“Get off the road!” he shouted as he rolled onto the shoulder, then scrambled back into the woods. Gina and Linda came with him, but Pete was not fast enough.

He threw off the gun and jumped, but he never hit the ground. Instead, he shot into the air and Mark hated to see him kicking and clutching, hated to hear him scream like a boy as he came dropping back down from a thousand feet. He bounced and was still.

This was just too much, it was too horrific, and for the first time in Mark’s life, he considered surrender. But what would that gain? A slow death, or worse, enslavement to the part of himself that he despised.

Gina said quietly, “Mark?”

She was looking toward the road, where Linda was working frantically, attempting to attach Pete’s Storm to her chest. Before Mark could run to her, she was upended and dragged into the sky. The gun fell, shattering against the roof of the pickup.

Her screams pealed and pealed, echoing flatly in the silence of the forest. The helplessness was miserable, but with it came a stirring of the same shaming thrill that had almost overwhelmed him in the Glade. Beside him, he could hear Gina gasping, and he did not know if it was fear or anger, or the shame of pleasure.

He did not let her see what was left when Linda’s voice dropped to a growl and died, the red skeleton dangling in midair like a grotesque Halloween decoration.

He drew Gina deeper into the woods.

“Where are we going?” she asked, trying to pull away from him.

“We need concealment.”

“Yes, of course. I understand. It’s just the two of us now.”

He stopped. Hidden here in the thick forest, they were safe from the menace from above, but for how long?

“You know what we are and why we’re here, Gina. It’s time to work as a team.”

She yanked her arm away. “We can’t fight them! There’s no way!”

“We have to fight.”

“With what? Knives?”

“For us, they’re better than guns.”

“Oh, come on!” Anger replaced her sobs.

“Gina, we have all sorts of capabilities programmed into us.”

“What are they?”

“What I’m finding is, if they’re needed, they’re there.”

“What are they, damnit? You can’t use something you don’t know you have.”

“You’ve been in flicker.”

“When that hybrid slowed down?”

“You sped up. He could have followed you but he wasn’t expecting it and you were able to drop him. That’s the why of knives instead of guns. In flicker, you can thrust a knife faster than a gun—any gun—can fire.”

“I’m a satellite surveillance specialist. It’s technical work, and that’s what I know.”