Alex Miles crouched behind a split fencepost and watched the checkpoint a quarter mile down the road. He was twenty-two, a Marine Staff Sergeant, and his name was on a list he wasn't supposed to know about. He had left his team behind at the field outside Noelle Springs without telling the one Marine who would have followed him without asking. He needed to reach Captain Michael Rivera, or the Navy lieutenant named Lani Morales, before anyone else did. He had a concern about Rivera he could not put on a report, and a witness he had asked to stay quiet. The checkpoint had grown since morning. A canvas command tent stood pitched on the shoulder, ropes staked tight, a folding table inside with a laptop and a stack of printed sheets. Two soldiers worked the table. A third stood at the barrier with a rifle across his chest. Above the tent, hung in the air like a held breath, was a flying saucer the size of a delivery truck. Its underbelly glowed pale blue. Through the clear dome on top, Alex could see the pilot — a reptilian figure with yellow eyes and gray scaled skin, head turning in slow sweeps over the road. Alex had driven this far in a battered orange Polaris, taken from the motor pool without a signature. It now sat dead in the ditch behind him, battery drained the moment the saucer drifted overhead. Every dashboard light had gone out at once. He had coasted into the weeds and run for the fencepost on foot. He understood now that the saucer was the eye. The tent was the mouth. His name on the printed sheet was the trap. If he walked the road, the soldier at the barrier would key his radio, and the figure in the dome would watch him be put in a truck. He counted what he had. One sidearm. A canteen. A folded map with Rivera's last known posting circled in pencil. No vehicle. No radio that would reach past the next ridge. He thought about the witness he had left behind, and the Marine he had not called. He thought about Rivera's voice on the comms during that first convoy, steady the whole way through. Then he made the decision he had been avoiding since he crossed the county line. He would not get past the checkpoint. He would go around it on foot, through the cut fields and the creek bed, and he would lose three days he did not have. He pulled the map from his pocket and tore the circled corner free. He pushed the rest into the dirt under the fencepost and covered it with a flat stone. Then he moved low along the ditch, away from the road, away from the dead Polaris, away from the blue light. Behind him, the saucer began another slow sweep. Alex did not look back.

Alex moved low through the cut field, the dead Polaris and the checkpoint a mile behind him. The ground was open stubble for as far as he could see. He had counted on the creek bed to hide him, but the creek bed was still half a mile north. Then he heard the hum. He went flat in the dirt and turned his head. A second saucer, smaller than the one over the tent, drifted across the field at the height of a barn roof. Its blue light swept the stubble in slow stripes. If he kept walking, it would have him inside an hour. He crawled to the only cover he could see, a dense tangle of bushes and reed grass at the edge of a drainage ditch. He pushed himself into the green and held still. From there he could watch the saucer without showing his outline. He needed to learn its pattern before he moved again. Speed would put him under the light. Concealment would cost him the three days he already could not afford. While his breathing slowed, he saw the marks. The stubble ahead was pressed flat in a long oval, and across the dirt ran tracks he did not know. Three-toed prints, the size of a child's hand, in clusters of four and five. Something the craft had dropped, or something it had been hunting. The prints led off toward the creek and did not come back. A hand closed on his ankle. Alex rolled and drew his sidearm in one motion. The man in the grass beside him did not flinch. Army fatigues, face streaked with dirt, a rifle laid flat at his side. He lifted one finger to his lips, then pointed at a fallen oak log six feet away. Behind the log, half hidden, sat a small green device with a stub antenna and a glowing screen. A tracker. The screen showed a slow blip crossing a grid. "Locke," the man whispered. "Ranger. Echo team." He tipped the screen so Alex could see. "Sweep runs eight minutes. Turns at the fence line. You've got ninety seconds after it passes to make the creek." Alex kept the pistol low. "You alone?" Locke's jaw set. "Now, yes." He did not explain. Alex did not ask again. The saucer's hum rose, passed overhead, and began to fade north. Locke tapped the screen. "Go." Alex went. He ran bent at the waist across the flattened stubble, past the strange tracks, and dropped into the creek bed as the hum turned at the fence. Locke slid in beside him a breath later, rifle up. Alex had wanted to reach Rivera alone. He was not alone anymore. The creek would take them both toward the next ridge, and toward whatever Locke already knew about the name on his briefing sheet.

The creek bed cut a shallow line between the stubble fields and the wooded ridge ahead. Alex moved first, Locke six paces back. They had gone half a mile when Locke clicked his tongue and pointed up. Through a gap in the brush, Alex saw a saucer parked on the next rise. Two reptilian pilots stood beside it on the dirt road, a checkpoint set across the only gravel track to the ridge. One held a cracked tablet. Green names crawled down its screen in tight columns. Alex went flat against the bank. He knew his name was on that screen. He had seen it scroll past at the first checkpoint two days ago. The pilots would not need him to speak. They had his face, his rank, and a list. He patted his chest pocket out of habit and felt the hard shape there. A weathered badge with an oak leaf, leather backing worn soft. Locke's badge. Locke had pressed it into his hand at the creek and told him to hold it. Alex had not asked why. Now he understood. If a patrol stripped him, that badge tied him to Echo team, and Echo team was on the list too. "Give it back," Alex whispered. He held the badge out. Locke shook his head. "Keep it. Means you came from me. If I don't make the ridge, someone needs to." Alex stared at him. "They'll match my face before I open my mouth. I can't walk that road." Locke's jaw worked. He drew a small folded map from his sleeve and tapped a mark west of the gravel track. "Then don't. There's a draw a quarter mile back. Fallen oak across it, big around as a truck. Rotted hollow. Goes under the ridge line for thirty yards. Comes out past their sight line." "You've been through it." "Once. Yesterday." Locke folded the map. "Ferns over the mouth. Stay low. Don't crawl fast. The wood's soft." They backtracked along the creek until the draw opened on their left. The log was where Locke had said. A wall of green hung over the opening, ferns spilling from the top of the trunk. Alex pushed the ferns aside. Inside, the hollow ran straight and dark, wide enough for a man on his belly. He went in first. The wood gave under his elbows in soft flakes. He smelled wet rot and something sharper, like old urine. Halfway through he saw a three-toed print pressed into the punk wood. Fresh. He kept moving. He came out on the far side in a stand of young pine, the ridge above him, the checkpoint behind. Locke slid out a minute later and brushed bark from his sleeves. They had gone around. The list had not seen them. But the print in the log meant something else had used the same tunnel, and it had come this way first. Alex put his hand on his sidearm and started up the ridge.