She couldn't muster the strength to move for a long time after. Minutes? Hours? Her eyes stayed rooted to the spot of darkness where she'd last seen the eyes. Half of her wanted them to reappear, and the other felt chilled to the bone at the possibility.

  Who? What? Why? How? She cringed. She was close to including where. No point in asking that one; knowing where she was was one of her current problems. The others worked hard enough to pull her attention in different directions. Those distractions didn't need company.

  Wait. Pa-5 wrenched her mind back. The blood. Right there. More than enough to grab samples.

  The WAV wasn't a specimen collection and analysis vehicle, though. After deliberation, she opened one of the suit's external plates. Underneath were a wealth of liquid and gas stores, all hooked up to IV lines that led further into the WAV.

  Some would go into the mixing facilities as ingredients for making the cocktails. Others were standalone treatments, already prepared for injection.

  She pulled out one of the vials at the edge of the glass and IV lines. In the darkness, attempting to read the label was pointless. Her HUD identified it for her.

  This one was a standalone injection to fool the body into thinking it wasn't injured. Aclofen-B903 was an experimental drug that targeted the spinal nerves. It temporarily made those nerves seem like they had died en masse.

  The number on the label better not be how many trials the drug had undergone before getting approval for unmonitored use. If so, she'd force herself through whatever trials she needed to to survive.

  Just to make it back to the Last Light and smack the team of researchers responsible. Hard enough the hand she did it with should ache afterward. Five would've been questionable, but she'd have felt at least a bit soothed. But not even that?!

  The drug would be useful and without any consequences if she trusted it. But the basic explanation was deceiving. It didn't fool the body into thinking injuries weren't there. It stopped the pain signals from reaching their destination, was all. She sighed, hooking it back into the IV line and hoping she wasn't about to poison herself.

  "Notice: Injection of Aclofen-B903 accepted. Estimation: Average duration of relief effects around twenty-four hours." So she had a day.

  The vial--or was it a capsule? She pulled it free again, leaning down to scrape it through one of the new puddles of purple. The HUD offered input that made her pause while hunched over. "Addendum: Material composition of Aud blood includes trace toxins. Advisory: Handle with caution. Avoid contact with skin. Avoid inhaling fumes."

  That was right, she knew that from the courses at the Light Institute covering basic Aud biology. It wasn't like she couldn't work around that. The refilled capsule went back. Although, not before she terminated it from the HUD's list of ready injections.

  If both physical contact and the fumes were off-limits, it entering her bloodstream would kill her. Probably. She'd rather let the brains back in the capital puzzle out the exact nuances of that.

  Or on second thought, not. Someone else would need to inject themselves for that.

  She looked around. Nothing was missing. None of her injuries--all, thankfully, light--could get treated with the limited resources she had on hand. And there was no corpse to collect more samples from. A shame, that.

  Something told her there was a corpse of a purple somewhere in these tunnels by now. She'd also have no chance of survival if she went back to find it. She resumed trekking the path.

  Her head had enough capacity to chew on those questions. Answers? No, she knew too little. But she could take her guesses and keep herself busy.

  So, Who? No easy way to tell. That also applied to what? It could be human. It could also be something new. She'd struggle to believe something capable of leading any Aud in circles existed. Not even carriers of the Old Man's Blessing specializing in illusions could do that.

  Fortunately, it'd happened right in front of her. Several of the drugs had light hallucinogenic side effects. Those had an extremely slim chance of explaining away what she'd seen. She dismissed that possibility.

  Assuming her savior was human, there were still plenty of humans alive. She'd be hard-pressed to find the right one, especially if they didn't want her or anyone else to.

  Abandoning the first two, she turned to how. This was the simplest of the four. Blades. This individual had pierced through a purple's hide, nothing short of a legendary feat. Using blades that'd replaced their arms. Where all but the most devastating of humanity's weapons had failed.

  Everything ever made to kill Aud, put to shame in a single skirmish. What were they made of? Nothing the Fifth or Sixth Rays could churn out. They were durable enough not to break against Aud fur when thrust or slashed with force. Yet they possessed enough sharpness to tear that natural barrier apart like paper.

  They'd danced, too.

  They. Danced. Yes, even higher tiers followed most of the same movement patterns as those Aud below them. That made them somewhat predictable. But their bodies had developed so far beyond their starting points that the sheer speed they displayed covered for that weakness.

  It was hard to dodge a furboulder out for blood when it moved hundreds of kilometers per hour. But her savior had danced around the devastation like the Aud was a thousand times slower.

  Thinking about it made her head hurt. This left one last way to explore it: why? Why did it come to fight? In what world did any sane creature--human or otherwise--choose to confront an Aud?

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Did it come to save her? If so, why? Was it some secret project of the Sixth or Seventh Rays they'd deployed for a test run?

  And if it wasn't explicitly there for her, was it a case of being in the right place at the right time? Or was it at the wrong time? Or the wrong place? Another bone crunching underfoot reminded her of all the human disappearances that'd happened outside the Gaiss Hollow.

  Maybe it left no witnesses. That could explain why she knew nothing about. Why no other human might, either. For the first time, Pa-5 checked behind her. Fresh paranoia surged at the thought of those yellow eyes reappearing.

  Think glass half full? Or glass half empty?

  That was an easy choice to make. One didn't survive long outside human territory if they expected better outcomes. Assuming the dancing blade-person, or thing, or whatever they were, would be back...

  She had two kinds of things to look out for. No, three. The HUD was already scanning for traces of Aud fur in the environment. She changed other parameters, increasing the audio sensors' range for humanoid footsteps specifically. She trained the rear optics to catch any artificial light and report it, too.

  She felt better with those measures. Moderately. Alright, barely. This wasn't working. She needed to think about anything else, or some kind of distraction--

  "'Speak of the devil, and he shall appear.'"

  She reached a break in the path. Not the usual fork leading in different directions. There was instead a single, segmented path. The cavern flooring looked cracked and frail here, several patches already missing. She approached the edge, risking a quick flash of light to probe. Nothing.

  As in, she couldn't see anything, even with the light. How far down did it go? She consulted the map. It amazed her that she was directly above the greater tunnel she'd aimed for. And the holes in the path didn't connect to the walls of the massive space. No, that'd be too easy.

  The HUD wanted her to pass over the crumbling patches to the stable ground further down her tunnel. It snaked along before making a sharp curve and reconnecting with the greater tunnel at its base. To do this, she needed to pass right over the ceiling of the greater tunnel.

  "Notice: Cavern floor incapable of supporting light WAV's weight. Addendum: Allowing weight distribution to settle by going slow will result in falling. Estimation: Thirty-six percent chance of success."

  Oh, she knew. One wrong step, the pressure of a WAV boot applied to the wrong spot. It'd be quick. Nothing but open space to catch her fall.

  She took a breath. Now would be the time to wish for good luck, if there was any left. Before her nerves failed her, she planted one boot on the next path of rock. It crushed, bending under the weight. She licked her lips. Pressed down a little.

  Something broke loose below and tumbled away. It felt like an hour before the echoing crash rose. The locals would mistake it for one of their own. They'd better. She took the leap of faith, so to speak, and brought the other boot away from safety. The patch bent even further, crunching. But it held her WAV.

  Heart in her throat, Pa-5 inched along, each second expecting a void to appear under one of her feet and claim her. One. Two. Three. Four…

  Each step the floor withstood brought her further from safety. Her shoulders felt painfully tight. She couldn't help it. The HUD did its best to locate safe points to apply pressure, showing her a long trail of neon footprints.

  It sometimes made errors, beeping an alert while making corrections. Her breath waited in fear of those alerts, like she needed permission to breathe. Every one of them sounded like a gong in her ears.

  Half the time, she had to perform a balancing act. Her suit's arms flailed miserably while she walked along a thin bridge of stone. The rest of it, her legs split between crumbling catwalks. It was far enough that her tendons felt strained. Between them was a jagged hole, the edges caving deeper into the unknown with each of her steps.

  She became aware of her breathing. It came ragged and short, a part of her diaphragm compressed, and half of her lungs remaining full. Pa-5 expected she'd need the stored capacity when it came time to scream. The thought of falling scared her.

  What scared her more was that she already thought falling was inevitable. She lost her balance, tipping to the left. The stone support cracked, a spider web forming effortlessly to tear it to shreds.

  Compensating, she shoved both arms the other way, using the momentum of the move to stay upright. The downside was that she now placed her entire weight on one of the stone beams when it could only carry half.

  She leaped, imagining the sounds of the cavern winds rushing over her scalp while landing on the edge. Her foot found a stabler point. It rumbled and crunched like the others, but it held. Looking back, she could see she'd passed a third of the way.

  Where she'd been, the stone supports had fallen, leaving a new, wider patch of void. It was large enough to swallow three of her WAVs side by side without scraping the edges.

  If holes could speak, this one would have a deep baritone.

  She didn't know where that thought came from. Shaking, she refocused on the path. Stepping off the oasis of safety was easier in her head than actually doing it. To the casual eye, each stone beam was as frail-looking as the rest. The project development head who'd stuffed the HUDs into servicemen deserved all her goodwill.

  Well, more than that, the HUD was the most important piece of equipment she had in her arsenal. Already, the number of times she could've died needed both hands to count. She couldn't have resolved most of them by quick thinking or having a bigger weapon. The HUD gave her direction and support in a completely mundane fashion.

  Of course, she was still grateful for having the amenities and protection of the WAV itself. Her journey to this point would've been much rougher in certain parts and outright impossible at others.

  Pa-5 bent under a low stalactite that almost reached the segmented ground. It was the first one she'd encountered. Even in the lesser tunnels, the ceilings were just too high. The stalactites that hung from them weren't in any danger of obstructing her.

  Her helmet brushed against the bottom. It made an ugly scraping sensation that made her cringe. She ducked lower, but the stalactite still grated against the plating. In the process, she heard two cracks. One above, and one below.

  Eyes widening, she dashed forward. The knees of the WAV clunked in faster intervals. The mad sprint upset the ground even more. Its rocky surface groaned and bent with such intensity it was a miracle--or maybe several--that the entire thing stayed up. As it was, dozens of new holes were forming, growing.

  Her rear feed captured the stalactite dropping from the ceiling. How was she supposed to know the mass of hanging rock connected to the ceiling by a fist's worth of rock? Her heart, already in her throat, pushed the back of her uvula as she watched it tremble.

  Something cracked like a gunshot. The accumulated tension from expecting each step to fail her finally released when it fell. That almost felt like a relief. Or was the shock setting in? She hadn't taken drugs to stave that off.

  It crashed through the floor like an Aud claw through flesh. It disrupted the strained unity of the floor and passed along into the void. The impact never reached her ears. Instead, there was a rush of oncoming noise that might've been her scream.

  The darkness sped closer and closer, passing a meter every second and nipping at her heels. She abandoned every cautious thought left. Move or die. Do or die. 'Do it!' Racing against the collapse required pushing against the suit's limits.

  She pressed her foot down in the crook of one of the surviving beams. And gasped when, instead of meeting a surface to hold it, it met open air. She flailed, arms desperately grabbing for anything. The other end of the tunnel was suddenly higher than her. The safe, solid ground was at her knees. Then at her waist. Then at her neck.

  Before she knew it, it wasn't there at all.