My arms wrap tightly around my stomach while my breaths come loud and heavy.
When I hear something move, I gasp. When a branch grazes my arm, I yelp.
Sawyer ignores every sound I make. I imagine him in his head, counting his steps, sorting through his memory bank. I called it compulsive, but it has its use. Newly initiated Keepers take months to become fully familiar with our forest. Sawyer has taken three weeks, and he knows it better than I’m guessing a great amount of our people.
He pauses at every trap, guides me by my arm around it, then pauses again and shifts his feet in an exact way. We do this several times before I realize what he’s doing.
The traps are markers for him.
Truly, I’m impressed.
“You really know your way around,” I whisper.
He doesn’t respond, and after a few minutes pass, I try again to speak. He just pauses, holds up his hand, and tells me he needs to focus. I watch his eyes close as he recomposes himself. When he opens his eyes, we carry on.
At some point, we stop so he can sort through a hollowed tree trunk. He says nothing as he pulls out the hiking bag and slings it over his shoulders, but I nearly smile. Clever,cleverboy.
It takes a solid forty-five minutes before we reach the fallen tree he talked about. Just like he told me to, he walks to the edge, sticks his heel against the trunk and angles his feet just slightly to the left.
When he takes off, I follow. I stop trying to appear scared. It doesn’t seem to matter. Nothing seems to matter to him right now besides the numbers in his head, the precise way he walks.
I’m captivated by it. I’m so captivated that when we get to the fence, I’m startled by the sound of a stick breaking behind me.
The present slams into me, squashing all my curiosity, all my calm. It makes no sense, but I feel a sort of dread for what is about to happen.
For a moment, it felt good to be cared for.
Sawyer
I spinwhen I hear something in the dark. Feet breaking twigs. Leaves rustling.
“Is this it?” Luna asks, her voice too loud. I whip toward her with a finger pressed over my lips.
She follows my lead when I creep back slowly toward the fence, my eyes scanning the dark forest. The bright moon beams through the trees to reveal shadowed branches, a bush half-dormant, autumn leaves carpeting the forest floor.
No humans. Not yet.
The tunnel should’ve shielded us from whatever drones buzzed outside the Keep, but we’re far from safe.
I drop the bag and retrieve the rubber gloves hidden in the brush.
“Get ready,” I whisper. I pull the gloves on as I kneel next to the hole. Panic thumps like a bird beating itself bloody against my ribcage—but beside me, Luna is silent. Her face is a blank slate, eyes watching with no sense of urgency.
I crouch and pull the metal chain-link back while once again searching the forest. “Go. Now,” I hiss when Luna doesn’t budge.
Something moves in the shadows as another twig snaps. A silhouette slipping from behind a tree.
I gasp, peel the metal back until my shoulders protest. “Luna, fuckinggo.”
The silhouette moves toward us—openly, brazenly, with the slow gait of a masked-villain in a horror movie. My gut begins to slip, nerves twitching in my feet, my shoulders, my neck.
Luna doesn’t move.
“Fucking go!” I scream. “Luna!”
She doesn’t.
Moonlight glints off the calm in her glassy eyes, never pointing at the silhouette. Never leaving me.
