But this week, she’d discovered that even dying was a choice. And because of Griffin, she chose to live.

She staggered up to yet another checkpoint and gulped down the bottle of water someone shoved at her.

“Head due west for two clicks, then angle southwest at the orange pylon for three clicks to the next checkpoint. Get out of here, Tate.”

West. Right. Wherever the hell west was. She spotted the guy coming up behind her—crap, Grundy—and took off, hoping to get a little ahead of her personal harasser-in-chief.

As far as she could tell, they must be past the halfway point of the run, because now they were heading back toward the west, after spending several hours slogging east through the sand and rocks.

The rocks were the worst of it, always waiting to roll underfoot and turn an ankle or send a girl tumbling to the ground in her exhaustion and inability to catch herself anymore. She lost count of how many times she’d fallen tonight.

She dared not hope this was the end, or that when she got back to base this nightmare would be over. The disappointment if she were wrong would be too much to bear.

Instead, she concentrated on thinking about nothing at all. She put her body on autopilot and zoned out as hard as she possibly could. No pain. No cold. No fatigue. No fear. Just determination. To. Keep. Moving.

The orange cone came into sight, and the path turned slightly left, angling southwest between two tall walls of rock. A narrow canyon wound away in the darkness. She stumbled down it, relieved to be almost halfway through this leg of the night’s interminable run.

All of a sudden, a black gap loomed in front of her, some sort of deep pit in the ground. Jerking out of her half-conscious state, she just barely managed to stop her forward momentum and not pitch into the hole.

Momentarily alert, she peered down into it. It had to be at least ten feet deep, with vertical sides. It was about a dozen feet to the other side. Too far to jump in her current state and with the heavy ruck on her back. She looked left and right. The gap stretched all the way across the narrow gully.

Truth be told, it was mostly luck that she’d even spotted the pit. A sliver of moon had come out from behind a cloud just then, illuminating the shadows in just the right way for her to see the lack of stones littering the path.

Was she supposed to climb down in the hole and back out the other side? She didn’t see anything even resembling handholds in the smooth wall across from her. Maybe she was supposed to go up and around the pit.