The snow came down thicker in the morning, laying a deceptive quiet over the forest floor. Every step sank and muffled. The trees leaned under the weight of it, branches bowed low with frost.
Joel led. Ethan stayed two paces behind him, eyes moving over the trail, ears tuned past their own crunch for any crunch that didn't belong to them.
Echo Ridge was still a day away. It felt closer than that.
"We stop in twenty," Joel muttered. "Rest and recon."
Behind them, Hale said nothing, eyes never leaving the tree line. Carrow had given up on small talk hours ago. The mood was brittle as the ice underfoot.
Ellie walked near Ethan, her rifle riding tight on its strap — a semi-auto she'd taken from one of the dead Fireflies weeks ago, when they'd barely escaped the orchard ambush. Her fingers kept flexing at her sides, like she was rehearsing something.
"You good?" Ethan asked quietly.
She gave a faint nod. "Got a feeling."
"Yeah. Me too."
They followed a frozen creek bed down until it opened into a shallow basin — rocks in a natural horseshoe, low brush, a few withered trees. Joel raised his hand.
"Here. Ten-minute break. Eyes open."
Ethan settled against a ridge of ice and pulled the small tactical scope from his jacket, panning the upper ledges slow. Nothing. Nothing. Then —
A flicker. A single hard reflection, there and gone.
His heart slammed into focus. He dropped flat.
"Contact. Northwest. Scope glint. Maybe two hundred meters."
Joel didn't ask questions. He snatched up his rifle and rolled behind a boulder.
"Ambush?" Ellie breathed.
"Looks like it," Ethan said. "They're waiting for us to walk into the open."
The crack came a half-second later. Then another.
A round punched into the rock above Ethan's head, spraying ice. Another skittered off a frozen trunk beside Carrow.
"Down!" Joel roared. "Suppressive fire — move east!"
Ethan drew his sidearm and put two quick shots toward the glint. Carrow and Hale opened up on the ridge. Ellie dropped to a crouch and crawled to Ethan's side.
"There's a dip past the rocks," she hissed. "We move now, we can flank."
Joel caught her signal. "Go. We cover."
They ran. Frost-slicked stones turned under their boots; bullets chased them, one chewing splinters out of a tree into Ethan's coat. They hit the dip and rolled behind cover, breathing hard, and Ellie was already reloading.
"Top ledge," she said, eyes fixed ahead. "Behind the dead pine."
Ethan raised the scope. "Got him." He lined the pistol up just above the frost line. "Now," Ellie whispered — and he fired.
The sniper folded sideways with a muffled grunt.
"Move!"
They surged up the path and around the sniper's perch. A Warden rounded the rocks to meet them — bald, armored, insignia stamped on his chest plate. Ellie hit him first, driving her shoulder into his gut and slamming him into the snow. He grabbed her rifle strap and yanked her sideways.
Ethan's knife was out before he thought about it. He drove it up under the rim of the helmet, into the seam at the neck.
The man twitched, gurgled, went still.
Ellie shoved off him, panting. "Thanks."
Ethan scanned the white around them. "Two more up here."
Gunfire echoed from below — Joel holding the ridge. Then a third Warden came over the rocks with a shotgun up, and Ethan threw himself sideways as the blast tore through a pine trunk. He kicked out, caught the man's knee, and took him down the incline in a tangle of limbs. They rolled through the snow, fists and elbows, a punch landing hard on Ethan's ribs — he twisted free and put two rounds into the man's chest.
Stillness.
Ellie slid in beside him, pale. "That was the last one."
Ethan was already moving. He stripped a comm piece off the nearest corpse, clicked it on, and tuned it to the Warden frequency.
Static. Then a voice: "Delta unit down. Ridge compromised. Orders?"
Ethan killed the line. "Fifteen minutes, maybe less, before they come looking."
They regrouped fast. Blood ran down Carrow's temple in a thin line, but she was on her feet.
"Time to move," Joel said.
Nobody argued.
They ran for hours, down the far slope, following the stream deeper into the trees, until Joel called a halt at a bend in the ravine walled in high stone. It wasn't safe. It was just out of sight.
Ellie knelt beside Carrow, whose forehead had split open above the eyebrow, blood matting her hair. "You're bleeding bad."
"I'm fine."
"Hold still," Ethan said, digging out the compact medkit. Joel stood off with his weapon up, scanning the slope.
Carrow watched Ethan's hands work — clean the gash, press, wrap. "You done this before?"
"Too many times."
Her voice went softer. "You move like someone trained you."
Ethan didn't answer. He tied off the bandage and checked the knot twice.
A shadow crossed the ravine wall. Joel's head snapped up.
"Incoming. Two at ten o'clock."
Ethan got Carrow to her feet. "We move. Now."
They went east along the cliff wall, Hale covering with short bursts, Ellie running point beside Joel, Ethan on the rear with his eyes on the trees — and then the forest came apart.
Gunfire ripped through the quiet. Three Wardens broke from the far slope, rifles up. Dirt fountained near Ethan's boot. A round sparked off a boulder by Ellie.
"Down!"
They scattered. Ethan spun behind a tree and fired — one Warden went down clutching his shoulder, the others fanning out. Ellie dove behind a log, sighted, and put a round center-mass. Clean. Joel's rifle cracked twice, deliberate, and two more shapes dropped. Hale dragged Carrow behind cover, laying down bursts.
One Warden left, crouched behind a stump.
"I got this," Ellie said, already moving.
"Ellie—"
Too late. She sprinted, slid into cover, and lobbed an empty bottle to the left. The Warden turned at the sound.
Ethan lined up the shot and took it.
Quiet came back all at once. No movement. No backup.
They regrouped, breathing hard.
"Is that it?" Carrow asked.
"For now," Joel said. "That was just a forward team."
Ethan crouched by the nearest body and worked the chest plate loose. The armor was new — no field wear, no patching. Tags etched with numbers hung at the collar. Not mercenary kit. Something built for a purpose.
"They're not just tracking us," he said quietly. "They're testing us."
Ellie wiped her blade on her sleeve. "Then let's fail the test before they bring the whole exam."
Joel let out a breath that was almost a laugh. "Let's move."
They didn't stop until nightfall, making camp behind a ring of collapsed boulders. Joel built the fire small and shielded it from the wind with his own body. Hale took first watch, a silhouette against the dark tree line. Carrow leaned against a trunk, breathing even but strained.
Ellie sat beside Ethan and broke a protein bar in two, handing him the larger half.
"You saved my ass twice today," she said. "Don't make it a habit. I'll start owing you."
He took the bar. He was still thinking about the sniper — the scope glint, the patience of it, the way they'd been set up like pieces on a board.
She leaned her shoulder against his. "Well," she said, quieter, "screw their experiment."
Joel came back from the perimeter and crouched across from them. "We move early. They'll be pushing toward Echo Ridge by morning."
Ethan nodded. "We get there first. Before they do."
The fire burned down to coals between them, and the snow kept falling, soft on the stones.