Miah's Maze - 1. Chapter 1

“Seriously? That’s a real thing? You can pay someone to do that to you?” I gaped at him.

“Something, not someone.” Keon gulped down half his beer and then belched. He gestured toward the hologram screen on the wall. “They even have advertisements for it.”

“That’s ridiculous.” I smacked my glass down on the table. “How can shifters demean themselves like that?”

Keon rolled his eyes. “You are such a rube, Nehemiah.”

I glared at him. “Not everyone can come from the city.”

“Yeah, but you’ve been here three years now. That’s long enough to lose some of your naiveté.” He sucked down the rest of his beer and wiped his mouth off on his sleeve. I crossed my arms over my chest. He was going to lecture and call me a rube? I’d moved to the city for a reason, and it wasn’t to screw around.

“I mean, look at you.” He waved a hand in my direction, before he punched in his selection on the server slot. He didn’t even flinch at the finger stick.

The drink materialized in the slot, but the machine chimed. Alcohol limit reached.

“Oh damn.” Keon scowled. “Damn regulations are getting stricter and stricter. I’m barely even buzzed.” Yeah, because my roommate didn’t need alcohol to be a crude jerk. He dragged his half-full glass across the table and frowned at it.

“What exactly do you mean by that?” I clenched my jaw and glared at him. After a year rooming with him, I didn’t get him. His view of the world was completely skewed from mine. Then again, my previous two roommates had been from the city too.

“Huh?” He frowned at me. Maybe the server should have cut Keon off sooner.

“You said look at me. What. About. Me?”

“Oh, that. Well, you’re this fresh-faced guy straight off the farm. You wear natural fiber clothes, for Jygp’s sake. You’re drinking a non-alcoholic drink, in a bar, even though we just finished finals. Everyone else is smashed, or as smashed as the damn servers will let them get. All you do is study, work, study, and then work some more! I was shocked as hell you even came out tonight.”

“And that means what?” I crossed my arms over my chest. I liked cotton clothes. I didn’t want scratchy synthetic fibers irritating my skin, or flashing colors constantly changing with my mood so everyone knew how I felt every second. And not everyone needed to be chemically altered to have a good time. Sure, I’d missed out on a lot of the fun everyone else seemed to seek, but I had responsibilities. Besides, city folk were complicated; it was like navigating through a forest blindfolded. I never knew which path to take, and it felt like I never would.

“You’re boring, man!” Keon shouted.

People at the tables surrounding ours stared. Could Keon be any louder? If I could’ve faded into the wall behind me, I would’ve. Two guys across the aisle from us snickered. One was tiny and slender, with blue hair standing up in a spiked crest. The other was big and bulky, with two fists like dinner plates wrapped around his drink. I looked away, my face on fire.

“Would you shut up?” I hissed. If the jerk wasn’t my roommate, and I wouldn’t likely get called by the bar staff to come pick his ass up in an hour when all that alcohol metabolized and made him pass out, I’d leave him there. We only had a week left, and I’d be damned glad when he was no longer the pain in my rear sleeping in the bed across from me.

Of course, now that finals were over, he’d probably get drunk every single night. Damn the University for instituting mandatory medical assistance for roommates, especially the idiot who decided ‘passed out from stupidity’ was a medical problem. I had no idea how he cheated the monitors, but my roommate was sneaky.

Keon smirked. “Truth hurt, Miah?”

“I told you not to call me that! Only family gets to call me Miah.” Keon rolled his eyes. I hated when he did that. “When you pass out in a puddle of puke in your bed, wearing just your underwear, I’m taking a holo and posting it on the school’s sting board.” He’d totally deserve it too. “Would someone boring do that?”

“Yup. That happens to me, like, all the time. Last semester this chick took a shot of me sleeping a party off, hugging a waste chute.” He shrugged. “This is college, man. We’re supposed to be idiots.”

I snorted. “You can be an idiot. I’m graduating with a license in animal husbandry and business economics.”

“Oh, no more!” Keon dramatically plugged his ears. “La la la la. No more about you and your aspirations to run back home to the boonies and live amongst the beasts.”

“So sue me for liking animals more than people.” Those guys were laughing again. Were they still listening to us? “You’ve regressed to a toddler again, Keon. See what happens when you kill off brain cells by ingesting massive amounts of liquor?”

“Yeah. I have fun while you get stuck putting up with me. Sucks to be you.”

It did. It really, really did.

Keon drained his glass in three swallows. “Anyway. What did you ask me about?”

I slumped against my seat. “Nature’s Wrath.” Shifters hunting humans. What kind of a pervert was I that the thought sent a little thrill through me? Straight to a place where my all natural fiber clothes did not stretch well.

“Right, right. It happens in the shifter hunting preserve. It’s about a hundred blocks of natural landscape inside their dome, in the middle of the city. The shifters gotta have somewhere to go and let loose you know?”

“I know that.” Everyone knew shifters had to have space. They weren’t animals, even when they were animals, but they couldn’t run, fly, slither, or swim in a concrete apartment block. They’d showed up one day asking for sanctuary, and didn’t that cause a huge freak out on our part? Aliens that didn’t look like little green men, but looked just like us. What were the odds? Of course, then the news came out they were shifters, not some ancient alien race of humans. Dad had snorted and shook his head at the foolish notion when he heard that rumor. The shifters’ ships had limped along on short-range engines that couldn’t go much farther. They’d needed a home, and didn’t have a planet to call their own after it had been razed by some mysterious enemy they’d never talk about. There’d been a lot of controversy when the Earth Unity Coalition had voted to grant their request.

We’d heard about the protests on the farm, but they’d never touched us personally. Even though they needed natural spaces, shifters stayed in the cities. I’d never met one. Not that I knew of, at least. They were quiet newcomers, for the most part.

And they definitely didn’t hunt people. I’d never heard of Nature’s Wrath before Keon insisted it happened to this guy who was a friend of a friend he knew. “Yes, I know about the dome. You’re saying they hunt humans in there? And people are actually paying for it?”

“Yep. I looked it up, just to see. Totally legit.”

“What the hell for? What’s the point? They’re not really animals. All the people I heard going on about it when they came here said that no one’s at risk from them ‘cause they can still think and reason in shifted form.” It was all a sham, probably. Some sort of watered-down game of tag for city folk.

Keon shrugged. “I dunno. Thrill? Something new and different? They’ve only been here for six years. There’s a lot no one knows about them still. Maybe the official line is all bullshit. You’d never know unless you tried it for yourself.”

I licked my lips. I was short on oxygen because I was in a crowded bar, surrounded by a ton of strangers, that’s all. Someone shouted over the music across the bar. One guy pushed another one off a bar stool and then laughed as the first one dumped his drink on the drunk on the floor. The two guys who’d been listening to us both stood and headed out of the bar pretty fast, passing so close I could’ve touched them. I had the urge to follow them, away from the immaturity of Keon and the rest of the guys in the bar just like him.

Good thing the big guy wasn’t fighting anyone. One tap from his fist and their faces would be toast.

“Better than getting in a bar brawl to feel a little adrenaline. That’s just about the only violent thing left in this city.” He stood. “Damn monitors are always shutting down the fun stuff. I’m gonna go watch before they show up.”

The cold liquid must have revived the guy on the floor ‘cause he staggered to his feet and began shoving his attacker. My roommate joined the growing circle of jeering onlookers who wanted some fun before the monitors arrived and sent everyone home. I leaned forward, resting my elbows on the table. Maybe he was right; maybe I was boring. I knew I was lonely, but I was too busy to change that when I was in school and now… it was too late. I just couldn’t see how any of this was fun, not the drinking, fighting… or being hunted like an errant head of cattle into whatever trap the shifters had set up to catch their human prey.

Because that would not be exciting at all. I dropped one hand and thumped my rising problem. What kind of freak wants to be hunted down like that?

* * * *

“Are you just going to pack all night?” Keon sat on his unmade bed. His side of the room was a mess: clothes flung about, and his holo pad blinking a report of seven messages waiting for him. He rolled his eyes when I nodded.

“This is your last night. Why don’t you do something for once? You have your certificates. They can’t take them away if you cut loose and just enjoy yourself. There’s no more studying, no more rules.”

“There is such a thing as a seven AM tram over the mountain range so I can get home this week.” If I missed the tram, I’d have to wait another week, and the university was kicking us out now that we’d graduated. I hadn’t exactly made a bevy of friends with places to put me up so I wouldn’t have to crash on the street if I was stranded in the city.

The last thing I’d need on my record after my college degrees was a transient charge and a city fee for enforced lodging and rations. My parents didn’t have the money to help me pay the fees, and every cent I’d earned was needed for the stake I’d purchased next to theirs. If I didn’t have the money to pay for the engineered cattle and feed, my whole plan would fail.

Keon shook his head as I crawled out from under my bed with my battered set of packing cubes. I began unfolding them, manually, which was just another thing he had to make fun of me for. No one used manual packing cubes, or wrote their notes by hand on a holo pad that was almost five years old.

“I’ve tried, man, I’ve tried. You wanna go die a slow, boring death in the sticks playing with stinky animals and mud, be my guest. Shoulda known you were that type on the first day.” Keon smirked. “Anyway, it’s been nice knowing ya. Good luck and all that.

“You’ll need it,” he muttered.

City people. They looked down on anything unlike their metal and cement box lives. Keon slammed the door behind him, but I could still hear all the shouting and excited commotion outside in the halls. People were celebrating another year done—or every year done for the seniors. They’d be off to various jobs in the city, or on to a new city in the coast network, probably. I was the only one I knew heading to the interior.

No one cared where I was going, though. No one knocked on my door to say good-bye.

At least Keon had used up his weekly drink allowance so he couldn’t ruin my final night in the city needing a pick-up. If he ended up drunk at a party, it wasn’t my problem. My holo pad was dark. No messages, no invites, but no study schedule or test dates either. I’d finished my studies and was officially a licensed adult with a future. A future of a hell of a lot of hard work, all on my own.

Fuck, that was scary.

I sank on the foot of my bed. The sudden thought was chilling. I grabbed the handmade blanket my mom had sewn for me off the end of my bed, and my jacket fell on the floor. Paper protruded from one of the pockets.

Which was really weird, cause… paper? Who used that anymore? Not even I was that old-fashioned.

I picked up my coat. The paper was a single pale blue strip with an imprint code on one side. The other side had a hastily scrawled message. “You should try it.” There were no other markings on the strip. Keon must have put it there.

“What is it?” I mused aloud. Oh shit. Already talking to myself.

For all my assurances to Keon, and my teachers who’d wanted me to enroll in the doctorate program and become an animal surgeon, I wasn’t sure if I could make it back in the interior. Life out there was a hard scrabble existence. On bad years, my parents had to go on subsistence rations. Good years saw all the excess money going to pay back the subsistence charges. It was a vicious cycle where only a rare few held on.

I had some ideas on how to change all that. All it would take was every scrap of my time and energy for the next five years—minimum—and I’d show everyone.

I’d be twenty-seven by then. Why did that sound so old? Maybe it was because I already felt old. Keon might be an idiot, but he had friends. Lots of them, just as stupid as he was. At least they had some fun. I slid my fingers over the bumpy ident code.

My things were packed. I could drop them off at the delivery station on my way to the transfer station. Whatever this ident code was, wherever it’d take me, I’d be ready to go no matter what.

Three years of never taking my eyes off my goal caught up to me. I stood and shoved my blanket into the last open cube and sealed it shut. I put on my coat and slipped the ident strip into my pocket. Folding the cubes down manually took nearly a half hour, but my decision to have one adventure to remember hadn’t wavered.

If this strip took me to a bar, I was actually going to have a drink for once! I’d always heard the classic hop brew was to die for, even if it was made with engineered grains.

* * * *

This was not a bar. The ident strip I’d stuck into the transfer slot on the transport tube had deposited me in an enclosed dome filled with clothing, survival gear, and weapons.

Weapons?

I spun around, looking for an exit.

There wasn’t one. The entrance to the transport tube was gone, like it had never opened and left me here. A smooth glass curving wall was all I could feel. I ran my hands over it, to see if it was a holo.

“Where in the heck am I?” I shouted. My voice fell, deadened by what must be a sound dampening field inside the dome walls.

Maybe the stuff would have some clue as to where Keon had sent me, probably as a final practical joke on his rube roommate. This was what I deserved for wanting an adventure, apparently. I strode over to the jumpsuits hanging on the wall. I plucked one off the rack, holding it up. Then I saw the tag inside the collar.

Nature’s Wrath.

I dropped the jumpsuit. Oh shit. No. Just no way. I began shouting for someone to let me out, pounding on the walls. I wasn’t going to be anyone’s prey. What I was going to do was pay precious credits I couldn’t spare for a ride back to our room, so I could begin the process of hunting my roommate instead.

Keon was going to pay.

“You have ten minutes before the dome opens. A reminder for the Hunt; the rules are as follows: One—no outside clothing or gear is allowed during the hunt.”

I jerked around. A holo projected a written list of the rules on the wall as the voice kept talking. Where was it coming from?

“I don’t want to be a part of any hunt!” I looked around to see if there were cameras or monitors. Surely there were monitors around. No inch of the city was unmonitored.

“Two—prey receives a thirty minute head start.” Prey gets a head start? Oh hell no.

“I am not prey!” I pounded on the wall. “Somebody let me out. I didn’t sign up for this!”

“Three—prey must remain inside the boundaries of the hunt area at all times.”

My hands were beginning to hurt. “Screw just making him pay, Keon is going to die.”

“Four—once prey has entered the dome, the hunt cannot be ended until they are caught. This ends the rules. Please enjoy your hunt planned by Nature’s Wrath.”

Green beams shot out of a grid in the ceiling of the dome and began to lower.

“Now what?” I eyed the light, biting my lip. No one seemed to hear me, the holo wasn’t responding to my voice, and now the green lights were nearly halfway down the dome.

I fought off the constriction in my muscles and sank into a crouch when they were just above my head. They didn’t stop. I dropped to the floor. “Oh Jygp, oh Jygp,” I gasped as they touched my head. Tingles turned into chills as every hair on my body stood up. I shot up as the ground lit up under me.

My clothes had disappeared.

Every last strip of cloth was gone. My shoes were gone. Even my underwear had vanished, leaving me naked as the day I was born. I yelped and clapped my hands over my crotch.

“What the hell!” My mother would tan my bare ass if she heard me cursing.

“Seven minutes until the dome opens.”

“I did not pay for this.” If nothing else, that would prompt a response. Credits ruled all in the city. I waited, my hands glued to my crotch. Come on… why wasn’t anyone listening to me?

Seconds passed. Another minute. And another.

“Five minutes until the dome opens.”

This was happening. I began panting. I couldn’t panic. First thing—I needed clothes. I yanked at the jumpsuits, searching for my size. The smaller ones fell in a heap on the floor, but I ignored them. My hands shook as I tried to pull the one piece garment on when I finally found one that would fit. I had to calm down.

“Get it on.” The hood came last. The cover film came down over my face and ears, creating a soft barrier. The regulation system engaged, sending a tiny filament into each wrist to gather my internal biometrics. The jumpsuit would regulate my temperature and oxygen saturation. I had to hope removing my scent and the sound of my breathing would help me hide from whatever was going to hunt me.

Survival gear was easy. A pack with some first aid supplies, a water canteen, and slip-over boots for my feet would have to do. I tapped the toe of my boot hard on the ground. Small spikes shot out of the sole and locked in placed. I might have to climb. The pack folded into a five inch strip, and suctioned to the back of my suit, along my spine.

Extra protection for a vulnerable area. What was I in for? This was not the watered-down game of tag I’d mockingly thought it was. Dad always reminded us to mind our mouths and minds; tempting fate was a dangerous business.

I hadn’t just tempted it. I must have walked up behind fate and kicked it in the ass for the rebound coming back at me right now. When I managed to find a way out of this, I was going to apologize to Dad for always thinking his superstitions were stupid.

This was still the middle of the city, so it was unlikely I’d run into any water I couldn’t handle. With two minutes to go, I studied the weapons. This was a hunt. It was supposed to be realistic, a way for man to outwit the cunning of a cogent mind in an animal body—probably a lethal animal body.

It wasn’t like people would actually pay to be chased down by fluffy bunny shifters, right? Did the shifters have bunny forms? Probably not; they weren’t from Earth, after all.

The last minute warning galvanized me into action. I grabbed two blunted knives and sheaths for the outside of my thighs. A coil of thick sticky rope that could be stretched into a long, thin strand, but retain its tensile strength, went around my waist, just over my hips. I might need it, or I could use it as a whip. I’d done it before when I was helping herd.

Knuckle knives with ejection mechanisms. I’d heard of them, but never used any. The knives were small hooks and fit between the fingers. The shifters could have claws.

I’d need my own.

I pulled on the gloves and checked the fit. My fingertips lined up with the eject mechanisms. If I curled my hands into fists and touched all four buttons the knives would shoot out between my fingers. No time to test the actual blades. There were no projectiles or other shooting weapons. At home I kept a tranq pistol, and I made reloads for an antique shot rifle that had been in the family for five generations.

Those would certainly be comforting to carry right about now. But I’d make do. The members of my family always did. If pampered city folk could play this game with the shifters, so could I.

A faint hiss filtered in through the film over my ears, and the clothes and gear melted back into the walls. Then the dome I was in cracked open like an egg, splitting cleanly in half, and then disappeared into the ground.

Giving into the urge to run would be the first mistake I refused to make. The holo said I had a head start—not much of one—but I’d use every second to make a plan. I scraped the side of my boot over the spot the dome disappeared.

“Just soil.” If I was standing in a holo field, I couldn’t tell. It looked, smelled, and felt like I was in a scrub oak forest. To my right, I could see through the small, gnarled trees to an artificial yellow field. It looked like I had grassland as far as I could see that way, which wasn’t far. The oaks wouldn’t give me much of an edge if I needed to escape anything that could jump, or had human or greater height. The dry grass could hide any number of things, and I’d have no way of seeing anything under chest height.

I veered away from the grassland. The trees were gave me a few options at least. Scents were muted through the film, but I could smell the natural landscape around me. It was a big change from the ozone, concrete, and metal odor that blanketed the city. I’d never really grown used to it.

It almost smelled like home. “Looks like it a bit, too,” I muttered. Not exactly my family’s land, or mine, but the general area. If I went far enough inside the trees, maybe the oak would peter out into another type of grove. It depended on the dome’s tech. Was I in a holo forest? Was this actually what grew inside the dome, or was it an elaborate holo scene? Did it mimic the countryside surrounding the city, or was it whatever the shifters liked best? Would it turn into something alien, like their home world, perhaps?

My heart would not stop pounding. Sweat trickled down my neck, despite the jumpsuit. It wasn’t hot, but my time would run out soon. Thirty minutes wasn’t long. I picked up the pace, jogging steadily, avoiding any tree roots that might trip me up. I had to ride my adrenaline rush, and use the energy to keep moving, but not exhaust myself.

How long did a hunt last? They said until I was captured, but there had to be humans who’d outwitted the shifters. Had any? My dead man of a roommate hadn’t said, and I’d been too embarrassed by my interest to ask, in case he figured me out. He must have, though, to set this up. Keon was going to die a painful, slow death.

“High ground. Find high ground.” That’s what Dad always said. I’d go for the mountains back home. They were northwest of the desert grassland. So far, the general area was similar to the countryside. I veered to the left, ducking under low tree limbs when I could to save time going around the squat trees, weaving a little right and left but heading straight as best I could. Sometimes I had to go in a small circle when the trees grew too close together and blocked my path. Maybe I could find a small cave to use as a bolt hole to hide in until time ran out.

If time ran out. It had to… eventually. They couldn’t just keep me here against my will.

At the very least, a solid surface at my back would help. If there were any scree slopes, I could pick up some ammunition. I could hit a hand-sized holo target at fifty feet. Sometimes a good thunk on the rear with a small chunk of stone would turn a cow looking to break from the herd.

At least I had some skills. Whether or not they’d do me a bit of good, I’d find out.

Soon, too, because the rumble behind me had to be my hunter. My thirty minute head start was up. I cast a wild glance over my shoulder, misstepped, and tumbled ass over end. I grunted, blinking up at the mossy branches with their wavy leaves. My chest refused to work, and I fought to get a breath of air.

“Ahh!” I finally sucked in a great gasp. Move, move, move. I had to go. I rolled over and paused, with my arms under me. The tree in front of me spread across the path but… I tilted my head. When I looked along the tree trunk to the left, I could see something I’d missed before.

The trees lined up. I craned my neck around, looking all about me. To one side, I could see another line of trees going off in an angle to the right. It was subtle, but the trees were not growing naturally. They were staggered somewhat, but created alleys in a vee to either side.

Just like the wall of grass that stopped at the edge of the trees discouraged me from going in that direction.

A maze.

I was in a maze with boundaries on the edges. It was subtle, but obvious, now that I knew.

Logic. A maze always had some sort of logic. There was no such thing as true randomness; ultimately, everything had a pattern. I’d seen it in nature many times—in the symmetrical patterns of a butterfly’s wings, or the veins on a leaf, to the radial symmetry of a six-arm starfish I’d once found on the beach.

An aisle of trees would eventually end, either in a turn or a dead end. Each time I’d found an open way by turning left, then right to get back on my original heading. I’d gone in a straight line so far. The booming was behind me. I didn’t want to risk running into a dead end. Straight lines from one area to another was a bad idea, because I’d probably run into the other maze edge. I’d gone at an angle from the grass.

Left it was. I lunged to my feet. The chase was on. I had to use my mind and my body. Thank goodness the university had a gym, and I’d stayed in shape. Vacations at home weren’t time off from anything other than studying; they’d still been hard work, helping out on the ranch.

The sounds of my pursuer grew louder, but it wasn’t on my heels just yet. However it was tracking me, it didn’t follow each turn I made. It was gaining, but slow enough to give me hope I could outrun it if I didn’t get too tired. This might turn out to be a distance hunt, where stamina made the difference. I put on a burst of speed anyway. The dirt and debris under my feet began to change. Moss—the same bright yellow as the grass—grew in patches under the trees. Then it grew into the lane.

I skidded to a halt when I topped a small rise. Moss rose in a ropy tangle that caught my foot. The tough fibers wrenched my ankle when my boot caught. “Ouch!”

Jygp! I clapped a hand over my mouth to smother the rest of my cry of pain. Prey never lasted long when it made too much noise.

The moss was a hopeless mess. No way could I walk on it. I’d found another wall. A single step had me snared like a critter in a trap. I didn’t have to chew at the loops hooked around my boot, thankfully. I drew one of my blades from my thigh sheath and began to hack my way free, one strand at a time.

It was taking entirely too long. The booming gave way to a thudding sound. I clenched my jaw and hacked harder.

Finally!

North again, but this time I went right whenever possible. I was traveling in a new zigzag, but it was still in the direction toward the mountains… if the dome was really a mirror of the country. That moss was nothing I’d ever come across on the ranch.

The trees were beginning to thin out, their branches straightening and angling toward the sky. My panting breath puffed back against my face, the film having a hard time processing my increasing need for a fresh supply of oxygen.

A strange swish joined the sound of my harsh breathing. The hair on the back of my neck tingled. What the hell was it? I swung around in a circle, using my momentum to spin. Nothing in sight. Snap! I dropped to my knees and rolled.

Was someone shooting at me? I scrambled on the ground, darting toward two trees growing into each other. The swishing came back… then I heard the same snap, like the sharp crack of my rifle.

I looked up.

“Holy shit.” Blasphemy was fitting. I’d never seen anything like the creature in the sky. It was no bird. If I had to guess, to compare it to anything, it looked like a blue snake, nearly black, but with wings. No feathers, no bat-like leathery arms, nothing so familiar. This thing had pale blue double sails that spread out accordion-style like a fan, rippling as they opened, then snapping shut.

How in the hell was it staying in the air?

Okay, that was irrelevant. It was coming straight for me, and it didn’t have to deal with the terrain. But if the shifter hunting me was in the air… what was making the thudding? I could almost feel it vibrating the ground.

I scrambled backward on my arms and feet. I had to get up. The shifter stiffened, and then its wing-things snapped shut and didn’t open again. It arrowed toward the ground, right where I was hiding.

“Not gonna be that easy!” Finally, I was on my feet again. I took off, running full out, not saving anything now. As I ran, I frantically checked over my shoulder at the flying thing that was after me. I couldn’t see its head, just that it had one. The other end was very thin and pointy. I ran until my lungs burned. The jumpsuit was barely keeping up with my oxygen needs.

Then I ran harder because it was gaining on me.

My foot came down on empty air. I lost sight of my pursuer as I tumbled down a nearly vertical slope I didn’t even see coming. I struck rocks, clumps of grass, and tiny saplings that broke under me as I rolled sideways down a hill, with bruising force. We’d done something like this as kids—for fun—but there was nothing fun about the battering I took on my way down to the bottom.

I groaned as I stopped against a pile of rocks. If I hadn’t broken any ribs, I’d be damned lucky. I pressed my hand to my chest, but I didn’t feel any blinding pain from a cracked or broken rib. I’d had a few when I was saddle breaking my horse, back when I was fifteen.

My head throbbed and my stomach threatened to empty, something I really didn’t want to do with the film on my suit still covering my face. I swallowed repeatedly, trying to get a handle on my dizziness. That shifter could probably slither its way down the slope far better than I had.

I rolled onto my hands and knees and began to crawl. The sides of the ravine were so steep. I didn’t think I could make it up the other side, but it ran like a narrow crack in the landscape for a distance ahead of me. I kept going, hoping it’d slope upward gradually, somewhere. The rocks bit into my knees. This was too slow.

I shoved my body up, despite the pain in my hands. Tears in my gloves from the rocks went straight to my skin. My palms were already scraped up, but I ignored the stinging and pushed to my feet. Unsteady and in pain, I staggered sideways, but managed to stay up. I wove a meandering path along the rocky ground, trying not to wrench my already sore ankle. As hard as it was to walk, maybe the uneven ground worked to my advantage. Snakes preferred smoother terrain.

My fall, and path along the bottom of the ravine, had sent me to the left again. Never a complete turn, but it seemed like I was going in a loop. The ravine had to be another edge.

Maybe it was time to change the game, get out of the maze. The rules said I had to stay in the hunt area. If the edges of the maze were the edge of the hunt area….

I eyed the other side of the ravine. The slope rose up about twenty feet, but it was more dirt than rocks here. There were tufts of bright yellow grass growing in bunches in the dirt just above my head. I grabbed handfuls of the soft dirt and it crumbled in my hands.

“Crap!” It wouldn’t give me much purchase, but it might be enough to get high enough. I just had to make it a step or two, and I’d reach the first clump.

I tapped my toes against the ground. The spikes in my boots shot out and locked. I’d make a scrambling run at it then use bunches of grass as hand and foot holds. It might work.

The thudding that had never slowed, but had faded into the back of my awareness, suddenly stopped. I snapped my head around.

“Saints preserve us,” I whispered. A second shifter. I’d ignored the sound when I was fleeing the visible predator. It was a mistake a lot of city folk probably made, but I shouldn’t have let panic drive me.

I was smarter than this.

Beyond the sense of sheer size, I was struck by its beauty. Not in the thin, deadly shiny lines of the flying shifter, no, this one was pure white and fluffy. And it had six legs on its segmented body. The shifter stomped the back two legs as I stared. Several rocks began to tumble down the slope.

Its huge blue eyes, oval-shaped and solid, without any pupil I could see, stared down at me. Damned if it didn’t remind me a giant caterpillar. If they had thick jointed legs, and stood at least six feet high and twelve feet long.

The shifter would never fit in the narrow ravine. But it wasn’t hunting me alone.

Lost in the sight of the strange beast, I’d forgotten the peril from its slithering companion. Or maybe they were competition, both after the prize—me—but not working together.

“I didn’t sign up for this!” I shouted. They weren’t really animals, right? I’d totally forgotten that in my fear and determination. If I could stop the hunt, maybe I didn’t need to make the climb. My ribs were still throbbing. “My ass of a roommate set up the hunt. I never wanted to be prey, and I didn’t agree to any of this.”

The white creature laughed. Laughed. “You’re ours.” His voice boomed, a deep bass rumble. So the shifters were working together. “You came here, you used the ident. You agreed to the rules.”

I narrowed my eyes. He wanted to win, even if it wasn’t fair. “I didn’t know what it was! I didn’t want this.”

“That’s not what we heard.” What had Keon told them? The shifter stamped one foot, shaking the ground. I stumbled against the bank.

I refused to talk about that night in the bar. I should never have said anything to Keon. “So Nature’s Wrath rigs the hunts. Ensures shifters win—to do… what? Prove your superiority over humans somehow?”

“No. This is—”

I caught sight of the blue shifter. It was less than twenty feet away.

“This is a distraction!” I wasn’t going to fall for it again, forgetting about one shifter while I focused on the other. I’d end this hunt, my way. “You haven’t caught me yet.”

He laughed again, bending backward and lifting his front segment off the ground, then bowing toward me. “Yet….”

A thin voice piped up. The snake-like shifter’s voice was smooth, like silk. “But we will. You have nowhere to go.”

Of all the arrogant folk I’d met, these two cocky jerks ranked at the top of my list of everyone I’d prove wrong. I would too.

Anger drove me up the side of the ravine faster than I would’ve made it before they revealed the duplicitous nature of the hunt. I didn’t want to be captured by them, no matter how exciting it had sounded at the bar to be the sole focus of another being.

“Hey!”

“Stop!”

Ha! They’d expected me to just give up. Fear, tinged with some hidden excitement at the challenge, motivated me before. I’d run myself to collapse before I gave up and let them catch me from sheer stubbornness now. They’d not have the satisfaction of bringing home this prey. If they’d ignore the rules of fair play, I’d ignore their hunt rules. My desperate scramble up the slope going from tuft to tuft of grass strained my ribs, but the blinding pain was muted.

The top of the ravine was the first in a series of ledges, shelves built up a graduated cliff. A stair for giants? Did shifters come even bigger than the huge white one chasing me?

This was definitely not the maze that looked like the countryside outside the city. The terrain was alien. I didn’t recognize the plants. The small sticky shrubs dotting the sides of the ledges were a shimmery color unlike any I could name. I grabbed one to pull myself up the first ledge. It held. I reached higher and used another to step up on. It bowed downward but held my weight.

I could use them. I repositioned my feet to gain a precious foot higher. The shrubs left sticky trails along the palms of my hands, through the tears in my gloves. Too bad the knives wouldn’t work now; they might have helped me climb. The ledge was solid, but gave under me slightly, more like bark than dirt. My hands stung and my thighs burned.

Ignoring the shouts of the shifters became easier as I concentrated on going higher.

It was steep enough the shifters would never be able to get up here. Well, the snake one could fly. The burning in my hands began to spread up my arms. I was almost there. My fingers spasmed. I lost my grip on the handful of the shrub currently holding my weight as I buried my front spikes on my boot into the ledge so I could inch higher, toward the very top.

I screamed as my body swung around to slam backward off the corner of the sloped ledge. My right leg wrenched sideways, hard enough that my boot popped completely off and remained stuck in the ledge. The ankle I’d twisted earlier snapped, and my vision whited out. I desperately fought the pain. I couldn’t fall from this high. I’d die. The snake shifter was right behind me. I hadn’t even heard it as it hovered, its pleated wings waving, but not snapping shut.

“Don’t let go!”

I scrabbled frantically at the ground, but my fingers wouldn’t uncurl. I tried digging my foot into the ground backward, but I couldn’t get any purchase. My only contact with the ground, keeping me up, was one arm, and that wasn’t going to hold much longer. “I’m gonna fall!”

The shifter shot up and over my head. His fan-like wings rippled, creating a musky scented breeze I could smell through the jumpsuit film. “Just another few seconds. You can hold on.”

The tingle in my hands began to intensify. My other palm was going to cramp too. I whimpered and closed my eyes.

“What are you waiting for? Reach up, reach for me. I’m trying to help you.”

I opened my eyes. A slender hand waved in front of my face. I flung my useless hand up, and my rescuer grabbed me by the wrist. He grunted and pulled. “You’re too heavy.”

“Don’t let go of me. Please!” I kicked, trying to get the spikes on my remaining boot to catch on the hard ground.

“Moshe, get up here!” the shifter yelled. The hands around my wrist slipped. “Stop squirming, Miah.” I froze.

The shifter knew my name. I cautiously tilted my head slightly back so I could see who was holding me. It was the blue-haired guy from the bar. Did that mean? I glanced down.

The other guy watching me and Keon that night ascended the steep tiers far faster than I had, grabbing and jumping up the tiers going bush to bush with just those huge hands pulling him along.

Naked.

Oh hell, he was big all over. And I was noticing this as I dangled over the edge of an alien cliff, held up by one hand about to cramp by a slender shifter in human form that probably didn’t reach my chin in height but would fit perfectly inside my arms. Maybe riding the line between life and death turned me into a horny pervert.

“Gotcha.” Moshe snagged me around the waist just as my hand gave out. The other shifter let go, and I slumped over the giant guy’s arm. Terror and pain morphed into extreme exhaustion as he hauled my limp body over the top of the tier to safety. “Good job, Lisco.”

I trembled against Moshe and Lisco, the other shifter who’d held me up. “No gotcha,” I mumbled. “Not prey, and you’re not animals anymore.” Exhaustion rolled over me, along with all the pain my anger had masked.

* * * *

Something stunk. Chemical cleansers, and the stench of too many bodies in too small a space, made my nose burn. Multiple beeps went off repeatedly, but didn’t quite match up. The incessant sounds finally drove me awake.

“Great,” I groaned. “The emergency room.” I closed my eyes again. I knew that waffled ceiling. I was in the university medical wing. Maybe I could block the beeps out and fall asleep again if I tried really hard.

“Miah?”

I jerked my eyes open and lifted my head to stare at the foot of the bed. Moshe stood there, his big hands holding on to the metal rail. He smiled. “You’re awake. Hi.”

Hi? I blinked.

“I’m Moshe.”

“Yeah, I remember.” Hard to forget a second of my first—and hopefully last—near death experience. “You didn’t win.”

Moshe’s smile widened into a grin. “You already pointed that out before. You know, when I rescued you just before you took a fifty foot fall.”

“Which only happened because you guys were hunting me and wouldn’t stop. I said I wasn’t prey.” I crossed my arms over my chest, refusing to look away from his wide blue eyes, even though my neck was starting to hurt.

“You liked it.”

“More than like!” The voice right next to my head was unexpected. I flinched.

“Ow.” My leg did not like it when I moved, even though it didn’t. I grit my teeth against the pain when the muscles in my arms crawled unpleasantly in a rippling spasm.

“Lisco, that’s not nice.”

“But I can smell him. He liked the idea of being hunted in the bar, he liked it when he was being chased, and he likes the memory of it too.” Lisco’s voice was smooth and smug, so close to my ear I wasn’t even sure if he was talking to Moshe or just to me.

I dragged in a shuddery breath when the spasms stopped. “What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Taking care of you,” Moshe said. “They called your roommate, but he wasn’t in your room. The dorm super said your boxes were gone when he checked your room. Is there someone else you’d like us to call?”

“What time is it?” I hauled myself up by the rails. Using my hands made the ripples start again. “Oh shit.” I couldn’t hold myself up, but I’d already seen something worse than the spasms. The sun was shining on the dingy floor in the corner of the open ward. The medical wing ran along the west side of the college. I slumped back against the bed.

“Why? What’s wrong?” Lisco leaned over the bed. “Miah? Do you need something for the pain? We’re really sorry you were hurt. You weren’t supposed to. I hope you believe that.”

“I missed my tram. There won’t be another one for a week. I’m homeless.” What was I going to do? I was screwed.

“You can stay with us.” Moshe’s voice was far too hopeful and innocent for a man who’d shifted into a huge furry caterpillar creature and chased me across the dome in a twisted game engineered by my soon-to-be-dead ex-roommate and their crooked company.

“No. Just no.”

“Oh.” The big guy crumpled. Oh man, why were the giants always intimidating on the outside and soft as a marshmallow inside? It was like seeing a puppy’s eyes after he’d been kicked, all mournful and hurt.

“You have no clothes. No roommate. No room. You have a severely wrenched leg, and the doctors said your hands and arms could spasm off and on for a few days. Humans don’t do well when they come in contact with pilltock fluid.”

I’d never manage crutches with my arms, but a week’s stay in the hospital would decimate my credits. “I can’t afford this.” I shook my head. “I have land to prepare. Why in the hell didn’t you stop when I said I hadn’t signed up with Nature’s Wrath? Don’t you have to have some sort of consent forms? Liability waivers?” It’d serve them right if they lost their jobs, and I sued the shifter company into non-existence. “There’s no way what you did was legal. I didn’t sign anything, unless Keon tricked me, which would invalidate the contract.”

“Umm… See… Well…” Lisco lost the smooth conviction for the first time. The beeping filled the silence.

“What? You can’t just say well and then stop talking.” I crossed my arms over my chest and stared at him. He rubbed his hands over his face and through his hair. Lisco peeked up at me and then sighed.

“Your roommate didn’t set up the hunt. We did. There was no contract.”

“Lisco said you wanted to be hunted, and you liked the way we looked at the bar. You displayed interest. We thought you’d like to court shifter-style.” Moshe ran his hands along the bar at the foot of the bed, staring at my leg wrapped in a stiff brace. “You weren’t supposed to get hurt.”

“Wait! I don’t understand any of that. It’s not possible to know what another person wants.”

“I could smell your arousal at the bar. You kept looking at us, and it’d get stronger.” Lisco tapped his nose. “We might look human on the outside, but we’re not.”

Like I could ever forget that.

“You wanted us. We wanted you. Then you said you were leaving.” Moshe twisted his hands around the foot railing and the metal groaned. “I didn’t want you to go.”

“Looks like you’ll get your wish. I’m not paying for the bed if you break that rail.” Moshe yanked his hands behind his back.

“Moshe would never want to keep you because you were hurt,” Lisco said. “We want to keep you for far more… pleasant activities.”

“Then what the hell was up with the hunting thing!” I was nearly shouting. I really had to stop cursing before I went home. Mom would kill me.

“Adrenaline. Arousal. Fight or flight. That’s what you humans call it, right? The ultimate game of wits.” Lisco waved off the nurse who came into the room before I could demand to see the doctor. She left before I could stop her. If I tried to push the call button on the holo pad on the railing, my hands might spasm again. Lisco trailed a hand down the front of the tight shirt he wore, tucking his thumb into a pocket of his even tighter pants.

“It’s no different for us. Hunting is… stimulating.” The word rolled off Lisco’s tongue in that smooth voice, and I couldn’t look away from the bulge his hand framed. Heaven help me, but I still found both of the shifters sexy as hell, even when I was pissed off at them.

“So you hunt men down and sex them up. Great job, guys.” A giant green monster was tearing up my insides, even as I blushed furiously from talking about something so private in the busy ward where anyone could hear me. Then again, it was their job, so maybe sex wasn’t private to them.

But it was to me.

“Look. Just go, okay? I don’t want to deal with this right now.”

“No!” Moshe shook his head vehemently. “Please.”

“We don’t work for Nature’s Wrath. We just used their transport system and the hunt dome node. A friend who does work there owed me a favor. They don’t do that anyway—the sex is always a bonus.”

I blinked.

“But we’re not sexing anyone.” Lisco bent down next to me. “Not unless you ask for us to.”

I was far too intrigued by the heat in Lisco’s gaze, and the way he licked his lips with tip of his tongue, toying with his full upper lip. The thin sheet couldn’t hide my response if I didn’t look away immediately. I was saved, just in time, by the doctor knocking on the ward doorway. The nurse must have fetched him, but how long had he stood there?

“Hello, Mr. Jonahson. I must say, I was surprised to see you in here.” Dr. Cooper smiled at me. “Three years of college, and you never visited my ER except to deliver supplies before.”

“It wasn’t my idea.” I wasn’t above twisting the knife into the two shifters standing by my bed. I was still mad. Not aroused.

Yeah right. Damn it, what was it about the pair that made me want to get closer to them?

“Oh?” Dr. Cooper raised an eyebrow. “Do we need to have a private talk?” He reached for the bracelet on his wrist, no doubt to call the security guards.

“No, no,” I assured him.

“You’re positive?”

I nodded. “I am. This was all just a big misunderstanding. We’re working it out.”

“We are?” Moshe moved over to the side of my bed, to stand by Lisco. They clasped their hands together.

“We have more talking to do. A lot more.”

“Sure, okay. Whatever you want to talk about.” Moshe’s grin was huge.

Dr. Connor tapped the holo feed to bring up my chart at the end of my bed, distracting me from the happy shifter. He explained the torn ligaments, and the micro-repair he’d done while I was out. “The pilltock has a chemical in it that we don’t have on Earth. There’s nothing I can give you to counter the spasm effects without risking a possibly dangerous interaction. There’s just not enough known about shifters and their natural environs.”

Lisco shrugged one lean shoulder. “We’re all different, Doctor.”

“Be that as it may, it creates a problem when you take curious humans into your dome.” Dr. Connor frowned at the two shifters standing by my side. “And I’d have expected you to have more sense than this too, Nehemiah.” Ouch. I’d heard my dad say my name in the same tone when I’d done something foolish more than once.

“It won’t happen again,” I assured him. Moshe made a sound in his throat. Lisco hushed him, leaning his head against the much taller shifter’s arm. “I don’t think I’ll be going anywhere anytime soon, right?”

“You can’t walk on that leg, not without support. I could get a hover chair for you, but you’re going to need basic assistance from a round-the-clock caregiver because of your arms. I know you just graduated, so you’re not staying in the dorms, and your roommate won’t be around to help you.” Dr. Connor and I’d had dinner a few times when I’d had late deliveries during a lull in the admittance of college-aged idiots to his ER. I’d told him about my family, and my dreams, and he knew just how hard I’d worked and still needed to work. “I might be able to help—”

“We’re responsible for what happened to him.” Lisco jumped in, interrupting the doctor. “Moshe and I can take care of him.” He didn’t even make the comment into a snarky or innuendo-laden remark.

“Can you?”

“Yes,” they said together. Did they do everything together? My skin prickled as I flushed. Naughty images flashed through my mind. I ducked my head, staring at my lap as my face flamed, trying to hide my reaction.

Dr. Connor shut off the holo. “You are going to need help walking for two weeks, at least. Until the pilltock juice you absorbed through your hands has left your system, you won’t be able to use crutches. For a few days, any movement of your hands could set off the spasms, and after that the muscles will be weak. My offer stands, if you need it.”

“Thank you.” I smiled at the doctor. He wasn’t a friend, not really, but he was probably the closest thing I had to one in the city. But I didn’t want him to take care of me, physically or financially. I looked up at Lisco and Moshe, and finally admitted the truth of everything the blue-haired shifter had said.

I did want them. If they had to take care of me for days, they’d have to touch me. Everywhere. Just the thought made my breath catch.

What would happen when we were alone? I wanted to twist Lisco’s lithe body into a pretzel and see if he was as flexible as he looked. I wanted to feel those huge hands on my hips as Moshe used the monster I’d glimpsed between his legs to see just how far I could stretch around him.

We’d have a week to get to know each other, maybe even two, before I left the city for good. I’d wanted an adventure to remember when I was alone and lonely. The two sexy shifters wanted me. They’d come up with the entire maze hunt to court me in their tradition. Sure, it was the wrong way to go about it, but they were shifters. They weren’t human, even if they looked like us.

And they were here now, even though I’d yelled at them to go away. They cared.

But would my time with them be enough when I was better and had to leave? I’d played it safe for years, working and studying. I wanted to explore the heat I felt when I looked at Lisco and Moshe together, to feel the kind of connection I might never get a chance at again.

“I appreciate your offer, Dr. Connor, but… I think I’ll go home with them.” It would just be for two weeks, but maybe I could make the memories last forever.