"Exactly. Physics."
She shoulders the rifle. She's small, and the gun looks huge in her hands, but she holds it with the same determined focus she applies to everything.
"Deep breath," I instruct. "Let it out halfway. Squeeze, don't pull."
CRACK.
The rifle roars, the sound echoing off the valley walls like thunder. Aris stumbles back a step from the recoil, but she keeps her footing.
"Did I hit it?" she asks, lowering the gun and looking eager.
I raise my binoculars. A chunk of bark has vanished from the stump, dead center.
"You hit the stump," I say, genuinely impressed. "Dead center."
"Really?" She beams, turning to look at me. Her face is flushed, her eyes bright. "I hit it!"
"Beginner's luck," I tease.
"Science," she corrects. "Trajectory, windage, gravity."
"Do it again."
She spends the next hour putting rounds into the stump—steady hands, good focus, a natural. By the time we run low on practice ammo, she's grouping shots inside six inches at a hundred yards.
"Okay," I say, taking the rifle. "Save the rest for the wolves."
"I hope we don't need it," she says, her mood sobering.
"Me too. But better to have it and not need it."
We head back to camp as the sun dips below the tree line. The solar indicator shows green. 80% charge. Enough for the release trigger.
"We move tomorrow?" she asks.
"Tomorrow. We find the herd, we trigger the release, and we get the hell out of here."
"Sounds like a plan."
Dinner is freeze-dried stroganoff, which tastes like salty cardboard, but Aris eats it without complaint. She's stopped picking at her food. She eats like someone who knows she needs the fuel.
The darkness comes down hard and fast. With no generator to run the floodlights, the camp feels smaller, the ring of firelight our only defense against the vast, pressing black of the wilderness.
We sit by the fire for a long time. The "University Pressure" seems to have receded, replaced by the immediate reality of where we are.
"Nash?"
"Yeah?"
"Thank you."
"For the shooting lesson?"
"For talking me off the ledge this morning. About Reynolds." She pokes the fire with a stick. "I was … I was really spiraling."
"You were scared. It's allowed."
"I've spent my whole life trying to be the perfect student," she admits. "The perfect researcher. The one who colors inside the lines. Being out here … with you … it's making me realize that the lines are kind of arbitrary."
