Orla Wren needed one more bounty to buy the homestead, and her scanner had just gone blind. The rogue harvester machine had scorched a line of pines ahead, black burns at chest height on every trunk. She followed the burns for a mile. Then the timber thickened, the trunks crowded close, and the glowing screen on her chest went gray. The trail was gone. So was the coin that would finally buy her a roof of her own. She crouched and pressed a palm to a scorched trunk. Still warm. The machine was close. But her scanner only read heat in open air, and here the packed pines swallowed every signal. She smacked the casing. The screen flickered, then died again. Three years of hunting had bought her this dented outpost shack she slept in and little else. She would not lose this one to a broken tool. A fat groundhog watched her from a rotted stump. A stub of cigar hung from its mouth, smoke curling up. It did not run. It blinked at her, slow, like it had seen fools chase machines before. "Laugh all you want," Orla said. The groundhog turned its head toward a gap in the trees. Orla followed its look. Through the gap stood a tree so vast it made the pines around it look like weeds. Its trunk was wider than her shack. Its branches spread over the whole clearing, and vines wrapped its bark. Above that huge crown, the air was open. Clear sky. No timber to block a signal. Orla understood. Down here the pines killed her scanner. Up there, nothing would. She ran for the giant tree. The bark was thick and knotted, easy to grip. She climbed, boots wedged in the vines, duster snagging on stubs. Her arms burned by the time she reached the lowest great branch. She unclipped the scanner and held it high over her head, into the open air above the canopy. The screen woke. A bright dot pulsed to the north, moving slow. She had the harvester. She marked the heading, clipped the scanner back to her chest, and grinned. Then the dot stopped. A second dot flared beside it. Then a third. Then six more, spreading wide across the screen. Orla's grin fell. She had been tracking one rogue machine. The tall air showed her the truth the timber had hidden. It was not one machine. It was a whole pack, and they were not scattered. They were gathering. She steadied herself on the branch and watched the dots pull toward each other. One bounty had just become nine. Nine machines between her and the coin for her homestead. Below, the groundhog puffed its cigar and waddled off into the dark, as if it wanted no part of what came next.

Orla climbed down from the giant tree and tracked the nine machines north. She caught them at the edge of a clear lake. The water lay flat and bright under the open sky. The harvesters moved in one tight pack along the shore, all the same shape, all the same size. Only one carried the bounty tag she was hired to claim. From here she could not tell which. She crouched behind a scorched warning post. The sign read BURN HAZARD in black letters. The base was scarred red from machine heat. She read that as a promise. If she rushed the pack, they would cook her before she found her mark. She checked her scanner. The screen showed nine dots, all glowing the same. The tag gave off no separate signal down here. She needed to split the pack and read them one at a time. A grey cat slipped out of the reeds. It padded to the shore and stared at the machines, ears forward, tail high. It showed no fear at all. Orla watched it and got an idea. The lake was flat and still. It held a clear picture of everything above it. She crept to the water's edge on her belly. She tilted her scanner low, so the screen faced the machines and caught their reflection off the lake. The still water threw their shapes back at her, doubled and sharp. One machine, third in line, carried a small square plate bolted under its arm. The bounty tag. The reflection showed what the timber and the pack had hidden. She had her mark. Now she had to cut it loose. Orla grabbed the scorched warning post and wrenched it from the mud. She swung it against a boulder. The dry wood cracked and sparked. She hurled the burning post into the reeds behind the pack. The flames caught fast. The machines were built to sense fire and clear it. Eight of them wheeled toward the smoke as one. The third machine turned last. For one breath it stood alone on the shore, tag plate flashing in the light off the water. Orla broke from cover and ran. She drew her clamp and locked it onto the tagged machine's arm before it could rejoin the pack. The bounty tag chimed under her scanner. Claimed. She had her one out of nine. But the fire she set had spread past the reeds. It ate into the dry brush along the whole shore. The other eight machines swung back from the smoke, and now they faced her. The cat bolted into the trees. Across the smoke, a fat groundhog watched from a stump, cigar glowing, unbothered. Orla held her one claimed machine and looked at the eight still standing. She had the tag. She had also lit the ground between herself and every road home.