Alix’s night in the tree passed in another fevered succession of nightmares. It always started with the field in Kansas and ended in Kabir’s Crimson Forest, twisted and shadowed and bloody with danger. She woke up in a cold sweat the same as before, at full alert as her heart pounded hard enough to burst out of her chest.

Alix stared up at the dawn sky and listened. No howls for the moment, thank God. They’d been so close last night, so close that even Figaro could hear them, but something must have delayed them. They didn’t make it to Alix’s tree and went quiet after a while. All the better. She hadn’t had the strength to run then, or even to stay awake once the howls had ceased. She’d have been a sitting duck if they’d found her.

Now, however, she was ready to run. Everything in her body was ramped back up to a hundred, maybe even a thousand. She felt like she could leap from the tree and fly, like she could see through the ground into the core of the planet, hear the coo of a malar hatchling from a continent away, everything was loud and flashing and ready to descend upon her, and her heart was beating so very fast—

Alix took a deep breath. She unzipped her pocket and pulled the wing fragment out, flipping it between her fingers to calm herself. She couldn’t pin down what it was about the texture or sensation that made her feel better, but she’d take anything she could get right now.

“Oh good, you’re awake.” Figaro scuttled from one of the vines to her shoulder. “I tried pinging the station again last night and at sunrise, I’m still getting nothing.”

“Hm. Bad.” Alix’s eyes darted around the branches above, tracing the flights of the black insectoids there. “Quite bad.”

“At least those . . . whatever they are haven’t started their howling yet. Damn it, Boss, I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.” Figaro slumped down. “I should have given you the benefit of the doubt. But my auditory sensors are solid, tuned to be as good as a young human’s hearing, so the howling things had to have been far out of my range. So how the hell did you hear it? Are you sure you didn’t get some sort of gene mods or cybernetic implants without telling me?”

“No mods. Just me.” Alix’s hand shot out and caught one of the insectoids mid-air. “Fantastic functioning.”

Figaro threw two of his limbs up helplessly. “Alright, I may have been wrong about the howling things, but I maintain that something’s not right with you. Let’s get down and get moving. The sooner we make it back to the station, the sooner the medics can figure out what’s wrong with you.”

“Very well. Alley-oop!” Alix sprung up and swung herself down branch by branch with rapid speed. Figaro screamed in her ear right up until she landed on the ground.

“Why didn’t you just climb down?” he demanded.

“Too slow. We gotta go. They’ll be after us again soon, and they’ll be rested. Better. Faster.” Alix started walking in the direction they’d been heading before she’d had to stop last night. She continued to fiddle with the wing fragment as she went. The forest around her pulsated.

“Are we still going the right way?” Figaro asked.

“Yes. We’ve been hitting the landmarks. I remember. I’ve got the map burned into my skull now. Wedged in my brain grooves.” Alix tapped the side of her head, then started. “DID YOU—”

“Hear that? No,” said Figaro crossly, though he then paused for a moment. “Then again, I don’t know how reliable my senses are. If my comms can fail, why not my auditory systems, too?”

“It could . . . I mean, I’m not sure . . .” Alix grabbed her right arm and pressed it hard, trying to stop the twitching that had erupted in her muscles there. She ground her teeth together. So much all at once, it was hard to focus on just what she wanted to say to Figaro. She shook her head, as if the mere action could clear it. “When we get back to the station, we . . . we’ll get you a diagnostic. Yeah. That’s what I wanted to say.”

A howling sounded in the distance.

“Heard that one,” Figaro said darkly. “Faint, but I heard it.”

“They won’t catch up,” Alix said resolutely, picking up the pace. “They didn’t catch up before, they won’t catch up now. Just gotta keep going fast.”

They continued through the forest. Alix pushed herself as hard as she could go, never stopping, never slowing. She continually reminded herself that everything was going to be fine. Even though the trees around them seemed to grow more twisted the longer they walked. And she could sense enemy creatures trailing from the shadows. And the canopy seemed thicker than ever, choking out the sunlight in some spots.

“Behold Orion, the Great Hunter.”

Alix stopped short for the first time that day.

Standing just ahead of her was Professor Matson. She looked just as she had Alix’s first day of class, wearing a blue jumpsuit, gray hair pinned back. But the smile on her face now didn’t belong to Professor Matson. It belonged to a demon.

“Running scared like a little girl. And not fast enough, I might add. After all that I taught you, you still haven’t learned how to see the true danger.” Matson tilted her head, lips flashing green. “Didn’t I warn you this wasn’t Kansas?”

“Alix?” Figaro poked at her cheek. “You just stopped. You alright?”

“Um . . .” Alix blinked hard. Her arms were twitching again. Professor Matson’s fangs dripped blood.

“The real wilderness. The hunter or the hunted. What’ll it be, Miss Daring?”

“Alix!” Figaro poked her again. “Didn’t you just hear that? Those howling things are getting closer, we’ve got to hurry it up! What’s the hold-up?”

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Alix couldn’t tear her eyes from Matson.

The howls rang out in the distance.

“Better listen to your little robot, Miss Daring,” Matson tutted. “They’re coming for you.”

Professor Matson winked out of sight.

Alix gripped the wing fragment harder, fighting back a scream that was bubbling up from deep within. She forced herself to walk instead. She couldn’t let the fear freeze her. She couldn’t let dreams stop her, even if they bled into her waking world.

“I was just seeing things,” Alix muttered to herself. “That wasn’t Matson. Professor Matson isn’t here, she isn’t. No one is. No one.”

“What? Matson? Your old Survival 1101 professor?” Figaro asked. “Of course she’s not here, though we’d probably be better off if she was. She’s back at Farside University, making students scale Everest or swim laps in lava pools or whatever.”

“They don’t have either of those things at the uni, it’s on the moon. There’s no lava on the moon.” Alix couldn’t keep her gaze steady. Her eyes darted from shadow to shadow. It was morning, yet she was struck by the feeling that the forest was getting darker. “They do field trips on Earth for special exercises.”

“Oh, right! I forgot you told me that. I didn’t think there was much wilderness left on Earth.”

“There is. There’s wilderness everywhere. Everywhere.” Alix looked to the trees ahead. Were her eyes playing tricks on her, or were those vines moving up the tree, coiling around the trunk and squeezing like a python? And every time the wind blew through the leaves, it sounded like whispers, like they were trying to tell her something. When Alix glanced down at the roots breaching the ground, she saw a vast webwork of veins instead, pumping lifeblood through the forest, stealing nutrients from the unlucky who decomposed on the ground and were reabsorbed into the world that once bore them.

“You keep getting that spacy look in your eyes, Boss,” said Figaro. “It’s giving me the willies.”

“I’m okay.” Red, red, red, flowing beneath her feet in endless rivers.

“You’re twitching again! Drink some water or something.”

Alix’s hands shook as she raised the flask to her lips. Something growling in the thicket. Something crawling down from the tree. Something drooling far behind her, a sickly sweet scent dripping from its fangs.

Figaro’s eye lenses extended, looking around. “Damn it, there’s that howling again. I hope they’re not gaining on us. These bastards are fast.”

“Fastest in the forest, Al.” Alix’s ex, Mason, looked down from the tree beside her. Vines curled around his silver, bionic arms. Green flowers blossomed in his eyes. “Ain’t nothing faster.”

“Oh, I don’t know, you were pretty quick when you stole my stuff and screwed off to Mars,” Alix snapped at him.

“Dude, what?” Figaro turned his eye lenses back on her. “I never took your stuff, that was Mason.”

“They’re a lot of them. They’re desperate. Craving. They couldn’t stop themselves from chasing if they wanted to.”

“Yeah, I noticed.” Alix rolled her eyes. “Can’t you t-tell me something helpful?”

“You can’t stop yourself, either. You didn’t solve the puzzle fast enough. My silly Al. Too late now . . .”

“What puzzle?” Alix asked.

“I’m confused. No one said anything about a puzzle.” Figaro’s lenses turned up to the tree, following her gaze before realizing nothing was there. He tapped at her temple. “Aw hell, you’ve cracked.”

Alix looked down. Lyle was laying at her feet, picking green beetles out of his teeth. He nodded somberly.

“You have.”

“I haven’t . . .” Alix gripped the side of her head as the forest continued to pulse around her. One of the ferns cackled. “Okay, maybe I have.”

“I really wish I was a medbot right now,” Figaro said miserably. “I have no idea what to do.”

“We just keep doing what we’ve been doing. Keep going.” Alix forced herself to step over Lyle, who waved at her and called out as she left.

“You’ll have to give it up sooner or later!”

The howls rang out again, ear-splittingly close this time. One gave rise to another, then another, one after another until they’d formed an invisible chorus.

“Oh no,” Figaro squeaked. He clutched at a lock of Alix’s hair.

Alix broke into a run. It would be okay. If she could just keep up this run all the way back to the station, the howlers wouldn’t catch up. She just had to keep running.

Alix kept up her run as they continued through the forest, only slowing when she had to confirm that they’d passed the right landmarks. She tried to ignore the constant barrage of sights, sounds, and smells and focus only on her own body, on keeping it going as fast as it could go.

More howls, even closer, now accompanied by the staccato beats of paws hitting the ground.

“Oh my God, they’re getting closer,” Figaro wailed, eyes extended to look behind them. “I think I can see them . . . they’re huge . . .”

Alix ran faster. She tried to ignore the terror eating away at her insides. She just had to be faster. That’s all she had to focus on.

But the forest around her kept shifting. For a split second, the scrubby forest floor morphed into green tall grass. The canopy seemed to shift back and forth between red and green. The sky flashed blue, gold, blue, black. The howls didn’t change.

“These animals haven’t been cataloged by the station,” Figaro said with a tremor of fear. “They’re three-eyed. Big fangs, like sabertooths. Ragged black fur.”

Alix didn’t look back to see. She could barely keep herself on track going forward. She felt as though she were being slingshotted back and forth between two places. Kabir’s Crimson Forest kept morphing back and forth, green trees nestled with the red, hawks flying by malar nests, the morning sky darkening for the stars before bursting bright again.

Now there was no howling, only rough growls and the snapping of jaws.

“We can’t outrun them!” Figaro shouted in her ear. “We have to climb up!”

Alix darted to the closest tree and began scrambling up, refusing to look down as the howling pack closed in around the tree. She went higher and higher as the howling began anew and the leaves shivered green. She didn’t stop until she was as high as she could go and the tears on her face had rolled all the way down to her chin. The sky flashed gold, black, gold . . .

“Jesus, they’re trying to claw their way up!” Figaro yelped.

“Alix . . . Alix . . . Alix . . .”

“I . . . I can’t . . .” Alix held her head in her hands and squeezed her eyes shut as the world continued shifting.

“We have to do something!”

“Alix, come on . . . Alix . . .”

Alix kept her eyes shut as her heart beat faster and faster. She thought she was going to explode. Every nerve was frayed beyond repair, every cell fit to burst. She was drowning in a sea of noise and blood and danger and all-consuming fear, fed by the endless howls below, building and building, louder and higher—

Until it all stopped.

Suddenly everything was quiet. All the noises and overloaded sensations that had been plaguing Alix faded away. A cool breeze brushed across her face.

Alix opened her eyes, and she was on the farm in Kansas, the Milky Way hanging over her head. The grass of the field swayed.

Standing in front of her was a middle-aged man. His shoulder-length hair was black, and his beard was peppered with gray. He had flour dust on the rolled-up sleeves of his plaid shirt.

“Alix! There you are. What are you still doing out here?” asked Dad. “I’ve been calling you home for ages.”