She looked around at the haze, a thick blanket that spread away in all directions. She had only a general idea of where her companions had gone, and they might change direction at any time. She could no longer hear the AV’s engine, no longer hear anything but the silence. Even the sounds of pursuit from the militia had disappeared. Or at least become muffled. It felt as if she were completely alone in the world. She experienced a moment of panic, but fought back against it and forced it down. She was her mother’s child, she reminded herself. Her warrior mother’s child. Panic was not allowed. She ran her fingers through her short-cropped blond hair, slung the Parkhan Spray over one shoulder, and started searching the ground for tire tracks. She found them almost at once. There, she thought, no need to worry. She ran through a litany of responses to possible threats that would keep her safe. If she saw fires, she would move away from them. If she heard noises, the same thing. Unless she decided they were from the Ghosts. If she saw movement, freeze. Stay clear of everything until it got light again, and then she could orient herself and find her way. She knew in general where she was going and what she was looking for. She had been lost before in places much more dangerous than this, and she had been much younger when it had happened. This was just another variation on a familiar experience. She would be all right.

But a small voice warned her to be careful. Just before she had fallen off the roof of the AV, she had spotted something strange. A huge, misshapen thing had appeared out of the fog, something vaguely human-shaped. It had shambled into view momentarily, walking up-right like a man, but much larger, and then it was gone again. She had lost her concentration and in the next moment she had fallen. She still didn’t know if what she had seen was real or not. But it had felt real, and that was enough to trouble her now.

She had no idea at this point where it was, and she did not think she wanted to find out. A sudden boom sounded off to her right, too far away to be a threat or even to be identified. She glanced in the general direction of the sound, but didn’t see anything. She kept walking, doing her best to keep a straight line, following the tracks of the AV, which were plain enough to see in the soft earth, even in the mist and darkness. She gained back a measure of lost confidence as she progressed, her uneasiness over her situation steadying, her determination hardening. It would take worse than this to throw her off stride, she told herself. A lot worse.