The firefight had stopped feeling like a skirmish and started feeling like a storm.
Blaster bolts shredded bark, splintered rock, and turned patches of undergrowth into smoking mud. Rebels pressed forward in bursts, yelling over one another. Military squads tried to hold a clean line, but the line kept bending as reinforcements poured in from three directions.
Lance lay flat behind a fallen trunk, lungs tight, ears ringing. Every time he tried to lift his head, the air snapped with red light. He'd already done his job—he had the chip and the partial data, the proof and the leverage. Now all he had to do was move.
He crawled back, using the roots like handholds. His datapad showed the route the officer had marked—south through the forest, then cut toward Bravo.
He pushed up to a crouch and sprinted.
A bolt cracked past his cheek and burned a clean line into the tree behind him.
He swore, slid, and threw himself behind another trunk.
The rebels and the military were too busy killing each other to notice the way the forest had begun to change.
At first it was nothing. Just a faint dampness on the air, like rain that never arrived.
Then the smell came—cool, mineral, sharp as crushed leaves. It didn't belong with smoke and ozone. It smelled… clean.
Lance blinked fast. His eyes stung.
Somewhere high above, a voice murmured through a communicator, calm and measured.
"One."
Lance couldn't tell where it came from. Not rebel. Not military. The tone was wrong. Too disciplined, too quiet.
He shook it off and forced his legs to move again.
Behind him, the battlefield erupted with a new burst of fire as the last reinforcements arrived and piled into the mess. Men screamed. Someone yelled "Flank!" like it mattered, like flanking meant anything in a forest that didn't end.
Lance ran low, darting from tree to tree, following the route on his pad.
He almost made it to a ridge when the air around him… thickened.
It wasn't fog yet. It was like the world had inhaled and was holding its breath.
Leaves trembled without wind.
And then it hit.
Pressure.
Not physical at first—no hand around his throat, no weight on his shoulders. It was deeper than that. Like a presence had turned its attention toward the forest and everything inside it had suddenly remembered it was small.
Lance stumbled, catching himself with his palm against bark.
For half a second, he thought he was about to vomit.
A nearby rebel, sprinting with his rifle up, stopped dead and dropped to one knee as if someone had kicked his legs out from under him. The man stared forward, mouth open, eyes wide and wet, trying to breathe through fear he didn't understand.
The pressure eased almost immediately. Not gone. Just… moved. Redirected. Like the forest had decided exactly how much panic it wanted to allow.
Lance forced air into his lungs and kept moving.
He didn't see the watchers. He felt them.
Not like soldiers. Soldiers were loud even when they were quiet. Soldiers shifted weight. Soldiers whispered. Soldiers made the forest respond.
These watchers didn't disturb anything. They existed around him the way shadows existed—present without announcing themselves.
He reached a break in the trees and saw the manhole cover the rebels had been guarding. The ground near it was torn and blackened. Blaster scars pocked the trunks. A few bodies lay where they'd fallen.
But the pattern was wrong.
In a firefight, bodies sprawled in chaos, weapons flung, hands reaching.
These bodies were set down.
Not gently. Not respectfully. But placed. Neutralized. Their weapons stacked off to the side like someone had sorted them out of habit.
Lance's spine went cold.
He crept forward.
The rebel snipers weren't at their positions anymore. The branches above were empty.
A twig snapped behind him.
Lance whirled, blaster up.
Nothing.
He backed toward the manhole, heart hammering, and that was when the mist finally arrived.
It rolled in low—silent, thick, swallowing the forest in smooth white. It didn't spread like natural fog. It moved like intent, curling around trunks, slipping between roots, cutting sightlines into tight, suffocating little worlds.
A voice, close now, spoke from the mist.
"Two."
Lance froze.
The word wasn't shouted. It wasn't even spoken loudly. It was simply there, like an order the air itself obeyed.
He raised his blaster, finger tight on the trigger.
"Who's there?" he snapped, trying to sound braver than he felt.
No answer.
Then—another sound.
Soft steps. Many of them. Not running. Not rushing. Marching, but spaced, controlled.
Shapes formed in the fog.
Helms. Robes. Plates over shoulders and chest that didn't shine, even when the mist caught the light. The armor looked like cloth until you watched it move. Then you saw the layered plates beneath and the way the edges were cut, precise and unfamiliar.
Equinox.
Lance didn't know the name. But something in his mind screamed that this wasn't military kit and it wasn't rebel gear.
A figure stepped closer, rifle leveled. The barrel had the long, clean build of a marksman's weapon, but the stance was wrong for a nervous human soldier. Too steady. Too patient.
Lance's blaster trembled.
He swallowed. "I'm leaving. I don't want trouble."
The figure didn't answer.
Another shape appeared to the left, then another to the right. The mist boxed him in.
Then the air around the first figure shimmered, subtle as heat over stone. A micro-layer, barely visible, like the world didn't want to decide whether the soldier was solid or not.
A blaster bolt screamed out of the mist from somewhere far off—wild fire from a panicked squad.
It hit the shimmer and bled away, the energy dispersing like water striking glass.
The armored figure didn't flinch.
Lance stared. A shield. Passive. Always on.
He understood the meaning. Whoever these people were, they had prepared for this.
The figure stepped forward again.
Lance backed away until the manhole cover hit the back of his boot. His mind raced—shoot? run? dive back underground?
A third shape slid through the fog behind the first two. This one moved differently. No armor shine at all. Just dark cloth, a mask, and a presence that made Lance's instincts howl.
A dark elf.
The elf's hand lifted slightly, and Lance's blaster suddenly felt heavy. Not yanked away—just… discouraged. Like the weight of it had doubled.
The elf's voice came, soft.
"Down."
Lance clenched his jaw. "No."
The elf's head tilted.
A dart flicked out of the fog—so fast Lance didn't see the shooter. It struck his upper arm.
Pain flared for half a heartbeat—then numbness chased it.
Lance's fingers went slack.
His blaster hit the dirt with a dull thud.
He tried to grab it and his hand refused to close.
Panic surged. He fought to keep his legs.
The elf's voice remained even, almost bored.
"Stun only. He's useful."
Useful.
Lance wanted to spit, wanted to curse, wanted to fight, but his body wasn't listening. He staggered sideways, caught himself on the manhole rim, and stayed upright by sheer spite.
The armored soldiers didn't rush him. They didn't tackle him. They didn't swarm like troops hungry for revenge.
They waited.
They let the paralysis settle just enough to make him cooperative without breaking him.
In the distance, the forest erupted again—screams, bolts, the pop of grenades. Someone was still fighting. Someone hadn't gotten the message.
The masked elf raised a hand, and the mist thickened for a moment. The sounds dulled, muffled, as if the fog ate noise.
Lance's mind flashed to his radio.
He tried to reach for it.
His arm barely moved.
The elf watched him try and didn't stop him.
That was what scared Lance the most.
A soldier moved closer and crouched in front of him. Through the helm slit, Lance saw eyes—green and unreadable.
The soldier held out a hand.
In it was Lance's datapad.
Lance's stomach dropped.
He hadn't felt it taken.
The soldier didn't crush it. Didn't snap it. Didn't even wipe it.
The soldier simply turned it over, scanning it like a clerk.
Then the soldier passed it back.
Lance blinked, confused even through fear. "Why?"
The soldier's voice came through the helm, muffled but clear.
"Because you want to deliver it."
Lance's throat went dry. "To who?"
The soldier didn't answer that.
Instead, the soldier leaned slightly to the side, and Lance saw a symbol etched into the pauldron plate—simple and sharp.
A stylized tree.
Not the rebel mark. Not the military crest. Something else entirely.
The soldier stood and stepped away.
The dark elf lifted his hand again.
Pressure nudged Lance—not force-choking, not crushing. Guiding.
A corridor opened in the mist to Lance's right, like the fog itself decided where he was allowed to walk.
Lance swallowed hard. "You're letting me go."
The elf's masked face turned toward him.
"You're running anyway."
Lance's legs began to work again. Slowly. The numbness faded like a tide pulling back.
He didn't wait for permission twice.
He ran.
Not because he trusted them.
Because every instinct he had screamed that if he stayed another second, he'd learn too much—and people who learned too much didn't leave.
As Lance sprinted through the corridor of fog, he caught glimpses of what was happening beyond his pocket.
A rebel squad burst into view, rifles up, shouting. They took two steps before vines snapped out of the ground and wrapped their ankles and wrists, yanking them down like puppets. No spikes. No tearing. Just restraint.
A military trooper tried to throw a grenade—his arm jerked, the grenade slipped, and a dark elf flicked a hand. The grenade popped harmlessly in a contained sphere of force that swallowed the blast with a dull whomp.
A captain screamed for his men to push forward, then went silent as something struck the base of his skull. He folded like a puppet with cut strings. Two armored figures dragged him back, careful not to bang his head against the roots.
No executions.
No slaughter.
A harvest.
Lance hit the edge of the corridor and the fog thinned.
Ahead, the forest opened toward the route to Bravo.
Behind him, the mist rolled and swallowed itself, sealing away the battlefield like a curtain falling.
Lance ran until his lungs burned and his legs shook. He didn't stop until he found a low ridge and collapsed behind it, shaking.
He tried his radio.
"Vaughn. This is Lance. Do you copy?"
Static.
Then a faint voice—too faint, too clean.
"Agent Lance. Report."
Lance's blood went cold.
That wasn't Vaughn.
He slammed the radio off and ripped the battery free with shaking hands.
In the distance, the blaster fire died, one pocket at a time, like candles being pinched out.
And in the silence that followed, the forest didn't sound relieved.
It sounded obedient.
Lance stared into the trees, clutching his datapad like it was the only real thing left.
He had escaped.
He had the data.
But he knew, with a certainty that made his skin crawl, that he hadn't escaped because he was fast.
He'd escaped because someone had decided he should.
And somewhere behind the mist, the first Equinox helms stepped forward between the trees.