[63.1190 N, 70.2505 W]

Darkness streamlines the entire way. The armored vehicle rolls on gravel, passing obscured trees, crumbled architecture, browned-out weeds. The windows are shut tight, though the bleak winter wind still finds its way inside. The coarse wails mask the rumbles of the predators outside, all of them hungry and ferocious.

The First Unit chooses not to engage if possible, and so they crank up the accelerator, waltzing past haunting wildlife, abandoned homes, decades-old debris. They’d refueled hours earlier at the base, filling the truck with enough mileage to last weeks.

The atmosphere is calm. Conversations settle on a lull. Among the whispers of wind and engine rattles, several distinct voices, Jae’s and Yoo Seok’s, are mixed in. The driver and passenger sit in the front compartment of the truck, discussing the next fork in the road.

“We’re getting close to owl territory.” Jae’s volume is lowered so as to preserve the quiet. “What do you think about turning left instead? Those creatures are too susceptible to sound and I’m afraid that… with our clanky vehicle, we’d be jumped and eaten in no time.”

“Should I go right?” Yoo Seok asks, tapping his hands against the steering wheel. “We’d be venturing toward cougar territory. Give it two seconds and you will lose an arm, at least.”

The most terrifying of predators are quick-moving ones and the cougar lies on top of the list. No humans can hope to match their acute night vision, their carnal claws, their sharp fangs that hunt under the veil of darkness. They hide behind boulders, blend in prairie and sit watching with glowing, golden eyes.

“I guess we go left?” Jae is hesitant. “I’d rather get pecked by owls than chewed alive by cougars… What do you think, Colonel?”

Yoo Seok is a commendable driver. He knows the terrain like he’d lived here all his life, speeding through shadowy roads with finesse. He gets some slight guidance from Jae, his not-so-trusty navigator who has as much self-esteem as a meek chipmunk. The young man is put in charge of road-mapping and definitely has the credentials for it too, but he often fumbles in his speech, making him sound incredibly unreliable.

“No,” Colonel Yang replies from the back. “Switch out. Noah, shotgun.”

Everyone turns simultaneously to look at the silver-haired young man in the backseat. Noah has been fading in and out of consciousness the entire trip, his head lolled to one side. His eyes are half-lidded, his complexion pasty white, almost luminescent in the unlit car. He doesn’t look fully healthy despite being covered in a quilt – courtesy of Ming Tang by his side – and once in a while, he would let out soft, shuddering breaths.

His temperature had been checked (cold, but that’s not unusual for him) and his pulse had been measured while asleep (steady, just a tad slow). His vitals don’t send off danger signs but he’s painfully groggy, his flexible body unable to move as it should.

He lifts his head upon being called, blinks five times back into alacrity, and then makes eye contact with the colonel in front of him. “…?”

“What?” Yang Rong leans back casually. The action makes the seat creak behind him. “Don’t want to?”

“Why?”

The black combat uniform blends in with the backdrop. Parts of Colonel Yang’s shirt is torn from combat, the shoulder threads nicked to show caramel-tanned skin. The windows let in a bout of moonlight, but it only serves to make the colonel more imposing. It highlights his side profile – sharp, battle-hardened, composed. His green eyes flicker in slight tease. “What do you mean ‘why’? You need to hold your weight, Noah.”

Noah furrows his brows. “I won’t be of help.”

“You will be,” says Yang Rong. He leans toward him, purposefully brushing against his leg and then lowers his voice to a whisper. “Is your eyesight better than a cougar’s?”

Noah thinks the man had found out long ago – was it during the fight with Hannes, or the journey to the gene bank? Perhaps it was earlier, when they had first met inside the army truck, the millisecond when Noah’s eyes reflected beastly allure. The colonel had always been uncannily perceptive.

“…Usually,” he replies slowly. “But right now, I don’t feel very… well.”

“You feel well enough to shoot down a quicksilver snake,” Yang Rong says with a grin. “And to spot a bear cove from a mile away.”

“It was only some hundred meters away.”

Yang Rong chuckles. “Doesn’t disprove my point.”

“I’m not superhuman,” he says with an annoyed tone.

“You’re extraterrestrial,” the colonel tells him before pulling him by the forearm, coaxing him to go. “Don’t be difficult or we’d really get killed tonight. Rong-ge will repay you later, hmm?”

Noah sighs. A minute of cajole later, he does swap with Jae, albeit begrudgingly. He finds himself seated in shotgun with messed-up hair and sleep-deprived eyes, holding a cushion close to his body. Ming Tang had given it to him just now to help with his headache – aside from the colonel, the rest of the crew are quite supportive.

“Headache?” Yoo Seok peers at him for a second, his dark eyes flitting off the road.

Noah probably looks bad enough for even Yoo Seok to question him, considering the amount of words he’d exchange with the latter totals to… none. None at all until now.

He hums in affirmation. “A bit.”

“There’s a button on the seat,” Yoo Seok says as he steers the wheel, turning right on the first fork. “Hold onto it to recline.”

“Mn, thanks.”

The conversation ends there. Neither of them is prone to lengthy talk, unnecessary chatter and the like. Noah places the cushion behind his head and sinks into the chair more comfortably. The hour goes by in silence, and soon, he’s staring more at the night sky than the road ahead. Pretty flickers of light among dusky blue, the occasional one that shines brighter than all others. The constellations remind of tranquility.

There is not a single plane in the skies, nothing to pollute such a slate. One look above captures beauty at its root – intriguing, that the world above is so pristine while the lands are so wrung with chaos and destruction. Six wayward travelers find their path through Orion, bumping into lost city rubble, rolling over soiled pavement, meat and bones, bloodied carcasses.

The sky is their only source of light. Noah is used to darkness, however, so he’s drawn to the small details – a cracked tree branch, unattended weeds, each individual rustle of grass. A signpost is lodged onto the ground, bent toward the tip. A heavy object had crashed into it long ago – he can tell by the ugly fissure on its length.

‘Trenton Village, 5 miles,’ it reads. Yet another village lost and plundered.

Ahead is a straight road leading to the riverbanks. The journey will still be long and tensely silent. Noah, always the peculiar one, finds solace in such a situation. Perhaps he feels sheltered enough in a vehicle that he can see their surroundings basked in pretty, moonlit mosaic. Perhaps he feels sheltered here – surprising that he’s at ease with four soldiers, all of them unfamiliar and one of them who looks at him with piercing green eyes.

Noah makes eye contact through the rearview mirror.

“Colonel Yang, what are you staring at?”

“I am staring at you,” the man responds with a calculated smile on his face. “I’m wondering what you’re looking at.”

“Aren’t I on lookout?”

“Supposed to be,” Yang Rong says, “but I never told you to look out for the sky, Noah. Aren’t your priorities too high up? Could it be that your eyesight is good enough to see into the galaxy?”

Noah hums uncommittedly. “There have been reports of airborne mutations in the area.”

“Air scouting is Jae and Xiao-Yun’s job.” The colonel jabs his thumb to the companions behind him, both of them intently staring out the window through binoculars. The contraptions are decked with fine night vision and image enhancement and are advanced enough to magnify more than a dozen times. They’d mentioned earlier how well-equipped they are for twilight hunts.

Yang Rong gestures to the road in front. The naked trees have coalesced into masses of dark black, making them nearly impossible to tell apart. “I assigned you specifically to watch for land predators – and Noah, I don’t assign roles to those unsuited.”

Of course the colonel would make full use of him, that filthy utilitarian. Noah thinks it’s the reason he’s being kept alive. With a soft sigh, he redirects his sight toward the unlit, murky roads.

“Then I will tell you that there are three—mn, four cougars zeroing in on us,” he says, his eyes sweeping through the trees. There’s a dark silhouette crouched behind a shrub, the creature only visible because of how abnormally large it is – almost three meters in length, more than three hundred pounds of blubber. Its eyes are dark silver, and when it shifts slightly to the left, peeking out from a branch, a manic red glints on the cornea.

The cougar is followed by three others, their attention glued to the incoming vehicle. It’s impossible to not make noise in such an environment – each time the wheels skid on mud, the engine humming in overdrive, the branches will crack under. Noah drills his eyes in front, straining them to analyze the creatures’ movements.

He doesn’t miss the slightest quiver of their whiskers and he doesn’t miss when they lower their upper bodies, suddenly breaking out into a ferocious run. The predators were born to hunt, naturally bending low to lessen air pressure, speeding up so fast they can reach in five seconds.

A haunting vision of orange and black, piercing dark eyes and trypophobia – Yoo Seok slams the accelerator decisively, colliding into one of them so roughly it sends tremors down the whole vehicle. The passengers behind erupt in callous shouts and nonsensical curses that come especially loudly from Yang Rong who is sent toppling sideways, crashing against Jae who in turn crashes against Li Jiayun who in turn crashes against Ming Tang and… the rest is just as chaotic.

The domino effect spurs a pain groan from Ming Tang, a mere twelve-year-old, crushed by three grown adults. The driver and the passenger in the front are far calmer in comparison.

“Right there,” Noah says though it may be too late. “They’re in front of—"

“Well, thank you!” Yang Rong springs up from his seat, rotating his unfortunately-not-dislocated shoulder. It’s rather comical to see him panic as he throws his duffel down on the mat and assembles his gun in haste. He shouts as he rolls down the window, just low enough for the tip of his firearm to show. “…Why didn’t you tell me earlier?! Give me a heart attack, will you?! I swear on my ballsack, Noah, you are seriously so—!"

The gunfire mutes the rest, not that Noah is keen on hearing it anyway. The run-on sentence is filled with expletives, no doubt. As Colonel Yang busies himself with his rapid-firing gun and mouth, Yoo Seok reverses gears and makes a clean turn to swerve off an even larger cougar, three and a half meters of hulking flesh closing in on their tail.

“Is that a cat or is it a fucking elephant?” Yang Rong speaks more nonsense as he pelts a bullet straight to its head. The aluminum etches into the cougar’s skull before exploding. Blood erupts out like blossoms, spraying the area in gruesome amounts, dotting the sides of the truck a deep red. “Does this fierceness run in your bloodline, Noah? Why are you so small in comparison?”

Noah ignores him completely and opts to brace his hands on the hood. A second cougar bares its teeth and pounces straight at him, ramming headfirst into the passenger window. The heavy-duty glass rattles forebodingly, straining to hold on. The contents inside the truck are thrown sideways, and Noah’s body, too, crashes onto the gear lever despite the seatbelt. The collision is so painful he grits his teeth.

“Use my gun,” Yoo Seok tells him while continuing to drive, not losing focus. “It’s in the left compartment. Are you a good shot?”

“Average,” he replies.

“Watch out for the recoil.”

Noah pulls the compartment open and takes the black rifle. A quick, haphazard inspection tells him it’s fully loaded and greased to perfection. It’s seen thousands of battles, just like Yang Rong’s pistol has. Unsurprising, of course. City soldiers fight out here for a good many years. As for Yoo Seok and Yang Rong, they may have lived in the battlefield all their lives.

Noah himself is not a trained shooter, but there are certain skills he has to acquire. He lowers the windows inch by inch, juts the rifle out, and then when the beast snarls ominously by his ears, dangerously close to severing his hand with a single bite, he shoots.

The bullet ripples and scrapes off the side of the cougar’s nose. It ricochets and gorges into its right eye. Tough skin splinters apart instantaneously. Incendiary bullets, modified lethal, able to take down a dinosaur if aimed correctly – unfortunately, Noah hadn’t. Yoo Seok was right to warn him about the recoil, but he hadn’t factored that one shot would send the rifle flying so far back it almost impales him in the eye.

“…!” He doesn’t remember firearms being this hard to handle.

Colonel Yang’s shout breaks him out of stupefy. “Idiot! How could you miss at such a distance?!”

The cougar roars and lunges at him. Blood runs down where a long black stripe runs across its face, making the cougar look even more petrifying. Noah pulls the trigger again at the same time Yang Rong does – one bullet rips the nose cleanly and the other, with staggering accuracy, drills a hole in its head. The coordination is perfect.

A single misaim and the cougar would’ve recovered quick enough to bite his limbs off. As Noah shot its front, forcing the creature to lurch backward, the colonel covered from the side – two rapid shots in tacit synchronization, the young men knowing exactly where to hit.

The creature falls lifeless onto the ground. A low whistle is heard.

Colonel Yang, with his upper body almost dangling out of the back window, sends him a pleased grin. “Good.”

Noah, a little breathless, rubs away the red stains on his face. “…Mn.”