The sun was already setting somewhere beyond the forest. He sat for a while, leaning against the rough metal wall, unable to understand how much time he had spent inside. The artifact in his hand suddenly grew cold and now felt like a dry cube of ice. Adrian looked at it. It turned now grey in the daylight, and the only extraordinary thing about it was its shape: it was perfectly round, as if not made by nature.

  Adrian wanted to curse, but only a dry cough came out of his throat. He drank greedily from the creek, then pulled a pouch from his belt. As he rolled a cigarette, he glanced at his hands. They were pale, covered in scratches, and his palm, burned earlier, was blistering. Blood trickled from his sleeve.

  Adrian lit up. Calmed down. Scrolled the memories in his mind.

  What happened when he grabbed the artifact? The radiation disappeared, along with all anomalies—there was none outside the helicopter either. How was this even possible? He knew that anomalies could sometimes travel, appear, and disappear. But not all, everywhere and at the same time.

  The strength was slowly returning to him. Adrian stood, shoved the stone into a pocket, reloaded the pistol magazine with rounds from a fresh box. The sun was almost gone, the sky dark blue with leaden cloud-shadows, and only in the west, beyond the forest, a strip of orange fire glowed.

  He set out. Stepped across the stream, climbed the hill where he and Inny had once lain. Entered the shade of the night pines. Everything seemed familiar here, and even in the cool, blue darkness, he noticed his own markers of anomalies and dangerous spots.

  It grew darker around him. Suddenly, he felt his exhaustion. He only remembered the path vaguely: Inny guided him on the way to the creek. But, with some effort, he remembered the signs that he paid attention to along the way: broken bushes, ravines, hollows, hills, and deadfalls often met along the path. It took him about half an hour to finally find the descent into the valley, at the bottom of which the scientists’ hideout darkened.

  Adrian almost ran to the entrance. Knocked quickly. He had to hurry.

  The bunker was silent.

  He knocked for a long time, rattled the handle, beat his fists and feet raw, drumming against the iron—futile. He ground his teeth in rage, realizing it wouldn’t help. If people had been inside, they would have opened.

  He turned away and, overcoming his exhaustion, sprinted along the path through the bushes toward the Ghost Trail, and almost immediately froze, seeing bright lantern light through the trees and hearing the barking of dogs in the distance. His heart sank. Adrian went cold.

  He was too late. They had noticed his absence at the shelter. And now they were hunting him.

  He veered off and bolted. Pine needles and branches betrayed him with snapping cracks underfoot. The barking shifted away, the lanterns glowed behind, but ahead rose a deep, mournful howling. The sun flashed one last time and sank beneath the horizon, and from behind the clouds rose a huge full moon. And then the howling grew louder, rising into the night sky, and the bushes stirred, releasing predators into the open.

  Adrian stopped. Looked around. The terrain was familiar. He broke into a run again, realizing with every step just how bad it was.

  Branches cracked. Shouts rang in the distance. Before him behind the trees were bright beams of light, and right behind him—growls. And the triumphant howling, an anthem of the hunt for a man. Adrian stumbled, shielded his face from branches, tumbled down the hill through brush, rolling into a misty lowland at the bottom of a ravine. He turned, wheezing, gasping for air. And he saw them. First, glowing pairs of eyes. Then, the silhouettes of bounding beasts. And the mutant dog, the first to arch into a leap.

  He snapped up his pistol and fired. The beast seemed to slam into a wall, flipped over, and crashed to the ground beside him. Adrian backed away and fired again. The dogs came in a pack, one after another bursting from the bushes.

  He shot, and the ravine filled with the roar of gunfire, the clack of the slide, blood, smoke, and beasts thrashing in their death agony. Lanterns, darting wildly beyond the trees, now drew nearer. The dogs howled triumphantly, going mad, and the moon shone as brightly as the sun, flooding the night forest.

  The pistol clicked dry one last time and fell silent. Adrian did not have time to reload, so he tucked the pistol inside the suit and burst running, scrambling up the opposite slope, clinging with teeth almost to sparse tufts of grass, biting his lips in blind desperation. He spotted the “trampoline” too late. It whirled him, hurled him into the air, and flung him toward the stakes of wild elder.

  He fell heavily on the ground, breaking through the branches. The first dog flew past, the second landed on him, crushing him and sinking its teeth into his suit, which tore and burst at once. Adrian reached for his knife and, in frenzy, stabbed the predator’s flank several times before it slumped off. He rolled aside, dodged another, and ran headlong through branches and thickets, growling with fear. They were on him again, and to his left, blinding lantern light flared close.

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  And then, suddenly, the Forest ended.

  He burst onto a broad trail winding among even, scattered trunks and collapsed to his knees, panting. An engine roared, and gunfire erupted—the rattle of falling casings, the thunder of a mounted machine gun. The cacophony blended into one roar in his head; he shielded his face from the blinding spotlights, and someone ran up, carefully lifted him in their arms, and he heard:

  “Albert! Uncle! It’s him! We found him!”

  He barely had the strength to rise, and with Inny’s help, clambered aboard the armored vehicle, frozen in place. The machine gun rattled without pause, but the engine roared, and they tore down the trail. The last mutant dogs, bursting onto the road, gave chase, but the machine gun cut them down as well, and the lanterns, yells, and barking remained far behind.

  “Found it?” he heard.

  “Yes…” he muttered hoarsely, pulling the stone out of his pocket.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Inny gasped, flinching.

  “What?” he looked at her in surprise.

  “You hold it with your hand! Don’t ever do it!” She pulled a magnetic tweezer from somewhere, carefully picked the artifact from his open palm. “Save for you contaminating it, it can also be very radioactive!”

  “It’s ok, Inny,” Salzman called calmly from the front seat. “Put it into the container. Good job, Adrian.”

  “We need to hurry… The orphanage… They are looking for me…”

  “No, they don’t. It’s a military raid. Clearing the territory of the dogs.”

  Adrian fell silent. Of course, Salzman was right.

  “Officially, we’re helping them, too,” Salzman said smugly. “I took the car from the Institute today, then drove straight to the shelter, and offered Burakovsky my help with fending off the mutants. It bought me free access to the territory.”

  “Where is my backpack?” Adrian asked, sitting upright.

  “It’s here,” Inny pulled the strap from under her seat.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the shelter, of course. I guess, we both still have a problem to solve.”

  Adrian nodded. The last statement sounded rather cryptic, but he did not want to give it too much thought.

  “So, what’s your plan?” the professor asked after a long period of silence.

  “I don’t know,” Adrian admitted. “I guess I’ll go straight to Southpaw and give him the artifacts. And hope Tim is still alive.”

  “Is there a way to solve the situation somehow without surrendering the loot? It’s good loot, you know. I could pay you better than that… Southpaw?”

  “I don’t think so,” Adrian said grimly. “I have to work with him. He’s a prick, but he’s a partner, and if I betray him, I will have a lot of problems. And I still need to survive for some time in the orphanage.”

  “Can Burakovsky help?”

  “Unlikely. I bet knows everything about Southpaw smuggling artifacts. I’d be surprised if he does not have a part in the business. He will rather incarcerate me for unauthorized therizing, than Southpaw for abducting a man.” Adrian thought for a moment. “Besides, if something happens to Southpaw and he gets officially arrested, his friends will kill me. They will think I’d framed their leader.”

  “Oh, if that’s your worry… Listen, you need to understand one thing now. You’re not staying in the orphanage.”

  “I—what?” Adrian felt his head spinning.

  “You’re not staying in the orphanage,” Salzman repeated wearily. “We will talk it through with Mr. Burakovsky tomorrow. I’m planning to adopt you.”

  Silence fell, disturbed only by the roar of engines and the thudding of the wheels on the bumpy road. Adrian was digesting the information.

  “Why?” he finally asked in a weak voice. “You sent me to death today, you know that? I almost kicked the bucket inside that damn hole. And now you want to adopt me?”

  “I knew you would make it. You will know everything in due time. But now, that you’re aware, that tomorrow you will leave this place forever—does it change something in your plan?”

  Adrian shook his head. He was thinking frantically.

  “Listen, Adrian,” the professor said mildly. “You helped me a great deal today, risking your life, and I owe it to you. If I can be of any help, just let me know, alright? And besides… I find it really a shame when bad guys get away from punishment, and even more so, when good artifacts get into the hands of some dumbasses.”

  Adrian took a deep breath. Salzman’s offer suddenly reminded him of another conversation that only took place this morning—though it felt like years ago. There was one string he could pull on. Burakovsky would not help him against Southpaw, that was certain. But there was someone in the orphanage who would.

  “You’ve said, you got a free access to the territory with the APC.”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you stay there overnight? Say, to help with the defense of the barrier?”

  “Certainly. In fact, that was the plan all along.”

  “I need you to do something for me.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “There are a few officers present now in the orphanage, who are not a part of the regular staff,” Adrian said slowly, still tracing the idea in his head. “They are from the Treaty headquarters, and they have a higher rank than the director. If they catch Southpaw red-handed, Burakovsky won’t try to protect him. In fact, Burakovsky will try anything to feign that he is not aware of this dirty business right under his nose.”

  He grinned, finally having the full puzzle put together in his mind.

  “We just need to make sure they see Southpaw during an act of selling illegally collected artifacts.”

  The armored car roared, turned, and rushed toward the edge of the Forest, where the fields began, that surrounded the orphanage.