The first mimic enters the clearing in complete silence. It’s already transformed when it arrives, stepping between the trees as a young woman with a blond ponytail that bobs at the small of her back. Her shoulders slump, the bags under her eyes deep and gray with exhaustion. When she spots Aidan, she beams.
“Oh, my god,” the woman cries. “I didn’t think … I’ve been going crazy looking for you.”
It’s difficult to see Aidan in the dark, but Ollie is sure he stiffens. Already, Ollie has to fight the urge to leap out and help him. The idea of waiting in the dark while more mimics gather around Aidan makes him ill.
The mimic looks over its shoulder into the trees behind it and its eyes widen. When it looks back at Aidan, desperation warps its face. It approaches fast, dropping to its knees in front of him. It takes his ankle in its hands, shaking its head.
“Aidan, I can fix your ankle right up,” the mimic says with a near-manic smile. “Why don’t you look me in the face? You see it’s me, right?”
Aidan looks away.
“Look at me when I’m talking to you, Aidan.”
Aidan doesn’t budge. His eyes are just visible to Ollie, a glint of moonlight glowing from his glasses. He’s more scared than Ollie’s ever seen.
“I am your mother.”
Ollie blinks. If the mimic is accurate, Aidan’s mother is younger than he expected. He’d thought the mimic was impersonating one of Aidan’s teachers, maybe, or an older cousin. She’s a young mother, though, and she’s in over her head. Aidan’s stories about his mother being barely able to keep up with him suddenly make sense.
Another figure enters the campsite, sidling up to Aidan’s mother without a word. This one is a tall, broad-shouldered boy Ollie’s age. Ollie ducks down farther in the brush, his lighter slick in his hand. Two mimics in the camp now. Still not enough to trigger the trap, but he doesn’t want Aidan enduring much more of this. He watches Devin’s hiding spot.
“We’ve been worried about you, man,” the broad-shouldered boy says. He holds his hand out, pushing past Aidan’s mother. “We should go tell everyone you’re okay.”
“No,” Aidan’s mother snaps, pushing the boy.
And then they do something Ollie hasn’t seen before.
The two mimics turn to each other and lunge. The boy tackles Aidan’s mother to the forest floor and brings a meaty fist down on her face. They morph into a blur of scrapes and snarls. Ollie watches them, eyes wide, mouth dry. Another mimic enters the clearing, this one a middle-aged man with a rugged head of hair the color of pepper. He easily steps over the tangle of the other two mimics and plants a hand on Aidan’s shoulder, donning a sympathetic frown.
“I never should’ve left you with her,” the man says, shaking his head. “If I took you to Chicago, you never would’ve gotten all banged up like this. I should take you back with me.”
Aidan doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t look away, either. Something about this one compels him where the other two didn’t. The first two mimics continue to thrash and tear at each other and a horrifying realization comes over Ollie. All three mimics have tried to get him away from the campsite. They’re pushing for Aidan to follow them somewhere they can be alone, which means they know Aidan isn’t alone here. They know they’re surrounded.
They need to start the trap.
Ollie looks for Devin, but her side of the campsite is dim. Sheridan’s side is dim, too. Another mimic enters the campsite, and when Ollie looks up, he sees more in the trees. More than the four or five he expected. It’s only been a few minutes and they’re being swarmed.
“Ollie.”
Ollie jumps. When he turns, Devin is crouched behind him. She presses a finger to her lips, edging close to him.
“What are you doing?” Ollie asks. “You’re supposed to be—”
“Shh,” Devin hisses. “I couldn’t see over there.”
“We need to start now,” Ollie rasps. “There’s tons of them, and more coming. Aidan’s gonna get torn apart if we don’t light this thing now.”
“No,” Devin says. She points up into the trees. “We need to wait until more of them are on the ground. That’s the only way it’ll be worth it.”
“It’s not worth it if he dies,” Ollie hisses.
“Just do what I say.”
Ollie stares at her for a long moment, watching the tilting of faint blue moonlight over her eyes, and he tries to understand. She’ll risk her own life in a heartbeat, sure, but risking Aidan’s life just to get a few more mimics? Ollie’s heart races.
Across the clearing, there’s a shriek.
“It’s not her!” Sheridan cries.
In a flash, Devin turns her gaze on Ollie and it clicks. He reaches for his lighter, pressing the flame to the rope at his feet.
The fire catches immediately, soaring down the rope. Not-Devin lunges for Ollie, knocking him to his back. Devin wasn’t lying before when she said the mimics are unnaturally heavy and unnaturally strong. Not-Devin pins him to the ground like it’s nothing, slamming his wrists over his head. She looks him hard in the face, dark eyes shining. With a ragged breath, she says, “Listen to me. I am going to have this body.”
Ollie kicks, but it’s no use. He strains to look across the campsite, waits for the real Devin to light her fire, but nothing happens. He prays she’s just grappling with her own situation. Devin is safe, Devin is alive, Devin is going to save them like always.
“Get off me,” Ollie snarls, kicking the mimic again.
A wicked smile spreads over not-Devin’s face, too wide to be real. “This will either be painless or it won’t, Ollie. Let’s make it painless.”
Ollie closes his eyes. He gathers up what strength he has, angles his hip, and shoves the mimic toward the fire. The fire just catches the crook of not-Devin’s elbow and her shriek drowns out everything else. He clambers out from under not-Devin as the fire overtakes her, scrambling to his feet.
When he steps into the campsite, it’s chaos.
Devin’s side of the campsite is empty. Aidan sits in the center as the fire crawls toward him, surrounded by mimics clawing for his attention, his head in his hands to block out the noise. Sheridan grapples with her own mimic, this one an older blond woman. Their trap has only half-worked. Some of the mimics are engulfed in flame, but most are unaffected, gracefully dodging the lines of fire in the clearing.
One thing catches Ollie’s eye, though. The spot where they left the mimic impersonating Hannah is empty.
“Fuck,” Ollie mutters, bracing himself against the nearest tree to keep his balance. He staggers around the campsite’s perimeter, careful to stay out of the light, eyes trained on the place Devin should be. If something’s happened to her … he can’t think about that. He needs to see for himself. He needs to help her.
The quiet of the mimics smothers the chaos of the campsite, leaving it eerily soundless. The silent bloodshed is enough to make Ollie’s head throb. When he finally makes it to Devin’s hiding place, it’s empty. He gasps for air, the smoke choking him. No Devin, no sign she ever even tried to light the ropes. If she’s gone, she’s been gone a long time.
He turns back to the center of the campsite and barrels toward Aidan. If he can’t find Devin, he can at least pull Aidan to safety. He can salvage this.
Before he reaches Aidan, though, something slams into his side.
Another mimic, this one guised as his grandmother, stands in front of him. Ollie staggers back, falling to the forest floor with a thud. The mimic moves to lunge at him, but another blurred figure tackles her to the ground. Ollie’s heart thumps and his head spins and it takes him too long to understand that his savior is Hannah. Or not-Hannah. She eyes Ollie and her expression is impossible to read. Fire roars across the campsite and she seems unafraid of it.
“You need to run,” she says. “We all do.”
“How did you…?” Ollie asks.
Hannah shakes her head. “I could’ve gotten out at any point. I told you it was safer for me to stay with you. If you don’t run, you’ll die here. Do you understand?”
Numbly, Ollie nods. Voice hoarse, he points to the center of the campsite. “We have to save Aidan.”
Hannah looks over her shoulder.
“It’s what Hannah would’ve done,” Ollie says weakly.
Solemnly, Hannah nods. She turns toward the fray. Toward Aidan. Ollie crawls to his knees, then to his feet, scrambling toward Sheridan. She’s managed to fend off the blond mimic, but now she’s surrounded by more of them. Ones that look like her, like Devin, like adults he doesn’t recognize, like other girls her age. And Ollie knows, even together, they don’t stand a chance. He reaches into the tangle anyway, grabbing Sheridan by the shoulder.
“We have to go,” Ollie pants. “We have to run.”
In a jolt, one of the mimics focused on Sheridan grabs Ollie by his shirt. It pushes him and Ollie’s vision blurs. In the campsite, there’s a chorus of voices begging to be heard. The voices call Aidan’s name, Ollie’s name, Sheridan’s name. But they don’t call for Devin. The mimic pushes Ollie again and his foot catches on something.
His heart briefly stops as he free-falls.
He hits the stone floor at the bottom of a jagged ledge. His lungs empty of air and all he can do is stare at the swaying treetops and patches of sky as flashes of fire pulse above him.
“Ollie!” someone calls.
Aidan.
Ollie hardly knows if it’s real or just another mimic, but he rolls onto his side, groaning with pain. Slowly, achingly, he climbs back up the ledge in time to see Hannah drag Aidan from the fire, his legs scraping up dirt and ash in his wake. It takes Ollie a moment to understand that Hannah did what he asked her to. She went into the fire, even if it was dangerous. She saved Aidan’s life.
Just like the real Hannah would’ve.
Hannah drops Aidan and wipes the sweat from her brow. When she spots Ollie, her eyes widen.
“I told you to run,” she says.
“I know, but I had to—”
“We need to run now,” Hannah snaps. She marches to him, reaching for his arm. “If I don’t get out of here, someone will—”
There’s another shriek only inches to Ollie’s left. He turns at the same moment as Hannah and barely sees it in time. Another mimic, entirely ablaze, bounding toward them. The flaming mimic collides with them both, knocking Ollie and Hannah back off the ledge.
Ollie hits the ground harder this time. The pain is piercing and precise, so intense that he momentarily can’t see anything but strokes of color.
When he turns to look at Hannah, his heart sinks.
She swats at her ankle, but it’s too late. A single spark is caught on the tattered edge of her pant leg. The fire creeps up her leg, moving so fast she doesn’t have a chance to put it out. Ollie reaches for her, but by the time he understands what he’s seeing, the fire has caught her skin.
Hannah takes his hand, eyes shifting from panic to calm. In a matter of seconds, the fire takes the rest of her, but she doesn’t stop watching Ollie. He squeezes his eyes shut because he can’t do it. He can’t watch her go, even if it isn’t her.
When Ollie opens his eyes, he is alone at the bottom of the ledge, the last trace of Hannah Kennedy gone in the dark.