Panthers. A terrifying thought occurred to her: Panthers are supposed to hunt at night, but I’ve only ever seen them in the day. Do they hunt in both now, or is this thing in the darkness something worse—something so dangerous the panthers had to change their habits to avoid it? Am I being hunted by a nocturnal panther, or are the panthers hiding, scared in their dens, to escape the creature that’s hunting me? Memories of the ParaGen brochure leapt unbidden to her mind—dragons and intelligent dogs, engineered lions and who only knew what else they’d done. They’d designed the Partials as the ultimate soldiers—had they designed an ultimate predator as well?

Kira stole a glance back down the street where she’d come, shaking her head at the long string of derelict cars and delivery vans; this creature could be hiding behind any one of them, waiting for her to pass by. It was the same with the plaza in front of her. Her best bet lay across the street, in the lobby of what might once have been a shopping mall: fallen mannequins, faded posters of bodies and faces, rack upon rack of ragged clothes. The beast could be in there, too—for all she knew the cluttered hallways could be its den—but there were doors as well, human-size and closed, and if she could get inside one and close it again behind her, she would be safe. Safe until it went away, safe until morning if it took that long. She heard the same rumbling growl, closer now than ever, and set her jaw fiercely.

“It’s now or never.” She leapt to her feet, charging across the broken street to the mall beyond, dodging around the corner of a car as a rush of air tore past behind her. She imagined giant claws swiping inches from her back, and struggled to regain her footing as she raced in through the shattered glass facade of the building. Debris clattered in her wake, far more than she could ever dislodge by herself, but she didn’t dare look back; she raised her gun over her shoulder, firing wildly behind her, turning again as she reached a cracking pillar. The interior of the mall was bigger than she’d expected, glistening metal stairways climbing up and down in pairs, a vast courtyard yawning wide in the center of the floor below her. It was too dark to see the bottom or the top; too dark to see much of anything. The door she’d been aiming for was on the other side; she turned to the right, skirting the pit, and brought her gun back in front of her, switching on the light. The thing seemed to be scrabbling on the slick floor; Kira found the first door she could and sprinted straight toward it.