ONE
“Choose your entrance to the maze,”the computerized voice commanded. Its cold, clinical tone somehow cut above everything else.
I glanced between the two entryways and the murky passageways stretching beyond them.This was a maze?
“Whichever party you reach first will be saved,” the voice continued. “The other will perish.”
My gaze lifted toward the ceiling, as if hoping to find a face behind the voice, someone I could stare at in disbelief.
It was asking me to choose between saving the lives of possibly a dozen men and women, and a single child?
I wet my lips, a knot tightening in my stomach as I weighed my options. This wasn’t about what I wanted. It was about calculating which choice would earn Fairwell’s approval—and right now, that was the only thing that mattered.
I approached the left doorway.
Blue lights flickered to life along the floor as I entered the passageway. I’d barely taken five steps whena sharp, metallic clang split the air. I spun around just in time to see a heavy door slam down behind me, sealing me inside.
A heartbeat later, every light blinked out.
TWO
Three hundred years ago,our ancestors did something unthinkable: they left North America behind and vanished into the southern jungles. The world thought they were fools—conspiracy nuts, panic-driven cowards. Even their loved ones mocked them.
But they saw disaster coming. They trusted the itch in their bones, the warnings etched across the world, and ran as far from humanity as they could.
It saved them.
War soon set the earth on fire, incinerating everything mankind had accomplished. The cities our forefathers fled were flattened to graveyards. A toxic haze followed on the flames’ heels, enveloping everything in its path.
Nobody was prepared, and everyone died—except for our forefathers… and whoever else had dared to prepare for the worst.
“Hellooo! Yousleeping,Tani?”
I flinched at the sound of my sister’sdisgruntled voice drifting up from a few branches below. I’d left her on the lower platform while I climbed to the lookout—the highest perch in our tree house colony—to examine the darkening sky. My mother had sent me up here to estimate how much time we had before the rain clouds rolled in. We had a celebration planned for tonight, and nobody wanted it drowned out by another storm.
I had a habit of getting distracted when I came up here. The view was breathtaking, for one thing. “I’m coming, Bea,” I called down.
The truth was… I didn’t know who else was out there. The only humans I’d encountered outside of our five-hundred-strong community belonged to neighboring jungle colonies to the north.
Sometimes, though, I looked to the far horizon, that hazy, blood-orange strip hovering above the ocean of treetops, and wondered who else had survived. How had they endured? What were their ancestors’ stories? And how did they live now?
But then another, wiser part of me whispered that perhaps it was better not to know. Rumors had long drifted in from colonies near the jungle’s edge, tales of militant nomads sweeping through desperate settlements already teetering on extinction. They stripped each community bare, stealing everything of value and leaving behind only ruin and hunger before moving onward.
Stories like these made me grateful we lived so remotely, so cut off from anyone who could harm us. My grandmother used to say that every ending was necessary for a new beginning. She believed humans had become such pests to the earth that the world had no choice but to renew itself, to give those who remained another chance. Yet it seemed that, even now, some humans hadn’t learned their lesson. The nomads paid no heedto history. They still made war and preyed on their fellow human beings, just as the humans of the past had done.
At least in the jungle, it was just us, the plants, and the animals, and because we respected nature, nature fed and sheltered us.
“Come ooon!” Bea’s voice rang out again.
“I’ll be just another minute!” I called back, then refocused on the task at hand.
We didn’t have high-tech gadgets to predict the weather—those belonged to another era. But a lifetime spent in the wild had honed our instincts into something our ancestors could only envy. I’d had plenty of chances to fine-tune my storm sense, especially this year. It was only March, and we’d already been battered by more storms than usual.
Judging by the breadth of this evening’s cloud formations and its dark, monsoon-blue color, this storm was going to be another dangerous one. I just hoped it wouldn’t be as violent as the one that had hit two weeks ago. The water was welcome but the wreckage was not. The wind from the last storm had caused severe damage to several roofs, the debris of which had injured four people and almost crushed an entire family while they slept. It took days and dozens of man-hours to patch them up.
I wanted to reassure my mother that we'd probably miss the worst of the storm, but judging by the darkening horizon, it would be a lie. Doubt crept in about the wisdom of continuing with tonight’s celebrations, yet with the storm still lingering just out of reach, the organizers likely wouldn’t cancel. All we could do was make certain everyone reached the community hall safely, secured its windows and doors before the winds hit—and then brace ourselves, hoping for the best.
I glanced at the family of squirrel monkeys perchedrestlessly on branches of the neighboring tree. They seemed uneasy, shifting nervously, but hadn't yet retreated to shelter. Parrots were still streaking across the sky, their vivid colors catching the fading sunlight. Typically, the jungle would fall eerily quiet an hour or so before a storm arrived. Judging by the animals’ behavior and my own instincts, we probably had two hours—three at most—before it reached us.
