This might be the intruder from last night, she thought. What do I do? What do I do? She scanned her surroundings. “I can’t run for it. I’m too far away,” Eva whispered through fast breath. She looked back at the glowing dot on the Omnipod. Whatever this is will make it to the surface before I get to the woods.

“Heart rate BPM acceleration detected, Eva Nine,” her tunic announced. “Please—”

Eva tapped the shoulder patch, silencing its report. She ran to the sloping back of the Sanctuary entrance, throwing her Omnipod into her satchel. After grabbing hold of the stalk of a large mushroom, she pulled herself up the back of the entryway and scrambled onto the tiny angled roof.

The footsteps became louder as whoever—or whatever—it was approached the surface. Eva held her breath and curled up tightly in a ball. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She could feel the thing near her.

Maybe it won’t see me. Maybe it will leave.

Time stopped as she waited, her body curled with her hands over her head. Her neck began to hurt. There was no sound to be heard at all except the far-off chortling of the birds.

Has it gone back down?

“Ovanda say tateel?” a voice barked.

Eva slowly unfroze from her position, and dared a peek over the edge of the roof.

There her eyes met the gaze of a being she knew her Omnipod would also not be able to identify.

CHAPTER 8: STUCK

Eva looked at the creature’s catfish-whiskered mouth as it spoke. Its lanky figure was much smaller than last night’s intruder’s. Its cerulean blue body was partially covered by the baggy faded brown jacket that it wore.

“Ovanda say tateel?” the bipedal creature repeated. Eva assumed the words were a question by the way the being spoke, and she assumed it was a male by its gruff voice, but she couldn’t be too sure. She scooted far from him to the back of the entryway roof.

“O-van-daa . . . saay . . . taa-teel?” He gestured with large hands. In one, he held a cylindrical bottle half-full of a milky liquid. “Say tateel? Dat?”

“Who are you?” asked Eva in a shrill tone. “How did you get in there?”

Did you kill whoever lived inside and steal their jacket?

The creature turned its narrow head and blinked, birdlike, as he regarded Eva with his indigo eyes. “Bluh. Shassa avanda say tateel,” he mumbled as he walked back down the steps into his Sanctuary.

Eva sat, perplexed, on the rooftop and waited.

In the distance, she could hear the air-whale call across the heavens.

Nothing else happened.

“I KNOW this isn’t on the stupid survival list!” She slid down the back side of the entryway and tiptoed back to the opening. Peering inside, she spied no sign of the creature in the darkness.