Basra Melin's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Basra Melin woke on cold pine needles with a stranger's blood drying on her sleeve. She didn't know the forest. She didn't know the hour. She didn't know her own last week. Her watch still ticked on her wrist, military-grade, its face cracked. Someone had wiped her memory and dumped her here, and she meant to learn who. But first she had to survive the next hour, and she couldn't tell which way led out. The trees stood too still. No birds. She checked her pockets and found no wallet, no keys, no name. Her field jacket was torn at the shoulder. Her hands moved on their own, patting for a weapon that wasn't there. Training she couldn't remember. A life she couldn't reach. She forced herself up and picked a direction downhill. Water ran downhill. Roads followed water. Ten steps in, she stopped. Ahead stood a tree wider than three men. Its bark had split into the shape of a face. Red knots glistened along the trunk like wet eyes, and they seemed to turn as she moved. Basra's gut went cold. Every animal instinct told her: not this way. She backed off and swung wide around it. Her boot struck something in the leaves. A drone. It lay tipped on its side, one rotor snapped, a small lens staring up at her. Still warm. Still watching. Behind her, a branch cracked. Basra dropped low and turned. A woman stepped from the pines. Young, black hair pulled back, headset around her neck, a controller in one hand. She moved careful and quiet, the way people move when they've been tracking someone a long time. She held up her empty palm. "Don't run," the woman said. "You'll walk straight into the bog if you go that way. I've been watching you stumble for an hour." Basra's fists came up. "Who are you?" "Vera. Vera Moss." She said it flat, like a name shouldn't matter now. "I flew that drone over you. I saw where you came from." She nodded past the eyed tree. "There's a ranger station up the ridge. That's your quickest way out. And I think it's yours." "Mine?" "Your prints are all over it." Vera's dark eyes didn't blink. "Something went wrong in there. I didn't fly close enough to see what." Basra weighed her. A silent watcher who'd tracked her from the sky wasn't a friend. But Vera knew the ground, and Basra knew nothing. "Show me," Basra said. Vera turned and led her up the ridge, away from the bog, past the tree with its red staring knots. Basra followed, close enough to grab, far enough to run. The station sat in a clearing, door hanging open, one window glowing yellow. Basra knew it. Her body knew it before her mind did. She had a direction now. It led straight into whatever she'd fled.