Where are they?

  Swift crouched in the darkness, perched low behind a natural rock outcrop, his breath shallow beneath the shell of his helmet. The riverbed below echoed with the strange, wet sounds he’d heard earlier.

  He counted six distinct breathing patterns.

  Night vision flared green. Silhouettes glided through the riverbed network: tall, hunched shapes, arms too long, limbs twitching in rhythmic jerks. The Skinnies seemed to be searching, probably for Swift.

  He narrowed his eyes behind the lens. He could wait and let them come—but that could mean getting surrounded. The ambusher becoming the ambushed… he didn’t believe in waiting to be attacked.

  Swift had to strike first.

  Quietly.

  Swift slipped backward from his perch, silent as moonlight. His steps were light on the stone. He zigzagged across the slope, using dead trees and rock shadows to mask his movement. Every step was measured. His heartbeat slow, controlled. Calm.

  Open area lay ahead, carved naturally into the soil. Once part of a natural irrigation channel, it now twisted with rot and black tendrils gripping the dirt like veins under diseased skin.

  Swift crept down to its edge and crouched. The Skinnies were moving in a slow patrol arc, their senses focused outward, not within.

  Perfect.

  The first one passed five feet from his position. It chittered softly, hunched and twitching like a marionette that had learned to hate its strings.

  Swift rose silently. One step. One plunge.

  Excalibur’s bayonet sank into the back of the Skinny’s skull. It didn’t scream. Just crumpled, like a puppet dropped mid-show.

  Swift held the corpse like a speared fish, lowered it gently—but the sound of its elbow smacking against stone echoed too far.

  The second Skinny turned sharply, head lolling unnaturally to one side.

  Swift didn’t hesitate.

  Boom.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  The shot from Excalibur cracked across the trench. The round struck center-mass. The creature folded with a gurgled shriek.

  The rest came fast. Four of them, bounding down from above the trench, screeching. Arms flailing like windmill blades, mouths open in hungry rage.

  Swift gritted his teeth.

  One lunged—he stepped inside its reach, bayonet under the chin, drove it upward with force.

  Another came from behind. He pivoted, swung Excalibur’s buttstock up, the reinforced stock cracking bone as it slammed the creature’s jaw.

  Slash.

  Another dropped.

  They didn’t hesitate.

  One claw raked across his side. He felt the fabric tear, the burn of ripped muscle. He growled, slammed his elbow into the creature’s throat, and finished it with a quick thrust.

  The final one lunged from above. Swift rolled aside, came up in a crouch, and jammed Excalibur forward in a brutal, two-handed stab.

  Stillness.

  The trench was quiet.

  Breathing heavy, Swift surveyed the bodies. Six. Confirmed dead.

  But his side…

  Breathing ragged, Swift lifted the helmet’s mask and peeled back the cut open portion of his flight suit. The gash along his side was ugly, but survivable. What stopped him cold was the skin surrounding it — dark veins, pulsing faintly under the surface like ink bleeding through parchment.

  “Shit,” he whispered.

  His fingers trembled as he tore open his med kit and wrapped the wound tightly, cinching the bandage until it burned. It slowed the bleeding, but the black spread remained.

  The wind shifted. From somewhere deeper in the zone, more sounds crept toward him. Soft. Wet. Clicking.

  Not many. Not yet.

  But they were hunting.

  Swift glanced toward the ridge where his perch had been — the tarp blind, the pack, the journal, the notes. Thirty steps uphill.

  I got this.

  He gritted his teeth and sprinted, pain screaming up his side with each jolt of impact. At the perch, he dropped to one knee and snatched his gear, shoving essentials into his pack with quick, practiced hands.

  He paused once, hand gripping Excalibur, and stared down the hill into the dark.

  There would be no more fighting tonight.

  Hopefully.

  He turned and vanished into an area with trees. His breath was shallow, movements sharp and controlled.

  Every step away from the riverbed felt heavier than the last.

  He ran south—south was safer—until his legs began to give, until his lungs clawed for air and his side lit up like fire beneath the bandage. The terrain sloped, the trees thinning into jagged thickets of dry brush. Eventually, he found what looked like a shallow animal den tucked between two roots of a gnarled old tree, half-covered in crumbling debris.

  Swift crawled in and used a tarp from his pack to drape across the entrance. He wedged stones in place to keep it low and tight, leaving just a slit to breathe through. Inside, the space barely fit him.

  A tight, muddy coffin.

  He collapsed backward, Excalibur across his lap, pulse hammering in his ears. The pain came next. Deep. Gnawing. His body trembled. He pulled one knee to his chest and leaned against the root wall, blinking through the haze.

  His fingers itched to grab the bandage, check the spread—but he knew what he’d find.

  The black veins. Corrosion.

  The memory hit like a boot to the head: Carlos’s body in the dirt, the black web creeping along his skin, and Voss quickly firing a round before Swift knew what was going on.

  Gunfighters didn’t get funerals when they were compromised.

  Swift shut his eyes.

  His breathing slowed.

  “Am I going to have to shoot myself?”