Turn 194 of 226

Hunt down the people in the military who know us

The rotors are closer. Lena hears them shift from the southeast, the blade rhythm changing as the aircraft banks north — toward the staging area that went silent ten minutes ago. She stops in the tree line and tilts her head, parsing the sound the way she used to parse spreadsheets. The helicopter is not a medevac. The rotor frequency is wrong for civilian. It is an armed reconnaissance bird, redirected from whatever the second staging area was supposed to feed it.

Diane stops beside her. Blood covers them both — their faces, their chests, their hands, drying in the cold forest air. The copper smell is strong but their noses push past it, sorting the air for information. The helicopter is six miles out and closing. Lena can hear the crew chief talking to someone on the radio. The signal is encrypted, but the voice is not. The words "two targets" and "industrial complex" and "estimate four times density" come through the rotor wash in fragments.

Lena's lip pulls back from her teeth. The remaining human part of her — the part that used to worry about waistbands and crop tops — recognizes what the animal part already acts on. They think she is 1,250 pounds. They think she is 15'6". They think four times bone density is the ceiling. They are sending one helicopter to investigate a staging area that stopped responding because two 5,000-pound bodies just ate eighteen men and crushed the satellite uplink. The gap between what they believe and what she is — that gap is the only advantage left, and it is not surprise. It is scale.

"They already know," Lena says. The words come out low, almost a growl, her vocal cords thickened until her voice is a thing of gravel and vibration. Diane's eyes meet hers. There is no surprise in Diane's face either. The animal knows. The human knows. The wish knows. The helicopter is coming because someone saw the footage from the first staging area before the uplink died. The element of surprise was gone before they left the tree line.

Lena turns south toward the sound. The pine branches break against her shoulders as she moves, and the ground does not register under her feet. The helicopter is five miles out. She can hear the co-pilot now, reading coordinates that match the clearing they just left. They are looking behind her. She is moving toward them. The gap between what the military believes and what is walking through the forest toward their aircraft — that gap closes with every step the 5,000-pound body takes through the pine.

The rotors are four miles away. Lena can see the helicopter through a break in the canopy. It is low — maybe 800 feet — moving slow, scanning the clearing they abandoned. The door gunner's weapon sweeps the ground. Lena watches from the tree line, her black eyes tracking the aircraft, and the thought that does not feel like her own drifts through her mind: Let it come. Let it land. Let them see what 24-times density looks like up close. The warmth spreads through her stomach. The wish is still building. The animal is already moving.