“Oh, no. She used violence to solve everything. Not as bad as Alik, though. But Yuri used to think through his problems. Remember the missing boyfriend story? He investigated properly and made decisions based on facts, and he never stopped until he finished the case. That’s what I aspire to.”

“He could be pretty ruthless, too. A lot of people died when he was hunting for Horatio.”

“That wasn’t his fault—well, apart from the matcher. And people like that deserved to be sent to Zagreus.”

“Yeah—” He frowned at the latest outbreak of shouting, glancing around to see the boys yelling his name and pointing wildly. Xante had brought up the knife pole he was carrying, pointing it toward Dellian and Yirella. But the expression on his face…Dellian slowly turned around, fear turning his skin to ice.

Standing on top of the flyer’s fuselage was a cougar. It shook its head, staring down at them. A small growl emerged from the back of its throat. The forelegs bent, taking it down into a pre-pounce crouch.

“Move back toward the flames,” Dellian said, barely moving his lips, shifting slightly so his body was between the cougar and Yirella.

“Del—”

“Now!” He began his own slow backward creep, pushing her along, eyes frantically scanning the ground for a loose stone like the one Yirella had used, anything he could strike the lethal beast with. He knew it was hopeless, but he wasn’t going down without a fight.

The cougar leaped, powerful muscles flinging it vigorously through the air toward them. Then it exploded. One instant a perfectly evolved killing machine…the next a cloud of flame and tatters of meat. Stinking steam belched out. The charred mess splattered down two meters from a paralyzed Dellian.

He dropped to his knees and vomited hard. Yirella was screaming. Clanmates ran toward them en masse, yelling and shouting.

A shadow fell across all of them. A shivering Dellian raised his head, watching in total incomprehension as the big flyer descended silently out of the clean morning sky.

The Assessment Team

THE ASSESSMENT TEAM

FERITON KAYNE, NKYA, JUNE 24, 2204

I was fascinated by the way Yuri and Callum resurrected their ancient conflict, shouting over each other, bickering with barrages of obscenities about trivial points and who was responsible for what, with neither giving ground. When the whole uncensored account was finally aired, I’d learned very little that I hadn’t already accessed in Connexion’s secure files.