It had begun with the Colonel. That much everyone was able to ascertain in the first few hours.

No one could recall seeing the Colonel for days, not in the apiary or stables or on the catwalks, where he sometimes went at night. Peter certainly hadn’t seen him over the seven nights he’d stood, but he hadn’t thought this absence strange; the Colonel came and went according to his own mysterious designs and sometimes didn’t show his face for days.

What people did know, and this was reported first by Hollis but confirmed by others, was that the Colonel had appeared on the catwalk shortly after half-night, near Firing Platform Three. It had been a quiet night, without sign; the moon was down, the open ground beyond the walls bathed in the glow of the spots. Only a few people noticed him standing there, and no one thought anything about it. Hey, there’s the Colonel, people might have said. Old guy never could quite make himself stand down. Too bad there’s nothing doing tonight.

He lingered a few minutes, fingering his necklace of teeth, giving his gaze to the empty field below. Hollis supposed he’d come to speak with Alicia, but he didn’t know where she was, and in any event, the Colonel made no move to look for her. He wasn’t armed, and he didn’t speak with anyone. When Hollis looked again, he was gone. One of the runners, Kip Darrell, claimed later to have seen him descending the ladder and heading down the trace, toward the pens.

The next time anyone saw him, he was running across the field.

“Sign!” one of the runners yelled. “We have sign!”

Hollis saw it, saw them. At the edge of the field, a pod of three, leaping into the light.

The Colonel was running straight toward them.

They fell on him swiftly, swallowing him like a wave, snapping, snarling, while on the catwalk high above a dozen bows released their arcing arrows, though the distance was too great; only the luckiest of shots would have accomplished anything.

They watched the Colonel die.

Then they saw the girl. She was at the edge of the field, a lone figure appearing out of the shadows. At first, Hollis said, they all thought she was another viral, and everyone was completely trigger-happy besides, all of them ready to shoot at anything that moved. As she broke across the field toward Main Gate, under a hail of arrows and bolts, one caught her in the shoulder with a meaty thunk that Hollis actually heard, spinning her around like a top. Still she kept on coming.

“I don’t know,” Hollis admitted later. “It might have been me who got her.”