"Release!" I scream, pressing the button.
Click.
I see it. The black collar on Waldo's neck pops open. It falls away, landing in the snow with a soft thud.
"Yes!" I cry. "I got it!"
Waldo doesn't stop. He and the cows thunder past us, hooves kicking up a cloud of powder, and disappear down the chute, escaping the trap.
I dart from the shadows, five strides through the churned powder, and scoop the collar out of the snow. It's heavier than it looks. The last year of Thaddeus's data, and I hug it against my chest as I scramble back beneath the cliff face.
I look back at the center of the bowl. The young bull is screaming. It's a terrible, high-pitched sound that tears through the air. The pack is on him. They aren't killing him quickly. They're hamstringing him, tearing at his hindquarters while he tries to stand.
"Nash," I say, grabbing his arm. "We have to go. We have the collar. We have to go."
"We can't," Nash says.
"What? Why?"
"Look at the chute."
I look toward the exit where Waldo just fled. Standing in the narrow gap, blocking our only way down, are two more wolves.
They aren't part of the kill squad. They're the rear guard. They watched the caribou leave, and they let them go.
Now they're looking at us.
"They split the herd," Nash says, his voice eerily calm. "They took the weak one. And now they've bottled up the competition."
"Competition?"
"Us," Nash says. "They know we're predators too. They know we're here."
The two wolves in the chute start to trot toward us. Behind them, in the bowl, the feeding frenzy continues.
We're trapped in a box canyon with a feeding pack behind us and two sentries cutting off our escape.
"Get behind me," Nash orders. He raises the rifle.
"Nash, there are too many," I whisper. "If you shoot, the whole pack will turn on us."
"I'm not shooting to kill," Nash says. "I'm shooting to change their math."
He aims not at the wolves, but at the rock wall right next to the lead sentry's head.
BOOM.
The sound is deafening in the enclosed space. The rock explodes, showering the wolf with stone shards. He yelps and scrambles back, startled. The second wolf flinches.
In the center of the bowl, the feeding pack lifts their heads. Six pairs of yellow eyes lock onto us. Their muzzles are red.
"Did it work?" I ask, my ears ringing.
"It bought us a minute," Nash says. "They're reassessing. They don't like loud noises."
He grabs my shoulder. "We can't go down the chute. They'll ambush us in the narrow part."
"Then where do we go?" I ask, panic rising again. "We can't fly."
