Northeastern Japan

Randi Russell’s eyes snapped open, but she couldn’t see much. Just spinning green set to the sound track of the ringing in her ears. She remained completely motionless, moderating her breathing to the point that it was completely inaudible and picking a fixed point to stare at.

Slowly the spinning stopped, but the ringing persisted with enough intensity to make her virtually deaf. Were the projectiles gone or were they all around her, waiting for any sign of motion that they could target?

She moved only her eyes, finding nothing but dense foliage intermittently broken by a darkening sky. The slope she’d cartwheeled down was to her left and the river was maybe another fifty yards downslope to her right. She was in a fair amount of pain but none of it was localized in a way that suggested serious injury—just the depressingly familiar feeling of having spent half an hour in a clothes dryer with a bunch of bowling balls.

She lay like that for a few more minutes, trying to find any sign of the things that had killed Vanya and chased her into the canyon. Soon, though, thoughts of her team and Wilson’s students began to overwhelm her. What had happened to them? Were any still alive? Did they need her help?

Lying there was pointless, she concluded. She didn’t know anything about the weapon that had been used against her. It might key on motion, but it could just as easily track heat or the shape of human outlines. The more interesting question was, did it just search for targets until it ran out of fuel or could it power down and lie in wait?

In the end, there was only one way to find out.

Randi grabbed a tree branch and used it to pull herself into a sitting position. She was in no condition to run and there was nowhere to go anyway, so she just sat there for a moment, waiting.

Nothing.

“Report,” she said into her throat mike but got no response.

Finally she risked standing. Miraculously, the damage to her body was limited to countless scrapes and gashes peeking out from tears in her clothing. Most of them had clotted and the shadows were lengthening, suggesting she’d been unconscious for the better part of an hour. Too long.

Randi started back up the slope, using trees and bushes to help propel her along the steep grade. Her progress was uncharacteristically slow but her balance was way off and the fact that she couldn’t hear much was making it worse.

It took fifteen minutes to cover the ground she’d careened down in only a few seconds, and she finally stopped just below the canyon’s lip. Crouched beneath a tree, she looked for any sign of danger or life. There was nothing, though. Just a light breeze rattling the leaves.

“Randi.”