16The attack comes without warning less than a day after we leave the shelter. It’s the screaming that alerts me first, high-pitched and panicked, shattering the jungle calm in the space of a heartbeat.
I whirl in the direction of the cries, nostrils flaring as my eyes frantically search the trees for squatters. No ghoulish odor reaches me, but through the veil of shrubbery, wild thrashing motions catch my eye, flashing like quicksilver through the gaps in the leaves. Without thinking, I run toward the ruckus. Small creatures scatter at my passage, scaling trees and skittering across the dirt as I shove aside branches and fling myself through brush in my headlong flight. A flock of auries, black as pitch, bursts from the ground in front of me, taking wing in a cavalcade of glossy feathers. I stagger back, momentarily forced to halt as they swirl up around me like smoke, and then, rounding a massive trunk, I duck under a low-hanging branch—and stop.
Xylla struggles in the grip of a vine as thick as my wrist, snaking out of the brush and wrapping around her leg like a boa constrictor. Up it crawls, calf to knee to thigh, steadily climbing her body even as she desperately pushes and pulls at the ironclad loops to no avail. It reaches her waist, cinching tight like a belt and knocking the wind from her with a single squeeze. She doubles over with a strangled whimper.
Horrified, I fumble for my knife. I’m about to scream for the others when footsteps pound through the brush. Moments later, Trey bursts through the trees, Vida on his heels.
“Xyl!” Trey goes for her.
Vida makes a lunge for him, her fingertips just missing his sleeve—
“Wait! Don’t!”
—but the warning comes too late. More vines appear out of nowhere, springing up from the brush and zinging down from the trees. In a flash, Trey is down, borne under by the weight of a dozen writhing, snapping tendrils. With a curse, Vida jumps back, trying to evade the onslaught, but at the last second, one stray tendril whips out, catching her outstretched wrist in a verdant stranglehold. She swears again, yanking at the vine as it tries to pull her in, but before she can bring her knife around to bear, another creeper captures her other arm with a sickening slap.
She shrieks. Compelled by her cry, I jump into the fray, slashing at the nearest vine that holds her—one, two, three! On the third hack, the vine parts, releasing Vida with a sharp hiss, but my triumph is short-lived. Almost immediately, the hacked-off end swings back around, flicking through the air like a whip.
Crack!
My head snaps back, blood already welling up over my cheek before I even register the strike. I backpedal furiously, trying desperately to get out of its range before it can wind up for a second blow, only to stumble straight into the grip of another vine. Iron clamps around my ribs. I slash furiously at the vine, severing it with two hacks of my knife, but the moment it drops off, two more tendrils appear, curling from a knothole in the trunk of a tree. Pink-edged leaves peek out from the edges of the hole, and in a flash, I suddenly realize what these are.
Raptors! Carnivorous plants that hunt in packs. Native Iolanthian stock, they were once normal vines until the terraforming started and the soil treaters stripped away the nutrients they needed to survive. Rather than die out, they adapted to feed upon fauna. Now they root themselves within the surrounding vegetation, hiding under roots and inside shrubs and upon leafy branches until likely prey passes by, and then—
Zing! They attack!
As if on cue, another tendril slashes through the air at me. I beat it away with a dead branch, clubbing at it with one arm even as I engage a second vine in a frenzied game of tug-of-war with my other. Back and forth we go, the vine pulling at the knife while I refuse to let it go, and still the attacks keep coming. I manage to spare a quick glance for the others. Off to my right, Vida seems to be holding her own, though just barely, but Trey is being restrained by at least a dozen vines, and Xylla has completely disappeared into the greenery. Panic wells up in me as I realize this is a fight we may not win.
A loud yell is the only warning I have, and then suddenly the others are here, knives and branches swinging as they wade into the fight. Three figures loom up around me.
Slicch! Slash! Swish!
Three swift strokes, and all of the vines fall away from me at once. Before I can react, Kieran grabs me and throws me bodily from the fray. I hit the ground and roll, out of range of the deadly vines. Moments later, Vida joins me, tossed from the fight by Jovan. With us out of the way, the others are free to focus on Xylla and Trey. Together, they surround the plants and move in. Knives slash and tendrils swing, the vines’ hisses interspersed with the humans’ cries, but with multiple students for every plant, the tide is quickly turning. While some fend off the tendrils, others track them back to their sources, digging the plants out by the roots and ripping them apart with their bare hands. Vines slump and creepers collapse, and within minutes, it’s all over. The last vine hits the ground with a soft thud, and then all is quiet.
Muscles still tensed, I scan the area for any last raptors they might have missed. My gaze jerks across the greenery in time with my stuttering heart, but I see nothing. No moving tendrils, no pink-edged leaves. Still not convinced, I take another pass, slower this time, but all I see are the mutilated remains of the raptor vines fluttering in the breeze. A large leaf, it’s edges so pink they’re almost red, wafts down from the trees. I watch it fall, spiraling down through the air like a bloody flag before the wind catches it and carries it away. I take a breath, waiting . . .
. . . then slowly let it out. Only then, convinced that the threat has been eliminated, do I slowly slump back against the broad trunk of an Iona. My eyes fall across the others. Though everyone seems to be okay, no one is unscathed. Eyes are glassy and shell-shocked, limbs are cut and bleeding, and already bruises have begun to spread across several people’s exposed skin.
I gingerly touch the spot on my cheek where the vine whipped me. A smear of blood comes away on my fingers, and already the flesh feels swollen and hot. I vaguely wonder if it will scar, not that it really matters. No physical scar could compare to the invisible ones I already carry inside.
For a moment, all I can hear are pants and wheezes as the others struggle to catch their breath, and then finally Jovan steps forward and sends one of the remaining plant pieces off into the jungle with a vicious kick.
“Fraggin’ vines!”
Yep, pretty much.
We spare half an hour to patch ourselves up, and then go, spurred on by yet another enemy signal only a few klicks away. Everyone is still a bit shaken, but though the raptor attack was the most brutal, it was hardly the first blow the jungle has struck us. In the time since we’ve taken to the Rainforest, we’ve been scratched, bitten, bruised, burned, clawed, darted, poisoned, and otherwise injured in every possible way. If we’re not being stung by fire ants, we’re being harassed by auries or fed on by leeches. Saw grass slices up our legs, rovers root themselves in our skin while we sleep, and razor vines, while not carnivorous, have no compunction about giving a face full of thorns to anyone who dares get between them and the sun. Word has gotten around about the purple flowers, but though everyone has taken to wearing them, insects still swarm us at random intervals, leaving us swollen with bites large and small. Poor Divya has so many bites peppering her face she looks like she has the measles. Then there’s the succession of sprains, snake bites, cuts, and rashes incurred from the slightest inattention or smallest misstep. Heatstroke is our new best friend.
We tend to our injuries as best as we can, using the med-kits we cadged from the emergency shelter, as well as whatever over-the-counter meds people brought with them, but with each day that passes, it becomes clearer that what we have just isn’t enough. Cuts that initially seemed minor have begun to fester in the humid conditions without the necessary antibiotics to treat them, and the handful of students who fled without decent footwear have begun to develop jungle rot—nasty lesions on their ankles and feet—from the constant damp.
I watch Megumi one afternoon as she goes around with the med-kit, black hair bobbing around her face as she treats one injury after another. An even-tempered sophomore, she’s become our designated medic by dint of the fact that she’s the only one who actually took the first aid course at the academy. She wraps up a sprained ankle, treats an animal bite on Matteo’s hand, and inspects the jungle rot on Gavin’s feet while he dries his socks with a small hand-op hair dryer borrowed from Divya. I wait until she finishes her rounds, approaching her only as she’s putting away her supplies for the evening.
Tapping her lightly on the shoulder to get her attention, I wait for her to look at me, asking only when I’m sure she can see my lips, “How is everyone?”
Megumi sticks a mostly empty bottle of disinfectant into the kit and closes it up. “Let’s see, I’ve got three animal bites, two sprained ankles, one cracked rib, four lacerations, five cases of jungle rot in varying stages, ones stomach flu—or maybe it’s a parasite, who knows?—and several infections. That’s not counting all the minor cuts, scrapes, rashes, and bruises, all of which are made exponentially worse by the fact that everyone is sore, exhausted, and generally malnourished.”
“Anything life-threatening?”
She lets out a bitter laugh. “Everything’s life-threatening in the jungle.” At my raised eyebrow, she sighs. “Not yet, but several of them could be if we don’t get more medical supplies soon.”
“What do you need?”
“What don’t I need?” she counters. “Bandages, disinfectant, painkillers. Dry socks and talcum powder for the jungle rot. Immuno-boosts, suture ointment, and antibiotics. Lots and lots of antibiotics.”
“And if we don’t get them?”
Megumi shakes her head. “I don’t know.” She pauses, then—“We’re not meant to be out here, not like this. I’ve been doing the best I can, but I’m no doctor, and I’m certainly no match for the Rainforest. If we can get the right supplies, and soon, we might stand a chance, but without them . . .” She shrugs helplessly. “I’m not sure how much longer we can survive the jungle.”
Megumi takes a breath, and for a second it looks like she’s about to say more, but then her chit buzzes. She glances down at her hand, then back up, scanning the area until her eyes fall on Amilee, who’s waving her over from several meters away. With an apologetic nod, Megumi grabs her med-kit and leaves.
I watch her go, thinking I should follow her, find something encouraging to say, but I can’t. The fact is that for all of our myriad infirmities, we’ve been lucky. Not only have we had no major animal attacks, probably owing to the sheer size of our group, but our monthly immuno-boosts seem to have staved off most diseases, parasites, and the worst of the infections, at least so far. As bad as things are, they could be much worse—and will be, once our luck, not to mention our last immuno-boosts, wear off—and as much as I want to tell Megumi that everything will be all right, the truth is:
I’m not sure how much longer we can survive out here either.
We leave the raptors behind quickly enough, circumventing two more packs of them before moving out of their territory, but though the vines are gone, I’m unable to leave Megumi’s words behind so easily. If anything, her prediction is only being borne out more each day, as new ailments accrue and old ones worsen.
As if that isn’t bad enough, the enemy’s attacks have continued to increase. In the week following the raptor attack, we have three close calls with the Specs—once with ghouls and twice with squatters—and even when we don’t have a direct run-in with them, it’s rare to go more than a day without catching the distant scent of a ghoul or picking up a squatter’s com signal. Everyone is continually tense and on edge, certain that the next encounter will be our last, and as we continue to push east through the jungle in search of food and shelter, one surety crystallizes in my mind:
We have to get out of here.
There’s no two ways about it—every close call is closer than the last, and I know it’s only a matter of time before close becomes catastrophic. If we could just get to the other side of the Shoqua River, away from the settlements and bunkers, I feel certain we could find safety—but only if we have the supplies necessary to survive. We need what’s in that big emergency shelter, but attempting a raid on it would be lunar! Even if either of our supposed leaders could stop arguing long enough to plan an incursion on it, we saw how fast the squatters came when we hit the last shelter. They would catch us before we got half a bagful of equipment! It’s too risky, and yet the more I tell myself it’s a bad idea, the more I find myself thinking it might be our only hope.
On the thirteenth day, everything goes quiet. Though we continue our cautious trek through the jungle, noses and ears ever on alert, we encounter nothing. No ghouls, no squatters. Just the ever-present hum of the forest wafting like wind through the trees. We pass the night in fearful silence, certain the enemy will appear the moment the light leaves us, but though we stand guard from dusk till dawn, the strike we’re waiting for never comes. A day passes, and then two, then three. Slowly, we begin to let our guard down.
That’s when our luck runs out.
Snnnhh!
It’s the stench of rotten lemons that wakes me, burning my nostrils and hurling me back to consciousness in a single instant. I sit bolt upright in the dark. Every sense is on high alert, and though I’ve barely awakened, adrenaline is already beginning to thread raggedly through my veins. Cocking my ear to the night, I listen. Rustles and crackles and sighs whisper across the trees, a symphony of the night that has become ever more familiar, but of squatters I hear no signs. The ghouls come alone.
No, not ghouls, I correct myself after a moment, but ghoul. For what comes silently through the dark isn’t a shiver but a single Spectre.
A shudder runs down my spine. It’s only fifty meters off now, and still it comes, ghosting unerringly toward our position, slow and deliberate, as though it knows: There’s nowhere for us to run. There’s nowhere for us to hide.
Around me, the others still sleep in blissful ignorance, their breathy sighs mixing with the ragged pants of the few others whose sniffers have forced them awake. No one speaks, not even when the ghoul finally arrives, flitting delicately through the air a mere meter above our heads. My breath catches, and for a moment I fancy I can hear its thoughts as it skips like a stone across us one after another.
Eeny. Meeny. Miney. Moe.
It passes overhead, and I freeze, barely daring to breathe as it comes to a stop a meter above my face. Though I can’t see it, I can smell it, searing through my nostrils like rotting lemon drops, one moment sickeningly sweet and the next so acidic it makes my eyes burn. It dips lower, and in the pitch dark, its rippling scent seems to drape over it like a physical thing, caressing its contours, giving its incorporeal presence shape, and even substance, though it has no true form. Paralyzed with fear, I sit stock-still in the dirt, limbs twitching helplessly as it hovers above me . . . then suddenly it drops!
Straight into the girl beside me.
All hell breaks loose in a single instant. I barely have time to be relieved, let alone wonder why it decided to switch hosts, before half the camp is up in arms. Voices rise and chits go on, their narrow lights flicking wildly over our sleeping classmates as those who were awake try frantically to identify the enemy among us, too terrified to hear my babbled answer—“It’s Ysha! It was Ysha!” Others begin to stir, drawn back to consciousness by the sweeping lights and frantic voices, and before long we have a full-blown panic on our hands. Only the darkness prevents another exodus, and even with that, it’s all Vida, Zane, and I can do to keep anyone from doing something completely deficient. By the time dawn arrives, the group is on the verge of a full-blown vac-out. With the situation going south fast, I pull out my box of Spec 1280. Only after I confirm the identity our unwitting victim, holding up the purple vial of Ysha’s blood for all to see, do the others start to calm down. Now the question is:
What in the stars do we do with her?
There’s no good answer. In the end, we leave her bound and gagged at the edge of a homestead, dropping her inside the shield-line just as the suns are beginning their slow descent over the horizon. Though no one is happy about leaving her, everyone agrees that we can’t afford to harbor a squatter, no matter how innocent the host, and Vida assures us she’ll be safe enough inside the shield until someone eventually finds her. Everyone assumes she’s just trying to make us feel better, but knowing Vida as I’m beginning to, I suspect she’ll make sure that an anonymous link finds its way to that particular homesteader’s chit, and stars forgive me, but I don’t have the heart to tell her not to.
As we’re walking away from the shield-line and back into the forest proper, my chit buzzes. I glance down. It’s an alert for the underground force fence network.
Dread curdles in the pit of my stomach when I pull up the network. The force fences around every single occupied terraforming bunker have just tripped.
Whatever the enemy was searching for, it looks like they’ve finally found it.
With our morale at a new low, we push on through the forest, anxious to put as much distance as possible between that homestead and us before our former classmate is discovered, fleeing the enemy not so much as our own collective guilt. For two days, we run—from Ysha, from the town, and from everything that’s haunted us since we stepped foot into this stars-forsaken jungle. Starving and nearly out of food once again, we hover on the verge of collapse, certain that the end is near.
That’s when we find the village.