The scream had come from the hills.
Will was already moving before the echo died, Khan calling directions from behind his sternum.
Left. Follow the dry creek bed, faster than the slope.
Will took the left without breaking stride. He'd stopped asking why three directions ago.
The hills were dense. Real wilderness, a hundred thousand years of doing exactly what it wanted. Roots broke through everywhere. Trees grew at stubborn angles. Will moved fast, reading the ground the way the Tutorial had taught him: weight forward, eyes ahead.
His hand shot out and grabbed a branch to haul himself up a steep section. It held. The branch beside it—the one he had almost grabbed—snapped away from the trunk the moment his weight cleared, falling silently into the dark below.
Will didn't notice.
Khan did. The ancient conqueror went quiet for half a beat too long.
Sound before sight, Khan said. Tell me what you hear.
Will listened without slowing. "Something large. Moving through brush, not around it. And something else. Lower frequency, more deliberate. Different gait."
Two targets.
"Two targets."
Assess before you commit, Khan ordered. A dead hero helps no one.
Will reached the ridge and looked down.
A cul-de-sac. He could see the ghost of a circular road in the tree line. Now it was just broken ground, grass pushing through cracked asphalt, and the foundation outlines of old houses.
Four people. All roughly his age. All post-Tutorial; he could tell from their scavenged gear and the way they held themselves.
[Threat Detected: Mutated Mountain Lion]
[Level: ??? - Uncommon]
The beast stood as tall as a draft horse, its spine ridged with thick bone plating. Its movements had that deliberateness Will had already learned to fear more than speed. It wasn't rushing. It was deciding.
Two of the survivors were running for a gap between collapsed walls on the far side of the clearing. One guy in patched leather armor hadn't looked back once. The guy behind him glanced back, then quickly looked away.
The two girls were back-to-back in the center of the clearing.
One of them, small and blonde, watched the mountain lion with flat, focused combat math. The improvised spear in her hands was held correctly. Her feet were set. She'd been in worse spots.
The other girl, dark-haired and unarmed, stayed anyway. Her back was pressed to the blonde's, her dark eyes tracking the monster with wide, careful attention.
Neither of them called after the boys.
Khan said nothing.
Then, something stepped out of the gap the boys were running toward.
[Threat Detected: Abyssal Stalker-Canine]
It was a lean thing built for ambush, its eyes moving independently. It blocked the exit completely and dropped low. The two boys skidded to a halt.
The boy who had looked back, looked back again.
He looked away again.
Noted, Khan rumbled.
Will was already coming down the slope.
He moved fast and quiet, using the elevation. The hunting bow was across his back and useless at this range, but his hand found it anyway. As he hit the clearing floor, he hurled the weapon hard and flat at the mountain lion's face to buy two seconds.
The heavy wood caught the creature across the eye socket. The mountain lion flinched left. Will landed between the beast and the girls, snapping his folding knife open.
The blonde girl assessed him in exactly one second.
"Move to the wall," Will said. "High ground if you can find it."
She moved without arguing.
Will noted this.
Khan noted that Will noted this.
"Took you long enough," the dark-haired girl said, already falling back with her friend.
The mountain lion finished flinching.
It charged.
Will had six feet of clearance and the footwork to use three. He stepped right. The wall that should have been there wasn't—a gap in the foundation he hadn't seen from the ridge. It gave him three extra feet. He used all of them, rolling alongside the creature rather than in front of it. The bone plating rushed past close enough to feel the displaced air.
His hand found the shoulder joint.
The gap where the plating ended. The one soft spot, small as a fist. His knife hit bone first, skidded, then bit. He shoved hard, his shoulder jarring before the blade sank deep.
The mountain lion let out a multi-toned scream, and its front leg buckled. The impact nearly tore the knife from his grip, kicking him half off-balance.
Grounded.
Again, Khan ordered. Same spot. Finish the commitment.
Will went back in without hesitation. The second strike went deeper, twisting on the way out. The creature went down on its side.
Still moving. Still dangerous. But earthbound.
Will pulled back and heard the Stalker-Canine hit the ground running behind him.
He didn't see it coming.
His boot caught a chunk of broken concrete. His weight shifted wrong—forward and down—and he dropped below the canine's lunge completely by accident. He felt the wind of its jaws snap shut right over his head.
It landed directly on the wounded mountain lion.
Bone plating cracked under the combined weight. The feline went still beneath the canine's scrambling legs as the smaller creature tried to find its footing.
Will was standing before it recovered.
One of the boys, backing away from the collision with wide eyes, forgot to watch his feet. He tripped on the edge of a foundation and went down hard. His boot caught a length of rusted, broken rebar, kicking it free.
The metal bar skidded across the clearing.
It stopped exactly at Will's feet.
Will looked down at it.
He looked up.
He picked it up.
"Did you plan that?" Maddie called from the wall.
"Obviously," Will said.
I have commanded armies for thirty years, Khan said softly in Will's mind. I have never in my life seen a battlefield make concessions to one man.
Will tightened his grip on the rebar. Don't get used to it.
...I am beginning to think I might have to.