A lance hit me in the gut and drove me to the ground. I rolled out from the weight of whatever had knocked me over, breathless from the blow, but Lantern-Eyes sat her hips on mine and one elbow across my neck and the other hand clasped over my mouth, immobilizing me with a soldier’s rough efficiency.

“I wish you had one survival skill,” she hissed into my face from inches away.

I tried to speak against her palm but didn’t have enough air. A frown furrowed her brows and she lifted her hand away, but kept it near my face.

“Sorry,” I whispered, still gasping for breath under her weight on my bruised diaphragm.

Lantern-Eyes looked over my head, towards the unseen edge of the forest. Strands of her hair dangled down onto my face, and almost obscured the fear on hers. She pressed her palm to my mouth again, a hard look in her eyes warning me, then rolled off my torso so carefully that the grass barely swayed. Flat on her belly, she stared ahead, chin above the soil.

I rolled over carefully and looked where she looked.

The two little girls had stood up suddenly, attracted, probably, by the sound of the lieutenant taking me down. First I saw nothing but two children standing there, and almost shouted at Lantern-Eyes for hauling me down when there were kids out there, kids who might need help. But there was something not right about the two children in the woods.

One girl had a scar on her face, bisecting her cheek, exposing the inside of her mouth. The scar dragged down, thick and gnarled, from her jaw to her shoulder. A twisted, ropy thing, and old—an older scar than a child should have. Both children had oddly misshapen cheeks, like they had something in their mouths. And, perhaps it was a trick of the light, but between their sandy lashes I saw nothing but liquid black.

Their heads swiveled this way and that, predatory, sharp. The scarless one inhaled on her palate, like a snake. Through her parted lips I could see bulging ivory, teeth stacked on teeth, warping the natural shape of her mouth. Then she shut her jaw. The two children turned away from us and clambered into the forest, vanishing beneath the looming bulk of the rotting tree.

The sunlight had been warm before, but all I felt now was cold. “Why do they have so many teeth?” I whispered.

There were stress lines around Lieutenant Gupta’s jack-o-lantern eyes; deeper now than before, and highlighted by the unrelenting sun. “I think sometimes the old teeth don’t fall out fast enough. Baby teeth, you know? They’re stuck at that age. The teeth just keep growing.”

“Stuck at that age?”

“Yeah.” Lantern-Eyes pushed herself up onto her hands and knees. “Species 048. An attempt at eternal youth, I think.”

I couldn’t seem to stop shaking. “Why do they look like children?” Eternal youth should mean eternal young adulthood. Eternal post-puberty. Someone old enough to—to— Not a child, an adult. An adult. Not children.