No one moved after the voice spoke.
The shelter stayed exactly as it had been a second earlier, small, dark, and tight with held breath, but the shape of the room changed anyway. The danger was no longer circling out in the dark where they could imagine it however they wanted. Now it was standing just beyond the entrance and asking to be let in.
Mara kept the spear low and ready, her body angled toward the opening. Toma did not shift from the wall, but Leon saw the tension run through his shoulders and settle in both arms. Pell was not here yet. That thought came and went before Leon even noticed it.
The voice came again, quieter this time.
"Please."
It was young. Male. Frightened in a real way, not smooth enough to be comforting.
That did not make it safe.
Leon leaned forward slightly, careful not to change the sound of the room too much. "How many are with you?"
Silence.
Then, from just outside, "No one."
The answer came fast. Too fast for certainty, but not necessarily wrong.
Mara said, "Don't."
She meant don't engage, don't encourage, don't begin the conversation on terms they hadn't chosen.
Leon understood. He ignored it anyway.
"Where are you hurt?" he asked.
A pause this time.
"My arm," the voice said. "And maybe my side. I fell."
That was better. Slower. Less neat.
Toma spoke next, his voice low and steady. "What's at the entrance?"
A longer pause.
Leon listened to it carefully. Not the words. The waiting. A lie built from imagination usually came in a different rhythm than an answer built from sight. The voice outside was breathing hard now, trying to keep quiet and failing at it in small, human ways.
"Two flat stones," he whispered. "One's chipped on the left. There's a split near the bottom where the sand gets caught. I can see the tip of your spear if I tilt my head."
Mara did not move, but Leon felt her attention sharpen beside him.
That still didn't prove enough.
It proved more than a mimic should know, if mimics existed. It proved less than Leon wanted.
He asked, "What was making the clicking sound before?"
The answer came after a sharp breath.
"Not what's out here now."
That was not an answer either, but it was the kind of bad answer a frightened person gave when they had no room left for cleverness.
Mara said, "Name."
"Pell."
"Convenient," she replied.
The voice outside almost sounded offended. "I didn't pick it for this."
Leon had to stop the corner of his mouth from moving.
There it was. Fear, yes, but also instinct. Talking fast because silence felt worse. Meeting pressure with speed because speed had probably saved him more than once.
Real enough.
Still dangerous.
A faint scrape came from outside and to the right, close enough now that all three of them heard it.
Pell heard it too.
His next whisper came thinner, more urgent.
"They stopped moving when I stopped. I don't think they can see well. I think they're listening. If you're going to leave me out here, at least do it quickly."
Toma's jaw tightened. Mara said nothing.
Leon looked from one to the other and saw exactly where the choice was failing. Mara wanted certainty before action. Toma wanted a reason strong enough to override caution. Both of those were understandable. Neither would come in time.
So he did what he had done before.
He made time less available.
Leon moved.
Mara saw it an instant too late. "Leon -"
He was already at the entrance, one hand on the edge of the stone lip, body turned sideways so he could pull back fast if the wrong thing came through. He shifted the loose slab that had been partly blocking the gap and opened the entrance just enough for a narrow body to pass.
A boy threw himself inside at once.
Thin, fast, all elbows and scraped hands, with dark hair stuck to his forehead and a torn outer layer of cloth hanging half loose over hospital clothes dirtied almost beyond recognition. He hit the shelter floor shoulder first, twisted, and rolled farther in on pure instinct as Leon shoved the stone back into place.
Something struck the entrance from outside at the exact same moment.
Not a full body. A limb.
Long, hard, and pale on the underside, tipped with a narrow black point that scraped across the edge of the stone and sent a bright sound through the shelter.
Mara reacted instantly. The spear drove forward through the narrow gap and hit something outside with a thick, ugly sound. The limb jerked back. Toma lunged just enough to slam his shoulder and forearm against the inner slab before the thing could push in again.
Leon grabbed the lower edge and helped hold.
For one second there was pressure from the other side.
Then a dry, choked clicking sound.
Then it let go.
No one released the stone immediately.
The new boy lay on the shelter floor breathing in quick, shallow pulls, one hand clamped over his left arm where blood had soaked through the sleeve. His eyes were wide and bright in the dark. He looked at Mara's spear, Toma's braced shoulder, Leon's grip on the slab, and then at the opening again as if expecting the whole wall to come apart.
It didn't.
The thing outside moved away in a slow circle, its limbs touching stone lightly enough to force everyone inside to keep listening.
Toma eased back first and said, very quietly, "Tell me that was worth it."
Leon looked at the boy on the floor. "Ask me after dawn."
Mara pulled the spear back and stared at Leon with flat anger.
"You don't do that again."
"No," he said. "Next time I'll wait until we're all satisfied and dead."
She looked as if she might answer, but the boy on the floor pushed himself upright too quickly, hissed from the pain in his arm, and said in a rough whisper, "You really, really don't want dawn to catch you here."
The shelter went still again.
This time it wasn't because of the thing outside.