"For me?"

"Put it on."

"Thanks."

The guard doesn't say anything. She dips back inside and shuts the door.

Pressia loves the jacket-the way it puffs around her, like walking inside warm risen bread. Nothing gets through it, not the cold, not the wind that whips up and then dies. These are the little things that people should really appreciate, simple pleasures. That's all she has right this minute. The jacket is warm, and sometimes you should just be thankful for that. When was the last time she felt warm like this in a jacket? She knows she could die out here. This whole officer thing is bullshit. The Game could be a game where she's the one who gets trapped. She knows this. But still, she thinks, at least she'd die in a warm coat.

She walks down the slope, wondering what she should say to El Capitan. Should she call him El Capitan? It's a strange name. Did he make it up himself ? If Pressia calls him El Capitan, will it just sound forced or, worse, a little insincere? She wouldn't want El Capitan to think she's making fun of him. It's only a matter of time before he realizes that she has no real ties to the Pure. She met him on the street. She got him to his old address, a pile of rubble. By the time El Capitan figures that out, she hopes she's on his good side-if good sides matter here. She decides not to say his name at all.

When she gets to the bottom of the hill, she stands there for a moment, not sure how to start. El Capitan puffs on the cigar and his brother stares at Pressia with his wide-set eyes.

El Capitan looks disgusted and already weary. He sizes Pressia up out of the corner of his eye and shakes his head as if disagreeing with the wisdom of all this but resigned to it anyway. He hands Pressia an extra rifle and says, "I'm guessing you can't shoot."

Pressia holds it like it might be a musical instrument or a shovel. She's never seen a gun this close up before, much less held one. She says, "I've never had the pleasure."

"Like this," El Capitan says, taking the rifle from her hand gruffly. He shows Pressia how to hold the rifle and look through the sight, then hands it back to her.

She holds the trigger with her good hand and then balances the long part of the gun on her doll-head fist.

The doll head gives El Capitan pause; she can tell. But he's used to deformities. And he's had his fair share of comments, hasn't he? A man who carries his brother on his back? He only says, "Can you at least flex it to your wrist, create a firm grip?"

Pressia can, of course. She's had to develop a grip over the years.

But then he nudges one of her elbows, adjusting her stance. For a moment he seems almost brotherly, and Pressia can't help but think of how her grandfather once taught her to swing an imaginary golf club by wrapping his arms around her, and lacing his fingers around hers. There were sloping green lawns that went on forever, he told her, and the golf clubs themselves were fitted with little specially made knit hats. But this gentleness doesn't last. El Capitan looks at her and says, "I don't get it." He drops his stub of cigar and rubs it out under his boot heel.

"What?"

"Why you?"

She shrugs, and he looks at her suspiciously, then coughs and spits on the ground. "Don't fire it right now. We don't want to announce our location. Just practice," El Capitan says. "Take a deep breath before you pull the trigger, let it out, just halfway. Then fire."

"Fire," his brother whispers, startling Pressia. She'd almost forgotten he was there.

Pressia takes aim and thinks about her breathing. She draws it in, holds it, imagines the crack of the gun, then lets her breath out.

"Don't forget that," El Capitan says, and he pushes her barrel down. "And don't point it at me while we're walking."

Pressia thinks of Helmud. Shouldn't El Capitan refer to himself as plural? Just don't point it at us-right?

El Capitan slaps her on the back. "Follow me."

His brother whispers, "Follow me."

"But what's The Game?" Pressia asks.

"No real rules, just a game of tag. Hunt down your foe. Then shoot instead of tag."

"What are we hunting down?"

"Who are we hunting down," El Capitan corrects her.

Pressia tries to think of the jacket, like walking in warm bread. "Who then?"

"An incoming. Someone like you. But this one isn't as lucky as Pressia Belze." She doesn't like the way he keeps calling her lucky. It's like he's mocking her.

Pressia glances at Helmud.

"Is the incoming armed?" Pressia asks.

"Unarmed. Those were the orders. I'm starting you out at level A," El Capitan says. "Think of this as part of your officer training."

They're on a worn path that cuts through the woods, downhill. "Who sent the orders?" she asks, worried that this is too bold. Officers are supposed to be bold, though, she tells herself.

"Ingership," El Capitan says. "I was hoping he'd forgotten about The Game. It'd been a while. But orders are orders."

What if he didn't shoot the incoming but let the incoming go free? Do orders have to be orders? Maybe this is why she's in officer training. She's supposed to learn not to ask these kinds of questions.

Pressia hears a sound behind them. Is it the incoming she's supposed to shoot? El Capitan doesn't turn around and so Pressia doesn't either. She doesn't want to shoot an incoming, someone just like her but not lucky. Pressia knows that she's not lucky for good. This is just some kind of error. At some point someone, maybe this Ingership, will call down from some other level and say they got the wrong girl. Not Belze, they'll say. We meant someone else. And then she'll be out here in the woods being hunted down by El Capitan and an officer-in-training who's never had the pleasure of shooting a gun before. Pressia's never liked games. She's never been good at them. Bradwell-she wishes he was out here with her. Would he kill an incoming? No. He'd figure out how to take a stand, do the right thing, make a statement. She's just trying to stay alive. There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, she kind of wishes he could see her now, but just a picture, a girl in the woods with a gun. At least she's giving the impression that she can take care of herself.

After a while, El Capitan stops. "You hear that?"

Pressia does hear something, the faintest rustling, but it's just wind through leaves. She looks to her right and sees a shape. It limps from one tree to the next then slips out of sight. A saying from Pressia's childhood echoes in her head, Come out! Come out wherever you are! It fills her with nervous dread. She mentally urges the shape to stay hidden. Don't come out. Don't come out.

El Capitan walks in the opposite direction into the brush and stops. He points his gun at something on the ground. "Look here," he says.

Pressia walks up and sees writhing reddish fur and then shining eyes, a dainty piggish snout with wiry whiskers but fox-like body. The animal is locked in a small steel trap.

"What is it?"

"Hybrid of some sort. It's genetically mutated, upscale though. Its generations turn over quicker than ours. See there." He nudges the animal's claw, and there's a metal glint to it. "Survival of the fittest."

"The fittest," Helmud says.

"Just like us, right." El Capitan looks at her. He expects her to agree and she does.

"Right."

"That's what'll happen to our DNA over time," El Capitan says. "Some of us will produce offspring with mergers that make us stronger, and others will die out. This one's still good to eat."

"Are you going to shoot it?" Pressia asks.

"Shooting it is bad for the meat. So don't, if you can avoid it." El Capitan looks around and picks up a rock. He holds the rock over its head for a moment, taking aim, and then bashes the skull so that it caves in. The animal twitches. Its metal claw clenches, then its eyes turn dull and glassy.

The brutality makes Pressia feel sick, but she refuses to show it. El Capitan keeps an eye on her, gauging her toughness. Or so it seems.

"I caught a dog-size rat a couple weeks back with a tail made of chain. It's sick out here. Perversions of all kinds."

"Perversions," his brother says.

Pressia is shaken. Her hand is trembling. To hide it, she grips the gun tightly. "Why did you ask me out here?" Pressia says. "Just to play The Game?"

"It's all a game now," El Capitan says, unlocking the trap. "You lose, you're dead. Winning means you just keep playing. Sometimes I wish I'd lose. Tired. I get tired, that's all. Do you know what I mean?"

She does but she's surprised he's said it aloud, something so honest and vulnerable. She remembers the time she made the cut to her wrist. Was she trying to cut herself loose from the doll head or was she really just tired? She wonders for a moment if he's testing her. Should she tell him that she has no idea what he's talking about, that she's tough, officer material? There's something in the way he looks at her, though, and she can't lie. She nods. "I know what you mean."

El Capitan motions to the dead animal, picks it up, pulls a cloth sack from the interior of his jacket, and drops in the beast. The sack is immediately splotched red, a bright seeping of blood. "This is the first time I've found a whole beast to eat in a week."

"What do you mean?"

"Something's been getting to my traps and eating what's there before I pick up what I need."

"What do you think it is?"

El Capitan resets the trap with his boot. He talks over his shoulder to his brother. "We can trust her, right? We can trust this Pressia Belze?"

"Belze, Belze!" his brother says excitedly, but it sounds like bells, bells to Pressia, like he's expecting something to start ringing.

"Look," El Capitan says, "I'm willing to be generous with you. We can have our own meat, you and me. Not have to rely on that shit they serve here daily." He stares at Pressia. "That chicken looked pretty good to you the other day, no?"

Pressia nods. "But my meal wasn't bad. Better than the others'."

"The others don't know a damn thing," El Capitan says. "They never will. But you..." His eyes rove the forest.

"What about me?"

"Stick close," he says. "I hear 'em. Sometimes they move so fast, it's like hummingbirds. You hear 'em?"

Pressia strains to hear something, anything. Don't come out. Don't come out wherever you are. "What am I listening for?"

"The air goes electric when they're around." El Capitan hunches over and walks slowly, quietly.

Pressia follows him. She likes the weight of the gun in her hand now. She's relieved it's not just a golf club. She wishes her grandfather had taught her about guns rather than imaginary wedges, nine irons, putters.

El Capitan squats down in some brush, nods to Pressia to get next to him. "Look at that."

There's a field where a house used to sit. Now it's a broken mound. Beside it, there's a lump of plastic that probably used to be a jungle gym. There's also a huge metal fist, curled in on itself, as if a metal ladder had gotten wrapped up in it. Pressia couldn't define the thing.

"There they are." El Capitan is strangely calm, transfixed.

Moving in the shadows of trees on the other side of the field, she sees quick bodies. Nothing like the limping figure that was hiding behind trees, these are large, fleet, and shifting in a pattern. She sees two and then a third. They emerge from the woods, and she can see that they are men, young with broad faces. They wear tight-fitting dark ashen camouflage suits that leave their arms bare. Their sleek hairless skin, so pristine, seems to glow. Their arms are rippled with muscle but also guns, thick black metal, attached, if not built in. They tilt their heads as if hearing things from far off and sniff the air. Their bodies are muscular. Two have barrel chests. The other has enormous thighs. They all have short hair. When they aren't moving with great speed with their breath steaming behind them in the chilled air, they lope almost elegantly. They have oversize hands-no, claws-but are still human. Normally, Pressia would be terrified, but because of the creatures' odd elegance and El Capitan's rapt fearlessness, she isn't.

"I've seen these three before. Maybe they like to be able to triangulate a victim."

"Who are they?" Pressia whispers.

"You don't have to whisper," El Capitan says. "They know we're here. If they wanted to kill us, they would have."

Pressia watches one of the young men leap onto the plastic mound. He looks off in the distance as if seeing for miles. "Where did they come from?"

The creatures move restlessly, and El Capitan seems agitated, almost boyish. For the first time, he seems closer to her age. He says, "I was hoping that they'd show, but I didn't know for sure. Now you saw them too. I'm not alone."

Pressia thinks of the brother on El Capitan's back and thinks, You're never alone.

"They're looking for something or someone." El Capitan turns to Pressia. "But you wouldn't happen to know anything about that, right?"

Pressia shakes her head. "About what?"

"It's interesting that they show up the same time you do."

"I don't know what you're talking about. I've never seen anything like them before in my life." Pressia thinks of the Pure standing there in the middle of the street, just the way he'd been described. Is that who the creatures are looking for? "I don't even know what they are."

"Somebody's learned how to take every trait that they want from other animals or things and merge or fuse them with a human," El Capitan says. "Hyper-brain, hyper-body."

"The Dome?" Pressia says.

"Yeah, the Dome. Who else? But they know we're here," El Capitan says, "so why don't they kill us? We're the enemy, right? Or at least worth eating."

"Worth eating," his brother says.

Pressia watches the creatures, their sudden bursts of speed, the strange hum-El Capitan was right about that. There's a buzz in the air.

"See that one there?" He points to the one who seems to be looking directly at them. "That one looked at me like that last time too. He's got something more human in him than the others. You see it?"

Pressia isn't so sure. They all seem so completely foreign to her that she has trouble seeing their humanness. "I guess so," she says.

"They fused them with some nice toys, huh?" El Capitan says. "The guns are state-of-the-art, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were some computer chips lodged in them somewhere, smart guns. But there are animals involved. Whatever they merged them with, they became animals on a deep level. Maybe they merged them with wildcats and bears. Maybe hawks for vision. Maybe they even gave them some echolocation sonar like with bats. See how they twist their heads?" El Capitan says. "No matter what, they became bloodthirsty."

"Bloodthirsty," his brother whispers.

And at the mention of this word, the three creatures turn in unison and stare at Pressia, El Capitan, and his brother in the brush.

"Don't move," El Capitan says.

Pressia doesn't even breathe. She closes her eyes and thinks of the coat-warm inside it. She thinks, If I die here, at least...

But then some other sound grabs the creatures' attention and they run toward it. Humming fills the air. They burst off through the trees.

The air goes still.

Pressia turns to El Capitan. "Why did you show me this?"

El Capitan stands up, stares at his boots. "Ingership sent your emergency orders."

"Who is Ingership exactly?"

El Capitan gives a grunting laugh. "He's the man with the plan." He squints at Pressia. "I never got orders like this before-to take some runt and send 'em up to officer, just like that. And a girl at that. Ingership wants to meet you-in person. And then there are these creatures, coming around. It has something to do with you," he says accusingly.