Riley
They woke us at 4:00 AM.
Not that I was sleeping. I never slept anymore. Not really. Just... drifted. Floating in that gray space between awake and gone. The lights never went out, so my brain never got the memo that it was supposed to shut down.
But 4:00 AM was different. I felt it before the door opened. Something in the air. Something that said today is the day.
The guards came. Same armor. Same visors. Same silence. But they didn't take us to the medical wing. They took us to a different corridor. One I hadn't walked before. I counted the turns. Left. Right. Straight for sixty-three paces. Left again. Down a ramp. The air changed. Colder. Wetter. Like outside.
I felt my heart do something weird. Not fear. Not excitement. Something in between. Something that said finally.
---
The room was a locker room.
Rows of metal lockers. Benches in the middle. Concrete floor. The walls were gray here, not white. Industrial. Like the facility had stopped pretending to be a hospital and started being what it really was.
"Strip," a guard said. "Clothes in the lockers. New clothes on the benches."
I didn't hesitate. I pulled off the gray sweats they'd given me on the ship. They were dirty. Stained with blood and sweat and things I didn't want to think about. I shoved them in a locker. Didn't close the door. Didn't care.
The new clothes were different. Dark green. Thick material. A jacket. Pants. Boots. Real boots, not the slip-on things I'd been wearing. I laced them tight. Tested the grip on the floor. Good.
A knife sat on the bench next to the clothes.
Small. Blade maybe four inches. Black handle. No frills. I picked it up. Felt the weight. Balanced it in my palm.
A knife. Not a gun. Not a spear. Just a knife.
I looked at the guard. "This is it?"
"This is it."
I tucked the knife into my belt. Didn't say anything else.
---
The others filed in. Sasha was two people behind me. She caught my eye. Raised an eyebrow. I didn't react.
Marcus was there. The shaved-head boy. His score was 203. He moved like someone who'd been in fights before. Confident. Maybe too confident.
The others... I didn't know their names. Didn't care. They were variables. Resources. Potential liabilities.
We all got the same thing. Dark green clothes. Boots. One knife.
Twenty-three kids walked into the room. Twenty-three walked out.
For now.
---
The door at the end of the corridor was different from the others. Bigger. Thicker. Metal. With a wheel in the center, like something from a ship.
A guard spun the wheel. The door hissed. Seals breaking. Air rushed in. Cold. Damp. It smelled like trees. Like earth. Like somewhere I'd never been.
"You will be released into the Green Zone," a voice said over the speakers. Not Vance. Someone else. Someone who sounded bored. "Your objective is to survive. Your supplies are limited. Your weapons are minimal. Your scores will be updated in real time based on your actions."
A pause.
"The Green Zone is the safest area on the island. But safe is relative. There are Stalkers in the Green Zone. They are the ones who failed early. They are weak. But they are not harmless."
Another pause.
"You have seventy-two hours until your first supply drop. Survive until then. Or don't. The choice is yours."
The door opened.
---
Light.
Real light. Sunlight. I hadn't seen it in weeks. It hit my face and I had to squint, had to look away, had to let my eyes adjust.
When I looked back, I saw it.
The island.
Trees. Everywhere. Thick. Dark green. The kind of trees that had been here for centuries, long before the facility, long before the Project, long before any of us were born. The ground was soft. Damp. Covered in leaves and moss and things I didn't have names for.
The air smelled clean. That was the strangest part. After weeks of bleach and antiseptic and fear-sweat, the air smelled... clean. Like nothing bad had ever happened here.
But something bad had happened here. I could feel it. In the silence. In the way the birds didn't sing. In the way the trees seemed to lean toward us, watching, waiting.
"Go," the guard said.
I went.
---
The forest swallowed us.
Within fifty paces, the facility was gone. Hidden behind a wall of green. I couldn't hear the guards anymore. Couldn't hear the hum of the lights. Just the sound of my boots on the soft ground and the breathing of the other kids and the occasional snap of a twig.
I walked fast. Not running. Just... purposeful. I had a direction in my head. Away from the facility. Toward higher ground. That was the first rule of survival: get the high ground. See what's coming before it sees you.
"Riley."
Sasha's voice. Behind me. Close.
I didn't stop walking.
"Riley, wait up."
"No."
"Seriously?"
I heard her footsteps quicken. She fell into step beside me. Her breathing was steady. She wasn't struggling. Good. Weakness slowed you down. Sasha wasn't weak.
"You don't have to follow me," I said.
"I know."
"Then don't."
"No."
I looked at her. Really looked. Her face was calm. Her eyes were sharp. The scar on her jaw was white against her skin. She wasn't scared. Or if she was, she was hiding it well.
"Why?" I asked.
She shrugged. "You're the highest scorer. You haven't broken. You're cold as ice. That's useful."
"I'm not a leader."
"Didn't say you were. I said you're useful."
I didn't have an answer for that. So I kept walking. And she kept following.
---
The others followed too.
I noticed it after about twenty minutes. Every time I changed direction, they changed direction. Every time I stopped, they stopped. Every time I looked at something, they looked at it too.
Like I was a magnet. Like I knew something they didn't.
Dang it. I didn't know anything. I was just... moving. Putting one foot in front of the other. Trying to stay alive.
But they didn't know that. They saw the score. 247. The highest in the group. They saw the way I didn't flinch. The way I didn't cry. The way I walked like I belonged here.
They thought I had answers.
I didn't.
But I wasn't going to tell them that.
---
We walked for hours.
The forest was dense. Hard to navigate. I kept us moving east, toward where the ground sloped upward. The trees thinned as we climbed. The light changed. Golden. Late afternoon.
I found a ridge. A place where the ground dropped away on one side, giving us a view of the valley below. Trees. More trees. And in the distance, smoke. Thin. Wispy. Not from a fire. From something else.
"What's that?" Marcus asked. He'd been hovering near me for the last hour. Trying to be helpful. Trying to be important.
"Don't know," I said. "Don't care. We're not going there."
"Why not?"
"Because smoke means something's burning. Something burning means something's wrong. Something wrong means something's dangerous." I looked at him. "We stay away from dangerous until we have to go toward it."
He nodded. Stepped back. Didn't ask again.
But he kept looking at the smoke. Kept wondering.
That was the problem with most people. They saw something mysterious and they wanted to know more. They couldn't leave it alone. That curiosity got them killed.
I wasn't curious. I was alive.
---
We found shelter an hour before dark.
A cave. Not deep. Maybe fifteen feet back into the hillside. But it had a narrow entrance. Only one way in. Easy to defend.
I stood at the entrance and looked inside. Dark. Damp. Smelled like animal. But no bones. No signs of recent habitation.
"This is it," I said.
"It's a cave," Marcus said. Like I hadn't noticed.
"It's shelter. It's defensible. It's not out in the open where something can sneak up on us." I turned to look at the group. Nineteen kids now. Four had peeled off earlier. Gone their own way. I didn't stop them. I wasn't their keeper.
"We stay here tonight. No fire. No loud noises. No wandering off."
"What about food?" someone asked. A girl I didn't know. Dark hair. Young. Thirteen, maybe.
"There's no food. Not until the supply drop in three days."
"Three days?" Her voice cracked. "We can't go three days without food."
"Then don't."
I walked into the cave. Found a spot near the back. Sat down with my back against the wall. My knife in my hand.
I didn't care if they followed. I didn't care if they stayed. I didn't care if they starved.
That was the truth. Cold and hard and simple.
I didn't care.
---
Sasha sat down next to me.
Not close. Not touching. Just... there. Within arm's reach.
I looked at her. She looked back.
"What?" I said.
"Nothing."
"Then why are you sitting here?"
"Because you're sitting here."
"That's not a reason."
"It's my reason."
I stared at her. She stared back. Her eyes didn't waver. She wasn't scared of me. Most people were. Something about the coldness. The emptiness. They could feel it. Like a draft. Like a warning.
Not Sasha. She sat there like she belonged next to me. Like she'd always been there. Like she wasn't going anywhere.
It annoyed me.
"I don't need a babysitter," I said.
"Good. Because I'm not a babysitter."
"Then what are you?"
She thought about it. Tilted her head. The scar on her jaw caught the light.
"I'm the person who's going to make sure you don't forget you're human."
I laughed. Actually laughed. It came out wrong—sharp and short and not funny at all.
"Too late for that."
"Maybe," she said. "We'll see."
She leaned her head back against the wall. Closed her eyes. Like she was taking a nap. Like we weren't in a cave on an island full of monsters. Like everything was fine.
I watched her for a moment. Then I looked away.
Annoying. That's what she was. Annoying and persistent and completely sure of something I knew wasn't true.
I wasn't human anymore. I'd left that behind somewhere. Maybe in the woods. Maybe on the table. Maybe a long time ago, in a foster home, when I learned that crying didn't help and no one was coming and the only person you could count on was yourself.
But Sasha didn't know that. Sasha thought she could fix me.
She couldn't. No one could.
But she was going to try anyway.
And for some reason... I didn't tell her to leave.
---
The night came fast.
The forest went dark. Not city dark. Not dark with streetlights and headlights and the glow of screens. Real dark. The kind that swallows everything. The kind that makes you realize how small you are.
I sat at the entrance of the cave. Knife in my hand. Eyes on the trees.
The others were inside. Huddled together. Whispering. Some were crying. Softly. Trying to hide it.
Sasha was still next to me. Still within arm's reach. Still not touching.
"You should sleep," I said.
"You should too."
"Someone has to watch."
"So watch. I'll sleep. Then we'll switch."
I looked at her. She was already closing her eyes. Already settling in. Like she trusted me to keep her safe.
Stupid. Trusting me was stupid. I'd leave her if I had to. I'd leave anyone if I had to.
But she didn't know that. Or maybe she did. Maybe she didn't care.
I turned back to the trees. The dark. The waiting.
Somewhere out there, something moved. I heard it. A branch snapping. Leaves rustling. Too heavy for an animal. Too deliberate.
A Stalker. Maybe. Or something worse.
I gripped my knife tighter. My heart didn't speed up. My breathing didn't change.
I was calm. Too calm. The kind of calm that should have scared me.
But I wasn't scared.
I was never scared anymore.