finally kicked a hole in the wall, and to TOP IT OFF - you got civilians down here too, what're the fucking chances-"

Her magnum cleared leather, the hammer cocked, and rested at her hip.

Nobody moved, nobody breathed, and when her voice came, it was low and patient.

"Our tour day was taken advantage of*.* Softer protocols. Someone used my hospitality as cover, my guests as camouflage. Do not confuse treachery with vindication, for my pets had nothing to do with this. Do you understand, Joel? This was not chance nor a fault of mine; this was planned. And whoever did it knew exactly what they were doing."

A beat passed; she tapped the barrel against her leg.

"Where's Caroline? Treatment too?"

Joel swallowed.

"Dead."

Something unreadable crossed her face.

Then Jaune stepped forward, timid and hesitant, Caroline's cane held in both hands.

"Something to remember her by?" Mara asked.

Jaune shook his head. "No... ma'am." The word fit snug in his mouth and he fucking knew it, damn near relishing in it. "Something to show you."

He twisted the silver handle.

Red Eyes turned as if he expected an ugly surprise from the dead woman's sleeve, one hand dropping to his sidearm.

The cane came apart.

No weapon.

A housing.

The hollow shaft opened to reveal a slim receiver tucked in velvet; brass toggles, a coil of wires, a tiny speaker grille, and a contact key neat as jewellery.

Morse.

Mara stared at it. The polished deceit; the tidy secret, and all the meaning packed into something so elegant, carried by a soul who never expected to die.

"Oh, Carol," she said softly, older than grief. "What have you done?"

Jaune held it out like it might bite him.

Mara took it from his hands with great care, turning it over, brushing over the brass before passing it to Red Eyes.

"Find the source. Then bring them to me."

Red Eyes nodded.

"Alive," she added. "So I can teach them some manners first."

Mara watched him take a few steps, speaking into his earpiece, but then her eyes found our little corner again. Her expression didn't soften much, but enough to notice.

"And find this lot a room. They must be exhausted."

[Part 1]

----

My world was small enough once to fit inside a fortress of mismatched linens and stolen sofa cushions, retreating from a thunderstorm that assaulted her bedroom window, tucking a torch into tunnels of floral patterns and plastic princesses, where the paperbacks waited.

Our little alcove, the monsters in the pages filling the guest list; the shadows on the walls only as scary as imagination allowed.

Sarah sat cross-legged, tucking the light under her chin, turning her face into a landscape of ghoulish goblins.

"Ah, young knight. Welcome." She'd whispered, tiny eyes reflecting in the torch.

I'd shivered, pulling a quilt over my knees, listening to the thunder growl across the roof.

She'd grinned something fiendish.

"Pfft, are you scared?!"

"No!"

"No?"

She clicked the light off, plunging us into a heavy dark. I'd squeaked, reaching out, panicked, finding only the rough fabric of her pyjamas. She didn't flinch, but she damn sure laughed and took my hand, her grip calloused; an anchor in the black, as the light returned.

"Pussy."

"That's a bad word, Sarah!"

"'That's a bad word, Sarah'... shut up."

Between giggles, she didn't read the stories so much as she challenged them, scoffing at wayward heroes who tripped over roots or hid in caves as ogres and dragons came sniffing, believing her snarling teeth were bigger.

"You'd be scared too!" I'd challenged.

"Nuh uh. I'd poke them in the eye!" She'd said in a low, steady vow that seemed to push back every wall of night. "No monster's ever gonna get me!" Her triumph wavered and softened into gentle kindness. "Or you... Ethan?"

The dark remained, but the warmth abandoned us; a freshly washed bed evaporating into a biting, chemical sting of scorched wiring and the wet, heavy rot of a garden that had deserted decency.

Ethan?

A dim swathe of navy-blue light bathed our sanctuary like an underwater coffin.

"Ethan?"

The light was anaemic, pulsing with the throb of a dying heart, turning spilt booze into pools of ink. Sarah's face was a mask of jagged shadows, standing in the wreckage, her chest heaving, knuckles on one hand split and weeping a bruised violet; other squeezing my arm as I stared blankly out the veranda window, where a waiting jungle pressed against the glass.

"You okay?"

"Yeah..." I managed, "yeah, I'm here-"

A sharp, frantic clack-clack echoed through the lodge, and Caroline emerged, a ghostly shroud in the blue gloom, leaning heavily on her cane, her expression a terrifying blend of aristocratic fury and calculated assessment. Behind her, Weiss hovered in the doorway, clutching a trembling Theo in her arms - too big for her; cuddled in a provided t-rex onesie - eyes darting from us, to Jaune, to the flickering red flare still burning like a scar on the horizon; a pillar of flame standing proud behind it.

"Oh, fuck me."

Caroline's gaze swept over the ruined room, then lingered on Jaune as he rose from his heap, a pathetic silhouette of groans and broken pride, wiping his mouth.

"What happened to you?" She asked, truly unbothered by the spectacle outside.

"I fell," he grumbled, tipsy sway still in his legs, glaring at Sarah like an ill omen.

"Really? A boy of your talent?"

Before he could retort, a mass passed the glass; broad and quick to smear the light as it flew on. Wet leaves whispered, timber creaked, and in its wake, a crack split in the distance

Another followed, farther off. Then two more in succession; pops muffled by the trees.

And the silence that choked the preserve began to wilt at the edges. Clumps of tentative insects and night-birds returned first as some beast called once from the undergrowth - a warbling note that raised hairs - answered by a shriek so ugly and brief it could've been a person.

Theo made a tiny weep into Weiss's shoulder, threatening to burst into tears. She gathered him higher against her chest, cradling the back of his head.

"Hey. Hey, no, no, you're okay. I've got you." Her voice was steady, but a tiredness dragged her words. "Cover your ears. It's okay. You're okay."

A kind lie.

Jaune, unsteady, pushed himself and started toward them, perhaps chasing forgiveness or desperate to look useful.

Sarah cut him off.

"Don't."

He stopped.

"I just wanted to-"

"Stay the fuck away from them."

He looked to Weiss, as if hoping she might overrule the verdict. She didn't even raise her eyes, rocking Theo, her face blank with effort, as Sarah reached them.

"Give him here."

Weiss hesitated.

Not distrust, but a refusal to admit her limits.

Another crack sounded. Then five more.

"I've got him, Weiss," Sarah said, stepping closer with her arms out. "Take a break."

"... Theo," Weiss murmured, as the boy turned his face. "Sarah's gonna hold you for a bit, okay?"

"... okay."

She passed him over a bit clumsily, still sniffing; dinosaur tail flopping, into Sarah's wiry patience. She held him with such ease.

"Hey, bud."

"... hi, Sarah." He hiccupped.

Freed of his weight, Weiss slumped against the wall, eyes shut, shoulders sagging with a painful fatigue that never left her.

Jaune hovered a moment, uncertain what shape to make himself before slumping back to the floor, as Caroline neared the window, her cane planted neatly before her, and watched the smouldering exhibition beyond.

"God, what a mess," she said. "How very embarrassing, Mara."

As her hand shifted on the cane's handle... I heard it. Not quite a tap, or a click, but a small metallic note that didn't quite belong.

She found my curiosity.

I looked up before she could open her mouth.

"You don't sound worried," I said.

"Or surprised," Jaune muttered, still tending his lip, shooting a look of understanding my way.

One immaculate brow rose. "Don't I? Would you rather I started flailing at someone’s catastrophic blunder?"

"I thought that 'someone' was your friend-"

"Oh, please. I have a very low opinion of women who build shrines for their own control, just for it to catch fire-"

"Especially if you've paid for it," I said.

That caught her attention, Jaune smiled, and something faint shifted in her expression; a brief allowance that I might be worth talking to.

"Perspective one, aren't you?"

I looked at her cane again.

"Force of habit."

"And a very dangerous one, at that."

A tremble rolled up from the trees; the growl of an engine driven too hard, and through the trunks, headlights burst into view and swept the undergrowth, bouncing wildly with the pitch of rough ground, swallowed and spat out by stands of black foliage.

A horn blared - a sharp, ugly honk that cut through the living racket.

Theo startled in Sarah's arms.

Another honk, lights swinging broad enough to catch the armoured SUV tearing along the service track; mud spraying from its tyres, one side striped with leaves and grime, hitting a rut to lurch, recover, and charge on with the grace of a drunk rhino.

"Is that Joel?" Jaune asked.

The car skidded to a stop, headlights raking the stilts, and the horn shouted a final time - sharper; impatient. The driver's door flew open... and Joel stumbled into the spill, a broad and frantic Ranger, wrenching something with him.

The first flare ignited in his hand with a savage hiss and a flood of white fire.

He hurled it to the brushes, and the jungle answered with a violent rearrangement of shadow; moving trunks flashing bone-pale, leaves stretching like tendons of muscle, the fauna writhing with startled depth.

Another flare.

A third.

Then a fourth, bleaching the clearing so harshly it hurt to look at it, and in that glare... I caught movement; lean shapes slipping into ushering shadow, weaving long tails and sickle-quick limbs, low and deliberate and silent, too fast to name or identify, but their intent unmistakable.

Fearless.

Stalking.

Pacing the edge of light.

Caroline was first to the steps, cane striking wood with furious taps, and she descended with startling speed, gathering herself through switchback staircases and rope ladders to the forest floor. The rest of us clumped after in an inelegant procession, hands on rails and shoulders, half-sliding final turns with frightened recklessness.

Another flare burned in Joel's fist, a silent sentry awaiting his cargo, throwing a last, ruthless white missile into the trenches. He gave us no attention as we came down, his eyes fixed on the trees, jaw taut, chest pumping.

Caroline went straight for him.

"Quite the show! Where's Mara-"

We crowded behind, forming our own fragmented questions, almost tripping over each other.

Joel turned.

And any queries died.

A heinous rake scored across his face, three deep furrows dragging from brow to cheek, carving straight through his eye. Blood had sheeted down and dried in a black, glossy mask, still wet at the edges where fresh red caught the flare-light; more of it soaked the front of his shirt, darkening the fabric from collar to ribs, mixed with dirt and shredded green stains.

He looked past us, over us, through us; listening to the wild with a dreadful concentration and a trembling grip around his sidearm.

"In," he winced. "Now."

No one argued.

Joel hauled open a rear door, and we crammed; Sarah got a whimpering Theo inside, then climbed in after, and in one small deliberate movement, set herself between Weiss and Jaune before either of them could settle. I climbed in opposite, Caroline following with a brittle hiss of annoyance, joining the knot of knees and breaths.

Sarah snatched my hand.

Not warm enough, this time.

Joel slammed the door as the first flare, his white judgment, began to dwindle. Such savage brilliance faltered, collapsing inward to a sputtering glow, and with its surrender, the jungle found a voice.

A clicking started in the black yonder.

Wet, arrhythmic sounds, like soggy teeth knocking together; like talons tapping glass; like a failed mimicry of the mechanics of speech, all from different points in the void, hopping nearer in horrible bursts.

Yelps followed.

Shrill and hideous, strangled almost like laughter; a manic pitch of hyenas forced through throats not built for it, panting and eager, worked into a demented, anticipatory frenzy.

So, so many.

But they were polite. They waited, and waited, and would wait still until the light was vanquished before announcing themselves, introducing us to their mercy.

Joel gave them no such honour. He was behind the wheel, the engine coughing, as the last flare bled out, and he tore down the road like it'd insulted him. A juddering assault, bounding wildly over ruts and roots, branches lashing the sides; shaking our chariot, rattling every gasp. Theo cried softly against Sarah as she all but folded him into her chest, her other hand crushing mine, his sister doing her damnedest to soothe him while tears streamed down her face.

And behind, in pieces, the jungle gave chase.

Fluid hooked masses vanished between the canopy with impossible speed; flashes of scales and fur and feathers and amber eyes, locked in pursuit, caught under the dim glow of our rear lights... Until a whole body, only briefly, kept pace beside the road... a velociraptor, frankensteined together with scarred reptile hide and matted tiger stripes, salivating with a hungry, bloodshot gawk, long claws fidgeting for the door handle, before the brush swallowed her spasming form whole.

Fast.

Just not fast enough.

We hammered on and began, by brutal, precious inches, to outrun the amalgamated fiends, but no one seemed willing to believe it.

"What the fuck's happening?" Jaune cracked first. "What are those things?!"

No answer.

"Joel?!" He demanded.

"You're not helping!" Sarah hissed.

Not even a glance in the mirror. Joel's ruined, bloody profile stayed fixed ahead, bullying the vehicle through each bend. And his silence beat down any further questions, as the road became a corridor of catastrophe.

Dead herbivores lay in the mud; huge, slack masses, hides torn open, innards tarred in the headlights, gazing up at where would-be stars might hang. And smaller wildlife littered verges in broken heaps as we passed the wreck of a jeep; windscreen punched through, one wheel still spinning in a ditch.

Farther on came another vehicle, ravaged beyond recognition; its doors peeled back, bodywork shredded, and beside it lay what remained of two Rangers, sprawled and dragged, leaking thick smears that vanished beneath us.

Caroline, still furious in that noble way of hers, watched a rigid Weiss grow paler and paler, staring out the window, and opened her mouth to speak. Whether to comfort or taunt, I do not know, as something struck the rear of the car. One of those things rose at the back window, dragging a nail across the glass in a screaming arc, its face lunging into view, staring at us like we were a savoury display. A narrow skull, slick with mud, jaw working in agitated snaps, eyes aflame; filament along its neck and arms - feathers or some mockery - quivering in the slipstream, as it tried to sink its claws... but its grip soon faltered, and it tumbled away into the dark.

"Where are you taking us?!" She barked. "Is it far?!"

The road curved: a cattle haulier was tipped on its side, trailer torn open like a tin toy; the inside a confusion of blood and snapped restraints.

Another scraping thud came from above, denting the roof.

Claws scratched and shrieked over metal, weight shifted with ugly balance, followed by a panting snarl... as a second creature peered its head over the windscreen and blinked with curious delight.

"Oh Christ," Weiss whispered, as Joel tried to shake it loose, but it anchored itself firm, and slammed its head into the reinforced glass; the impact booming through the cabin, birthing a spidering mark.

"SHOOT IT!"

The creature battered its skull, each blow punctuated by its own frantic pants and yelps of exertion, veining creeping fractures across the window like frozen black water.

Again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

One tiny chunk gave way with a spray of safety grit, as the thing wailed in triumph and snapped its jaws at its work, blood and saliva smearing the pane as it shook a torn scalp.

Then the trees erupted.

A herd burst onto the track in a crashing wave of flesh and panic; limbs churning, eyes white with terror, as they flung themselves into and over us - a flood of stampeding bodies with no pattern.

"Fuck!"

Joel slammed the brakes, and we slewed sideways as one animal slammed against us. Another clipped the bonnet, meeting our feral stowaway, who pounced on the poor thing and ripped into its neck as if it were paper. Then we were boxed in entirely, swallowed by the stampede, crowded in a flowing frenzy of muscle and mud.

A bellow ripped through the night.

Not from the herd. From behind it.

The fleeing animals split as a larger force charged through, and in the wash of headlights... a triceratops staggered into view; enormous and wounded and mad with pain. Blood caked down one shoulder, one horn was cracked, great strips of hide hung loose along its body, and it heaved with the turmoil of rage outrunning death.

We were simply in its way.

"HOLD ON TO SOMET-"

Joel tried to wrench us free, but the impossible mountain of horns bore down without mercy, without acknowledgement, and ploughed into us like a freight train.

Metal tore and glass burst, as the world retched in a storm of white and flying bodies, crying and shouting and screaming... until it all went dark.

-

I'd been in a car crash once.

Not a real one, not really; didn't count.

Just my dultz of a mum half-dozing at the wheel after a late shift, drifting at a junction and clipping the back of some miserable prick's Volvo. Enough to make her cry from fright and shame; scared the shit out of me at the time.

Young enough for the fear to feel giant. My measure for disaster.

Seen a dead body before, too.

Fifteen, led out there by a boy with bad skin and too much deodorant, hoping to get his dick wet; said he knew a quiet place. Real romantic little outing, that. Poor fucker was by the old train tracks; half down the embankment, one shoe missing, flies all over the mouth. Boy screamed and bolted like he'd been shot at... but I stayed. Far longer than I should have.

Plenty of time to know some sights stick in your skull like a hook.

I watched consciousness snap back to him in fragments, and I knew my job.

Same as always.

He did not need to see.

He couldn't.

What was left of the SUV was nose-down in a ditch, tangled in vines and roots thick as rope, creaking every few seconds with the nasty settling sound of twisted metal, stinking of petrol and gore. He was half-folded in the back seat, belt locked across him, face gone grey under bloody smears, blinking slow like he'd been dug up. A wound at his temple tightened my stomach, split and pumping lazily down his face, and his lashes were wet; stunned, dazed, too soft for this shithole.

Pretty, though.

Annoyingly so.

His eyes found me - a dirty mess of loose hair and cuts. He made some rough little sound in acknowledgement. And then, because head trauma wasn't enough to cure him of being a sucker, he lifted one unsteady hand and reached for my face. His fingers brushed my cheek, clumsy and light, smearing blood I hadn't realised was there.

"Sarah..." Ethan mumbled, words dragging. "You're-you're bleeding."

For a moment, I stared at him.

He'd seen me gush before; split fingers, busted eyes, knees skinned raw. One fight behind the liquor store opened my eyebrow up once, and he'd hovered in the bathroom doorway as I picked glass out, looking green enough to faint. And I sneered through it all.

Christ, I'd seen him just as bad!

I'd seen him cry, even when he tried not to, yet still, half conscious with his pissing head open... he was worried about me. Always worrying about me.

Something sharp and awful tugged in my chest as I fought his seatbelt; the latch twisted sideways. My fingers were slick, everything was slick - blood, mud and sweat - the whole night greased up and sliding faster into Hell.

"Sarah... Sarah what's wrong?"

"Shut up!" I caught his wrist, and his arm dropped uselessly.

Blood started running down his throat, dripping off his jaw, slicking warm on my hands. His temple pumped harder, each sluggish beat pushing fresh red through the mat of his hair.

"Sarah-"

"Stop talking!"

Outside, an orange flare burst through the heights. Then Joel started shouting.

"The grounds! Now!"

Another flare hissed, closer and white, bleaching our ditch silver, and I saw the whole mess of us. Weiss cradled a shell-shocked Theo by a stump, blood soaking one of his sleeves; a flare gun and a radio at her side, fiddling with the dials, muttering half-remembered orders. While Jaune limped through the mud with an armful of flares and Caroline's cane; Joel propped against the driver's side, still somehow alive.

His legs were ruined.

One chewed; the other bent wrong. Didn't matter. He snapped something to Weiss - a breach, assets loose, civilian survivors, 'say it proper' - and she flinched, but she tried with shaky breath.

Ethan stirred at the noise, and he felt it then. The weight on his leg.

Shit.

His eyes flicked down.

Then up.

I caught his jaw and turned him back to me before he could settle on the woman beside him... where Caroline sank.

The windows were gone, smashed out in the roll, and the ditch had reached in with eager, pitiless hands. Thick branches had lurched through and impaled her like the jungle had a debt to collect, skewering her into a frozen scream, still glaring at the windshield with her ravaged face. One hand had fallen into Ethan's lap, cool and elegant; rings still shining, nails gleaming, obscenely normal compared to the rest of her clawed frame.

What I would give to have her complaining instead.

His breathing changed fast. Each inhale came thin, catching in his throat, as his eyes kept trying to focus and failed; huge and glassy with terrified, crawling realisation.

I braced myself, hauled with both hands, and his seatbelt finally cracked, and he collapsed into me with a groan, all cold and dead weight.

"I've got you."

He mumbled into my shoulder, too weak to lift his head.

"What?"

"It-...mph... hurts." He said it like an apology; almost did me in.

"I know," I said, my voice coming out wrecked. "I know, I know-fuck, come on."

I dragged him toward the broken door, and he tried to help, pushing with the wrong limb, choking and slurring on a pain so hard his whole body jerked. I shoved us out into the ditch, away from the corpse... and agony detonated through my leg.

White-hot. Sudden. So vicious it snatched my breath.

Hadn't felt it before, my knee buckled, and my grip went loose. Ethan slipped from my arms with a broken sound and plummeted straight to the mud.

But Jaune was there.

He lunged, dropping flares and a prized cane, to catch him.

"Fuck," he hissed, hugging his head. "Warn me next time."

"I didn't-" I groaned, the words snagging as I tried to put weight on my leg and almost crumbled. Fire roared down my calf, throbbing, warm blood seeping into my shoe.

Jaune's eyes flicked down, took it in.

"Ouch," he whispered. "That's worse than a split lip, huh."

"Jaune-"

A mass skimmed quick through the trees above; a violent shake of branches and a string of clicking notes hopping limb to limb.

"Bring him here!" Weiss called, shifting a mute Theo higher, first-aid kit appearing.

We painstakingly hobbled over, Jaune lowered Ethan into my lap, and my whole thigh started screaming at me.

Weiss scrambled through the kit. "Clot pack. Gauze. Pressure on the temp-"

"I know how to use a fucking bandage, Weiss!"

"Then hurry up." Her voice softened. "And talk to him. Keep him awake."

Jaune reclaimed his flares as Joel raised a pistol toward the tree line.

"You got another gun?" He asked, striking another flash.

"No."

"How many bullets?"

"Enough."

Another burst of clicking from the trees, close enough to chill bones. I tore gauze and tape open with my teeth, my hands shaking too much to hold it all.

Weiss gave what aid her oversized toddler would allow.

"Ethan." I pressed dressing to his temple.

He cried out, body trembling.

"Fuck, stay still-please, just stay still."

Blood welled hot through the pad, then slowed. His face had gone waxy; his lips were almost colourless. He looked so unbearably frail... and dear.

Click. Rustle. Wail. Cackle.

Closer.

His hand twitched against my thigh.

"S-... Sarah?"

"I'm here." I caught his hand and squeezed until it hurt. "I'm here. I'm here."

"I can't...I-" He swallowed. "Can't-....

"Yes, you can." I leaned over him, clamping his head and cupping his cheek. His skin had gone colder than any winter. Fuck, my voice broke so bad I didn't recognise it. "You can. You stay with me, alright? Stay awake, and I'll-... I'll fucking bully you until we're fifty."

A faint smile touched his mouth.

"F-fifty?"

"Mmm, minimum."

His eyes fluttered, then found me by sheer effort.

"S-... Sarah... I-"

I could feel the fleeting warmth of his breath.

"Yeah, I'm here. I'm-"

"I-mm... I-... I love you."

Every nerve stopped.

Not shock.

I knew. Always had.

Every careful look, every soft apology, every stupid, earnest act of devotion he thought I didn't notice.

You fucking idiot.

My hand shook against his face.

"I know, dummy," the words came out small and shattered. "I know. I've always-"

His face warped.

Peace.

A tiny, tired peace, beyond all surprise and relief, as if he'd been carrying that love so long it'd worn grooves through him, and now he'd finally laid it at my feet, there was nothing left in him to prop him up.

He breathed... and then he was limp, heavy in my hands.

Not my silly, stubborn soldier-please, please God.

I grabbed at him, the dressing slipping, blood slick between my fingers.

"Ethan?"

His head lolled against my palm, mouth open, eyes drifting shut like he was only sleeping, like this was mercy, like this was anything but the most monstrous dread.

"Ethan?!"

Nothing.

"Ethan!"

My voice tore itself out, and Weiss came closer, saying something urgent I couldn't hear. Jaune turned, Joel shouted, another flash of white over the ditch, and I saw them beyond the trees, crept nearer through the dying light, shifting and waiting rejects stitched together out of nightmares and hunger.

Yet all I could feel was him.

A hand slack in mine, a terrible softness of a body that couldn't try, dreaming of what might've been had I never stolen a silver ticket from a neighbour's box, and ahead... a taloned foot stepped into the light.

A siren then split the canopy, but it was no animal. Mechanical and enormous, blaring through the trees with a force that shook the world.

Every head snapped up, the clicking stopped, as the lights came - bursting through the foliage in barbaric washes of orange and red. An APC smashed into the ditch, roaring and howling, floodlights cutting merciless paths through the pit, scattering the ghouls in the dark; their shapes flinching back, hissing in sudden agitation. One bolted low into the undergrowth, another sprang for the branches; a third lingered, caught in the full blast of light, all twitching feathers and blood-bright eyes.

The vehicle braked.

Doors blew open.

Men poured out in black.

Armed. Masked. Efficient.

Rifles came up in one clean swing.

And the first burst of gunfire cracked so clean and sharp it punched holes in the gloom. One of the creatures jerked sideways mid-lunge, blue blood spraying cold across the ferns. A dozen more took rounds through the throats, tails thrashing, claws tearing mud before final shots put them still, as the air filled with the stink of lead and opened reptile, painting the ditch blue in gruesome stripes.

Boots hammered toward us, figures fanned out, weapons tracked and lasers traced red lines through drifting smoke and flare-haze. One man dropped a knee near the wrecked SUV, tilting his head at Caroline's ruined remains, reaching for her cold hand, as another strode closer, red-tinted lenses in his mask, looking us over - to the crippled Ranger and the boy bleeding across my legs. Then he pressed two fingers to a comm in his ear.

"We have eyes on them, ma'am."

Last time I got loaded into the back of a truck, I was drunk enough to think running from the police counted as a personality, hauled into a council wagon by men who looked more tired than disappointed. I'd laughed so hard I nearly vomited; fierce little pride in being an expected fuck-up.

If I ever become a Mom, maybe I'll do a little better.

We tore through the jungle, watching the trees whip past through slats, trying not to be sick.

The lights caught it on occasion. More death on the road.

Big things. Small things. Scaled things. Feathered things. Some as old as the earth; some wrong in newer ways, made by a brain too rich to fear God. And when we reached the gates, there were enough prehistoric corpses to stock a hundred museums.

The HUB sat in the middle of it all - a prosperous woman's spa built in this warring tangle.

Spotlights, fences, concrete barricades, towers with glass fronts; black guards and lab coats everywhere, moving in clipped patterns with weapons ready. And behind them bathed polished stone, warm windows, manicured walkways, all under soft gold lighting.

A fucking resort, wrapped in enough steel and firepower to survive the apocalypse.

We rolled through a checkpoint, big gates and bigger guns; men shouting codes across an estate I didn't understand or care to. I was busy watching Ethan.

They had him on a stretcher.

Black guards had cut his shirt open, kept an oxygen mask to his face, held pressure to his head. Every bump rocked him, and every time he shifted, looser and heavier by the second, something under my ribs seemed to widen.

I kept waiting for his eyes to open. Never did.

They pulled me out first into a buffer zone, and I nearly ate concrete.

A woman in scrubs caught me by the elbow, sat me on a bench, cut my trouser leg open and started flushing the gash in my calf.

Fuck, it hurt.

"Weight-bearing only if necessary," she said, clinching a bandage tight. "Please enjoy your stay." She handed me a crutch, and I looked past her to see them wheeling Ethan away.

A bright corridor, white floor, more boots and orders; the stretcher rattling over clean tiles.

"Hey!" I shoved up, nearly went over again, but I caught myself and kept going. "Wait!" I started after them, half hopping, half falling, thumping the crutch hard enough to jar my shoulder loose.

Had to be with him.

Next to him. Right there.

When he opened his eyes, I had to make sure that he heard, that he knew, I had to-

One of the guards stepped in front of me, same red eyes in his mask, and I went face-first into his armour. He put an arm out. Gentle, but final.

"Stay." The word came flat as paperwork.

"The fuck I will-" I tried to shove past him. Failed.

"He's being taken to treatment. Personnel only."

"Please, I-"

The stretcher disappeared through double doors, medics around him.

Then he was gone. Out of sight.

Behind me came the others.

Weiss reached me, resting a hand on my back; Theo fused to her side, but walking now, hustling in his onesie. He looked up at me, tiny and grey, bandaged along one arm; a cookie in the other.

"Is he dead too?" He asked, blank-faced.

Weiss closed her eyes.

"No," she said, before I could speak. "No. They're helping him-are you good?" She aimed at me.

"... fine."

Joel next, wrangled onto a wheelchair by two medics while he argued like a dying ox. One of his legs was already wrapped in something soaked through, but he had enough life left in him to look furious.

"Take me to her!" He barked.

Jaune came last, pale and limping, eyes refusing to settle, still carrying Caroline's cane like an heirloom. He didn't huddle too close.

They'd left her where they found her, in her perfect coat with her perfect rings, cooling in the world she'd paid for. Her absence was deafening.

Red Eyes spoke. "Doctor wishes to see you all."

Joel spat blood. "Good."

Weiss scrubbed a hand down her face. "Right now? Can't we-"

Jaune gripped Caroline's cane tighter. "Lead on, sir."

They marched us, and the HUB opened in layers as we moved deeper; less resort, more machine. Polished lounges and pretty little attractions thinned out in favour of reinforced doors, keypads, pressure locks, and black steel ribs in the walls. Hallways widened and ceilings climbed; more guards and more staff, speaking into tech, faces pulled taut by a fear there was no procedure for.

Up and up until, at the end of a corridor wide enough to carry a tank, a pair of doors opened... onto The Bridge.

A mammoth surveillance chamber, or a command deck from some glossy sci-fi shit; metal balconies and layered banks of screens climbing the walls. Camera feeds covered every surface they could; roads, paddocks, fences, lifts, gates, lodges, labs, holding pens, catwalks, corridors, jungle trails, treetops, river crossings, every fucking angle of the preserve.

Every avenue of the lie.

Maps glowed across central tables in soft greens and hostile reds. Status feeds dragged, camera windows blinked in and out, sections of the jungle flashed with warning icons... one quadrant had gone null. And people worked every station, headsets on, fingers dancing, fear stuffed down into the motions of competence, drowning out a low pulsing alarm like a giant trying not to shit itself.

And there she was.

Mara Archbishop stood at the centre in the same green attire, one hand braced on the rail of a command pit; other resting near a holstered magnum as if she'd been born expecting to need it.

She turned when we entered.

No tablet, no flourish, no warm little greetings.

The woman who'd welcomed us into her wonderland had been shed, like theatre makeup after curtain call. This Mara was stripped, contained, and I thought at once that this might've passed for Caroline's 'friend'.

Her gaze moved quickly and precisely; blood and bandages, half-asleep, tempers held together, and the missing shape where Caroline ought to have been. Her face tightened.

"Sit down," she said. "You're safe here."

Safe.

I nearly laughed.

Weiss lowered Theo into a chair. I took the seat beside them, and Theo leaned against her immediately.

"The other boy?" She asked us, gentler, pitched toward our corner of the room.

"Treatment," Red Eyes said. "Infirmary."

Mara smiled at me. "No finer care on Earth."

"Better be."

Red Eyes approached her, Joel in tow.

"Repot."

Joel spat. "Your pens failed!" He shifted in his chair, twisting with anger and pain. "Site-wide breach; your lovely little pets are all over the preserve, chewing through payroll."

"Numbers?" She asked.

Red Eyes stepped in.

"All of them, bar the apexes, ma'am."

Joel gave a harsh laugh. "I'd write that down. Save it for the next board meeting."

One of Mara's eyes twitched.

"I told you this would happen!" Joel bit harder. "But no, you kept breeding them. Too aggressive, too clever, too damn many, and now everybody gets to act surprised because someone finally kicked a hole in the wall, and to TOP IT OFF - you got civilians down here too, what're the fucking chances-"

Her magnum cleared leather, the hammer cocked, and rested at her hip.

Nobody moved, nobody breathed, and when her voice came, it was low and patient.

"Our tour day was taken advantage of*.* Softer protocols. Someone used my hospitality as cover, my guests as camouflage. Do not confuse treachery with vindication, for my pets had nothing to do with this. Do you understand, Joel? This was not chance nor a fault of mine; this was planned. And whoever did it knew exactly what they were doing."

A beat passed; she tapped the barrel against her leg.

"Where's Caroline? Treatment too?"

Joel swallowed.

"Dead."

Something unreadable crossed her face.

Then Jaune stepped forward, timid and hesitant, Caroline's cane held in both hands.

"Something to remember her by?" Mara asked.

Jaune shook his head. "No... ma'am." The word fit snug in his mouth and he fucking knew it, damn near relishing in it. "Something to show you."

He twisted the silver handle.

Red Eyes turned as if he expected an ugly surprise from the dead woman's sleeve, one hand dropping to his sidearm.

The cane came apart.

No weapon.

A housing.

The hollow shaft opened to reveal a slim receiver tucked in velvet; brass toggles, a coil of wires, a tiny speaker grille, and a contact key neat as jewellery.

Morse.

Mara stared at it. The polished deceit; the tidy secret, and all the meaning packed into something so elegant, carried by a soul who never expected to die.

"Oh, Carol," she said softly, older than grief. "What have you done?"

Jaune held it out like it might bite him.

Mara took it from his hands with great care, turning it over, brushing over the brass before passing it to Red Eyes.

"Find the source. Then bring them to me."

Red Eyes nodded.

"Alive," she added. "So I can teach them some manners first."

Mara watched him take a few steps, speaking into his earpiece, but then her eyes found our little corner again. Her expression didn't soften much, but enough to notice.

"And find this lot a room. They must be exhausted."

[Part 1]

----

My world was small enough once to fit inside a fortress of mismatched linens and stolen sofa cushions, retreating from a thunderstorm that assaulted her bedroom window, tucking a torch into tunnels of floral patterns and plastic princesses, where the paperbacks waited.

Our little alcove, the monsters in the pages filling the guest list; the shadows on the walls only as scary as imagination allowed.

Sarah sat cross-legged, tucking the light under her chin, turning her face into a landscape of ghoulish goblins.

"Ah, young knight. Welcome." She'd whispered, tiny eyes reflecting in the torch.

I'd shivered, pulling a quilt over my knees, listening to the thunder growl across the roof.

She'd grinned something fiendish.

"Pfft, are you scared?!"

"No!"

"No?"

She clicked the light off, plunging us into a heavy dark. I'd squeaked, reaching out, panicked, finding only the rough fabric of her pyjamas. She didn't flinch, but she damn sure laughed and took my hand, her grip calloused; an anchor in the black, as the light returned.

"Pussy."

"That's a bad word, Sarah!"

"'That's a bad word, Sarah'... shut up."

Between giggles, she didn't read the stories so much as she challenged them, scoffing at wayward heroes who tripped over roots or hid in caves as ogres and dragons came sniffing, believing her snarling teeth were bigger.

"You'd be scared too!" I'd challenged.

"Nuh uh. I'd poke them in the eye!" She'd said in a low, steady vow that seemed to push back every wall of night. "No monster's ever gonna get me!" Her triumph wavered and softened into gentle kindness. "Or you... Ethan?"

The dark remained, but the warmth abandoned us; a freshly washed bed evaporating into a biting, chemical sting of scorched wiring and the wet, heavy rot of a garden that had deserted decency.

Ethan?

A dim swathe of navy-blue light bathed our sanctuary like an underwater coffin.

"Ethan?"

The light was anaemic, pulsing with the throb of a dying heart, turning spilt booze into pools of ink. Sarah's face was a mask of jagged shadows, standing in the wreckage, her chest heaving, knuckles on one hand split and weeping a bruised violet; other squeezing my arm as I stared blankly out the veranda window, where a waiting jungle pressed against the glass.

"You okay?"

"Yeah..." I managed, "yeah, I'm here-"

A sharp, frantic clack-clack echoed through the lodge, and Caroline emerged, a ghostly shroud in the blue gloom, leaning heavily on her cane, her expression a terrifying blend of aristocratic fury and calculated assessment. Behind her, Weiss hovered in the doorway, clutching a trembling Theo in her arms - too big for her; cuddled in a provided t-rex onesie - eyes darting from us, to Jaune, to the flickering red flare still burning like a scar on the horizon; a pillar of flame standing proud behind it.

"Oh, fuck me."

Caroline's gaze swept over the ruined room, then lingered on Jaune as he rose from his heap, a pathetic silhouette of groans and broken pride, wiping his mouth.

"What happened to you?" She asked, truly unbothered by the spectacle outside.

"I fell," he grumbled, tipsy sway still in his legs, glaring at Sarah like an ill omen.

"Really? A boy of your talent?"

Before he could retort, a mass passed the glass; broad and quick to smear the light as it flew on. Wet leaves whispered, timber creaked, and in its wake, a crack split in the distance

Another followed, farther off. Then two more in succession; pops muffled by the trees.

And the silence that choked the preserve began to wilt at the edges. Clumps of tentative insects and night-birds returned first as some beast called once from the undergrowth - a warbling note that raised hairs - answered by a shriek so ugly and brief it could've been a person.

Theo made a tiny weep into Weiss's shoulder, threatening to burst into tears. She gathered him higher against her chest, cradling the back of his head.

"Hey. Hey, no, no, you're okay. I've got you." Her voice was steady, but a tiredness dragged her words. "Cover your ears. It's okay. You're okay."

A kind lie.

Jaune, unsteady, pushed himself and started toward them, perhaps chasing forgiveness or desperate to look useful.

Sarah cut him off.

"Don't."

He stopped.

"I just wanted to-"

"Stay the fuck away from them."

He looked to Weiss, as if hoping she might overrule the verdict. She didn't even raise her eyes, rocking Theo, her face blank with effort, as Sarah reached them.

"Give him here."

Weiss hesitated.

Not distrust, but a refusal to admit her limits.

Another crack sounded. Then five more.

"I've got him, Weiss," Sarah said, stepping closer with her arms out. "Take a break."

"... Theo," Weiss murmured, as the boy turned his face. "Sarah's gonna hold you for a bit, okay?"

"... okay."

She passed him over a bit clumsily, still sniffing; dinosaur tail flopping, into Sarah's wiry patience. She held him with such ease.

"Hey, bud."

"... hi, Sarah." He hiccupped.

Freed of his weight, Weiss slumped against the wall, eyes shut, shoulders sagging with a painful fatigue that never left her.

Jaune hovered a moment, uncertain what shape to make himself before slumping back to the floor, as Caroline neared the window, her cane planted neatly before her, and watched the smouldering exhibition beyond.

"God, what a mess," she said. "How very embarrassing, Mara."

As her hand shifted on the cane's handle... I heard it. Not quite a tap, or a click, but a small metallic note that didn't quite belong.

She found my curiosity.

I looked up before she could open her mouth.

"You don't sound worried," I said.

"Or surprised," Jaune muttered, still tending his lip, shooting a look of understanding my way.

One immaculate brow rose. "Don't I? Would you rather I started flailing at someone’s catastrophic blunder?"

"I thought that 'someone' was your friend-"

"Oh, please. I have a very low opinion of women who build shrines for their own control, just for it to catch fire-"

"Especially if you've paid for it," I said.

That caught her attention, Jaune smiled, and something faint shifted in her expression; a brief allowance that I might be worth talking to.

"Perspective one, aren't you?"

I looked at her cane again.

"Force of habit."

"And a very dangerous one, at that."

A tremble rolled up from the trees; the growl of an engine driven too hard, and through the trunks, headlights burst into view and swept the undergrowth, bouncing wildly with the pitch of rough ground, swallowed and spat out by stands of black foliage.

A horn blared - a sharp, ugly honk that cut through the living racket.

Theo startled in Sarah's arms.

Another honk, lights swinging broad enough to catch the armoured SUV tearing along the service track; mud spraying from its tyres, one side striped with leaves and grime, hitting a rut to lurch, recover, and charge on with the grace of a drunk rhino.

"Is that Joel?" Jaune asked.

The car skidded to a stop, headlights raking the stilts, and the horn shouted a final time - sharper; impatient. The driver's door flew open... and Joel stumbled into the spill, a broad and frantic Ranger, wrenching something with him.

The first flare ignited in his hand with a savage hiss and a flood of white fire.

He hurled it to the brushes, and the jungle answered with a violent rearrangement of shadow; moving trunks flashing bone-pale, leaves stretching like tendons of muscle, the fauna writhing with startled depth.

Another flare.

A third.

Then a fourth, bleaching the clearing so harshly it hurt to look at it, and in that glare... I caught movement; lean shapes slipping into ushering shadow, weaving long tails and sickle-quick limbs, low and deliberate and silent, too fast to name or identify, but their intent unmistakable.

Fearless.

Stalking.

Pacing the edge of light.

Caroline was first to the steps, cane striking wood with furious taps, and she descended with startling speed, gathering herself through switchback staircases and rope ladders to the forest floor. The rest of us clumped after in an inelegant procession, hands on rails and shoulders, half-sliding final turns with frightened recklessness.

Another flare burned in Joel's fist, a silent sentry awaiting his cargo, throwing a last, ruthless white missile into the trenches. He gave us no attention as we came down, his eyes fixed on the trees, jaw taut, chest pumping.

Caroline went straight for him.

"Quite the show! Where's Mara-"

We crowded behind, forming our own fragmented questions, almost tripping over each other.

Joel turned.

And any queries died.

A heinous rake scored across his face, three deep furrows dragging from brow to cheek, carving straight through his eye. Blood had sheeted down and dried in a black, glossy mask, still wet at the edges where fresh red caught the flare-light; more of it soaked the front of his shirt, darkening the fabric from collar to ribs, mixed with dirt and shredded green stains.

He looked past us, over us, through us; listening to the wild with a dreadful concentration and a trembling grip around his sidearm.

"In," he winced. "Now."

No one argued.

Joel hauled open a rear door, and we crammed; Sarah got a whimpering Theo inside, then climbed in after, and in one small deliberate movement, set herself between Weiss and Jaune before either of them could settle. I climbed in opposite, Caroline following with a brittle hiss of annoyance, joining the knot of knees and breaths.

Sarah snatched my hand.

Not warm enough, this time.

Joel slammed the door as the first flare, his white judgment, began to dwindle. Such savage brilliance faltered, collapsing inward to a sputtering glow, and with its surrender, the jungle found a voice.

A clicking started in the black yonder.

Wet, arrhythmic sounds, like soggy teeth knocking together; like talons tapping glass; like a failed mimicry of the mechanics of speech, all from different points in the void, hopping nearer in horrible bursts.

Yelps followed.

Shrill and hideous, strangled almost like laughter; a manic pitch of hyenas forced through throats not built for it, panting and eager, worked into a demented, anticipatory frenzy.

So, so many.

But they were polite. They waited, and waited, and would wait still until the light was vanquished before announcing themselves, introducing us to their mercy.

Joel gave them no such honour. He was behind the wheel, the engine coughing, as the last flare bled out, and he tore down the road like it'd insulted him. A juddering assault, bounding wildly over ruts and roots, branches lashing the sides; shaking our chariot, rattling every gasp. Theo cried softly against Sarah as she all but folded him into her chest, her other hand crushing mine, his sister doing her damnedest to soothe him while tears streamed down her face.

And behind, in pieces, the jungle gave chase.

Fluid hooked masses vanished between the canopy with impossible speed; flashes of scales and fur and feathers and amber eyes, locked in pursuit, caught under the dim glow of our rear lights... Until a whole body, only briefly, kept pace beside the road... a velociraptor, frankensteined together with scarred reptile hide and matted tiger stripes, salivating with a hungry, bloodshot gawk, long claws fidgeting for the door handle, before the brush swallowed her spasming form whole.

Fast.

Just not fast enough.

We hammered on and began, by brutal, precious inches, to outrun the amalgamated fiends, but no one seemed willing to believe it.

"What the fuck's happening?" Jaune cracked first. "What are those things?!"

No answer.

"Joel?!" He demanded.

"You're not helping!" Sarah hissed.

Not even a glance in the mirror. Joel's ruined, bloody profile stayed fixed ahead, bullying the vehicle through each bend. And his silence beat down any further questions, as the road became a corridor of catastrophe.

Dead herbivores lay in the mud; huge, slack masses, hides torn open, innards tarred in the headlights, gazing up at where would-be stars might hang. And smaller wildlife littered verges in broken heaps as we passed the wreck of a jeep; windscreen punched through, one wheel still spinning in a ditch.

Farther on came another vehicle, ravaged beyond recognition; its doors peeled back, bodywork shredded, and beside it lay what remained of two Rangers, sprawled and dragged, leaking thick smears that vanished beneath us.

Caroline, still furious in that noble way of hers, watched a rigid Weiss grow paler and paler, staring out the window, and opened her mouth to speak. Whether to comfort or taunt, I do not know, as something struck the rear of the car. One of those things rose at the back window, dragging a nail across the glass in a screaming arc, its face lunging into view, staring at us like we were a savoury display. A narrow skull, slick with mud, jaw working in agitated snaps, eyes aflame; filament along its neck and arms - feathers or some mockery - quivering in the slipstream, as it tried to sink its claws... but its grip soon faltered, and it tumbled away into the dark.

"Where are you taking us?!" She barked. "Is it far?!"

The road curved: a cattle haulier was tipped on its side, trailer torn open like a tin toy; the inside a confusion of blood and snapped restraints.

Another scraping thud came from above, denting the roof.

Claws scratched and shrieked over metal, weight shifted with ugly balance, followed by a panting snarl... as a second creature peered its head over the windscreen and blinked with curious delight.

"Oh Christ," Weiss whispered, as Joel tried to shake it loose, but it anchored itself firm, and slammed its head into the reinforced glass; the impact booming through the cabin, birthing a spidering mark.

"SHOOT IT!"

The creature battered its skull, each blow punctuated by its own frantic pants and yelps of exertion, veining creeping fractures across the window like frozen black water.

Again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

One tiny chunk gave way with a spray of safety grit, as the thing wailed in triumph and snapped its jaws at its work, blood and saliva smearing the pane as it shook a torn scalp.

Then the trees erupted.

A herd burst onto the track in a crashing wave of flesh and panic; limbs churning, eyes white with terror, as they flung themselves into and over us - a flood of stampeding bodies with no pattern.

"Fuck!"

Joel slammed the brakes, and we slewed sideways as one animal slammed against us. Another clipped the bonnet, meeting our feral stowaway, who pounced on the poor thing and ripped into its neck as if it were paper. Then we were boxed in entirely, swallowed by the stampede, crowded in a flowing frenzy of muscle and mud.

A bellow ripped through the night.

Not from the herd. From behind it.

The fleeing animals split as a larger force charged through, and in the wash of headlights... a triceratops staggered into view; enormous and wounded and mad with pain. Blood caked down one shoulder, one horn was cracked, great strips of hide hung loose along its body, and it heaved with the turmoil of rage outrunning death.

We were simply in its way.

"HOLD ON TO SOMET-"

Joel tried to wrench us free, but the impossible mountain of horns bore down without mercy, without acknowledgement, and ploughed into us like a freight train.

Metal tore and glass burst, as the world retched in a storm of white and flying bodies, crying and shouting and screaming... until it all went dark.

-

I'd been in a car crash once.

Not a real one, not really; didn't count.

Just my dultz of a mum half-dozing at the wheel after a late shift, drifting at a junction and clipping the back of some miserable prick's Volvo. Enough to make her cry from fright and shame; scared the shit out of me at the time.

Young enough for the fear to feel giant. My measure for disaster.

Seen a dead body before, too.

Fifteen, led out there by a boy with bad skin and too much deodorant, hoping to get his dick wet; said he knew a quiet place. Real romantic little outing, that. Poor fucker was by the old train tracks; half down the embankment, one shoe missing, flies all over the mouth. Boy screamed and bolted like he'd been shot at... but I stayed. Far longer than I should have.

Plenty of time to know some sights stick in your skull like a hook.

I watched consciousness snap back to him in fragments, and I knew my job.

Same as always.

He did not need to see.

He couldn't.

What was left of the SUV was nose-down in a ditch, tangled in vines and roots thick as rope, creaking every few seconds with the nasty settling sound of twisted metal, stinking of petrol and gore. He was half-folded in the back seat, belt locked across him, face gone grey under bloody smears, blinking slow like he'd been dug up. A wound at his temple tightened my stomach, split and pumping lazily down his face, and his lashes were wet; stunned, dazed, too soft for this shithole.

Pretty, though.

Annoyingly so.

His eyes found me - a dirty mess of loose hair and cuts. He made some rough little sound in acknowledgement. And then, because head trauma wasn't enough to cure him of being a sucker, he lifted one unsteady hand and reached for my face. His fingers brushed my cheek, clumsy and light, smearing blood I hadn't realised was there.

"Sarah..." Ethan mumbled, words dragging. "You're-you're bleeding."

For a moment, I stared at him.

He'd seen me gush before; split fingers, busted eyes, knees skinned raw. One fight behind the liquor store opened my eyebrow up once, and he'd hovered in the bathroom doorway as I picked glass out, looking green enough to faint. And I sneered through it all.

Christ, I'd seen him just as bad!

I'd seen him cry, even when he tried not to, yet still, half conscious with his pissing head open... he was worried about me. Always worrying about me.

Something sharp and awful tugged in my chest as I fought his seatbelt; the latch twisted sideways. My fingers were slick, everything was slick - blood, mud and sweat - the whole night greased up and sliding faster into Hell.

"Sarah... Sarah what's wrong?"

"Shut up!" I caught his wrist, and his arm dropped uselessly.

Blood started running down his throat, dripping off his jaw, slicking warm on my hands. His temple pumped harder, each sluggish beat pushing fresh red through the mat of his hair.

"Sarah-"

"Stop talking!"

Outside, an orange flare burst through the heights. Then Joel started shouting.

"The grounds! Now!"

Another flare hissed, closer and white, bleaching our ditch silver, and I saw the whole mess of us. Weiss cradled a shell-shocked Theo by a stump, blood soaking one of his sleeves; a flare gun and a radio at her side, fiddling with the dials, muttering half-remembered orders. While Jaune limped through the mud with an armful of flares and Caroline's cane; Joel propped against the driver's side, still somehow alive.

His legs were ruined.

One chewed; the other bent wrong. Didn't matter. He snapped something to Weiss - a breach, assets loose, civilian survivors, 'say it proper' - and she flinched, but she tried with shaky breath.

Ethan stirred at the noise, and he felt it then. The weight on his leg.

Shit.

His eyes flicked down.

Then up.

I caught his jaw and turned him back to me before he could settle on the woman beside him... where Caroline sank.

The windows were gone, smashed out in the roll, and the ditch had reached in with eager, pitiless hands. Thick branches had lurched through and impaled her like the jungle had a debt to collect, skewering her into a frozen scream, still glaring at the windshield with her ravaged face. One hand had fallen into Ethan's lap, cool and elegant; rings still shining, nails gleaming, obscenely normal compared to the rest of her clawed frame.

What I would give to have her complaining instead.

His breathing changed fast. Each inhale came thin, catching in his throat, as his eyes kept trying to focus and failed; huge and glassy with terrified, crawling realisation.

I braced myself, hauled with both hands, and his seatbelt finally cracked, and he collapsed into me with a groan, all cold and dead weight.

"I've got you."

He mumbled into my shoulder, too weak to lift his head.

"What?"

"It-...mph... hurts." He said it like an apology; almost did me in.

"I know," I said, my voice coming out wrecked. "I know, I know-fuck, come on."

I dragged him toward the broken door, and he tried to help, pushing with the wrong limb, choking and slurring on a pain so hard his whole body jerked. I shoved us out into the ditch, away from the corpse... and agony detonated through my leg.

White-hot. Sudden. So vicious it snatched my breath.

Hadn't felt it before, my knee buckled, and my grip went loose. Ethan slipped from my arms with a broken sound and plummeted straight to the mud.

But Jaune was there.

He lunged, dropping flares and a prized cane, to catch him.

"Fuck," he hissed, hugging his head. "Warn me next time."

"I didn't-" I groaned, the words snagging as I tried to put weight on my leg and almost crumbled. Fire roared down my calf, throbbing, warm blood seeping into my shoe.

Jaune's eyes flicked down, took it in.

"Ouch," he whispered. "That's worse than a split lip, huh."

"Jaune-"

A mass skimmed quick through the trees above; a violent shake of branches and a string of clicking notes hopping limb to limb.

"Bring him here!" Weiss called, shifting a mute Theo higher, first-aid kit appearing.

We painstakingly hobbled over, Jaune lowered Ethan into my lap, and my whole thigh started screaming at me.

Weiss scrambled through the kit. "Clot pack. Gauze. Pressure on the temp-"

"I know how to use a fucking bandage, Weiss!"

"Then hurry up." Her voice softened. "And talk to him. Keep him awake."

Jaune reclaimed his flares as Joel raised a pistol toward the tree line.

"You got another gun?" He asked, striking another flash.

"No."

"How many bullets?"

"Enough."

Another burst of clicking from the trees, close enough to chill bones. I tore gauze and tape open with my teeth, my hands shaking too much to hold it all.

Weiss gave what aid her oversized toddler would allow.

"Ethan." I pressed dressing to his temple.

He cried out, body trembling.

"Fuck, stay still-please, just stay still."

Blood welled hot through the pad, then slowed. His face had gone waxy; his lips were almost colourless. He looked so unbearably frail... and dear.

Click. Rustle. Wail. Cackle.

Closer.

His hand twitched against my thigh.

"S-... Sarah?"

"I'm here." I caught his hand and squeezed until it hurt. "I'm here. I'm here."

"I can't...I-" He swallowed. "Can't-....

"Yes, you can." I leaned over him, clamping his head and cupping his cheek. His skin had gone colder than any winter. Fuck, my voice broke so bad I didn't recognise it. "You can. You stay with me, alright? Stay awake, and I'll-... I'll fucking bully you until we're fifty."

A faint smile touched his mouth.

"F-fifty?"

"Mmm, minimum."

His eyes fluttered, then found me by sheer effort.

"S-... Sarah... I-"

I could feel the fleeting warmth of his breath.

"Yeah, I'm here. I'm-"

"I-mm... I-... I love you."

Every nerve stopped.

Not shock.

I knew. Always had.

Every careful look, every soft apology, every stupid, earnest act of devotion he thought I didn't notice.

You fucking idiot.

My hand shook against his face.

"I know, dummy," the words came out small and shattered. "I know. I've always-"

His face warped.

Peace.

A tiny, tired peace, beyond all surprise and relief, as if he'd been carrying that love so long it'd worn grooves through him, and now he'd finally laid it at my feet, there was nothing left in him to prop him up.

He breathed... and then he was limp, heavy in my hands.

Not my silly, stubborn soldier-please, please God.

I grabbed at him, the dressing slipping, blood slick between my fingers.

"Ethan?"

His head lolled against my palm, mouth open, eyes drifting shut like he was only sleeping, like this was mercy, like this was anything but the most monstrous dread.

"Ethan?!"

Nothing.

"Ethan!"

My voice tore itself out, and Weiss came closer, saying something urgent I couldn't hear. Jaune turned, Joel shouted, another flash of white over the ditch, and I saw them beyond the trees, crept nearer through the dying light, shifting and waiting rejects stitched together out of nightmares and hunger.

Yet all I could feel was him.

A hand slack in mine, a terrible softness of a body that couldn't try, dreaming of what might've been had I never stolen a silver ticket from a neighbour's box, and ahead... a taloned foot stepped into the light.

A siren then split the canopy, but it was no animal. Mechanical and enormous, blaring through the trees with a force that shook the world.

Every head snapped up, the clicking stopped, as the lights came - bursting through the foliage in barbaric washes of orange and red. An APC smashed into the ditch, roaring and howling, floodlights cutting merciless paths through the pit, scattering the ghouls in the dark; their shapes flinching back, hissing in sudden agitation. One bolted low into the undergrowth, another sprang for the branches; a third lingered, caught in the full blast of light, all twitching feathers and blood-bright eyes.

The vehicle braked.

Doors blew open.

Men poured out in black.

Armed. Masked. Efficient.

Rifles came up in one clean swing.

And the first burst of gunfire cracked so clean and sharp it punched holes in the gloom. One of the creatures jerked sideways mid-lunge, blue blood spraying cold across the ferns. A dozen more took rounds through the throats, tails thrashing, claws tearing mud before final shots put them still, as the air filled with the stink of lead and opened reptile, painting the ditch blue in gruesome stripes.

Boots hammered toward us, figures fanned out, weapons tracked and lasers traced red lines through drifting smoke and flare-haze. One man dropped a knee near the wrecked SUV, tilting his head at Caroline's ruined remains, reaching for her cold hand, as another strode closer, red-tinted lenses in his mask, looking us over - to the crippled Ranger and the boy bleeding across my legs. Then he pressed two fingers to a comm in his ear.

"We have eyes on them, ma'am."

Last time I got loaded into the back of a truck, I was drunk enough to think running from the police counted as a personality, hauled into a council wagon by men who looked more tired than disappointed. I'd laughed so hard I nearly vomited; fierce little pride in being an expected fuck-up.

If I ever become a Mom, maybe I'll do a little better.

We tore through the jungle, watching the trees whip past through slats, trying not to be sick.

The lights caught it on occasion. More death on the road.

Big things. Small things. Scaled things. Feathered things. Some as old as the earth; some wrong in newer ways, made by a brain too rich to fear God. And when we reached the gates, there were enough prehistoric corpses to stock a hundred museums.

The HUB sat in the middle of it all - a prosperous woman's spa built in this warring tangle.

Spotlights, fences, concrete barricades, towers with glass fronts; black guards and lab coats everywhere, moving in clipped patterns with weapons ready. And behind them bathed polished stone, warm windows, manicured walkways, all under soft gold lighting.

A fucking resort, wrapped in enough steel and firepower to survive the apocalypse.

We rolled through a checkpoint, big gates and bigger guns; men shouting codes across an estate I didn't understand or care to. I was busy watching Ethan.

They had him on a stretcher.

Black guards had cut his shirt open, kept an oxygen mask to his face, held pressure to his head. Every bump rocked him, and every time he shifted, looser and heavier by the second, something under my ribs seemed to widen.

I kept waiting for his eyes to open. Never did.

They pulled me out first into a buffer zone, and I nearly ate concrete.

A woman in scrubs caught me by the elbow, sat me on a bench, cut my trouser leg open and started flushing the gash in my calf.

Fuck, it hurt.

"Weight-bearing only if necessary," she said, clinching a bandage tight. "Please enjoy your stay." She handed me a crutch, and I looked past her to see them wheeling Ethan away.

A bright corridor, white floor, more boots and orders; the stretcher rattling over clean tiles.

"Hey!" I shoved up, nearly went over again, but I caught myself and kept going. "Wait!" I started after them, half hopping, half falling, thumping the crutch hard enough to jar my shoulder loose.

Had to be with him.

Next to him. Right there.

When he opened his eyes, I had to make sure that he heard, that he knew, I had to-

One of the guards stepped in front of me, same red eyes in his mask, and I went face-first into his armour. He put an arm out. Gentle, but final.

"Stay." The word came flat as paperwork.

"The fuck I will-" I tried to shove past him. Failed.

"He's being taken to treatment. Personnel only."

"Please, I-"

The stretcher disappeared through double doors, medics around him.

Then he was gone. Out of sight.

Behind me came the others.

Weiss reached me, resting a hand on my back; Theo fused to her side, but walking now, hustling in his onesie. He looked up at me, tiny and grey, bandaged along one arm; a cookie in the other.

"Is he dead too?" He asked, blank-faced.

Weiss closed her eyes.

"No," she said, before I could speak. "No. They're helping him-are you good?" She aimed at me.

"... fine."

Joel next, wrangled onto a wheelchair by two medics while he argued like a dying ox. One of his legs was already wrapped in something soaked through, but he had enough life left in him to look furious.

"Take me to her!" He barked.

Jaune came last, pale and limping, eyes refusing to settle, still carrying Caroline's cane like an heirloom. He didn't huddle too close.

They'd left her where they found her, in her perfect coat with her perfect rings, cooling in the world she'd paid for. Her absence was deafening.

Red Eyes spoke. "Doctor wishes to see you all."

Joel spat blood. "Good."

Weiss scrubbed a hand down her face. "Right now? Can't we-"

Jaune gripped Caroline's cane tighter. "Lead on, sir."

They marched us, and the HUB opened in layers as we moved deeper; less resort, more machine. Polished lounges and pretty little attractions thinned out in favour of reinforced doors, keypads, pressure locks, and black steel ribs in the walls. Hallways widened and ceilings climbed; more guards and more staff, speaking into tech, faces pulled taut by a fear there was no procedure for.

Up and up until, at the end of a corridor wide enough to carry a tank, a pair of doors opened... onto The Bridge.

A mammoth surveillance chamber, or a command deck from some glossy sci-fi shit; metal balconies and layered banks of screens climbing the walls. Camera feeds covered every surface they could; roads, paddocks, fences, lifts, gates, lodges, labs, holding pens, catwalks, corridors, jungle trails, treetops, river crossings, every fucking angle of the preserve.

Every avenue of the lie.

Maps glowed across central tables in soft greens and hostile reds. Status feeds dragged, camera windows blinked in and out, sections of the jungle flashed with warning icons... one quadrant had gone null. And people worked every station, headsets on, fingers dancing, fear stuffed down into the motions of competence, drowning out a low pulsing alarm like a giant trying not to shit itself.

And there she was.

Mara Archbishop stood at the centre in the same green attire, one hand braced on the rail of a command pit; other resting near a holstered magnum as if she'd been born expecting to need it.

She turned when we entered.

No tablet, no flourish, no warm little greetings.

The woman who'd welcomed us into her wonderland had been shed, like theatre makeup after curtain call. This Mara was stripped, contained, and I thought at once that this might've passed for Caroline's 'friend'.

Her gaze moved quickly and precisely; blood and bandages, half-asleep, tempers held together, and the missing shape where Caroline ought to have been. Her face tightened.

"Sit down," she said. "You're safe here."

Safe.

I nearly laughed.

Weiss lowered Theo into a chair. I took the seat beside them, and Theo leaned against her immediately.

"The other boy?" She asked us, gentler, pitched toward our corner of the room.

"Treatment," Red Eyes said. "Infirmary."

Mara smiled at me. "No finer care on Earth."

"Better be."

Red Eyes approached her, Joel in tow.

"Repot."

Joel spat. "Your pens failed!" He shifted in his chair, twisting with anger and pain. "Site-wide breach; your lovely little pets are all over the preserve, chewing through payroll."

"Numbers?" She asked.

Red Eyes stepped in.

"All of them, bar the apexes, ma'am."

Joel gave a harsh laugh. "I'd write that down. Save it for the next board meeting."

One of Mara's eyes twitched.

"I told you this would happen!" Joel bit harder. "But no, you kept breeding them. Too aggressive, too clever, too damn many, and now everybody gets to act surprised because someone finally kicked a hole in the wall, and to TOP IT OFF - you got civilians down here too, what're the fucking chances-"

Her magnum cleared leather, the hammer cocked, and rested at her hip.

Nobody moved, nobody breathed, and when her voice came, it was low and patient.

"Our tour day was taken advantage of. Softer protocols. Someone used my hospitality as cover, my guests as camouflage. Do not confuse treachery with vindication, for my pets had nothing to do with this. Do you understand, Joel? This was not chance nor a fault of mine; this was planned. And whoever did it knew exactly what they were doing."

A beat passed; she tapped the barrel against her leg.

"Where's Caroline? Treatment too?"

Joel swallowed.

"Dead."

Something unreadable crossed her face.

Then Jaune stepped forward, timid and hesitant, Caroline's cane held in both hands.

"Something to remember her by?" Mara asked.

Jaune shook his head. "No... ma'am." The word fit snug in his mouth and he fucking knew it, damn near relishing in it. "Something to show you."

He twisted the silver handle.

Red Eyes turned as if he expected an ugly surprise from the dead woman's sleeve, one hand dropping to his sidearm.

The cane came apart.

No weapon.

A housing.

The hollow shaft opened to reveal a slim receiver tucked in velvet; brass toggles, a coil of wires, a tiny speaker grille, and a contact key neat as jewellery.

Morse.

Mara stared at it. The polished deceit; the tidy secret, and all the meaning packed into something so elegant, carried by a soul who never expected to die.

"Oh, Carol," she said softly, older than grief. "What have you done?"

Jaune held it out like it might bite him.

Mara took it from his hands with great care, turning it over, brushing over the brass before passing it to Red Eyes.

"Find the source. Then bring them to me."

Red Eyes nodded.

"Alive," she added. "So I can teach them some manners first."

Mara watched him take a few steps, speaking into his earpiece, but then her eyes found our little corner again. Her expression didn't soften much, but enough to notice.

"And find this lot a room. They must be exhausted."

A tubby lard of fat rolls decided I talked too weird, read too much, and such crimes demanded punishment - a few chased laps around the climbing frame, peppered by stones from his fellow failed abortions. I hadn't even started crying, or scampered properly, or decided which serving of humiliation would hurt less, when she launched herself off the monkey bars like a feral saint and came crashing down on the little shit, knees first, granting me the glorious sight of a ten-year-old boxing match.

Gosh, the grass in that playground has never smelled any different.

She hit a pole wrong, where his face was, and snapped her arm so damn loud I heard it over any wailing taunts. Doctors set the bone, and I, encouraged by my parents to make friends with their son's saviour, visited her. She spared no pleasantries, asking me through a mouthful of pudding and flaunting her glitter-penned cast, if I wanted to egg the bully's house.

Ah, Sarah.

By twelve, she'd taught me how to hop the fence behind the public pool, and we'd float in the nightlife glow, like we were the last two kids on Earth, talking of crushes and life and rumours until authority sent us scuttling.

At fourteen, she punched holes through walls and drowned my bedroom in punk rock, stressing over coursework and parents (mainly mine), jotting private thoughts in a fleeting journal and mushing noses of those who tried to share her secrets out loud.

And at sixteen, she'd kissed a girl behind the bowling alley, stolen two road signs in her career, and convinced me (more times than I'd ever admit) to skip class so we could ride our bikes into the woods, into the quarry; smoke pot and scream our futures plain to the air amid other rebels and rapscallions.

A bad influence in every measurable sense; the best and worst thing to ever happen to me.

A good friend. Abrasive and brash as shit, but good.

And I almost squandered it, mistaking closeness for courage.

One random night, when we'd climbed the roof of her garage armed with blankets and contraband bottles of cherry vodka her Dad turned a blind eye to, to hum the shingles of a travelling carnival, waiting to catch a shooting star or more. She talked for hours about all the places she'd leave this guppy town for, all the gorgeous bodies she'd fuck when she got there, all the smart, beautiful dreams that waited with their mouths open, drooling the angst and hubris of young adulthood; a self-proclaimed thug, skin inked with pop culture, believing she was worth more than the cards life had dealt.

I watched her laugh steam into cold and realised then, within a helpless nausea of revelation, what was wrong with me. When she finally slumped against my shoulder, warm and careless and trusting, I thought of taking her hand and exploring her lips, to show her she'd already forged one bittersweet dream within another.

I thought of ruining my friendship, my kinship, my life on purpose.

Only thoughts.

Instead, I stilled my frantic heart and spoke inspired mumbles until morning. She'd called me 'boring'. I don't know if she knew, if she saw how starved my eyes were, if she was waiting or hoping or glad; sparing me from another humiliation, as she'd always done and would continue to.

And we carried on.

Loving her - and yes, in whatever ugly, tangled, adolescent way a person can 'love' their best friend - was like being handed a live wire and told to call it comfort, never to be shared; a one-sided attrition. A damned kindred, venturing soul who could exhaust and embarrass and yet, despite all logic, make me feel invincible... and would never go anywhere without her '+1'.

So of course, when Sarah won her silver ticket - through what esteemed peers insisted was a 'Founder's Invitation' - she came pounding on my bedroom window before sunrise, eyes bright, eyeliner smudged from sleeping in it, and scared more years off my life.

"Get up, cunt," she hissed through the glass, parading a cream envelope at me like she'd stolen it from a vault. "We're going to the mountain!"

I let her in before my mother woke and called the police. Again.

"You say that like it's normal," I grumbled, wrapped sheepishly in a duvet, timidly hiding my state of undress.

"It is for us now." She dropped into my desk chair, spun, and read the card in the same posh voice she used to mock. "Congratulations, Resident. You and one optional guest-that's you-are cordially invited to an exclusive, guided tour of House 65, courtesy of Archbishop Biotics and the prestige Haven Research Facility Division-bla bla bla, small print. Get dressed!"

She lowered the card, grin widening.

"What, right now?"

"Yes! Ethan, we've won the fucking lottery!"

How could I say no to such sparkling excitement?

And in her fairness, she might as well have.

Everyone in town knew House 65.

Sat proud beyond the ridge, a copper-domed observatory peered over the trees that ranged from (depending on who you asked) a botanical lab to a weather station; a biotech think tank, a private zoo, or just an expensive, lucrative way for a billionaire to avoid commoners, that occupied brochures and local gossip.

Mel's Diner hummed with such gossip, amid cutlery, coffee, and weaponised curiosity, while Sarah laid her invitation between sugar shakers; a sacred relic for any onlooker to see. And see they did, as glances bounced from our booth to the ridge beyond, expecting the distant House might raise a hand and salute the unlucky masses.

On a notice board, beneath missing cat posters and curling flyers, a new company notice fluttered whenever the door opened:

TOUR DAY IN EFFECT - AUTHORISED GUESTS ONLY

TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED

- Archbishop Biotics

Pete from the hardware store slapped his newspaper and barked as our drinks arrived.

"A tour?! They do tours now?! Fuck is that place, Disneyland?!"

"Probably just plants and stargazing, grumps." Mel herself said, topping off his coffee.

"Then why the fence?" Pete shot back, his gaze sneaking darts at us. "Why the trailer trucks? Why's every road up there monitored? Nobody builds a metal ring around a mountain to stare at space and grow... I don't know, tomatoes."

"Maybe they bite?" Someone said, and a few laughs danced around the room until false reassurance fit properly on their faces.

House 65 had spent years buying goodwill; building its monuments, its halo.

Funded scholarships, repaired floods, and sent polished vans to the clinic with vaccines and vitamin packs stamped with a company crest: a golden reptile's eye. And their founder, our good Doctor Mara Archbishop - our Saint of The Ridge - smiled from charity galas and newspaper clippings with the elegant calmness of a woman who had never once been proven wrong... or told no. She tipped a hat to the grocer when she graced the streets, bought rounds of coffee for retirees, and listened to the Mayor's rambles with a patient, clinical grin.

People loved what her money did.

But they didn't trust her mountain; those monuments had cracks, and that halo tilted.

And we'd all been woken at least once to the mechanical hum bleeding down; to cattle hauliers that blitzed roads in the earliest mornings. I'd never given it much imagination, never really wondered what lived under the private dome that choked moonlight on clear skies, when clouds dragged themselves thin, where fabled silver machines churned money and charted cosmos.

I assumed Sarah felt the same. Yet here we were.

"So, how many got invited?" I soon asked her.

"Four." She shrugged, slurping down a milkshake. "Why?"

"Just... curious."

"You're always curious," she said fondly.

"That a good thing?"

"Usually." She smiled.

The limousine arrived at noon.

A long white vehicle snaked into town so quietly it almost glided, all polished panels, blacked-out windows, and gold detailing that caught sunlight in surgical winks, and when it stopped outside the diner, every eye shifted to watch. Doors sighed and unfolded, and a driver in pearl-grey uniform stepped out, wearing a stoic expression so carefully calibrated it seemed robotic.

Sarah bolted so fast her shadow had to usher me.

The man smiled, his professionalism wavering, as Sarah showed him her ticket.

"Ah, another young blood. Hope you're hungry."

He inclined his head toward the open door, tapped down on a tablet, and reclaimed his wheel.

Inside, velvet seats ran along in facing rows, divided by brass lamps and polished walnut tables; platinum seatbelts, chilled glass bottles nested in silver rings, satin boxes embossed with the Archbishop crest.

And everyone else was already here.

A boy nearest the window almost bounced in his seat when we climbed in. Maybe twelve, all freckles and restless, physically incapable of being still inside his own skin.

"Hi!" He said immediately. "I'm, um-... I'm Theo!"

Beside him sat an older girl, deeply familiar and burdened with stopping Theo from enthusiastically launching himself into the stratosphere. One hand sat hooked in the back of his hoodie, barely looking at him while still somehow controlling his orbit. Tired eyes, tidy frame, pretty in a sharp, cool way that looked half natural and half hard-earned.

"Ignore him," she said. "Or don't. It never matters."

"You said I could say hello?!"

"... oh yeah."

Sarah smiled and slid into a seat.

"Sarah," she said.

"Ethan," I added, taking my place beside her.

"Weiss," the girl said.

Theo nodded, as if he were filing us into a system. "Do either of you, uh-... like rocks?"

Weiss closed her eyes. "Ugh, fuck me."

"Yeah, rocks are cool," Sarah said, fighting to contain a laugh; a battle I fought in unison.

"Thank you!" Theo said, vindicated.

Across them sat a smiling young man, eyes down at a brochure.

"You could try sharing his enthusiasm, Weiss." He said.

She glared at him. "Our parents do enough of that, thanks."

"And yet he brought you with him?"

Theo chirped up. "Hell yeah, I did! I'd be bored without her!"

Weiss relented, and a smirk nearly forced its way out.

"Hmph. Whatever."

The man's eyes then found us. Blonde hair that refused total neatness, a handsome, rumpled face; good build. "Jaune," he said pleasantly, firm hand at his chest.

Sarah leaned forward with a look I knew well.

"No tag along?"

"Ah, this graduate flies solo." He leaned forward too, and spoke next in a subdued murmur. "Kind of like the miserable bitch in the back."

Theo laughed, kicking his heel; Weiss was quick to hush him as Sarah and I looked to the rear corner, where our final guest sat: a woman in a cream coat so expensive it looked immune to weather and ordinary social contact. Perfect hair, perfect posture, and an unrivalled beauty that had been chiselled by wealth into something far more impressive than natural. One elegant, gloved hand rested on a silver cane, and rings flashed on the other as she studied an invitation packet.

"Who's-" I began.

"Someone who's not deaf, young man!" She said, her voice radiating with refined authority.

"Well, you've given me no reason to call you anything else," Jaune said, raising his hands in a mocking surrender.

Her smile came thin and immaculate. "Caroline," she said.

"That wasn't hard, was it?"

"I suppose not."

There was a brief silence; Theo broke it.

"She's pretty."

"Many thanks, little rock goblin."

"Don't call him that." Weiss spat.

Sarah shot her a glance too, knuckles twitching. I rested a hesitant, but firm hand on her knee.

"Oh, please, dear, I meant nothing by it. Besides, I'm sure he's been called far worse."

Sarah opened her mouth, but the driver spoke first over invisible speakers, as our limo pulled away from town and began its slow, purring climb toward the ridge.

"Please remember to complete your waivers before arrival," he said. "And try to keep it civil back there. You're all winners, after all."

Jaune untied his satin box as our chariot settled into quieter, casual conversations. He tossed candied gingers to Theo with a wink; sugared violets to Weiss, and produced a glossy electronic ledger.

"Very modest," She muttered, producing her own, still shooting looks at a silent lady who paid her no such courtesy.

Theo read his screen aloud with bated breath.

"No guarantee of complete environmental control-what does that mean?"

Weiss looked to Jaune for salvation.

"Nothing bad," he said, but the look on his face betrayed him.

I skimmed our waiver:

potential lab exposure

contaminations

engineered pollinators?

... unpredictable animal behaviour?

"The fuck?" Sarah muttered, reading the same words.

Outside, town fell away in layers until only farms remained, then the last scraps of a sane road. Trees crowded close, the mountain seemed to loom from every direction, and through tinted glass I caught glimpses of obsidian fencing between trunks - a giant, onyx curtain cutting through the terrain, humming with a live power, singeing leaves and adorned with patient red lights.

Cameras turned as we passed.

Theo pressed his face to the window.

At the first gate, a wash of green light passed over, and a steel barrier opened inward.

Quiet enveloped our party.

At a second gate, the driver's voice returned.

"Windows will now be lowered for acclimatisation."

Weiss let out a tiny, disbelieving breath.

"That's not a real word, right?" Sarah asked.

"It is if you're rich enough," Jaune said.

I smiled a tad at that; Theo bounced one leg hard enough to rattle the county.

"Is he-" I tried to ask Weiss.

"He's fine." She said, as the shades slid down, slowly, delicately.

The forest beyond the inner perimeter was... wrong.

The trees gleamed with an alien humidity, bark slick and dark, taller than any pines or oaks that inherited the land, and pale vines pulsed through the roots like lit veins, violating earth and crawling up their timber frames thirstily, lapping sap like cottonmouth tongues.

"What the fuck," Theo whispered, in a tone of confused awe.

"Language," Weiss said automatically, though she stared just as hard.

"What kind of biome is this?" Jaune said softly, more to himself.

Sarah had gone mute, her expression sharpened into something rare: interest.

Real, pure interest.

While Caroline did nothing at all, barely giving the forest a glance, more judgmental than commentary.

The road then curved.

And the mountain opened its mouth.

The rock face had been carved into a vast black maw; a stretched tunnel, lined with bronze ribbing, like the jaw of some sleeping mechanical titan held open in willing obedience. Warm amber light spilt from within, and the limo coasted toward it; a tasty, shining white treat longing to be swallowed.

Jaune watched the entrance with avid concentration, trying to reverse-engineer it in his head; nudging Weiss's shoe in an attempt to stop her hiding awe from her brother, who made choked little peeps of delight. Caroline crossed her legs, unimpressed.

"Tsk. Theatrics."

Inside, the tunnel walls were smoothly cut dusk, pulsing with guide lights sunk into stone. The air changed instantly - humid, wetter, touched by a succulent chemical perfume between the clean crisp of conditioned air as a chiming, greeting music grew louder, until the tunnel broadened, and then opened into a gigantic receiving bay buried beneath the mountain.

The truth of House 65.

Not a copper dome above; a pretty observatory, a cute face town could point to and daydream about.

That dainty little thing was only a hat, a front, a distraction; hardly registered on entry.

Almost pathetic when compared to the sprawling, immense threshold we resided in.

Loading platforms, polished metal floors, security booths, silver rails set into concrete, cargo lifts, and walls curved so seamlessly from rock to steel to glass they looked grown; a utopian chamber spacious enough to pose as a hangar for spacecraft, buzzing with a small army of personnel manning equipment, be it scientists or armed guards.

Above, welcoming silk banners stretched between catwalks:

TO WONDER IS TO WILL

The limo doors lifted, heat breathed in around us, and one wall of the bay irised open to reveal Doctor Archbishop herself in immaculate green, hair pinned back, tablet attached to one hand like a third limb.

"Welcome!" She called, her voice carrying rough through the bustling chamber, huffing her way over to us. "Surface impressions are so often misleading, aren't they?! I find the truly miraculous stuff prefers to dwell a little deeper!"

Caroline emerged first, as though answering a summons she finally considered worthy of her time. Weiss next, catching Theo by the sleeve before he could rocket away. While Jaune exited more cautiously, still studying the architecture with both visible fascination and confusion, sneaking doses of attention to the bipolar siblings.

Sarah lingered behind me... and awkwardly took my hand. Too warm.

The Doctor allowed herself the faintest hint of amusement at our mesmerised crew, before turning and gesturing to follow across the bay. Caroline fell into step at the front, close enough to suggest intent. It suited her better than the limo. In motion, she had abandoned the guise of a passenger and inspected the chamber as if it were a purchase not fully committed to.

"You do enjoy spectacle, Mara," she said, shrugging off part of her coat to fight the hanging heat, uttering her first name with confidence.

The Doctor did not look at her. "And you still enjoy pretending it's all beneath you."

Weiss, Sarah and I shared a look.

Caroline's grin came elegant and bloodless. "Call it due diligence-"

"I call it expensive patience... friend."

Theo looked between them with odd excitement. "Have you been here before, miss?" He asked loudly.

Caroline glanced at him with mild surprise. "Not this division."

"There are divisions?" Jaune asked.

"House 65 is not a singular project, young man." The Doctor answered. "It is an ecosystem. Some elegant, some necessary, some not yet ready for vulgar description."

"Just say 'yes', damn," Weiss whispered to herself, rubbing her temples.

We passed beneath an arch of black steel and into a corridor softened by luxury. Leisure zones, cafes, and glass cases lined the walls, each holding stunning and daunting displays; translucent seed pods veined with amber, flowers preserved in crystal, and tiny skeletal models of impossible animals posed mid-stride, like works of art.

"Are those real?!" Theo beamed.

"Merely inspiration, lad."

"For what?"

"Success."

At the end of the corridor, the wall unveiled into a modest space; to call it a 'service elevator' would be an insult. Circular and enormous, built to carry machinery - whole vehicles, perhaps, or freight crates the size of bungalows if brave enough. Glass walls slid around a platform of white metal and brass, its railings filigreed with intricate, whimsical jewels and above hung banks of warm light while below, through a transparent floor, was a throat of rock braced with steel, pipes, cables and tracks dropping into a void so deep it made my stomach tense.

"Is all of this sanctioned?" Jaune asked, almost accusatory.

The Doctor smiled. "Of course. I don't think I'm built for federal prison."

Caroline stepped on first, testing the metal with an immaculate heel to confirm it was real.

"You still haven't explained what I'm supposed to be excited about."

"If I explained it, Carol, I would lose the pleasure of watching you try to understand it."

That irritated her, and Weiss relished watching her face contort.

I despised the floor most, the way that shaft vanished into some engineered underworld, as we flowed into the lift. Sarah must've noticed my inability to look down, squeezing my hand tighter with a little smile. It only made things worse.

I had to free myself, apologetically slipping my palm out of her grip to her dismay. She scoffed, folding her shoulders over her chest.

The Doctor prized herself in the centre, as the doors snapped shut, and before we could converse, the descent came fast. A brash drop of the bowels to the uninitiated, but assured, as the glass filled with shaft walls of guiding, honeyed light.

And down, down, down we went into the Earth.

The mountain's industrial anatomy revealed itself in flashes as levels blurred past.

Then, indifferent stone again.

For one awful second, Sarah seemed tempted to enjoy herself at my expense; my refusal to acknowledge the private, excavated cruelty below, opening beneath our shoes, but she wavered at the sheer scale of the place.

Jaune studied every passing strut and junction with open, helpless fascination, while Weiss, becoming somewhat observant of his watching, kept a clamp on Theo as if some unnatural law might fling him through the glass.

Caroline remained unchanged, waiting for the curtains to justify themselves.

And by God, they did.

The shaft widened; light began to gather below. A pale blast at first, but colour soon rose into it, wafts of green and gold and brown, vast and layered shades, our descent slowing by a small degree as the world unfurled... into a sprawling tropical paradise so immense my mind rejected it.

A jungle - no, a damn rainforest - spread for fucking miles, bathing under an impossible, artificial sky, its colossal synthetic ceiling painted a rich blue glare of endless summer. A false sun burned beyond a gauze of tailored cloud, pouring warm daylight over a dense, cathedral-thick canopy. Humidity ghosted the glass, mist drifted in luminous sheets between emergent evergreen crowns, water flashed in silver cuts - streams, lagoons, rivers - winding through a thriving abundance determined to quell any memory of rock and steel, and it was alive. Teeming, screaming with itself, throbbing with delirious ambience; the ceaseless thrum of insects, the trills of unseen birds, the churring, clicking, croaking, cascading chorus of creatures living among the leaves. Giant ferns uncurled in shaggy green masses, moist trees erected like pillars, girdled by vines, and flowers the size of a person blazed in violent bursts of crimson, orange, bruised purple and poisonous blue, their petals lathered in dew, their mouths smiling. And occasional movements disturbed the tranquil; the taunts of scaled hide, wingbeats, an ape lurching through branches, panthers bounding in waterfalls, tails snicking fast through foliage.

Incomprehensible and unrivalled.

Beautiful.

Absolute.

Theo forgot himself entirely, as did his sister; Jaune wore a naked expression of a man tackling several blooming equations in his head; Sarah and I had become statues, blunted by audacity. But Caroline... still remained untouched. The view sprawled and roared and flirted with her, earning nothing more than a cold sweep.

"And the point of all this?"

The question seemed to please Doctor Archbishop, as if she viewed her impatience as another applause.

The lift slowed further.

A torrent of wind passed through the upper leaves, a tremor that shivered ferns and bowed branches in the green distance, but it did not relent. For it was no wind; it was intent. A path of purpose opened through the jungle in heaving, massive increments towards us. Birds shrieked from trees, great fonds slapped and parted, flowered branches bent and vanished, as something moved through the canopy with such casual authority that the land seemed to organise itself around it.

Theo made a strangled, squeal of delight as our lift came to a stop.

One treetop shuddered. Then another. And another. Vines drew taut and snapped, banks of nature stepped aside, and from that orchestrated sea of emerald there rose, with almost holy serenity, the girthed, curved neck... of a brachiosaurus. Mottled in rich greens and riverstone greys, beaded with water that caught artificial sunlight in jewelled pops; beneath, the suggestion of a hulking body lugged through the trees with tidal patience, camouflaged among the leaves.

A head, gentle and blunt-faced, peered down the canopy toward the glass.

Toward us.

Toward the little box, lowering visitors into its kingdom.

Its eyes were dark, placid and dull; old, deep and unreadable, framed by lashes kissing mist. It drew near with frightening calmness, one breath clouded every pane in a broad smog; this boom-limbed relic, this magnificent trespass against time, this living monument... bowed its head.

And at the centre of our lift, basking in our silence, stood a Doctor with a shit-eating grin, who set her coaxed eyes on little Theo.

"Would you like to pet him?"

Theo looked at her so fast I thought his neck would snap.

"Wha-... me?! Pet the-"

"Mmm hmm."

The Doctor made some minute gestures across her tablet, a lock disengaged, and a lone panel of glass slid soundlessly aside. She inclined her head, and Theo bolted as fast as his sister would allow.

"Hey, just be careful, please!"

He nodded, deaf, moving forward on manic feet.

Weiss followed, attached to his back, visibly scared and bewildered by the giant nostril that flared to the new scent of us; of the eye settling on an ant reaching towards it with trembling fingers.

Theo touched him.

Two digits, the front of his colossal snout, so gently, and when the world failed to punish his destiny, his whole palm came to rest against his hide. The dinosaur closed his eye, content, and breathed out his nose in a deep, cavernous gust that blasted Theo's hair back, and bellowed a soothing moan of approval.

A helpless laugh erupted from the boy, struck by wonder, and he looked, in that moment, so painfully young; an open book of joy, carrying a childish softness unhurt by the world, stroking a miracle he would never forget.

The dinosaur lingered another moment. Then, with a slow and sorrowful grace, he lifted his head and turned with monumental patience, called away by unheard duties, and disappeared back into the rainforest.

"Bye!" Theo called, waving sporadically.

The lift resumed its descent in complete silence, save for the frantic appraisals and questions of one little boy.

Lushness warped into an assault, hitting skin and throat in tandem; floral swamp-rich musk laced with petrol and animal sweat, as the lift doors parted. The dialect of familiar insects, birds and amphibians followed, joined by hydraulic whines and thudding engines.

Theo lurched.

"Hold on! Please." Weiss said, being the first to march out, keeping her wriggling, eager tyke in check.

My boots met muddy concrete, patterned by tyre tracks and dried leaves trampled into the gravel floor. The outpost barely passed for a welcome point, more a survivalist scar; a nest of practical, caged violence left to earn its keep like some dishonoured truce. Low service structures dwelt beneath vined drapes, floodlight pylons rose among cycads, cargo trailers sat in rows beneath netted canopies; some armoured, some striped with hazard bands, some reinforced with thick cagework. Mud-caked trucks and jeeps idled beside crates and drums, while handlers and rangers moved briskly through the gloomy terminus, carrying clipboards, rifles, feed bins and medical coolers.

Not one paid us any attention; we were not the novelty here.

And the jungle was right there with them, with us, up in arms, as close as a lover.

Dragonflies the size of hawks skimmed over drainage ditches, frogs as big as housecats lurked in tangles of wet roots, and, beyond an outer fence that rivalled a castle gate, a plated ankylosaur waddled through ferns, grazing sloppily, ushered back into the fold by a couple rangers, handling the tank-sized boar with ease as its limp tail dragged furrows. Near one trailer, another pair of handlers guided a squat, feathered thing, its beak jerking with fussy indignation as baby birds settled in its mouth. Past it, where gravel gave way to the opening of a basin, a small herd of herbivores drifted past, shifting their egg-shaped heads in joint suspicion.

Farther off, along a worn road and above a bank, I caught the sway of serrated plates sneaking between the trees.

My stare drifted up to find an elusive structure over it all, a couple miles out. Rope-and-steel walkways linked cabin to cabin, nested and embraced by ladders and lifts, clinging verandas, and screened catwalks; a distant private village of lodges that could touch the horizon.

Sarah weakly nudged my shoulder as I took it all in.

"Penny for your thoughts?"

"I'd need more than a penny."

"Really? Can't possibly imagine why."

That earned her a flicking grin, one she returned.

"Shut up."

"Or what?"

"Or I'll-"

Theo, still restrained, found enough slack to point triumphantly at everything.

"Did you see that, guys?! And-... and that-"

"Yes, Theo," Weiss said. "We do."

Jaune stepped out, gaze shifting quickly, hungrily over the logistics of this place.

"Obscene," he mumbled. "Field containment, environmental bleeding-"

"And disgusting," Caroline said, emerging behind him, stalking carefully through the filth and muck, deeply offended she was not granted a cleaner entrance, but bearing a less severe face than topside.

"Would you prefer a slaughterhouse, bimbo?" Sarah chirped, the friend I knew reclaiming her throne in her head, getting a smile from me and a chuckle from Weiss.

"Excuse me?"

"Patrons, please!" The Doctor called, last to step out. Even here, ankle-deep in mud and fumes and a symphony of her own design, she arranged the scene around herself in insulting assuage. "Let's save arguments for-"

A field officer approached with rapid pace. Darker, tactical clothing; clean, urgent, with one hand pressed to an earpiece. He bent down and spoke in a voice lost to us, but her face revealed it all. An irritated wince of the eyes; a conductor informed mid-performance that a musician had collapsed.

Caroline's cane gave a little, squelching tap.

"Something the matter, Mara?"

"Only if you bore easy."

She then addressed the rest of us in a tone polished for ribbon-cutting.

"A minor operational matter requires my attention, but your tour should continue without delay. Please extend our staff the same courtesy you've... almost extended one another. And please, don't wander; just... wonder."

"Cringe," Sarah muttered.

"I heard that."

The Doctor, almost amused, passed us off with a small snap toward an approaching ranger; a slab of sun-browned muscle, cropped hair, jaw darkened by stubble, and sleeves rolled above forearms mapped by scratches and bites of nature. A uniform sat on him without ceremony, heavy belt at the waist, sidearm on one hip, tranq pistol on the other; a man built for the preserve he served.

"Joel," he said, looking us over. "Range lead. You'll be heading up to High Hides with me." He waved the Doctor away, and only Caroline watched her go, likely wishing she could follow.

I doubt any of us would've minded.

"High Hides?" Weiss asked.

Joel jerked his chin to the far-off web of cabins. "Of course. Safer than the ground, that's for sure." He thumbed toward a transport. "Now come on. If we're lucky, you'll make it to lunch before one of you does something stupid."

-

Night did not arrive naturally; it was administered.

The false sun dimmed smooth, its rich nova thinning to honey, then copper, then a long violet bleed over the canopy. Shadows cast out day-creatures, winding down in grunting, rustling retreats; night-folk taking their seats with stranger instruments. The calls of the jungle became throatier, unbothered with explaining themselves, and out in the dark, amid the electric droning of crickets, unseen beasts gave resonant, flute-deep cries.

We received it all from the High Hides, gazing out over miles of studyable black.

By then, we had been shown our quarters, fed beyond service, and supplied with enough liquor and emergency equipment to suggest our hosts expected both luxury and disaster at any given hour. Joel had left us there at sundown with a ring of keys, some radios, a promise of adventure tomorrow, and three tired, repeated rules:

Stay in the light.

Do not leave food unattended.

And if the jungle falls quiet, lock your doors.

Caroline vanished instantly after dinner, taking a bottle of red and all her attitude to whichever private cabin was seen fit. Theo, after resisting sleep with the doomed sincerity of youth, eventually folded on a central lodge sofa; his thumb in his mouth, head in Weiss's lap - muttering about his hurdles. She soon carried him to bed; Jaune followed like a service dog.

Some time after, they returned.

And there we were.

Four of us (absent a sleeping child and one socialite), tucked into the warm hush of the central cabin.

For an age, it was nice.

Really... really fucking nice.

The sort that feels doubtful in stories like this.

A fake fire glowed low in a wannabe stove, and bottles and glasses had accumulated across a table in lazy democracy; an evening gone too long to stay tidy. Sarah had commandeered one end of a sofa with her feet up, drink sloshing carelessly, all sarcasm and fangs. I sat near to be claimed by proxy, Jaune occupied an armchair with the loose confidence of a man who believed himself immortal, and Weiss allowed herself to rest, at last, on another sofa, drink balanced against her knee.

Sarah raised a glass to her, slurring her words. "Y'know, for someone who looks like she'd report fun to the police, you're taking all this weirdly well."

Weiss gave her a flat stare. "And for someone who looks like she'd key a priest's car for sport, you are too."

Sarah barked a laugh. "Oh, I have so done that."

"Yeah, no shit."

And the evening kept opening.

Jaune, flushed from drink and heat, drifted easily into stories; university, jobs, some almost certainly embellished to better suit company. Sarah met him in eager stride, inventing adolescent crimes with such pride that even I forgot which were true. Weiss, to my private shock, also contributed with dry remarks strong enough to elicit laughter. And I managed my share too, mostly by accident, and found that once we'd decided to be chumps, it was easy to mould in.

There was something stupidly tender about it, getting tipsy as the impossible thundered outside. The laughs, the smiles; the brighter the freer, the belief that this bizarre collection of strangers might yet become a unit, departing from an experience with gushing lore of dinosaurs in the jungle under House 65.

Maybe that was why the shift felt so immediate when it came.

No drama.

Just Jaune... who'd been etching closer to Weiss for some time, close enough to seem conversational; subtle, harmless under the shelter of alcohol and charm. She didn't seem to mind, or if she did, she tolerated it with the weary stillness of a girl used to men mistaking dryness for permission.

His hand found her thigh.

A small thing; hard to miss.

He smiled in a blurred, pleased way, his thumb shifting against the fabric of her trousers, as if familiarity was long granted and he was playing catch-up, charming enough to trespass.

Weiss lifted his wrist and threw his greasy palm back to his own lap, with not a word.

He blinked, laughed once, and made the worst mistake of opening his floppy mouth.

"Come on," he said. "I was just-"

"Don't."

Quiet.

So much quiet that even the jungle leaned in to listen.

Sarah had gone still, the warmth in her face draining, all that easy humour and lust dripping into something meaner - the kind I'd seen in playgrounds.

I set my glass down.

Weiss stood.

Jaune followed.

Then Sarah.

Then me.

"Let's get you to bed, Jaune," I said.

"I'm fine, Ethan."

"No, you're not," Weiss mumbled.

"Can we talk outside?"

His hand cuffed around her arm.

Sarah lunged, unstoppable.

One viscous step and her knee drove between his legs with all the kindness of a prison sentence. He folded with a sound I hope never to hear again; Weiss stumbled back against the wall, one hand over her mouth, the other cradling her arm as if he'd tried to sever it.

Sarah caught a fistful of shirt and hit him again, a filthy punch to the mouth, spitting blood.

And again, when he tried to straighten, tried to defend himself.

And again, and again; he went over the table, taking half the evening with him. Bottles burst on the floorboards; one lamp pitched and threw the room into an ugly shade.

"Sarah!"

I caught her core as she tried to hound after him, a fiendish little wolf, because nothing in her face suggested she'd stop; she fought me, all undying fury, trying to climb through my arms and over my shoulder to ravage a pig as he curled on the boards in a wreck of booze and broken glass, bleeding from his mouth, cradling his groin.

"He fucking-the fucking cunt, he-" Sarah hissed.

"I know."

"Then fucking let me-"

"You need to calm down!"

It should've ended there. Cupping her face, a solemn, heartfelt look in her eyes and some wise words.

Instead, the jungle flashed crimson.

A flare went up far beyond the canopy, a streaking ruby lance that tore into the night and hung like a dying star.

The world answered its call; the land unstitched.

Sound ripped from every direction, screams and shrieks and the cracking rush of trees convulsing under sudden violation. A huge mass blundered through the understory hard enough to shake the floor, and a shape crossed over the roof, massive and fast, hammering the cabin with a leathery buffet of air.

Theo cried out from his deep cradle, and Weiss outran time itself to find him.

She missed the visage... barely two miles away, of the lift tower, our passage into this heaven, lighting up through the black lattice.

A clean orange flash in the dark.

Then the mountain split.

Fire punched upward in a looming column, metal cartwheeled black; a deep detonation, the death-rattles of torn steel, the thunderclap of collapse rolling through this hollow gut.

It lost its fucking mind.

Animals wailed torturously; lights flared everywhere, flickered, failed.

The power died... as the jungle damned itself into silence, like its throat had been torn.

One blink; the whole lie snuffed out, every careful thread of light gone until the only source remaining was an inferno where the lift stood, and the fading red, wispy stain beside it.

Our sanctuary carbonised.

And the night readied to deal its hand.

A tubby lard of fat rolls decided I talked too weird, read too much, and such crimes demanded punishment - a few chased laps around the climbing frame, peppered by stones from his fellow failed abortions. I hadn't even started crying, or scampered properly, or decided which serving of humiliation would hurt less, when she launched herself off the monkey bars like a feral saint and came crashing down on the little shit, knees first, granting me the glorious sight of a ten-year-old boxing match.

Gosh, the grass in that playground has never smelled any different.

She hit a pole wrong, where his face was, and snapped her arm so damn loud I heard it over any wailing taunts. Doctors set the bone, and I, encouraged by my parents to make friends with their son's saviour, visited her. She spared no pleasantries, asking me through a mouthful of pudding and flaunting her glitter-penned cast, if I wanted to egg the bully's house.

Ah, Sarah.

By twelve, she'd taught me how to hop the fence behind the public pool, and we'd float in the nightlife glow, like we were the last two kids on Earth, talking of crushes and life and rumours until authority sent us scuttling.

At fourteen, she punched holes through walls and drowned my bedroom in punk rock, stressing over coursework and parents (mainly mine), jotting private thoughts in a fleeting journal and mushing noses of those who tried to share her secrets out loud.

And at sixteen, she'd kissed a girl behind the bowling alley, stolen two road signs in her career, and convinced me (more times than I'd ever admit) to skip class so we could ride our bikes into the woods, into the quarry; smoke pot and scream our futures plain to the air amid other rebels and rapscallions.

A bad influence in every measurable sense; the best and worst thing to ever happen to me.

A good friend. Abrasive and brash as shit, but good.

And I almost squandered it, mistaking closeness for courage.

One random night, when we'd climbed the roof of her garage armed with blankets and contraband bottles of cherry vodka her Dad turned a blind eye to, to hum the shingles of a travelling carnival, waiting to catch a shooting star or more. She talked for hours about all the places she'd leave this guppy town for, all the gorgeous bodies she'd fuck when she got there, all the smart, beautiful dreams that waited with their mouths open, drooling the angst and hubris of young adulthood; a self-proclaimed thug, skin inked with pop culture, believing she was worth more than the cards life had dealt.

I watched her laugh steam into cold and realised then, within a helpless nausea of revelation, what was wrong with me. When she finally slumped against my shoulder, warm and careless and trusting, I thought of taking her hand and exploring her lips, to show her she'd already forged one bittersweet dream within another.

I thought of ruining my friendship, my kinship, my life on purpose.

Only thoughts.

Instead, I stilled my frantic heart and spoke inspired mumbles until morning. She'd called me 'boring'. I don't know if she knew, if she saw how starved my eyes were, if she was waiting or hoping or glad; sparing me from another humiliation, as she'd always done and would continue to.

And we carried on.

Loving her - and yes, in whatever ugly, tangled, adolescent way a person can 'love' their best friend - was like being handed a live wire and told to call it comfort, never to be shared; a one-sided attrition. A damned kindred, venturing soul who could exhaust and embarrass and yet, despite all logic, make me feel invincible... and would never go anywhere without her '+1'.

So of course, when Sarah won her silver ticket - through what esteemed peers insisted was a 'Founder's Invitation' - she came pounding on my bedroom window before sunrise, eyes bright, eyeliner smudged from sleeping in it, and scared more years off my life.

"Get up, cunt," she hissed through the glass, parading a cream envelope at me like she'd stolen it from a vault. "We're going to the mountain!"

I let her in before my mother woke and called the police. Again.

"You say that like it's normal," I grumbled, wrapped sheepishly in a duvet, timidly hiding my state of undress.

"It is for us now." She dropped into my desk chair, spun, and read the card in the same posh voice she used to mock. "Congratulations, Resident. You and one optional guest-that's you-are cordially invited to an exclusive, guided tour of House 65, courtesy of Archbishop Biotics and the prestige Haven Research Facility Division-bla bla bla, small print. Get dressed!"

She lowered the card, grin widening.

"What, right now?"

"Yes! Ethan, we've won the fucking lottery!"

How could I say no to such sparkling excitement?

And in her fairness, she might as well have.

Everyone in town knew House 65.

Sat proud beyond the ridge, a copper-domed observatory peered over the trees that ranged from (depending on who you asked) a botanical lab to a weather station; a biotech think tank, a private zoo, or just an expensive, lucrative way for a billionaire to avoid commoners, that occupied brochures and local gossip.

Mel's Diner hummed with such gossip, amid cutlery, coffee, and weaponised curiosity, while Sarah laid her invitation between sugar shakers; a sacred relic for any onlooker to see. And see they did, as glances bounced from our booth to the ridge beyond, expecting the distant House might raise a hand and salute the unlucky masses.

On a notice board, beneath missing cat posters and curling flyers, a new company notice fluttered whenever the door opened:

TOUR DAY IN EFFECT - AUTHORISED GUESTS ONLY

TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED

- Archbishop Biotics

Pete from the hardware store slapped his newspaper and barked as our drinks arrived.

"A tour?! They do tours now?! Fuck is that place, Disneyland?!"

"Probably just plants and stargazing, grumps." Mel herself said, topping off his coffee.

"Then why the fence?" Pete shot back, his gaze sneaking darts at us. "Why the trailer trucks? Why's every road up there monitored? Nobody builds a metal ring around a mountain to stare at space and grow... I don't know, tomatoes."

"Maybe they bite?" Someone said, and a few laughs danced around the room until false reassurance fit properly on their faces.

House 65 had spent years buying goodwill; building its monuments, its halo.

Funded scholarships, repaired floods, and sent polished vans to the clinic with vaccines and vitamin packs stamped with a company crest: a golden reptile's eye. And their founder, our good Doctor Mara Archbishop - our Saint of The Ridge - smiled from charity galas and newspaper clippings with the elegant calmness of a woman who had never once been proven wrong... or told no. She tipped a hat to the grocer when she graced the streets, bought rounds of coffee for retirees, and listened to the Mayor's rambles with a patient, clinical grin.

People loved what her money did.

But they didn't trust her mountain; those monuments had cracks, and that halo tilted.

And we'd all been woken at least once to the mechanical hum bleeding down; to cattle hauliers that blitzed roads in the earliest mornings. I'd never given it much imagination, never really wondered what lived under the private dome that choked moonlight on clear skies, when clouds dragged themselves thin, where fabled silver machines churned money and charted cosmos.

I assumed Sarah felt the same. Yet here we were.

"So, how many got invited?" I soon asked her.

"Four." She shrugged, slurping down a milkshake. "Why?"

"Just... curious."

"You're always curious," she said fondly.

"That a good thing?"

"Usually." She smiled.

The limousine arrived at noon.

A long white vehicle snaked into town so quietly it almost glided, all polished panels, blacked-out windows, and gold detailing that caught sunlight in surgical winks, and when it stopped outside the diner, every eye shifted to watch. Doors sighed and unfolded, and a driver in pearl-grey uniform stepped out, wearing a stoic expression so carefully calibrated it seemed robotic.

Sarah bolted so fast her shadow had to usher me.

The man smiled, his professionalism wavering, as Sarah showed him her ticket.

"Ah, another young blood. Hope you're hungry."

He inclined his head toward the open door, tapped down on a tablet, and reclaimed his wheel.

Inside, velvet seats ran along in facing rows, divided by brass lamps and polished walnut tables; platinum seatbelts, chilled glass bottles nested in silver rings, satin boxes embossed with the Archbishop crest.

And everyone else was already here.

A boy nearest the window almost bounced in his seat when we climbed in. Maybe twelve, all freckles and restless, physically incapable of being still inside his own skin.

"Hi!" He said immediately. "I'm, um-... I'm Theo!"

Beside him sat an older girl, deeply familiar and burdened with stopping Theo from enthusiastically launching himself into the stratosphere. One hand sat hooked in the back of his hoodie, barely looking at him while still somehow controlling his orbit. Tired eyes, tidy frame, pretty in a sharp, cool way that looked half natural and half hard-earned.

"Ignore him," she said. "Or don't. It never matters."

"You said I could say hello?!"

"... oh yeah."

Sarah smiled and slid into a seat.

"Sarah," she said.

"Ethan," I added, taking my place beside her.

"Weiss," the girl said.

Theo nodded, as if he were filing us into a system. "Do either of you, uh-... like rocks?"

Weiss closed her eyes. "Ugh, fuck me."

"Yeah, rocks are cool," Sarah said, fighting to contain a laugh; a battle I fought in unison.

"Thank you!" Theo said, vindicated.

Across them sat a smiling young man, eyes down at a brochure.

"You could try sharing his enthusiasm, Weiss." He said.

She glared at him. "Our parents do enough of that, thanks."

"And yet he brought you with him?"

Theo chirped up. "Hell yeah, I did! I'd be bored without her!"

Weiss relented, and a smirk nearly forced its way out.

"Hmph. Whatever."

The man's eyes then found us. Blonde hair that refused total neatness, a handsome, rumpled face; good build. "Jaune," he said pleasantly, firm hand at his chest.

Sarah leaned forward with a look I knew well.

"No tag along?"

"Ah, this graduate flies solo." He leaned forward too, and spoke next in a subdued murmur. "Kind of like the miserable bitch in the back."

Theo laughed, kicking his heel; Weiss was quick to hush him as Sarah and I looked to the rear corner, where our final guest sat: a woman in a cream coat so expensive it looked immune to weather and ordinary social contact. Perfect hair, perfect posture, and an unrivalled beauty that had been chiselled by wealth into something far more impressive than natural. One elegant, gloved hand rested on a silver cane, and rings flashed on the other as she studied an invitation packet.

"Who's-" I began.

"Someone who's not deaf, young man!" She said, her voice radiating with refined authority.

"Well, you've given me no reason to call you anything else," Jaune said, raising his hands in a mocking surrender.

Her smile came thin and immaculate. "Caroline," she said.

"That wasn't hard, was it?"

"I suppose not."

There was a brief silence; Theo broke it.

"She's pretty."

"Many thanks, little rock goblin."

"Don't call him that." Weiss spat.

Sarah shot her a glance too, knuckles twitching. I rested a hesitant, but firm hand on her knee.

"Oh, please, dear, I meant nothing by it. Besides, I'm sure he's been called far worse."

Sarah opened her mouth, but the driver spoke first over invisible speakers, as our limo pulled away from town and began its slow, purring climb toward the ridge.

"Please remember to complete your waivers before arrival," he said. "And try to keep it civil back there. You're all winners, after all."

Jaune untied his satin box as our chariot settled into quieter, casual conversations. He tossed candied gingers to Theo with a wink; sugared violets to Weiss, and produced a glossy electronic ledger.

"Very modest," She muttered, producing her own, still shooting looks at a silent lady who paid her no such courtesy.

Theo read his screen aloud with bated breath.

"No guarantee of complete environmental control-what does that mean?"

Weiss looked to Jaune for salvation.

"Nothing bad," he said, but the look on his face betrayed him.

I skimmed our waiver:

potential lab exposure

contaminations

engineered pollinators?

... unpredictable animal behaviour?

"The fuck?" Sarah muttered, reading the same words.

Outside, town fell away in layers until only farms remained, then the last scraps of a sane road. Trees crowded close, the mountain seemed to loom from every direction, and through tinted glass I caught glimpses of obsidian fencing between trunks - a giant, onyx curtain cutting through the terrain, humming with a live power, singeing leaves and adorned with patient red lights.

Cameras turned as we passed.

Theo pressed his face to the window.

At the first gate, a wash of green light passed over, and a steel barrier opened inward.

Quiet enveloped our party.

At a second gate, the driver's voice returned.

"Windows will now be lowered for acclimatisation."

Weiss let out a tiny, disbelieving breath.

"That's not a real word, right?" Sarah asked.

"It is if you're rich enough," Jaune said.

I smiled a tad at that; Theo bounced one leg hard enough to rattle the county.

"Is he-" I tried to ask Weiss.

"He's fine." She said, as the shades slid down, slowly, delicately.

The forest beyond the inner perimeter was... wrong.

The trees gleamed with an alien humidity, bark slick and dark, taller than any pines or oaks that inherited the land, and pale vines pulsed through the roots like lit veins, violating earth and crawling up their timber frames thirstily, lapping sap like cottonmouth tongues.

"What the fuck," Theo whispered, in a tone of confused awe.

"Language," Weiss said automatically, though she stared just as hard.

"What kind of biome is this?" Jaune said softly, more to himself.

Sarah had gone mute, her expression sharpened into something rare: interest.

Real, pure interest.

While Caroline did nothing at all, barely giving the forest a glance, more judgmental than commentary.

The road then curved.

And the mountain opened its mouth.

The rock face had been carved into a vast black maw; a stretched tunnel, lined with bronze ribbing, like the jaw of some sleeping mechanical titan held open in willing obedience. Warm amber light spilt from within, and the limo coasted toward it; a tasty, shining white treat longing to be swallowed.

Jaune watched the entrance with avid concentration, trying to reverse-engineer it in his head; nudging Weiss's shoe in an attempt to stop her hiding awe from her brother, who made choked little peeps of delight. Caroline crossed her legs, unimpressed.

"Tsk. Theatrics."

Inside, the tunnel walls were smoothly cut dusk, pulsing with guide lights sunk into stone. The air changed instantly - humid, wetter, touched by a succulent chemical perfume between the clean crisp of conditioned air as a chiming, greeting music grew louder, until the tunnel broadened, and then opened into a gigantic receiving bay buried beneath the mountain.

The truth of House 65.

Not a copper dome above; a pretty observatory, a cute face town could point to and daydream about.

That dainty little thing was only a hat, a front, a distraction; hardly registered on entry.

Almost pathetic when compared to the sprawling, immense threshold we resided in.

Loading platforms, polished metal floors, security booths, silver rails set into concrete, cargo lifts, and walls curved so seamlessly from rock to steel to glass they looked grown; a utopian chamber spacious enough to pose as a hangar for spacecraft, buzzing with a small army of personnel manning equipment, be it scientists or armed guards.

Above, welcoming silk banners stretched between catwalks:

TO WONDER IS TO WILL

The limo doors lifted, heat breathed in around us, and one wall of the bay irised open to reveal Doctor Archbishop herself in immaculate green, hair pinned back, tablet attached to one hand like a third limb.

"Welcome!" She called, her voice carrying rough through the bustling chamber, huffing her way over to us. "Surface impressions are so often misleading, aren't they?! I find the truly miraculous stuff prefers to dwell a little deeper!"

Caroline emerged first, as though answering a summons she finally considered worthy of her time. Weiss next, catching Theo by the sleeve before he could rocket away. While Jaune exited more cautiously, still studying the architecture with both visible fascination and confusion, sneaking doses of attention to the bipolar siblings.

Sarah lingered behind me... and awkwardly took my hand. Too warm.

The Doctor allowed herself the faintest hint of amusement at our mesmerised crew, before turning and gesturing to follow across the bay. Caroline fell into step at the front, close enough to suggest intent. It suited her better than the limo. In motion, she had abandoned the guise of a passenger and inspected the chamber as if it were a purchase not fully committed to.

"You do enjoy spectacle, Mara," she said, shrugging off part of her coat to fight the hanging heat, uttering her first name with confidence.

The Doctor did not look at her. "And you still enjoy pretending it's all beneath you."

Weiss, Sarah and I shared a look.

Caroline's grin came elegant and bloodless. "Call it due diligence-"

"I call it expensive patience... friend."

Theo looked between them with odd excitement. "Have you been here before, miss?" He asked loudly.

Caroline glanced at him with mild surprise. "Not this division."

"There are divisions?" Jaune asked.

"House 65 is not a singular project, young man." The Doctor answered. "It is an ecosystem. Some elegant, some necessary, some not yet ready for vulgar description."

"Just say 'yes', damn," Weiss whispered to herself, rubbing her temples.

We passed beneath an arch of black steel and into a corridor softened by luxury. Leisure zones, cafes, and glass cases lined the walls, each holding stunning and daunting displays; translucent seed pods veined with amber, flowers preserved in crystal, and tiny skeletal models of impossible animals posed mid-stride, like works of art.

"Are those real?!" Theo beamed.

"Merely inspiration, lad."

"For what?"

"Success."

At the end of the corridor, the wall unveiled into a modest space; to call it a 'service elevator' would be an insult. Circular and enormous, built to carry machinery - whole vehicles, perhaps, or freight crates the size of bungalows if brave enough. Glass walls slid around a platform of white metal and brass, its railings filigreed with intricate, whimsical jewels and above hung banks of warm light while below, through a transparent floor, was a throat of rock braced with steel, pipes, cables and tracks dropping into a void so deep it made my stomach tense.

"Is all of this sanctioned?" Jaune asked, almost accusatory.

The Doctor smiled. "Of course. I don't think I'm built for federal prison."

Caroline stepped on first, testing the metal with an immaculate heel to confirm it was real.

"You still haven't explained what I'm supposed to be excited about."

"If I explained it, Carol, I would lose the pleasure of watching you try to understand it."

That irritated her, and Weiss relished watching her face contort.

I despised the floor most, the way that shaft vanished into some engineered underworld, as we flowed into the lift. Sarah must've noticed my inability to look down, squeezing my hand tighter with a little smile. It only made things worse.

I had to free myself, apologetically slipping my palm out of her grip to her dismay. She scoffed, folding her shoulders over her chest.

The Doctor prized herself in the centre, as the doors snapped shut, and before we could converse, the descent came fast. A brash drop of the bowels to the uninitiated, but assured, as the glass filled with shaft walls of guiding, honeyed light.

And down, down, down we went into the Earth.

The mountain's industrial anatomy revealed itself in flashes as levels blurred past.

Then, indifferent stone again.

For one awful second, Sarah seemed tempted to enjoy herself at my expense; my refusal to acknowledge the private, excavated cruelty below, opening beneath our shoes, but she wavered at the sheer scale of the place.

Jaune studied every passing strut and junction with open, helpless fascination, while Weiss, becoming somewhat observant of his watching, kept a clamp on Theo as if some unnatural law might fling him through the glass.

Caroline remained unchanged, waiting for the curtains to justify themselves.

And by God, they did.

The shaft widened; light began to gather below. A pale blast at first, but colour soon rose into it, wafts of green and gold and brown, vast and layered shades, our descent slowing by a small degree as the world unfurled... into a sprawling tropical paradise so immense my mind rejected it.

A jungle - no, a damn rainforest - spread for fucking miles, bathing under an impossible, artificial sky, its colossal synthetic ceiling painted a rich blue glare of endless summer. A false sun burned beyond a gauze of tailored cloud, pouring warm daylight over a dense, cathedral-thick canopy. Humidity ghosted the glass, mist drifted in luminous sheets between emergent evergreen crowns, water flashed in silver cuts - streams, lagoons, rivers - winding through a thriving abundance determined to quell any memory of rock and steel, and it was alive. Teeming, screaming with itself, throbbing with delirious ambience; the ceaseless thrum of insects, the trills of unseen birds, the churring, clicking, croaking, cascading chorus of creatures living among the leaves. Giant ferns uncurled in shaggy green masses, moist trees erected like pillars, girdled by vines, and flowers the size of a person blazed in violent bursts of crimson, orange, bruised purple and poisonous blue, their petals lathered in dew, their mouths smiling. And occasional movements disturbed the tranquil; the taunts of scaled hide, wingbeats, an ape lurching through branches, panthers bounding in waterfalls, tails snicking fast through foliage.

Incomprehensible and unrivalled.

Beautiful.

Absolute.

Theo forgot himself entirely, as did his sister; Jaune wore a naked expression of a man tackling several blooming equations in his head; Sarah and I had become statues, blunted by audacity. But Caroline... still remained untouched. The view sprawled and roared and flirted with her, earning nothing more than a cold sweep.

"And the point of all this?"

The question seemed to please Doctor Archbishop, as if she viewed her impatience as another applause.

The lift slowed further.

A torrent of wind passed through the upper leaves, a tremor that shivered ferns and bowed branches in the green distance, but it did not relent. For it was no wind; it was intent. A path of purpose opened through the jungle in heaving, massive increments towards us. Birds shrieked from trees, great fonds slapped and parted, flowered branches bent and vanished, as something moved through the canopy with such casual authority that the land seemed to organise itself around it.

Theo made a strangled, squeal of delight as our lift came to a stop.

One treetop shuddered. Then another. And another. Vines drew taut and snapped, banks of nature stepped aside, and from that orchestrated sea of emerald there rose, with almost holy serenity, the girthed, curved neck... of a brachiosaurus. Mottled in rich greens and riverstone greys, beaded with water that caught artificial sunlight in jewelled pops; beneath, the suggestion of a hulking body lugged through the trees with tidal patience, camouflaged among the leaves.

A head, gentle and blunt-faced, peered down the canopy toward the glass.

Toward us.

Toward the little box, lowering visitors into its kingdom.

Its eyes were dark, placid and dull; old, deep and unreadable, framed by lashes kissing mist. It drew near with frightening calmness, one breath clouded every pane in a broad smog; this boom-limbed relic, this magnificent trespass against time, this living monument... bowed its head.

And at the centre of our lift, basking in our silence, stood a Doctor with a shit-eating grin, who set her coaxed eyes on little Theo.

"Would you like to pet him?"

Theo looked at her so fast I thought his neck would snap.

"Wha-... me?! Pet the-"

"Mmm hmm."

The Doctor made some minute gestures across her tablet, a lock disengaged, and a lone panel of glass slid soundlessly aside. She inclined her head, and Theo bolted as fast as his sister would allow.

"Hey, just be careful, please!"

He nodded, deaf, moving forward on manic feet.

Weiss followed, attached to his back, visibly scared and bewildered by the giant nostril that flared to the new scent of us; of the eye settling on an ant reaching towards it with trembling fingers.

Theo touched him.

Two digits, the front of his colossal snout, so gently, and when the world failed to punish his destiny, his whole palm came to rest against his hide. The dinosaur closed his eye, content, and breathed out his nose in a deep, cavernous gust that blasted Theo's hair back, and bellowed a soothing moan of approval.

A helpless laugh erupted from the boy, struck by wonder, and he looked, in that moment, so painfully young; an open book of joy, carrying a childish softness unhurt by the world, stroking a miracle he would never forget.

The dinosaur lingered another moment. Then, with a slow and sorrowful grace, he lifted his head and turned with monumental patience, called away by unheard duties, and disappeared back into the rainforest.

"Bye!" Theo called, waving sporadically.

The lift resumed its descent in complete silence, save for the frantic appraisals and questions of one little boy.

Lushness warped into an assault, hitting skin and throat in tandem; floral swamp-rich musk laced with petrol and animal sweat, as the lift doors parted. The dialect of familiar insects, birds and amphibians followed, joined by hydraulic whines and thudding engines.

Theo lurched.

"Hold on! Please." Weiss said, being the first to march out, keeping her wriggling, eager tyke in check.

My boots met muddy concrete, patterned by tyre tracks and dried leaves trampled into the gravel floor. The outpost barely passed for a welcome point, more a survivalist scar; a nest of practical, caged violence left to earn its keep like some dishonoured truce. Low service structures dwelt beneath vined drapes, floodlight pylons rose among cycads, cargo trailers sat in rows beneath netted canopies; some armoured, some striped with hazard bands, some reinforced with thick cagework. Mud-caked trucks and jeeps idled beside crates and drums, while handlers and rangers moved briskly through the gloomy terminus, carrying clipboards, rifles, feed bins and medical coolers.

Not one paid us any attention; we were not the novelty here.

And the jungle was right there with them, with us, up in arms, as close as a lover.

Dragonflies the size of hawks skimmed over drainage ditches, frogs as big as housecats lurked in tangles of wet roots, and, beyond an outer fence that rivalled a castle gate, a plated ankylosaur waddled through ferns, grazing sloppily, ushered back into the fold by a couple rangers, handling the tank-sized boar with ease as its limp tail dragged furrows. Near one trailer, another pair of handlers guided a squat, feathered thing, its beak jerking with fussy indignation as baby birds settled in its mouth. Past it, where gravel gave way to the opening of a basin, a small herd of herbivores drifted past, shifting their egg-shaped heads in joint suspicion.

Farther off, along a worn road and above a bank, I caught the sway of serrated plates sneaking between the trees.

My stare drifted up to find an elusive structure over it all, a couple miles out. Rope-and-steel walkways linked cabin to cabin, nested and embraced by ladders and lifts, clinging verandas, and screened catwalks; a distant private village of lodges that could touch the horizon.

Sarah weakly nudged my shoulder as I took it all in.

"Penny for your thoughts?"

"I'd need more than a penny."

"Really? Can't possibly imagine why."

That earned her a flicking grin, one she returned.

"Shut up."

"Or what?"

"Or I'll-"

Theo, still restrained, found enough slack to point triumphantly at everything.

"Did you see that, guys?! And-... and that-"

"Yes, Theo," Weiss said. "We do."

Jaune stepped out, gaze shifting quickly, hungrily over the logistics of this place.

"Obscene," he mumbled. "Field containment, environmental bleeding-"

"And disgusting," Caroline said, emerging behind him, stalking carefully through the filth and muck, deeply offended she was not granted a cleaner entrance, but bearing a less severe face than topside.

"Would you prefer a slaughterhouse, bimbo?" Sarah chirped, the friend I knew reclaiming her throne in her head, getting a smile from me and a chuckle from Weiss.

"Excuse me?"

"Patrons, please!" The Doctor called, last to step out. Even here, ankle-deep in mud and fumes and a symphony of her own design, she arranged the scene around herself in insulting assuage. "Let's save arguments for-"

A field officer approached with rapid pace. Darker, tactical clothing; clean, urgent, with one hand pressed to an earpiece. He bent down and spoke in a voice lost to us, but her face revealed it all. An irritated wince of the eyes; a conductor informed mid-performance that a musician had collapsed.

Caroline's cane gave a little, squelching tap.

"Something the matter, Mara?"

"Only if you bore easy."

She then addressed the rest of us in a tone polished for ribbon-cutting.

"A minor operational matter requires my attention, but your tour should continue without delay. Please extend our staff the same courtesy you've... almost extended one another. And please, don't wander; just... wonder."

"Cringe," Sarah muttered.

"I heard that."

The Doctor, almost amused, passed us off with a small snap toward an approaching ranger; a slab of sun-browned muscle, cropped hair, jaw darkened by stubble, and sleeves rolled above forearms mapped by scratches and bites of nature. A uniform sat on him without ceremony, heavy belt at the waist, sidearm on one hip, tranq pistol on the other; a man built for the preserve he served.

"Joel," he said, looking us over. "Range lead. You'll be heading up to High Hides with me." He waved the Doctor away, and only Caroline watched her go, likely wishing she could follow.

I doubt any of us would've minded.

"High Hides?" Weiss asked.

Joel jerked his chin to the far-off web of cabins. "Of course. Safer than the ground, that's for sure." He thumbed toward a transport. "Now come on. If we're lucky, you'll make it to lunch before one of you does something stupid."

-

Night did not arrive naturally; it was administered.

The false sun dimmed smooth, its rich nova thinning to honey, then copper, then a long violet bleed over the canopy. Shadows cast out day-creatures, winding down in grunting, rustling retreats; night-folk taking their seats with stranger instruments. The calls of the jungle became throatier, unbothered with explaining themselves, and out in the dark, amid the electric droning of crickets, unseen beasts gave resonant, flute-deep cries.

We received it all from the High Hides, gazing out over miles of studyable black.

By then, we had been shown our quarters, fed beyond service, and supplied with enough liquor and emergency equipment to suggest our hosts expected both luxury and disaster at any given hour. Joel had left us there at sundown with a ring of keys, some radios, a promise of adventure tomorrow, and three tired, repeated rules:

Stay in the light.

Do not leave food unattended.

And if the jungle falls quiet, lock your doors.

Caroline vanished instantly after dinner, taking a bottle of red and all her attitude to whichever private cabin was seen fit. Theo, after resisting sleep with the doomed sincerity of youth, eventually folded on a central lodge sofa; his thumb in his mouth, head in Weiss's lap - muttering about his hurdles. She soon carried him to bed; Jaune followed like a service dog.

Some time after, they returned.

And there we were.

Four of us (absent a sleeping child and one socialite), tucked into the warm hush of the central cabin.

For an age, it was nice.

Really... really fucking nice.

The sort that feels doubtful in stories like this.

A fake fire glowed low in a wannabe stove, and bottles and glasses had accumulated across a table in lazy democracy; an evening gone too long to stay tidy. Sarah had commandeered one end of a sofa with her feet up, drink sloshing carelessly, all sarcasm and fangs. I sat near to be claimed by proxy, Jaune occupied an armchair with the loose confidence of a man who believed himself immortal, and Weiss allowed herself to rest, at last, on another sofa, drink balanced against her knee.

Sarah raised a glass to her, slurring her words. "Y'know, for someone who looks like she'd report fun to the police, you're taking all this weirdly well."

Weiss gave her a flat stare. "And for someone who looks like she'd key a priest's car for sport, you are too."

Sarah barked a laugh. "Oh, I have so done that."

"Yeah, no shit."

And the evening kept opening.

Jaune, flushed from drink and heat, drifted easily into stories; university, jobs, some almost certainly embellished to better suit company. Sarah met him in eager stride, inventing adolescent crimes with such pride that even I forgot which were true. Weiss, to my private shock, also contributed with dry remarks strong enough to elicit laughter. And I managed my share too, mostly by accident, and found that once we'd decided to be chumps, it was easy to mould in.

There was something stupidly tender about it, getting tipsy as the impossible thundered outside. The laughs, the smiles; the brighter the freer, the belief that this bizarre collection of strangers might yet become a unit, departing from an experience with gushing lore of dinosaurs in the jungle under House 65.

Maybe that was why the shift felt so immediate when it came.

No drama.

Just Jaune... who'd been etching closer to Weiss for some time, close enough to seem conversational; subtle, harmless under the shelter of alcohol and charm. She didn't seem to mind, or if she did, she tolerated it with the weary stillness of a girl used to men mistaking dryness for permission.

His hand found her thigh.

A small thing; hard to miss.

He smiled in a blurred, pleased way, his thumb shifting against the fabric of her trousers, as if familiarity was long granted and he was playing catch-up, charming enough to trespass.

Weiss lifted his wrist and threw his greasy palm back to his own lap, with not a word.

He blinked, laughed once, and made the worst mistake of opening his floppy mouth.

"Come on," he said. "I was just-"

"Don't."

Quiet.

So much quiet that even the jungle leaned in to listen.

Sarah had gone still, the warmth in her face draining, all that easy humour and lust dripping into something meaner - the kind I'd seen in playgrounds.

I set my glass down.

Weiss stood.

Jaune followed.

Then Sarah.

Then me.

"Let's get you to bed, Jaune," I said.

"I'm fine, Ethan."

"No, you're not," Weiss mumbled.

"Can we talk outside?"

His hand cuffed around her arm.

Sarah lunged, unstoppable.

One viscous step and her knee drove between his legs with all the kindness of a prison sentence. He folded with a sound I hope never to hear again; Weiss stumbled back against the wall, one hand over her mouth, the other shaking as if he'd tried to sever it.

Sarah caught a fistful of shirt and hit him again, a filthy punch to the mouth, spitting blood.

And again, when he tried to straighten, tried to defend himself.

And again, and again; he went over the table, taking half the evening with him. Bottles burst on the floorboards; one lamp pitched and threw the room into an ugly shade.

"Sarah!"

I caught her core as she tried to hound after him, a fiendish little wolf, because nothing in her face suggested she'd stop; she fought me, all undying fury, trying to climb through my arms and over my shoulder to ravage a pig as he curled on the boards in a wreck of booze and broken glass, bleeding from his mouth, cradling his groin.

"He fucking-the fucking cunt, he-" Sarah hissed.

"I know."

"Then fucking let me-"

"You need to calm down!"

It should've ended there. Cupping her face, a solemn, heartfelt look in her eyes and some wise words.

Instead, the jungle flashed crimson.

A flare went up far beyond the canopy, a streaking ruby lance that tore into the night and hung like a dying star.

The world answered its call; the land unstitched.

Sound ripped from every direction, screams and shrieks and the cracking rush of trees convulsing under sudden violation. A huge mass blundered through the understory hard enough to shake the floor, and a shape crossed over the roof, massive and fast, hammering the cabin with a leathery buffet of air.

Theo cried out from his deep cradle, and Weiss outran time itself to find him.

She missed the visage... barely two miles away, of the lift tower, our passage into this heaven, lighting up through the black lattice.

A clean orange flash in the dark.

Then the mountain split.

Fire punched upward in a looming column, metal cartwheeled black; a deep detonation, the death-rattles of torn steel, the thunderclap of collapse rolling through this hollow gut.

It lost its fucking mind.

Animals wailed torturously; lights flared everywhere, flickered, failed.

The power died... as the jungle damned itself into silence, like its throat had been torn.

One blink; the whole lie snuffed out, every careful thread of light gone until the only source remaining was an inferno where the lift stood, and the fading red, wispy stain beside it.

Our sanctuary carbonised.

And the night readied to deal its hand.

A tubby lard of fat rolls decided I talked too weird, read too much, and such crimes demanded punishment - a few chased laps around the climbing frame, peppered by stones from his fellow failed abortions. I hadn't even started crying, or scampered properly, or decided which serving of humiliation would hurt less, when she launched herself off the monkey bars like a feral saint and came crashing down on the little shit, knees first, granting me the glorious sight of a ten-year-old boxing match.

Gosh, the grass in that playground has never smelled any different.

She hit a pole wrong, where his face was, and snapped her arm so damn loud I heard it over any wailing taunts. Doctors set the bone, and I, encouraged by my parents to make friends with their son's saviour, visited her. She spared no pleasantries, asking me through a mouthful of pudding and flaunting her glitter-penned cast, if I wanted to egg the bully's house.

Ah, Sarah.

By twelve, she'd taught me how to hop the fence behind the public pool, and we'd float in the nightlife glow, like we were the last two kids on Earth, talking of crushes and life and rumours until authority sent us scuttling.

At fourteen, she punched holes through walls and drowned my bedroom in punk rock, stressing over coursework and parents (mainly mine), jotting private thoughts in a fleeting journal and mushing noses of those who tried to share her secrets out loud.

And at sixteen, she'd kissed a girl behind the bowling alley, stolen two road signs in her career, and convinced me (more times than I'd ever admit) to skip class so we could ride our bikes into the woods, into the quarry; smoke pot and scream our futures plain to the air amid other rebels and rapscallions.

A bad influence in every measurable sense; the best and worst thing to ever happen to me.

A good friend. Abrasive and brash as shit, but good.

And I almost squandered it, mistaking closeness for courage.

One random night, when we'd climbed the roof of her garage armed with blankets and contraband bottles of cherry vodka her Dad turned a blind eye to, to hum the shingles of a travelling carnival, waiting to catch a shooting star or more. She talked for hours about all the places she'd leave this guppy town for, all the gorgeous bodies she'd fuck when she got there, all the smart, beautiful dreams that waited with their mouths open, drooling the angst and hubris of young adulthood; a self-proclaimed thug, skin inked with pop culture, believing she was worth more than the cards life had dealt.

I watched her laugh steam into cold and realised then, within a helpless nausea of revelation, what was wrong with me. When she finally slumped against my shoulder, warm and careless and trusting, I thought of taking her hand and exploring her lips, to show her she'd already forged one bittersweet dream within another.

I thought of ruining my friendship, my kinship, my life on purpose.

Only thoughts.

Instead, I stilled my frantic heart and spoke inspired mumbles until morning. She'd called me 'boring'. I don't know if she knew, if she saw how starved my eyes were, if she was waiting or hoping or glad; sparing me from another humiliation, as she'd always done and would continue to.

And we carried on.

Loving her - and yes, in whatever ugly, tangled, adolescent way a person can 'love' their best friend - was like being handed a live wire and told to call it comfort, never to be shared; a one-sided attrition. A damned kindred, venturing soul who could exhaust and embarrass and yet, despite all logic, make me feel invincible... and would never go anywhere without her '+1'.

So of course, when Sarah won her silver ticket - through what esteemed peers insisted was a 'Founder's Invitation' - she came pounding on my bedroom window before sunrise, eyes bright, eyeliner smudged from sleeping in it, and scared more years off my life.

"Get up, cunt," she hissed through the glass, parading a cream envelope at me like she'd stolen it from a vault. "We're going to the mountain!"

I let her in before my mother woke and called the police. Again.

"You say that like it's normal," I grumbled, wrapped sheepishly in a duvet, timidly hiding my state of undress.

"It is for us now." She dropped into my desk chair, spun, and read the card in the same posh voice she used to mock. "Congratulations, Resident. You and one optional guest-that's you-are cordially invited to an exclusive, guided tour of House 65, courtesy of Archbishop Biotics and the prestige Haven Research Facility Division-bla bla bla, small print. Get dressed!"

She lowered the card, grin widening.

"What, right now?"

"Yes! Ethan, we've won the fucking lottery!"

How could I say no to such sparkling excitement?

And in her fairness, she might as well have.

Everyone in town knew House 65.

Sat proud beyond the ridge, a copper-domed observatory peered over the trees that ranged from (depending on who you asked) a botanical lab to a weather station; a biotech think tank, a private zoo, or just an expensive, lucrative way for a billionaire to avoid commoners, that occupied brochures and local gossip.

Mel's Diner hummed with such gossip, amid cutlery, coffee, and weaponised curiosity, while Sarah laid her invitation between sugar shakers; a sacred relic for any onlooker to see. And see they did, as glances bounced from our booth to the ridge beyond, expecting the distant House might raise a hand and salute the unlucky masses.

On a notice board, beneath missing cat posters and curling flyers, a new company notice fluttered whenever the door opened:

TOUR DAY IN EFFECT - AUTHORISED GUESTS ONLY

TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED

- Archbishop Biotics

Pete from the hardware store slapped his newspaper and barked as our drinks arrived.

"A tour?! They do tours now?! Fuck is that place, Disneyland?!"

"Probably just plants and stargazing, grumps." Mel herself said, topping off his coffee.

"Then why the fence?" Pete shot back, his gaze sneaking darts at us. "Why the trailer trucks? Why's every road up there monitored? Nobody builds a metal ring around a mountain to stare at space and grow... I don't know, tomatoes."

"Maybe they bite?" Someone said, and a few laughs danced around the room until false reassurance fit properly on their faces.

House 65 had spent years buying goodwill; building its monuments, its halo.

Funded scholarships, repaired floods, and sent polished vans to the clinic with vaccines and vitamin packs stamped with a company crest: a golden reptile's eye. And their founder, our good Doctor Mara Archbishop - our Saint of The Ridge - smiled from charity galas and newspaper clippings with the elegant calmness of a woman who had never once been proven wrong... or told no. She tipped a hat to the grocer when she graced the streets, bought rounds of coffee for retirees, and listened to the Mayor's rambles with a patient, clinical grin.

People loved what her money did.

But they didn't trust her mountain; those monuments had cracks, and that halo tilted.

And we'd all been woken at least once to the mechanical hum bleeding down; to cattle hauliers that blitzed roads in the earliest mornings. I'd never given it much imagination, never really wondered what lived under the private dome that choked moonlight on clear skies, when clouds dragged themselves thin, where fabled silver machines churned money and charted cosmos.

I assumed Sarah felt the same. Yet here we were.

"So, how many got invited?" I soon asked her.

"Four." She shrugged, slurping down a milkshake. "Why?"

"Just... curious."

"You're always curious," she said fondly.

"That a good thing?"

"Usually." She smiled.

The limousine arrived at noon.

A long white vehicle snaked into town so quietly it almost glided, all polished panels, blacked-out windows, and gold detailing that caught sunlight in surgical winks, and when it stopped outside the diner, every eye shifted to watch. Doors sighed and unfolded, and a driver in pearl-grey uniform stepped out, wearing a stoic expression so carefully calibrated it seemed robotic.

Sarah bolted so fast her shadow had to usher me.

The man smiled, his professionalism wavering, as Sarah showed him her ticket.

"Ah, another young blood. Hope you're hungry."

He inclined his head toward the open door, tapped down on a tablet, and reclaimed his wheel.

Inside, velvet seats ran along in facing rows, divided by brass lamps and polished walnut tables; platinum seatbelts, chilled glass bottles nested in silver rings, satin boxes embossed with the Archbishop crest.

And everyone else was already here.

A boy nearest the window almost bounced in his seat when we climbed in. Maybe twelve, all freckles and restless, physically incapable of being still inside his own skin.

"Hi!" He said immediately. "I'm, um-... I'm Theo!"

Beside him sat an older girl, deeply familiar and burdened with stopping Theo from enthusiastically launching himself into the stratosphere. One hand sat hooked in the back of his hoodie, barely looking at him while still somehow controlling his orbit. Tired eyes, tidy frame, pretty in a sharp, cool way that looked half natural and half hard-earned.

"Ignore him," she said. "Or don't. It never matters."

"You said I could say hello?!"

"... oh yeah."

Sarah smiled and slid into a seat.

"Sarah," she said.

"Ethan," I added, taking my place beside her.

"Weiss," the girl said.

Theo nodded, as if he were filing us into a system. "Do either of you, uh-... like rocks?"

Weiss closed her eyes. "Ugh, fuck me."

"Yeah, rocks are cool," Sarah said, fighting to contain a laugh; a battle I fought in unison.

"Thank you!" Theo said, vindicated.

Across them sat a smiling young man, eyes down at a brochure.

"You could try sharing his enthusiasm, Weiss." He said.

She glared at him. "Our parents do enough of that, thanks."

"And yet he brought you with him?"

Theo chirped up. "Hell yeah, I did! I'd be bored without her!"

Weiss relented, and a smirk nearly forced its way out.

"Hmph. Whatever."

The man's eyes then found us. Blonde hair that refused total neatness, a handsome, rumpled face; good build. "Jaune," he said pleasantly, firm hand at his chest.

Sarah leaned forward with a look I knew well.

"No tag along?"

"Ah, this graduate flies solo." He leaned forward too, and spoke next in a subdued murmur. "Kind of like the miserable bitch in the back."

Theo laughed, kicking his heel; Weiss was quick to hush him as Sarah and I looked to the rear corner, where our final guest sat: a woman in a cream coat so expensive it looked immune to weather and ordinary social contact. Perfect hair, perfect posture, and an unrivalled beauty that had been chiselled by wealth into something far more impressive than natural. One elegant, gloved hand rested on a silver cane, and rings flashed on the other as she studied an invitation packet.

"Who's-" I began.

"Someone who's not deaf, young man!" She said, her voice radiating with refined authority.

"Well, you've given me no reason to call you anything else," Jaune said, raising his hands in a mocking surrender.

Her smile came thin and immaculate. "Caroline," she said.

"That wasn't hard, was it?"

"I suppose not."

There was a brief silence; Theo broke it.

"She's pretty."

"Many thanks, little rock goblin."

"Don't call him that." Weiss spat.

Sarah shot her a glance too, knuckles twitching. I rested a hesitant, but firm hand on her knee.

"Oh, please, dear, I meant nothing by it. Besides, I'm sure he's been called far worse."

Sarah opened her mouth, but the driver spoke first over invisible speakers, as our limo pulled away from town and began its slow, purring climb toward the ridge.

"Please remember to complete your waivers before arrival," he said. "And try to keep it civil back there. You're all winners, after all."

Jaune untied his satin box as our chariot settled into quieter, casual conversations. He tossed candied gingers to Theo with a wink; sugared violets to Weiss, and produced a glossy electronic ledger.

"Very modest," She muttered, producing her own, still shooting looks at a silent lady who paid her no such courtesy.

Theo read his screen aloud with bated breath.

"No guarantee of complete environmental control-what does that mean?"

Weiss looked to Jaune for salvation.

"Nothing bad," he said, but the look on his face betrayed him.

I skimmed our waiver:

potential lab exposure

contaminations

engineered pollinators?

... unpredictable animal behaviour?

"The fuck?" Sarah muttered, reading the same words.

Outside, town fell away in layers until only farms remained, then the last scraps of a sane road. Trees crowded close, the mountain seemed to loom from every direction, and through tinted glass I caught glimpses of obsidian fencing between trunks - a giant, onyx curtain cutting through the terrain, humming with a live power, singeing leaves and adorned with patient red lights.

Cameras turned as we passed.

Theo pressed his face to the window.

At the first gate, a wash of green light passed over, and a steel barrier opened inward.

Quiet enveloped our party.

At a second gate, the driver's voice returned.

"Windows will now be lowered for acclimatisation."

Weiss let out a tiny, disbelieving breath.

"That's not a real word, right?" Sarah asked.

"It is if you're rich enough," Jaune said.

I smiled a tad at that; Theo bounced one leg hard enough to rattle the county.

"Is he-" I tried to ask Weiss.

"He's fine." She said, as the shades slid down, slowly, delicately.

The forest beyond the inner perimeter was... wrong.

The trees gleamed with an alien humidity, bark slick and dark, taller than any pines or oaks that inherited the land, and pale vines pulsed through the roots like lit veins, violating earth and crawling up their timber frames thirstily, lapping sap like cottonmouth tongues.

"What the fuck," Theo whispered, in a tone of confused awe.

"Language," Weiss said automatically, though she stared just as hard.

"What kind of biome is this?" Jaune said softly, more to himself.

Sarah had gone mute, her expression sharpened into something rare: interest.

Real, pure interest.

While Caroline did nothing at all, barely giving the forest a glance, more judgmental than commentary.

The road then curved.

And the mountain opened its mouth.

The rock face had been carved into a vast black maw; a stretched tunnel, lined with bronze ribbing, like the jaw of some sleeping mechanical titan held open in willing obedience. Warm amber light spilt from within, and the limo coasted toward it; a tasty, shining white treat longing to be swallowed.

Jaune watched the entrance with avid concentration, trying to reverse-engineer it in his head; nudging Weiss's shoe in an attempt to stop her hiding awe from her brother, who made choked little peeps of delight. Caroline crossed her legs, unimpressed.

"Tsk. Theatrics."

Inside, the tunnel walls were smoothly cut dusk, pulsing with guide lights sunk into stone. The air changed instantly - humid, wetter, touched by a succulent chemical perfume between the clean crisp of conditioned air as a chiming, greeting music grew louder, until the tunnel broadened, and then opened into a gigantic receiving bay buried beneath the mountain.

The truth of House 65.

Not a copper dome above; a pretty observatory, a cute face town could point to and daydream about.

That dainty little thing was only a hat, a front, a distraction; hardly registered on entry.

Almost pathetic when compared to the sprawling, immense threshold we resided in.

Loading platforms, polished metal floors, security booths, silver rails set into concrete, cargo lifts, and walls curved so seamlessly from rock to steel to glass they looked grown; a utopian chamber spacious enough to pose as a hangar for spacecraft, buzzing with a small army of personnel manning equipment, be it scientists or armed guards.

Above, welcoming silk banners stretched between catwalks:

TO WONDER IS TO WILL

The limo doors lifted, heat breathed in around us, and one wall of the bay irised open to reveal Doctor Archbishop herself in immaculate green, hair pinned back, tablet attached to one hand like a third limb.

"Welcome!" She called, her voice carrying rough through the bustling chamber, huffing her way over to us. "Surface impressions are so often misleading, aren't they?! I find the truly miraculous stuff prefers to dwell a little deeper!"

Caroline emerged first, as though answering a summons she finally considered worthy of her time. Weiss next, catching Theo by the sleeve before he could rocket away. While Jaune exited more cautiously, still studying the architecture with both visible fascination and confusion, sneaking doses of attention to the bipolar siblings.

Sarah lingered behind me... and awkwardly took my hand. Too warm.

The Doctor allowed herself the faintest hint of amusement at our mesmerised crew, before turning and gesturing to follow across the bay. Caroline fell into step at the front, close enough to suggest intent. It suited her better than the limo. In motion, she had abandoned the guise of a passenger and inspected the chamber as if it were a purchase not fully committed to.

"You do enjoy spectacle, Mara," she said, shrugging off part of her coat to fight the hanging heat, uttering her first name with confidence.

The Doctor did not look at her. "And you still enjoy pretending it's all beneath you."

Weiss, Sarah and I shared a look.

Caroline's grin came elegant and bloodless. "Call it due diligence-"

"I call it expensive patience... friend."

Theo looked between them with odd excitement. "Have you been here before, miss?" He asked loudly.

Caroline glanced at him with mild surprise. "Not this division."

"There are divisions?" Jaune asked.

"House 65 is not a singular project, young man." The Doctor answered. "It is an ecosystem. Some elegant, some necessary, some not yet ready for vulgar description."

"Just say 'yes', damn," Weiss whispered to herself, rubbing her temples.

We passed beneath an arch of black steel and into a corridor softened by luxury. Leisure zones, cafes, and glass cases lined the walls, each holding stunning and daunting displays; translucent seed pods veined with amber, flowers preserved in crystal, and tiny skeletal models of impossible animals posed mid-stride, like works of art.

"Are those real?!" Theo beamed.

"Merely inspiration, lad."

"For what?"

"Success."

At the end of the corridor, the wall unveiled into a modest space; to call it a 'service elevator' would be an insult. Circular and enormous, built to carry machinery - whole vehicles, perhaps, or freight crates the size of bungalows if brave enough. Glass walls slid around a platform of white metal and brass, its railings filigreed with intricate, whimsical jewels and above hung banks of warm light while below, through a transparent floor, was a throat of rock braced with steel, pipes, cables and tracks dropping into a void so deep it made my stomach tense.

"Is all of this sanctioned?" Jaune asked, almost accusatory.

The Doctor smiled. "Of course. I don't think I'm built for federal prison."

Caroline stepped on first, testing the metal with an immaculate heel to confirm it was real.

"You still haven't explained what I'm supposed to be excited about."

"If I explained it, Carol, I would lose the pleasure of watching you try to understand it."

That irritated her, and Weiss relished watching her face contort.

I despised the floor most, the way that shaft vanished into some engineered underworld, as we flowed into the lift. Sarah must've noticed my inability to look down, squeezing my hand tighter with a little smile. It only made things worse.

I had to free myself, apologetically slipping my palm out of her grip to her dismay. She scoffed, folding her shoulders over her chest.

The Doctor prized herself in the centre, as the doors snapped shut, and before we could converse, the descent came fast. A brash drop of the bowels to the uninitiated, but assured, as the glass filled with shaft walls of guiding, honeyed light.

And down, down, down we went into the Earth.

The mountain's industrial anatomy revealed itself in flashes as levels blurred past.

Then, indifferent stone again.

For one awful second, Sarah seemed tempted to enjoy herself at my expense; my refusal to acknowledge the private, excavated cruelty below, opening beneath our shoes, but she wavered at the sheer scale of the place.

Jaune studied every passing strut and junction with open, helpless fascination, while Weiss, becoming somewhat observant of his watching, kept a clamp on Theo as if some unnatural law might fling him through the glass.

Caroline remained unchanged, waiting for the curtains to justify themselves.

And by God, they did.

The shaft widened; light began to gather below. A pale blast at first, but colour soon rose into it, wafts of green and gold and brown, vast and layered shades, our descent slowing by a small degree as the world unfurled... into a sprawling tropical paradise so immense my mind rejected it.

A jungle - no, a damn rainforest - spread for fucking miles, bathing under an impossible, artificial sky, its colossal synthetic ceiling painted a rich blue glare of endless summer. A false sun burned beyond a gauze of tailored cloud, pouring warm daylight over a dense, cathedral-thick canopy. Humidity ghosted the glass, mist drifted in luminous sheets between emergent evergreen crowns, water flashed in silver cuts - streams, lagoons, rivers - winding through a thriving abundance determined to quell any memory of rock and steel, and it was alive. Teeming, screaming with itself, throbbing with delirious ambience; the ceaseless thrum of insects, the trills of unseen birds, the churring, clicking, croaking, cascading chorus of creatures living among the leaves. Giant ferns uncurled in shaggy green masses, moist trees erected like pillars, girdled by vines, and flowers the size of a person blazed in violent bursts of crimson, orange, bruised purple and poisonous blue, their petals lathered in dew, their mouths smiling. And occasional movements disturbed the tranquil; the taunts of scaled hide, wingbeats, an ape lurching through branches, panthers bounding in waterfalls, tails snicking fast through foliage.

Incomprehensible and unrivalled.

Beautiful.

Absolute.

Theo forgot himself entirely, as did his sister; Jaune wore a naked expression of a man tackling several blooming equations in his head; Sarah and I had become statues, blunted by audacity. But Caroline... still remained untouched. The view sprawled and roared and flirted with her, earning nothing more than a cold sweep.

"And the point of all this?"

The question seemed to please Doctor Archbishop, as if she viewed her impatience as another applause.

The lift slowed further.

A torrent of wind passed through the upper leaves, a tremor that shivered ferns and bowed branches in the green distance, but it did not relent. For it was no wind; it was intent. A path of purpose opened through the jungle in heaving, massive increments towards us. Birds shrieked from trees, great fonds slapped and parted, flowered branches bent and vanished, as something moved through the canopy with such casual authority that the land seemed to organise itself around it.

Theo made a strangled, squeal of delight as our lift came to a stop.

One treetop shuddered. Then another. And another. Vines drew taut and snapped, banks of nature stepped aside, and from that orchestrated sea of emerald there rose, with almost holy serenity, the girthed, curved neck... of a brachiosaurus. Mottled in rich greens and riverstone greys, beaded with water that caught artificial sunlight in jewelled pops; beneath, the suggestion of a hulking body lugged through the trees with tidal patience, camouflaged among the leaves.

A head, gentle and blunt-faced, peered down the canopy toward the glass.

Toward us.

Toward the little box, lowering visitors into its kingdom.

Its eyes were dark, placid and dull; old, deep and unreadable, framed by lashes kissing mist. It drew near with frightening calmness, one breath clouded every pane in a broad smog; this boom-limbed relic, this magnificent trespass against time, this living monument... bowed its head.

And at the centre of our lift, basking in our silence, stood a Doctor with a shit-eating grin, who set her coaxed eyes on little Theo.

"Would you like to pet him?"

Theo looked at her so fast I thought his neck would snap.

"Wha-... me?! Pet the-"

"Mmm hmm."

The Doctor made some minute gestures across her tablet, a lock disengaged, and a lone panel of glass slid soundlessly aside. She inclined her head, and Theo bolted as fast as his sister would allow.

"Hey, just be careful, please!"

He nodded, deaf, moving forward on manic feet.

Weiss followed, attached to his back, visibly scared and bewildered by the giant nostril that flared to the new scent of us; of the eye settling on an ant reaching towards it with trembling fingers.

Theo touched him.

Two digits, the front of his colossal snout, so gently, and when the world failed to punish his destiny, his whole palm came to rest against his hide. The dinosaur closed his eye, content, and breathed out his nose in a deep, cavernous gust that blasted Theo's hair back, and bellowed a soothing moan of approval.

A helpless laugh erupted from the boy, struck by wonder, and he looked, in that moment, so painfully young; an open book of joy, carrying a childish softness unhurt by the world, stroking a miracle he would never forget.

The dinosaur lingered another moment. Then, with a slow and sorrowful grace, he lifted his head and turned with monumental patience, called away by unheard duties, and disappeared back into the rainforest.

"Bye!" Theo called, waving sporadically.

The lift resumed its descent in complete silence, save for the frantic appraisals and questions of one little boy.

Lushness warped into an assault, hitting skin and throat in tandem; floral swamp-rich musk laced with petrol and animal sweat, as the lift doors parted. The dialect of familiar insects, birds and amphibians followed, joined by hydraulic whines and thudding engines.

Theo lurched.

"Hold on! Please." Weiss said, being the first to march out, keeping her wriggling, eager tyke in check.

My boots met muddy concrete, patterned by tyre tracks and dried leaves trampled into the gravel floor. The outpost barely passed for a welcome point, more a survivalist scar; a nest of practical, caged violence left to earn its keep like some dishonoured truce. Low service structures dwelt beneath vined drapes, floodlight pylons rose among cycads, cargo trailers sat in rows beneath netted canopies; some armoured, some striped with hazard bands, some reinforced with thick cagework. Mud-caked trucks and jeeps idled beside crates and drums, while handlers and rangers moved briskly through the gloomy terminus, carrying clipboards, rifles, feed bins and medical coolers.

Not one paid us any attention; we were not the novelty here.

And the jungle was right there with them, with us, up in arms, as close as a lover.

Dragonflies the size of hawks skimmed over drainage ditches, frogs as big as housecats lurked in tangles of wet roots, and, beyond an outer fence that rivalled a castle gate, a plated ankylosaur waddled through ferns, grazing sloppily, ushered back into the fold by a couple rangers, handling the tank-sized boar with ease as its limp tail dragged furrows. Near one trailer, another pair of handlers guided a squat, feathered thing, its beak jerking with fussy indignation as baby birds settled in its mouth. Past it, where gravel gave way to the opening of a basin, a small herd of herbivores drifted past, shifting their egg-shaped heads in joint suspicion.

Farther off, along a worn road and above a bank, I caught the sway of serrated plates sneaking between the trees.

My stare drifted up to find an elusive structure over it all, a couple miles out. Rope-and-steel walkways linked cabin to cabin, nested and embraced by ladders and lifts, clinging verandas, and screened catwalks; a distant private village of lodges that could touch the horizon.

Sarah weakly nudged my shoulder as I took it all in.

"Penny for your thoughts?"

"I'd need more than a penny."

"Really? Can't possibly imagine why."

That earned her a flicking grin, one she returned.

"Shut up."

"Or what?"

"Or I'll-"

Theo, still restrained, found enough slack to point triumphantly at everything.

"Did you see that, guys?! And-... and that-"

"Yes, Theo," Weiss said. "We do."

Jaune stepped out, gaze shifting quickly, hungrily over the logistics of this place.

"Obscene," he mumbled. "Field containment, environmental bleeding-"

"And disgusting," Caroline said, emerging behind him, stalking carefully through the filth and muck, deeply offended she was not granted a cleaner entrance, but bearing a less severe face than topside.

"Would you prefer a slaughterhouse, bimbo?" Sarah chirped, the friend I knew reclaiming her throne in her head, getting a smile from me and a chuckle from Weiss.

"Excuse me?"

"Patrons, please!" The Doctor called, last to step out. Even here, ankle-deep in mud and fumes and a symphony of her own design, she arranged the scene around herself in insulting assuage. "Let's save arguments for-"

A field officer approached with rapid pace. Darker, tactical clothing; clean, urgent, with one hand pressed to an earpiece. He bent down and spoke in a voice lost to us, but her face revealed it all. An irritated wince of the eyes; a conductor informed mid-performance that a musician had collapsed.

Caroline's cane gave a little, squelching tap.

"Something the matter, Mara?"

"Only if you bore easy."

She then addressed the rest of us in a tone polished for ribbon-cutting.

"A minor operational matter requires my attention, but your tour should continue without delay. Please extend our staff the same courtesy you've... almost extended one another. And please, don't wander; just... wonder."

"Cringe," Sarah muttered.

"I heard that."

The Doctor, almost amused, passed us off with a small snap toward an approaching ranger; a slab of sun-browned muscle, cropped hair, jaw darkened by stubble, and sleeves rolled above forearms mapped by scratches and bites of nature. A uniform sat on him without ceremony, heavy belt at the waist, sidearm on one hip, tranq pistol on the other; a man built for the preserve he served.

"Joel," he said, looking us over. "Range lead. You'll be heading up to High Hides with me." He waved the Doctor away, and only Caroline watched her go, likely wishing she could follow.

I doubt any of us would've minded.

"High Hides?" Weiss asked.

Joel jerked his chin to the far-off web of cabins. "Of course. Safer than the ground, that's for sure." He thumbed toward a transport. "Now come on. If we're lucky, you'll make it to lunch before one of you does something stupid."

-

Night did not arrive naturally; it was administered.

The false sun dimmed smooth, its rich nova thinning to honey, then copper, then a long violet bleed over the canopy. Shadows cast out day-creatures, winding down in grunting, rustling retreats; night-folk taking their seats with stranger instruments. The calls of the jungle became throatier, unbothered with explaining themselves, and out in the dark, amid the electric droning of crickets, unseen beasts gave resonant, flute-deep cries.

We received it all from the High Hides, gazing out over miles of studyable black.

By then, we had been shown our quarters, fed beyond service, and supplied with enough liquor and emergency equipment to suggest our hosts expected both luxury and disaster at any given hour. Joel had left us there at sundown with a ring of keys, some radios, a promise of adventure tomorrow, and three tired, repeated rules:

Stay in the light.

Do not leave food unattended.

And if the jungle falls quiet, lock your doors.

Caroline vanished instantly after dinner, taking a bottle of red and all her attitude to whichever private cabin was seen fit. Theo, after resisting sleep with the doomed sincerity of youth, eventually folded on a central lodge sofa; his thumb in his mouth, head in Weiss's lap - muttering about his hurdles. She soon carried him to bed; Jaune followed like a service dog.

Some time after, they returned.

And there we were.

Four of us (absent a sleeping child and one socialite), tucked into the warm hush of the central cabin.

For an age, it was nice.

Really... really fucking nice.

The sort that feels doubtful in stories like this.

A fake fire glowed low in a wannabe stove, and bottles and glasses had accumulated across a table in lazy democracy; an evening gone too long to stay tidy. Sarah had commandeered one end of a sofa with her feet up, drink sloshing carelessly, all sarcasm and fangs. I sat near to be claimed by proxy, Jaune occupied an armchair with the loose confidence of a man who believed himself immortal, and Weiss allowed herself to rest, at last, on another sofa, drink balanced against her knee.

Sarah raised a glass to her, slurring her words. "Y'know, for someone who looks like she'd report fun to the police, you're taking all this weirdly well."

Weiss gave her a flat stare. "And for someone who looks like she'd key a priest's car for sport, you are too."

Sarah barked a laugh. "Oh, I have so done that."

"Yeah, no shit."

And the evening kept opening.

Jaune, flushed from drink and heat, drifted easily into stories; university, jobs, some almost certainly embellished to better suit company. Sarah met him in eager stride, inventing adolescent crimes with such pride that even I forgot which were true. Weiss, to my private shock, also contributed with dry remarks strong enough to elicit laughter. And I managed my share too, mostly by accident, and found that once we'd decided to be chumps, it was easy to mould in.

There was something stupidly tender about it, getting tipsy as the impossible thundered outside. The laughs, the smiles; the brighter the freer, the belief that this bizarre collection of strangers might yet become a unit, departing from an experience with gushing lore of dinosaurs in the jungle under House 65.

Maybe that was why the shift felt so immediate when it came.

No drama.

Just Jaune... who'd been etching closer to Weiss for some time, close enough to seem conversational; subtle, harmless under the shelter of alcohol and charm. She didn't seem to mind, or if she did, she tolerated it with the weary stillness of a girl used to men mistaking dryness for permission.

His hand found her thigh.

A small thing; hard to miss.

He smiled in a blurred, pleased way, his thumb shifting against the fabric of her trousers, as if familiarity was long granted and he was playing catch-up, charming enough to trespass.

Weiss lifted his wrist and threw his greasy palm back to his own lap, with not a word.

He blinked, laughed once, and made the worst mistake of opening his floppy mouth.

"Come on," he said. "I was just-"

"Don't."

Quiet.

So much quiet that even the jungle leaned in to listen.

Sarah had gone still, the warmth in her face draining, all that easy humour and lust dripping into something meaner - the kind I'd seen in playgrounds.

I set my glass down.

Weiss stood.

Jaune followed.

Then Sarah.

Then me.

"Let's get you to bed, Jaune," I said.

"I'm fine, Ethan."

"No, you're not," Weiss mumbled.

"Can we talk outside?"

His hand cuffed around her arm.

Sarah lunged, unstoppable.

One viscous step and her knee drove between his legs with all the kindness of a prison sentence. He folded with a sound I hope never to hear again; Weiss stumbled back against the wall, one hand over her mouth, the other cradling her arm as if he'd tried to sever it.

Sarah caught a fistful of shirt and hit him again, a filthy punch to the mouth, spitting blood.

And again, when he tried to straighten, tried to defend himself.

And again, and again; he went over the table, taking half the evening with him. Bottles burst on the floorboards; one lamp pitched and threw the room into an ugly shade.

"Sarah!"

I caught her core as she tried to hound after him, a fiendish little wolf, because nothing in her face suggested she'd stop; she fought me, all undying fury, trying to climb through my arms and over my shoulder to ravage a pig as he curled on the boards in a wreck of booze and broken glass, bleeding from his mouth, cradling his groin.

"He fucking-the fucking cunt, he-" Sarah hissed.

"I know."

"Then fucking let me-"

"You need to calm down!"

It should've ended there. Cupping her face, a solemn, heartfelt look in her eyes and some wise words.

Instead, the jungle flashed crimson.

A flare went up far beyond the canopy, a streaking ruby lance that tore into the night and hung like a dying star.

The world answered its call; the land unstitched.

Sound ripped from every direction, screams and shrieks and the cracking rush of trees convulsing under sudden violation. A huge mass blundered through the understory hard enough to shake the floor, and a shape crossed over the roof, massive and fast, hammering the cabin with a leathery buffet of air.

Theo cried out from his deep cradle, and Weiss outran time itself to find him.

She missed the visage... barely two miles away, of the lift tower, our passage into this heaven, lighting up through the black lattice.

A clean orange flash in the dark.

Then the mountain split.

Fire punched upward in a looming column, metal cartwheeled black; a deep detonation, the death-rattles of torn steel, the thunderclap of collapse rolling through this hollow gut.

It lost its fucking mind.

Animals wailed torturously; lights flared everywhere, flickered, failed.

The power died... as the jungle damned itself into silence, like its throat had been torn.

One blink; the whole lie snuffed out, every careful thread of light gone until the only source remaining was an inferno where the lift stood, and the fading red, wispy stain beside it.

Our sanctuary carbonised.

And the night readied to deal its hand.