Jonas ran.
He didn’t know where he was going. There was no path, only trees, and the gaps between them, and he threw himself at whichever gap was closest. Branches whipped across his face. Wet leaves slid out from under his boots, and twice he nearly went down before he caught himself on a trunk and kept going.
His breath was tearing in and out of his chest.
Behind them, the thing was coming.
He could hear it. It didn’t move like anything he had ever heard. The footsteps were uneven, a heavy thud and then a dragging scrape, and between them came the crack of branches snapping and the thrash of bushes being shoved aside. But it never slowed down.
It was getting closer.
"Faster!" Tobin gasped beside him. "Run faster!"
Celia kept looking back. Every time she did, she stumbled, and every time she stumbled, she made a small, frightened sound and kept running.
The trees were so thick here. Jonas had thought that might help them. Those arms were so long. Surely something shaped like that couldn’t get through undergrowth this dense as easily as they could.
But the crashing behind them only grew louder.
Left. There was more space to the left. He went left, and the others followed.
A huge fallen tree lay across the ground in front of them, its trunk as high as his waist and slick with moss.
Jonas didn’t stop. He threw himself at it, scrambled up the side and dropped down onto the other side. Celia came over a moment later, and he caught her arm as she landed.
Behind them, Tobin jumped for the trunk.
His boot hit the wet bark and slid straight off.
"Agh!"
He fell backward and landed hard on the ground on the far side.
Jonas spun around.
Through the trees behind Tobin, something was moving. Fast.
"Tobin!"
Jonas lunged back to the trunk, leaned over it and grabbed Tobin’s arm.
"Jonas, it’s coming!" Celia screamed. "It’s right there!"
"I’ve got him! Tobin, get up! Get up!"
He pulled. Tobin was scrambling, trying to get his feet under him.
The thing came out of the trees.
Jonas let go of Tobin with one hand and his armament formed in it. He brought it up between himself and the creature.
It didn’t matter.
The long arm swung at him so fast that he barely saw it. The blow went straight past his guard and caught him across the shoulder.
Crack!
Jonas was thrown sideways into the trunk. Pain exploded through his shoulder and down his arm, white and blinding, and when he tried to lift it, it wouldn’t move the way it should. Something in it was very, very wrong.
He slid down onto the leaves, gasping.
On the other side of the trunk, Tobin had made it to his feet. His armament was in his hands, and he was backing away, holding it out in front of him.
"Stay back!" he shouted. "Stay back!"
He swung at it.
The creature didn’t even slow down. It caught him.
There was a sound Jonas would never forget.
And then Tobin wasn’t shouting anymore.
He fell. He lay on the leaves and didn’t move.
Jonas tried to get up. His legs pushed, but his shoulder screamed, and he fell back against the trunk.
"Tobin!" Celia’s voice broke in half. She took a step toward him without seeming to realise she had done it.
Then she stopped.
The creature had bent over Tobin’s body.
It began to feed.
The wet tearing sound came again, and Jonas heard it, and he couldn’t stop hearing it.
He stared through the gap at the end of the trunk. Tobin was lying there. A few minutes ago, he had been running beside them, arguing, telling Jonas that complaining wouldn’t get them any points. And now he was lying on the ground under that thing, and he wasn’t moving.
"Tobin," Jonas said. It came out as a croak. "Tobin—"
A hand grabbed his good arm.
Celia was pulling him. Her face was wet, and she was breathing in short, broken gasps.
"Come on," she said. "Come on, Jonas. Get up."
"We can’t leave him." He tried to pull away from her. "We can’t just leave him there, Celia, we have to—"
"Look at him!"
She grabbed his face and turned it toward the end of the trunk. He saw the creature hunched over Tobin. He saw what it was doing.
"He’s dead," Celia said. She was sobbing now. "He’s dead, Jonas. And if we stay here, we’re going to die too."
Jonas looked.
Then he let her pull him up.
They went back into the trees, Celia half dragging him, his useless arm pressed against his chest. Behind them, the tearing sounds went on.
The thing didn’t follow.
Not yet.
* * *
In the observation room, the end of the examination was close enough that the mood had begun to change.
Major Helena Stroud could feel it. Several of the instructors had drifted toward the main ranking board, comparing the leaders and arguing about the last few places inside the line. Others were watching the final scrambles on the smaller projections, candidates who had realised they were just short and were taking risks they hadn’t taken all day.
Thirty minutes left on the countdown.
"Major."
Captain Pike was standing in front of one of the forest projections on the far side of the room. Something in his voice made Stroud turn at once.
"Look at this."
She crossed the room.
The projection showed a part of the forest so deep and overgrown that the light barely reached the ground. Two candidates were running through it. One was a girl, crying as she ran. The other was a young man, staggering, one arm held against his chest at an angle no arm should be held.
Something was moving behind them.
"Bring it back," Stroud said to the attendant. "Before this. Further back along their trail."
The image shifted. The attendant swept it back through the trees, past a fallen trunk.
Then it stopped.
Nobody in the room said anything.
There was something crouched beside the fallen tree. It was hunched over a body, and its arms were far too long, and its shoulders were set wrong, and its head was bent low over what it was doing.
The body underneath it wore the clothes of a candidate.
Stroud felt her stomach go cold.
"Hold on that," she said. Her own voice sounded very far away. "Get me the section staff on this now. I want every view we have of that thing, and I want to know who those candidates are."
The staff moved. Records were pulled, images brought up and compared. It took less than a minute.
"Jonas Reed," someone said. "Celia Venn. They’ve been travelling with a third. Tobin Marr."
Stroud looked at the projection.
The body under the creature hadn’t moved since the image came up. It was not going to move.
A candidate was dead.
She had seen death before. Everyone in this room had. She had buried soldiers, and some of them had been barely older than the people out in that forest. But those soldiers had gone into danger knowing what it was.
This boy had come to sit an examination. And the Academy had told his family it would be safe.
"I know that," an older instructor said quietly. He had come up beside her and was looking at the creature with his jaw tight. "Not that one, but that kind. I’ve seen them before, years ago, in the field. Hunters know them. So does anyone who’s soldiered long enough." He shook his head. "I couldn’t tell you how strong this one is from a picture. But it should never, ever have been in there."
"Then how did it get in?" Stroud demanded.
Nobody answered.
"The survey teams went over every part of those grounds before the candidates went in," Pike said. "Every monster in there was checked. Everything was meant to be something an applicant could handle. If they’d seen that, they would never have left it."
"Then they didn’t see it."
"They’d have reported it, Major. Nobody would leave something like that in there with a bunch of eighteen-year-olds."
Stroud believed him. That was what frightened her.
On another projection, the two survivors were still moving through the trees. The girl was all but carrying the boy now. And somewhere behind them, in that dark stretch of forest, the creature was still there.
"End it," Stroud said. She turned to face the room. "End the examination. Now. Get the barrier down and get our people in there."
"She’s right," another officer said. "We can’t leave them in there with that thing loose."
The doors at the far end of the room opened.
The Commandant came in. One of the staff must have sent for him the moment the projection came up, because he walked straight to the forest display without stopping and looked at it.
He looked for a long time.
"Major," he said.
Stroud told him everything they knew, which was almost nothing. A creature that wasn’t meant to be there. One candidate dead. Two more running from it.
"We need to open the barrier, sir," she said. "We need to send soldiers in to bring the rest of them out."
"We can’t."
Stroud stared at him.
"The barrier can’t be brought down before the twelve hours are up," the Commandant said. "You know how it works, Major. Once it’s raised, it seals those grounds from the outside. Its release is tied to the examination clock. Nothing gets in until the countdown runs out. Not us. Not anyone."
"Then break it."
"It can’t be broken. That’s the point of it." His voice was very even. "We can see in. We can’t go in."
"There are hundreds of candidates in there," Stroud said. "Hundreds. Their families sent them to us because they trusted us to run this safely."
"I know that."
"So we just stand here?" the other officer said. His voice was rising. "We stand here and watch them die, and we don’t do anything?"
"What do you intend to do about it, sir?" Pike asked. "About that thing?"
The Commandant looked up at the countdown.
Thirty minutes.
"Until that runs out, there is nothing we can do inside," he said. "For now, all we can do is hope. And pray that the rest of them stay alive long enough for that barrier to open."
Several of the instructors stirred. Someone swore under their breath. Nobody had anything better to say.
Stroud looked back at the projection. At the dark forest, and the fallen tree, and the two of them running.
The Commandant hadn’t moved. He was still looking at the countdown, and Stroud saw that his hands, clasped behind his back, were gripping each other so hard that the knuckles had gone white.
Then he turned around.
"But I will not have us waste thirty minutes," he said.
The whole room looked at him.
"I want armed response teams at the edge of the barrier. Now. Every soldier we can spare, fully equipped, standing at the boundary, ready to move the second it comes down." He turned to another officer. "Get the healers. Treatment stations, supplies, everything, set up at the boundary. We will have injured candidates."
"Yes, sir."
"Major Stroud. You stay on that creature. I want to know where it is every moment until we’re inside. Captain Pike, pull together everything we have on the other candidates’ positions. Anyone near that thing, I want to know who and where."
"Sir."
"When that barrier opens," the Commandant said, "I don’t want anyone looking for their equipment. I don’t want anyone waiting to be told where to go. Our people go in immediately. Is that understood?"
"Yes, sir."
The room broke into motion. Officers went out through the doors at a run. Staff gathered around the projections, calling out positions. But Stroud saw how every one of them kept glancing back at the forest display, again and again, as they worked.
At the doors, the Commandant paused.
"Keep watching it, Major," he said. "And anyone who gets too close to it."
Then he was gone.
Stroud turned back to the projections.
The creature hadn’t moved from the fallen tree yet. But there were still candidates scattered all across those grounds. Hundreds of them, in the forest and the grassland and the rocks. Hunting, chasing the last few points, with no idea what was out there with them.
She couldn’t warn any of them.
And she had no way of knowing which of them would find it next.