Colt 45 read the fourth bounty poster of the week and knew someone was harvesting the desperate. Three names she recognized had gone out chasing the listed marks. None had come back. She stood in the crooked market square of a settlement that wasn't on any map she trusted, a place travelers called the Lost world because ships landed here and forgot why. The poster promised eight hundred credits for a runaway courier. The paper was fresh. The ink smelled wrong, sweet, like it had been mixed with something to draw the eye. Colt tore it down and folded it into her coat. She had a rifle, a half-charged sidearm, and no one inside whatever network kept nailing these things to the board. Without an informant, the next name on a poster could be hers. She was leaving the square when the animal followed her. It was tall as her hip, long-limbed, orange and grey, with yellow eyes that tracked her without blinking. She'd seen it twice already that week, always near the board. Colt stopped in the alley behind the freight office and turned on it. "Go on," she said. The cat sat down. Then it pawed at the folded poster in her pocket until she pulled the paper out. It bit the corner, tugged, and started walking. Colt followed because she had nothing better and because the creature moved like it knew the way. Six blocks on, it stopped at a shuttered pawnshop and scratched the door. A woman opened it a crack, saw the cat, saw Colt, and swore. "He only brings me the ones who are next," the woman said. She pulled Colt inside and bolted the door. "Sit down. I'll tell you who's writing the posters. Then you tell me how you plan to stay alive long enough to use it."

The woman poured Colt a cup of something dark and sat across from her. She said the poster ink was cut with a marker chemical. The thing hunting the marks could smell it on a hunter's hands from a mile out. She said the last three men who went out carried standard sidearms. She said standard sidearms did not scratch it. Colt asked what did. The woman looked at the cat, then at the floor behind the counter. "I have one thing left in the case," she said. "My brother left it before he took a poster and didn't come back. You take it, you owe me a name when you're done." She unlocked a low cabinet and set a heavy pistol on the counter. It was white and grey, ringed with orange light, the barrel wide as a soup can. Colt lifted it. The grip warmed to her hand. The woman showed her the charge cell and the safety and told her it fired a compressed pulse that would burn through plate. "Two shots before it needs to rest," she said. "Make them count. And wash the ink off your fingers before you go anywhere near open ground." Colt scrubbed her hands raw at the sink. She loaded her rifle across her back for show and holstered the pulse gun under her coat. The tall cat watched from the doorway, tail curled, eyes steady. When Colt stepped out, the animal did not follow. That told her enough. She walked to the coordinates on the folded poster before the light changed. The courier was bait and she knew it. She crouched behind a fuel drum at the edge of a dry lot and waited. The thing came low and fast, four legs, no face she could name, hide the color of wet stone. It caught her scent and turned. Colt fired once. The pulse punched a hole through its shoulder and spun it sideways. It screamed and kept coming. She fired again. The second shot took its head. The body slid to a stop six feet from her boots. She stood in the quiet and listened. Nothing moved. Then, from the far side of the lot, a small speaker crackled to life on a post she hadn't seen. A voice she didn't know said her name, calm and pleased, and told her the real hunt was only starting now. The poster board had a new name on it by morning. Hers.