Adrenaline flooded Killian’s veins, shoving the nausea to the fringes of his mind. Panic honed his focus, turning the ache in his knees into mere electrical signals he could dismiss. Killy kept his eyes on the trail, scanning yards ahead for frost-slick roots, fallen branches, or hard to spot dips that could snap an ankle. As one of the people who’d carved this vilge from wilderness, he couldn’t afford to falter—his people needed him, and he’d be damned if he let them down. The forest blurred past, maples oaks and pines cwing at his face, snagging his coat in the chilly dawn. Each gust of cold air carried the acrid sting of smoke, biting his cheeks and stinging his eyes. The woods seemed to taunt his desperation, their leaf bare limbs like a thousand hands slowing his sprint. Twenty years ago, he’d chosen this valley for its seclusion, mapping every trail to keep his people hidden. Now, that secrecy was burning, and Killy, the man who’d promised safety, ran to face the reckoning.

  His mind churned as he dodged a low branch, its brittle leaves crunching underfoot. The explosion’s thundercp wasn’t dynamite—Dave, the vilge’s scavenged-tech engineer, kept a stash from an old farm, but its sharp crack didn’t match what Killy had heard. He ruled out the neighboring settlement, too. Last month’s trade—venison for their tools—had ended in ughter, their people healthy despite the grind of this life. An attack from them was a long shot. Killy’s leadership had built trust with neighbors, but trust didn’t expin the smoke. His gut twisted at the truth he couldn’t dodge: the Ascendancy had found them. Two decades of his strategies—banning crops, hiding trails, enforcing silence—had kept the vilge a ghost. He’d drilled vigince into his people, from the six families to the dozen or so singles, but five years without drone sightings might’ve softened them. Had he failed them, letting compcency creep in?

  The Ascendancy was a shadow, their motives murky. They’d cimed The Cutoff, gutting governments and militaries, but beyond that, only rumors filled the void: tech tycoons wielding godlike power, secret societies like Masons or Jesuits pulling strings, even wild tales of aliens or time travelers purging humanity’s excesses. Killy had heard it all, sifting truth from myth around campfires. He’d prepared for threats, teaching his people to scatter at the first drone hum. Their mobile homes, salvaged from pre-Cutoff wrecks and reinforced with steel, were his design—portable, untraceable. Yet the smoke ahead mocked his efforts. His wife and daughter, lost in The Cutoff’s chaos, had driven him to build this haven. Failing it now was unthinkable.

  Minutes stretched like hours, each step pounding the frozen earth, frost glittering in the pale morning light. Killy’s breath fogged, his lungs burning in the crisp air. He reached the clearing’s edge, halting fifty yards out, crouching behind moss covered boulder. The vilge—his creation—y exposed. One trailer bzed, fmes devouring its frame; another was gone, reduced to cinder blocks on barren ground. In the clearing’s heart, ringed by intact trailers, squatted a monstrous craft—a hundred-foot stainless steel cigar on six segmented legs, its hull glinting coldly. It dwarfed the drones of old, which had darted like fireflies. This was brute power, too massive for the drone’s physics-defying twists. Killy’s mind, sharpened by years of living through and surviving crises, cataloged it: Ascendancy, not alien. His life’s work—keeping this valley secret—had crumbled.

  Movement flickered. Two men in pristine white uniforms, integrated with body armor, strolled from the ship’s far side, ughing as if the world were theirs. Killy slid behind a gnarled elm, its rough bark biting at his hands, heart hammering. No aliens, just men—arrogant, careless men. Killy was cautious, he’d always pnned three steps ahead, and now survival hinged on intel. He dropped to his belly, crawling through frozen grass and brittle leaves, movements smooth to avoid rustling bushes. His folding knife was ughable against their tech, but Killy hadn’t kept his people alive by rushing in blind. He’d outsmarted raiders in the early years, redirected streams to hide tracks, even burned a false camp to mislead scouts. Stealth was his weapon now.

  The men flinched as a trailer door smmed open, revealing a seven-foot robot—shiny metal and white polymers, its limbs a writhing mass of joints, groping like tentacles. Beneath its pstic shell, something organic pulsed, sickly and wrong. A green triangle fshed on its chest. “No helmets! Use external speakers!” one man barked.

  “This domicile is clear,” the robot boomed, its too-human voice slicing through the frosty air. It lurched to the next trailer, jerky limbs pawing surfaces like a puppet on frayed strings.

  “Twisted bastard made that thing,” Killy muttered, his mind racing. He’d taught his people to fight, to hide, but this tech was beyond his worst nightmares. He didn’t know how, but he had to find a way—any way—to stop this.

  One man stepped toward the cleared trailer, raising his hand, palm out. With a tap on his gauntlet, the trailer imploded into a beer-can-sized lump, the thundercp rupturing the air. Killy’s ears rang, the sound like nature’s scream as air molecules colpsed inward.

  “Gravity’s a mother fucker!” the man whooped, frost puffing from his mouth.

  “Let me try!” the other begged.

  “DNA-cued, jackass. General issue next month—you’ll get yours.” Killy’s stomach churned. Their tech mocked every defense he’d built—traps, secrecy, even Dave’s dynamite. He’d fortified the vilge against raiders, not this.

  The robot burst from another trailer, gripping Nora—Reese and Cy’s tomboy friend—in its vice-like cws. Killy’s nausea surged, bile burning his throat. Nora thrashed, bloody fists pounding the robot, screaming, “Who are you creeps?!” Pride fred in Killy—she was fighting, just as he’d taught the kids—but dread drowned it. He’d failed her, failed them all.

  “Lower her down,” the lead man said calmly, then smmed his fist into Nora’s jaw, knocking her out. “That’s who I am, you little bitch. Throw her in the transport brig, cnker.” The robot obeyed, carrying her into the ship. Killy’s fists clenched, helpless rage searing his chest. He’d built this vilge to shield kids like Nora, spent nights teaching them to keep safe, to run silent. This was his failure.

  Another trailer erupted in a fiery bst, knocking the men down. “What the fuck, Aaron?!” the leader yelled, scrambling up, frost clinging to his armor. “Tell me you scanned for explosives!”

  “I did! No C-4, no Semtex, no PE2 no PBX or DPX… nothing!”

  “Well that trailer didn’t blow up from fairy dust you asshole!” Killy stifled a grim ugh—Dave’s old fashioned agricultural dynamite had slipped their scanners. Had Dave rigged a timer or gone down swinging? Both fit the man Killy had trusted to fortify their home.

  “What are you so pissed about? The cnkers were signed out in my name. Jenna is gonna have my ass for losing that one. Besides we got all three yields, and this site is finally harvested, even if it is a year te. Now we just have to get them to the ttice, give them a week to successfully integrate, and we can collect our commission.” The men continued to bicker, as they climbed up the ramp into their ship.

  “Where’s the other cnker?”

  “We’re leaving it here to take care of any stragglers. New protocol. Which means I’ve gotta come back and pick it up in a couple days. Pain in the ass.” Killy’s mind spun: his secrecy, his sacrifices—hunting instead of farming, hiding instead of building—had been for nothing. As founder, he’d poured his soul into this pce, and it was unraveling.

  “Killy?” A small voice whispered through the frost. He turned, heart lurching, to see Junior, Dave and Susan’s nine-year-old, crouched in a frost-dusted bush twenty yards away, his eyes wide with fear. “Are they gone? Is it safe?” Killy’s resolve hardened. The vilge and most of it’s inhabitants were gone, but some of the kids remained, They needed him, and he wasn’t about to let them done.