I watched from the shadowed ridge above the camp—jetpack humming low on my back, silent and ready. Below, the scene unfolded like a slow-motion nightmare in the flickering firelight.
Megan—still bound in rough rope around her wrists and ankles—sat slumped against a crate, tears cutting clean tracks through the dirt on her face. She looked Broken. But her eyes still burned with that stubborn cop fire.
Hailey knelt beside Paul—her father—trying to press a damp cloth to his fevered forehead. Paul's leg was a ruin: torn away below the knee by a mountain lion, the stump wrapped in filthy bandages that had long since soaked through with pus and blood.
Infection had set in deep—fever burning him up, skin hot and yellow-tinged, breaths shallow and labored. Hailey's hands shook as she wiped his brow, but her eyes kept darting to Megan—fear and fury warring on her young face.
