She had been pretty, when she had first entered these woods. She could’ve been a model: leggy in olive shorts and hiking boots, her blonde ponytail pulled through the back of her ballcap.

  She was still blonde, and though her outfit was muddy and torn, she still wore it. But the prettiness had vanished behind bulging eyes and chalky cheeks, and her feet were bare.

  She checked behind her often, mincing over the slippery rocks of the rivulet. Heat bloomed with the dawning sun, and birds warbled. She could not hear anyone following her.

  She squinted, extending her arm toward the sun, then turning until her fingers lined up with their shadow. Her lips moved, calcu-lating. The rivulet had brought her as far as it could. If it had not broken her trail, nothing would.

  Checking around yet again, the woman leapt onto solid ground. Quick as a rabbit, she bolted between the trees. A squirrel chittered above her and she jolted, foot slamming down on an iron plate.

  She shoved her hands in her mouth to muffle the scream. When she looked at what had hurt her, she had to muffle it again. The iron jaws of a bear trap clamped on the exposed flesh of her leg. Blood oozed. Clenching her teeth, she grabbed the trap’s jaws, trying to lever them apart. They didn’t budge. She wanted to sit down and cry, but she didn’t have time for that. She had to keep going, trap or no trap.

  The trap was immensely heavy, forty pounds of solid iron, but it wasn’t anchored. Instead, its chain ended in a short, dull iron hook. She should be able to move it.

  The girl hopped, shuffling her leg behind her. She dragged the trap ten feet before glancing back. Only then did she see that the hook, so useless as an anchor, had dug a clear trail behind her. Simple for any hunter to track.

  Stifling a moan, the girl crawled back those laborious ten feet, brushing out the trail with a handful of pine needles. Then she stood and folded herself over, so she could grab the hook. The chain was too short for her to straighten, so she had to stay bent as she hopped and dragged, one step at a time.

  The sun rose higher, nearing noon. With a sob of relief, the girl spotted the blank opening in the woods, the shining powder blue of her little car. Heaving and panting, she threw herself past the last of the trees, down the embankment. But at the edge of the road, she stopped short, frozen with despair.

  A giant waited next to her car. His painted lips smiled, and his arm ended in a hook.

  Brooding over the many gruesome ways a piece of curved metal could penetrate human skin would only make them come true. Daisy had always despised distraction in her partners, and she despised it most in herself. So what if her every muscle ached? So what if she suspected that her new superior had expected her to be dead by now? So what if her partner probably wouldn’t care if she did die? She was Daisy Allen, and she was a professional. She was focused. She was strong. And, at the moment, she was sweltering under her brown collar in the breathless dry air of an August thirty-five years Pre-Agency Time.

  The Path had deposited them at the edge of a wilderness, in a parking lot of dirt, pebbles, and stray pine needles. Daisy’s eyes traced ponderosa pine trunks eighty, a hundred, a hundred twenty feet upward. Their lower levels were largely limb-less, creating both airy pathways for morning strolls and the illusion of good visibility. Oh, you could see a significant distance if you didn’t mind what you saw, but you’d probably miss the shrouded hollows, the treacherous dips and dives and slants.

  Providing sporadic shelter were wiry, drought-resistant shrubs and fallen branches. Birds jabbered, critters chittered, and insects buzzed. The wind, waggling branches far above, provided no relief below.

  “These woods are extremely real,” Daisy observed. “No glittering, no gussying up—or whatever the Horror equivalent is. Gnarled black trunks under a blood moon?”

  Lawrence didn’t look over, but she said, “Horror has many variations.”

  “And does this variation match your interpretation of the brief?”

  “It does.”

  Daisy gazed fondly at a mosquito. “Sparkling Christmas forests cold enough to flush cheeks without burning noses. Over-manicured parks and enchanted groves. A decorative fawn; the distant glimpse of a coyote.”

  Lawrence didn’t answer. Daisy hadn’t expected her to, though she wished . . .

  She wished Lawrence would be more what she had been last night, on way back from their Dead House crypt scenario.

  Tech Derek had still been in the Path Room when they had emerged. Despite his clear surprise at Daisy’s survival, he had two decontamination units prepped. Daisy managed an exhausted smile in response to his congratulations for a successful mission, but she didn’t say anything until she and Lawrence were out on the walkway, heading for the dorms. Then she remembered, and exclaimed with consternation, that all her possessions, even her nightgown and toilet-ries, were still in her old Romance suite.

  “I didn’t exactly believe the Skeleton was going to transfer me, when I got the summons,” she admitted. “I’d been requesting one for years, but I’d always been turned down. I did prepack, because you never know, and I thought that if by some miracle I was being transferred, it’d be better to get out of there quickly.”

  Lawrence was listening—Daisy could tell that she was definitely listen-ing—but she didn’t reply. Daisy couldn’t imagine what it would be like, to be so utterly devoid of people skills.

  “Anyway,” Daisy went on breezily, “I should only be an hour or so. I’ll meet you back—is it weird to call it ‘home’? It feels weird.”

  “There are worse homes,” Lawrence said.

  The Path Room lurked at the furthest tip of the Horror spoke; the dormitory was at around the halfway point. Daisy expected Lawrence to leave her there, but Lawrence stayed by her side. Daisy found herself strangely flattered by this, which took some of the drag off her fatigue.

  The Agency’s central hub swarmed with agents: hurrying to and from the cafeteria, the armorer, the various shops that gave color to otherwise drab suites. Agents lounged on the grass, chat-ting, reading, or snoozing under the cozy sun. Most of them knew Daisy, of course. They waved to her, called out to her to join them, and detoured to bask in her presence. Daisy smiled at them in turn, greeting them by name and asking after their partners, their hobbies, their children—anything and everything to show she knew these people, she cared about them, they were her friends. Lawrence might have the advantage in Horror, but everyone loved Daisy.

  And that meant Daisy was far too useful to let die.

  The crowd thinned again as they entered the Romance spoke; but as there was no one in Romance who did not know Daisy, adore Daisy, and depend on Daisy, she was no less approached than before.

  “Hetty is in hysterics,” agents informed her. “She’s telling everyone you disappeared.”

  “I was on assignment,” Daisy said. “I got transferred. I’ll tell you about it later, okay? I’m exhausted, and I haven’t gotten my stuff yet.”

  “Not transferred!” they exclaimed, and would have stopped her; but as Daisy didn’t need their help to carry her belongings, she shed them at the entrance to her old suite, where Hetty was waiting.

  At her best, Hetty was a handful—and she was currently far from her best. As promised, she was in hysterics . . . as she had regularly been since Daisy had gotten saddled with her seven months ago.

  “Where have you been?” Hetty wailed, throwing herself at Daisy. “You disappeared! I was worried!”

  Patting Hetty’s back as the woman blubbered on her, Daisy said, “I’m sorry; I thought you’d be informed. I got transferred to Horror. This is my new partner, Agent Nebekah Lawrence.”

  Hetty either didn’t recognize the name or didn’t register its implications. She looked through tearstained eyes, observed the uninteresting drape of Lawrence’s post-decontamination scrubs, misunderstood the empty expression, and assumed what she liked.

  Blowing her nose on a lacy handkerchief, Hetty turned and apol-ogized to Lawrence. “I don’t mean to be so soppy, when we’ve only just met. I should say ‘congratulations’ and ‘welcome to the Agency,’ but it’s hard, you know? Or you don’t know yet, but you will, once you’ve worked with Daisy as long as I have. She’s a goddess. You’re so lucky, having her train you.” She swung around again, seizing Daisy’s arm. “But why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I’m sorry to have worried you,” Daisy said, laying a comforting hand on her shoulder, “but it was sudden for me too. Don’t be sad. It’s best this way.”

  “But I don’t want you to go. And to Horror!”

  Lawrence moved, but she was only going into Daisy’s room to bring out the first load of suitcases. As she returned, Daisy saw her looking closely at Hetty. Lawrence’s expression didn’t shift, but Daisy suddenly saw the situa-tion as it must look to her new partner. She flushed with dismay and humili-ation as she finally understood why Lawrence, impenetrably anti-social and undoubt-edly exhausted, had accompanied her to Romance. After all, good agents always read their briefs, and Lawrence knew. She knew that Daisy regularly ensorcelled her part-ners inside scenarios. She knew what Daisy’s real opin-ion of Hetty must be.

  What would someone like Lawrence think Daisy had been about, show-ing off her popularity as they’d crossed the Agency? Did she think that Daisy was forcing people to like her? That she had no real friends and no real skills, that she went around ensorcelling everyone she met? Did she think that Hetty had only become this weeping rag because of long-term damage from frequent ensor-cellment? Was it possible Lawrence even knew about—

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  No. The Skeleton would not have stopped at reassignment, if he had any proof of that.

  Crimson filled Daisy’s ears, and she became almost brusque as she peeled Hetty off, as she said nice things that were mostly not true, as she left Romance for good.

  Lawrence didn’t say anything on the way back. Not a word until they reached the suite, and then she only announced that she was taking the shower first, and that she would be the one to write and deliver their report. Daisy had been too tired to resist . . .

  And now here they were hardly twelve hours later, in another scenario, in the patchy shade of ponder-osa pines.

  The crypt in their first assignment had been only partly real, a base location multiplied far beyond its original dimensions. By con-trast, these trees were ordinary trees, without discernable altera-tion. The Heart would not be able to control their limbs, could not bend them to pluck up or obstruct victims. The only Horror influence Daisy could detect was a faint edge designed to attract certain types as victims. That influence must have been effective, because accord-ing to the brief, four known groups of campers had gone missing in this wilderness in the past three months, along with possibly dozens of tramps and hitch-hikers.

  Of the probable victims, only one had escaped: a virtuous young woman with shoulder-length brown hair, a sweet face, and a wildly improb-able story about a preternaturally strong man with hooks for hands. He had, she claimed, kidnapped her and then forced her to run barefoot through the woods while he hunted her.

  Since her wounds were only partially consistent with her rather confused story, and since Hook Man legends were popular in those parts, no one with any sense took her seriously. The police thought drugs and bully-ing, and her parents paid for counseling. Flies buzzed, and people forgot.

  The Agency brief contained this story, along with several varia-tions of the Hook Man legend and a precise description of the type of wilderness they would encounter.

  “Possibly a rabid animal or supernatural creature,” Lawrence had told Daisy when asked, “but the girl’s story suggests Slasher strain, Hunter type.”

  “Vulnerability?”

  “You must know the answer to that. What are hunters vulnerable to?”

  “Being hunted,” Daisy had said. She’d grinned impishly at her partner. “That’s how love triangles happen.”

  Heat shimmered in a line above the trees, in the direction the compass indi-cated. Lawrence’s chin dipped, and she cheated her angle to watch both wilder-ness and road. A moment later, Daisy heard the engine, tires on gravel. She cloaked herself in charm and lit a smile for the newcomers. These could not be agents of the enemy, not here outside the infection zone. That meant ordinary humans, likely attracted as victims.

  A truck pulled up, shining black under filth, and the driver hopped out. “You here for Taylor too?” he asked. He was a foot taller than Daisy and broad in a tough-guy, wrestle-a-grizzly, survive-the-zombie-apocalypse sort of way. His revolver was high caliber, his features lovable cowboy, his mind as open and untrained as a newborn babe’s.

  “Hey, look—chicks!” exclaimed his friend, climbing out of the back seat.

  “You moron,” chided the third newcomer. This one was a woman and, like the others, college aged. “You can’t call rangers ‘chicks.’”

  “But they are!”

  “Did Taylor invite you?” Tough Guy was asking Daisy. And, doubt-fully, “You one of us?”

  “I’m Daisy,” Daisy said, and shook hands to squeeze out their names. Tough Guy was Arne; the other two were Mijo and Brittney. “It’s nice to meet you, but I’m afraid I have bad news: these woods are currently off limits to the public.”

  “Yeah?” demanded Brittney. “You have the authority to do that?”

  “They’re rangers, Britt,” said Arne.

  “Ask for ID,” Mijo prompted.

  Brittney, Daisy decided while displaying her Agency-replicated ID, was dating Arne. Mijo was either dating or thought he was dating Taylor. It had to be a female Taylor, since Mijo’s presence made no sense for a love triangle. Unless this was a tragic backstory for Arne, but she thought not.

  —Or that would be the setup in Romance. Which this wasn’t. In Horror, what did any of it mean? What were the implications of the setting, the players?

  “Taylor is dead,” Lawrence said, interrupting the hikers’ stream of reasons she should let them accompany her. “Her mutilated corpse was discovered ten miles from here, on a northern trail. There is a mankiller loose, possibly a rabid bear. We can’t let anyone in until we’ve neutralized it.” She touched the rifle slung over her shoulder, drawing their eyes to it. “Details won’t be revealed to the public until we notify her family, so I expect you to do the decent thing and keep your mouths shut. I’d never have told you, except I don’t want you stum-bling around and getting killed—or getting us killed. Under-stand?”

  Daisy suppressed a sigh at Lawrence’s brutal method of getting rid of the hikers. Her partner was right, of course: Taylor had to be dead, because the scenario was currently quiescent, between victim cycles. But if Lawrence had left her to it, Daisy would have dismissed them without inflicting permanent mental scarring.

  Too late now; there was nothing for it but to play into Lawrence’s story. Daisy flattened her lips in sympathy as she said many diplomatic things and shooed the hikers back into their truck. “I’m sorry we had to be blunt,” she said, “but it’s most important that you stay safe. That’s what Taylor would have wanted.” The hikers resisted, but not much, and soon Daisy was waving at them as they drove off.

  She waited until they were out of range before rounding on Lawrence. “I could have handled that!” she snapped.

  “Do not ever,” said Lawrence, “give a Horror our real names.”

  Daisy shook her head at this non-sequitur. “We’re not inside the scenario.”

  “If the scenario begins where it’s supposed to. If the Heart cannot hear beyond its borders. If those three, with their knowledge and naked minds, never enter. Horror is a speculative genre, and names can have power inside it. Your mental defenses are too strong for the Heart to pluck out your identity; do not give it your advantage.”

  The compliment was spoken without inflection, but it went a long way toward mollifying Daisy. With a calmer mind, she recognized that Lawrence was attempting to teach her, much as she had been in the crypt. She had not appreciated it then; but though Lawrence’s manners could use work, her infor-mation was invaluable. Daisy relaxed, smiled, and thanked her sincerely.

  She was rewarded with a flicker of surprise and the grudging amend-ment that she probably hadn’t killed them this time, but that she ought to “especially beware House and Fairytale strains.” Then Lawrence turned and, Daisy by her side, walked into the Horror.

  There were no immediate threads or enemies. Nothing to delay the agents or warn them against following the trail. Or Daisy supposed it must be a trail, despite it being neither paved nor broad enough for two abreast. It looked slightly different than the surrounding landscape, anyway, though rocks stuck haphazardly out of the dirt, and nearly as many pine needles were on the path as were next to it. It headed uphill but switched back regularly, gentling the incline.

  Daisy slowed and then stopped. She tilted her head back, eyes lidding until she saw nothing but the shadow of her lashes and a glitter as of tears.

  It wasn’t easy to puppet innocents, even for a strong Heart. It took both delicacy and power, and the controlling threads had to be thick enough to con-tinuously pump instructions through. Even a junior agent could instantly spot an innocent, though untangling the threads without damag-ing the minds took considerable expertise.

  There are no innocents in Horror; only enemies and victims.

  Years back, long before Daisy had joined the Agency, she had opened the door of an abandoned wellhouse. Every few inches inside, a single fine spiderweb had dangled three or four feet down from the ceiling. Daisy had found a stick and used it to poke the end of one web. Instantly, a small black spider had streaked down.

  These threads were even finer than those, blending into the shim-mer-ing heat. They hung from the tree branches in a curtain ten feet deep, at a height to hook on to the faces and shoulders of adults. Touching a thread would activate the scenario and mark one as a victim.

  “You have very good eyes,” Lawrence observed.

  “Let’s crawl,” said Daisy.

  The trail led them five miles further in before petering out at a meadow of waist-high grass. No path led through the grass, but one must once have, because at the center of the meadow lay an old gray cabin. It was a rectan-gular structure with a porch along the front and a squat chimney in the middle. Someone had gone to the effort of cutting logs into planks before building, but either they had not fitted the planks properly or age and weather had warped them apart. A broad picture window opened the front, its sill jagged with broken glass. Though the entire structure had shriveled within itself, dryness prevented sagging and rot.

  Keeping low, the agents stalked the edge of the meadow. The Heart was not visible, but it was definitely inside the cabin.

  The agents retreated, and Lawrence scaled several trees before finding one with both an unobstructed view of the window and a considerable degree of cam-ouflage. She threw down a rope for Daisy, who thought she could have climbed the tree without one, but not without leaving marks for the canny hunter.

  Also, she was really sore.

  “How well do you snipe?” Lawrence asked, surveying the land with binoc-ulars.

  “With a tranquilizer rifle, perfectly,” Daisy said. “It’s one of the ways we disable innocents. But I have also practiced with live rounds, and there’s barely a breeze. Four hundred yards is nothing.”

  “Those gloves aren’t suited to close combat,” Lawrence said. “I’ll spot.” She got out of the way, and Daisy stretched herself along the tree limb. Lawrence had chosen one with a convenient V of branches to brace the rifle, and Daisy barely had to adjust it.

  It had been dreadful, in Romance, the choice between sniper and spot-ter: between trusting her partner’s aim and trusting her protection. But those cares could not be permitted to intrude here.

  Daisy wedged herself into position, eye to the scope, fingers feeding a special Agency round into the chamber. Her breathing, regular and slow, shifted her aim in microscopic undulations. The breeze, she estimated, would push her shot six inches to the left. The sun lay behind them, ready to blind anyone seek-ing them from the cabin, but giving her a perfect view of its interior: a table covered in dirty plates and miscellaneous tools. A collection of sticks leaning against the corner. Coils of rope. Black halfmoons of metal.

  “Bear traps,” Lawrence said, when Daisy relayed this description. “Probably to hide in the long grass, though there may be some among the trees. You saw the Punji sticks and pit traps we passed. I expect there are numerous snares hidden around here, none of them deadly. This hunter prefers to finish off his prey personally.”

  Daisy hesitated, but not for long. “Were the Punji sticks ensor-celled?” she asked, knowing the answer.

  Lawrence didn’t respond immediately. The hairs on Daisy’s neck crawled, but she did not lift her face from the scope or alter the rhythm of her breath.

  “No,” Lawrence said at length, “they were not ensorcelled. They were only sharpened sticks, not even poisoned or manured.”

  Daisy sighed. “Threads aside, in Romance a ‘trap’ usually refers to an effeminate youth or infidelity-reveal plot.”

  “Look for straight lines,” said Lawrence. “They do not exist in nature.”

  The sun sank into early evening, and the Heart began moving. It was not awake in any real sense, only going about its maintenance routine as it awaited victims. It was man-shaped but oversized. Its hands looked like hands, but that didn’t mean much at this stage. It drifted slowly in the back-ground, doing this and that. When it neared the window, its head extended above the frame, its chest at normal head height. It paused at the table, look-ing at something.

  Daisy exhaled and squeezed the trigger. The bullet, silver and iron, flew true, striking the Heart’s center of mass and tearing through its delicate array of internal threads. That wasn’t enough to kill it, but it fell to its knees, grasping the table, trying to wake up so it could fight back. As Daisy emp-tied the hot brass from her rifle, she saw a face severely deformed but confused and dull. She slotted in a second round and aimed at the forehead. Her finger squeezed, and—

  Between one instant and the next—

  The Heart changed. A porcelain mask materialized over its face, and the hole in its chest dried closed. It twitched as the bullet passed, but that was all. With inhuman speed, it bolted to its feet and crossed to the window, searching the trees for its attacker.

  The rules had changed. A new victim cycle had begun. “Those idiots,” Daisy breathed.