They reached the farmstead towards the evening of the next day as the sun was setting, casting long shadows across the fields. On the horizon, Kayla caught sight of the first limb of Ran, Caldera’s black and livid-red moon, rising into the night.

The main house was falling apart. Doors hung from their hinges, and insects zipped through shattered windows. Rust covered farming equipment was scattered here and there, while the musty smell of mold seemed to pervade everything. Kayla had a strange feeling as she realized that no sounds disturbed the evening air. Silence was almost unheard of on a farm. She fiddled with her shirt where it hung over her holstered pistol.

Urtiga swiped at her arm. “Don’t advertise,” she cautioned in a low voice. She, too, was alert, eyes darting from the horizon to the house and back.

Flicking on flashlights, they pushed through the front door and stepped inside, coughing as they inhaled the thick dust that hung in the air. The house had obviously been undisturbed since Owen had left it, with bits and pieces of woodwork scattered on surfaces, together with tools and other household objects. Kayla couldn’t make out any photos that might indicate friends or family. He had obviously been a loner, and didn’t keep very tidy.

“Dirtbag nest,” Urtiga commented.

“This is basically my backwood place on Tyr,” Zhang muttered. “If it hasn’t burned down yet. Haven’t been back in a while.”

Urtiga chuckled softly. “Yeah, same.”

On the wall by the shoe rack, the line of coats was interrupted by several empty pegs. There were also cupboards left open, containing a few pieces of camping and outdoor gear. Evidence that Owen had packed for a trip.

They continued through the house, checking all the rooms but not finding anything significant. Eventually, Christie uncovered a computer beneath a mess of papers, and got to work booting it up. While she did this, Kayla descended the stairs into the basement. It was mostly full of housekeeping gear, but in one corner there was a desk and a wall covered in maps. She whistled loudly.

“Check this out,” she called, as Urtiga stuck her head through the basement door.

Pegged out on the wall was a hand-drawn map of the mountain range, including contour lines and peak heights. Owen had obviously been a very busy and thorough hiker. Kayla’s eyes were drawn to the bright red squiggles tracing their way through the valleys and over ridges.

“This is where he was walking. These are his paths,” she said, as excitement built up in her chest.

Urtiga nodded. “Looks like we struck paydirt.”

When Zhang joined them and saw the maps, she punched the air. “That’s exactly what we needed. His range was limited to a small group of peaks—the highest ones.” She chuckled. “I guess he thought size mattered.”

“Men,” Urtiga scoffed.

“This significantly lowers our search area. We just have to confirm he was actually working with the Helvets,” Zhang continued.

“Of course he was; it stands to reason,” Kayla argued.

“Maybe, but coincidences are ubiquitous in nature, and you shouldn’t make assumptions.”

Kayla shrugged. “If you say so.”

“Didn’t they teach you the old Ranger saying?” Urtiga asked.

“Huh?”

She grinned. “If you assume… you get shot in the face. But don’t worry, I’m sure your friend will pull something up on the computer.”

“This is going to take a while,” Christie said, engrossed in the bright screen. “His file structure is as tangled as a jungle.”

“At least you managed to hack in,” Kayla said encouragingly.

“His password was ‘12345’. To be honest, that’s more sophisticated than I expected.”

Kayla looked away. “Um… I dunno, sometimes when you have a lot of passwords…” her voice trailed off.

Christie glanced up at her suspiciously, but Kayla said nothing.

While the others worked, Kayla and Urtiga went to check the barn in case there was anything else they might be able to use. Unfortunately, it was filled with nothing more interesting than rusted up machines and rotting haybales, but as Kayla looked around, she thought she heard a scraping sound coming from outside. Opening a side door, she looked out across the empty fields. An old tractor had rolled into a ditch and been abandoned, and out of bored fascination, Kayla took a closer look, playing her flashlight over the aged metal.

A deep growl filled the silence.

She turned and froze as her flashlight illuminated a tall bulky figure, covered in the same spikes and armor that reminded her of the savage animals. Its face was hideous, like a human, but grossly distorted, and wearing an evil glare. Something in Kayla’s mind told her to grab her pistol, but she couldn’t move—she could only stare in horrified fascination as the figure snarled and raised its arm.

“Kayla, get down!” Urtiga shouted, and Kayla felt her legs obey of their own accord.

She hit the dirt as an explosion of noise and light lit up the barn. The creature snarled and whirled around, trying to face its aggressor, but Urtiga had already moved behind cover. The monster roared with frustration and smashed its huge fist through the barn wall.

Kayla cursed silently. She was out in the open, and the tractor was the only piece of cover she could get to, so she wormed her way through the grass and tucked herself under the machine. It wouldn’t hide her for long, and the creature was obviously tough. Urtiga had emptied her pistol’s magazine into the thing, only to piss it off.

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Fortunately, the monster seemed to have lost interest in Kayla as it searched for its attacker. Her hand shook as she withdrew her own weapon, though she couldn’t use it yet. The monster was between her and Urtiga, so if she fired, she risked hitting her.

Another explosion of gunfire erupted, and she heard Zhang shouting something to Christie as they emerged from the house. Kayla heard the heavy thud of footfalls wandering back and forth in confusion. With the creature distracted, she jumped up from the tractor and dashed around the outside of the barn, where she found Urtiga huddled up against a stack of old tyres.

“Friendly!” she called, her training beginning to kick in.

Urtiga glanced around, then impatiently motioned for her to start shooting.

Kayla aimed her pistol at the hulk and saw it had raised its arm again. Without thinking, she dropped her front sight-post on the thing’s head and began cycling the trigger as fast as she could. A projectile shot out of the creature’s extended arm, hitting something with a wet thunk. There was a scream, and Zhang dropped to the ground by the house. Christie darted into the open, grabbing the woman’s body and pulling her back behind Owen’s truck.

Kayla hammered the trigger until it clicked, and she cursed again. What had gone wrong—a stoppage? After a moment of angry confusion, she realized the magazine was empty. Feeling like an idiot, she started to reload, and as she did, Urtiga began firing again.

No more shots came from the truck in front of the house where Christie had dragged Zhang, and Kayla felt a wave of nausea. Fortunately, the weight of gunfire appeared to be doing its job as the monster collapsed on all fours, vomiting blood. Now was her chance to finish the thing off for good.

“Reloading!” Urtiga called.

“Moving!” Kayla yelled, and dashed forward.

“Wait—dammit!”

The creature didn’t look up as Kayla closed the distance. Approaching as closely as she dared, she aimed at the thing’s massive blood-stained head. Several bullets had hit it in the neck, or ripped chunks out of the shoulders, but this time she wouldn’t miss. She steadied her shaking hands, broke the trigger perfectly, and the round ripped through the cranium, spraying blood and gore across the grass. The creature collapsed, unmoving. Kayla stepped closer and fired two more shots, leaving nothing left on its shoulders and a gory mess on the ground.

Then she noticed that Urtiga was at her side, weapon raised and a ferocious expression on her face. “Good job,” she said with a nod. Then more loudly, she called, “who’s hit?”

“It’s Zhang,” Christie called back.

They ran over and saw a foot long spike of bone buried in Zhang’s shoulder. She winced as Christie applied bandages and dressing around the wound. Her face was white, but while she was obviously in pain, she didn’t seem alarmed.

“Shit, this thing hit hard,” Zhang said through gritted teeth.

“What did you run out in front of it for?” Urtiga scolded. “We could have hit you in the crossfire.”

“Trying something stupid. Sorry, I know combat isn’t my strong suit.”

“We need to get you back to the medics at the safe house before we try and get that thing out,” Urtiga said as she studied the wound. “It’s not poisoned, is it?”

“Um… no,” Christie said, as she checked the broken skin. “We would see signs of necrosis around the wound already.”

“Nanites can handle most toxins,” Zhang said. “I can manage for the trip back, if you have something to take the edge off?” Hopeful eyes met Urtiga’s.

Urtiga laughed. “Fortunately, I have something strong in the truck.”

They carried Zhang back to their vehicle and carefully seated her inside while Urtiga produced a bottle of brown liquid, unscrewed the top, and placed it in her good hand. Then they returned to the body.

“What the hell is this thing?” Urtiga asked, kneeling a short distance away. She flashed a warning expression when Kayla started to step closer. “Not yet. Keep your distance.”

Now that the violence was over, Kayla was starting to feel shaky with the excess flood of adrenaline. She felt tired and vulnerable, and was happy to obey the more experienced operator.

“I have never heard of a creature like this on the farms,” she said, to keep herself distracted. “Those were all like animals. This is like a man, but much bigger.”

“Maybe,” Urtiga said darkly, “this is one of those missing farmers.”

Kayla shuddered at the thought of what had been done to the innocent person, whoever it had been. Had they been imprisoned and transformed? What a nightmare. Black rage descended over her, invading every pore until she thought she would exhale smoke and ash. Rayker was going to pay for what she had done.

“Okay, let’s take a closer look,” Urtiga said, and moved around the body until she was next to the head. When she saw the bloody mess of what remained, she shook her head. “Damn girl, you went savage.”

Kayla breathed a deep sigh and shook her head wearily. “I was an idiot. I can’t believe I froze up like that—”

“You did just fine for a rookie, so knock those thoughts out of your head. Violence is overwhelming and confusing, and seeing something like this come out of the shadows is enough to shock anyone.”

“Hmm,” Kayla said, not satisfied.

“Now,” Urtiga said with a glare, “you were a complete idiot when you broke cover to close in on it. You have no idea what this thing is or what it’s capable of, so yeah, that was stupid. Don’t let me catch you doing something like that again.”

Kayla nodded somberly.

“Okay. You wait there, while I give this thing a closer inspection.”

“What are you looking for?” asked Christie, who had finished tending to Zhang and rejoined them.

“Dirty tricks, booby traps—anything my sick imagination can conjure.” Urtiga began gently tracing her fingers around the corpse’s arms. “We once had to deal with a flying machine that sprayed acid in the air when it died. No such thing as too paranoid in this game.”

Kayla began to shiver violently, despite the warm night air. The idea that her mentor might suddenly be killed by some evil martyrdom mechanism was appalling, but she couldn’t argue, and she couldn’t help.

“Get anything off the laptop?” she asked Christie.

Christie beamed. “Yes, as a matter of fact. I was able to access his crypto wallet and found a substantial transaction from a week before he went missing. He added a note about guiding an expedition into the mountains, which, I should think, provides us our confirmation.”

“Don’t suppose he said where they were going?”

“Unfortunately not. But he had a drawer of larger scale maps, and several were missing, so we can assume that he was near his usual range. That narrows down the potential area by a large margin.”

Kayla’s spirits lifted. “That’s awesome! So we’re looking at what, three or four valleys…?”

“About six hundred square miles—but don’t panic!” Christie said, as Kayla’s face fell. “That’s much better than an entire mountain range.”

“I guess,” Kayla said. There could never be a straightforward win, could there?

Urtiga finished her examination and stood up. “Okay, you two, since you’re standing around yapping and doing nothing, why don’t you help me load this into the truck? There’s going to be a lot of people that will want to look at this thing.”

Kyellan Bell watched the truck move off into the night. He and another soldier had heard the sounds of gunfire as they came to check on the drone they had left to guard Owen’s house. They had stopped the vehicle in a ditch and ran up a slight rise to get to their vantage point.

Bell rubbed his jaw as he put down the binoculars and turned to his comrade. “I don’t know who those people are, but they did surprisingly well against our ‘unstoppable’ super soldier.”

“They moved fast,” the other man agreed, “and those must have been some powerful firearms to kill the thing so quickly. Just what the hell are we in for?”

Bell shook his head. “I think it’s about time we wrap things up out here.”

“Falling back to the valley, boss?”

“I don’t see that we have a choice. With the drones carrying us, we should be able to make it in two days.”

“You really think we can fight this out?” The soldier looked nervous. “Now they have that body they’ll have a good understanding of what they’re up against.”

Bell nodded. He sympathized with the soldier’s anxiety. A siege would end in either total victory or their deaths. “I think that they have no idea what Rayker is capable of. Come on, let’s get moving.”