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Past the gorge mouth, the storm wall is closer than it was yesterday. Candidates keep looking toward it.

Nobody knows when it will reach us.

A shadow falls over my square, and a man plants himself in front of me, his bowl in one hand.

“Well, look who’s up. If it isn’t the little princess.” Putting his bowl down, he gives me a mock bow. He’s brick-built, with a shaved head, a shovel-like jaw, and shoulders broad enough to make people move around him. “Sleep well, princess? Ass sore? Did your Adjudicator inspect you thoroughly enough, or is he coming back to finish?”

“That’s not...” My voice cracks, and I hate it instantly. “That isn’t true. None of that is...”

The queue laughs, and I stop trying. Moving away from the dispenser with my bread and water, I force my eyes down as my ears burn.

It doesn’t matter that I didn’t ask for his attention. Somehow, I’m still the one who ends up wrong.

Once, when I was eleven, three older boys chased me into an alley with nowhere to run, and Onyx bit one of them to the bone.

Near the edge of camp, I slip a hand into my pack and find the cord, rubbing my thumb over the scratched letters on the washer.

Find your way home. Onyx.

He read them.

This keeps happening. It’s as if he keeps coming after me. First, the desk when the alarm flared. Then here last night. Was he the one who made sure I got a place inside the checkpoint, or am I going completely crazy?

And now the others think I’m some kind of pet.

They should have seen him up close. The visor. The dark strands above it. That broad frame, filling the firelight.

Those lips...

Light, what is happening to me?

The horn blasts through camp, and I jump.

Day two has begun. Three hundred and nineteen candidates remain in contention. Checkpoint Two priority capacity is twelve. The Hunt wishes you speed.

Three hundred and nineteen.

I don’t want to imagine what happened out here while I was asleep.

My stomach turns. People came here desperate enough to die nameless in a forest on a planet everyone talks about as if it’s beautiful. And somewhere beyond the glass, people are watching it happen for entertainment.

I leave camp alone and head northeast toward higher ground. Keeping off the main trail, I push aside branches and wet shrubs as I make my way deeper into the trees.

Twice, the land funnels me back toward the main route. The second time, a stream cuts through the ridge, the banks pinching every path on this flank into one.

Then a hand comes off a trunk and catches my shoulder.

I’m spun before I can duck, my back hitting wet bark, and the man from breakfast fills my view. His breath stinks as he leans close.

His two friends step out of the brush on either bank. One is all elbows and long legs, his eyes flicking between me and the knife. The other already has a blade out, cleaning a thumbnail with it.

“Going somewhere, princess?”

“Let go of me.”

“That’s not the toll.” He rests a forearm across my collarbones. “Two purification tablets. The Adjudicator’s pet can afford them.”

“There was no...” The words snag on the heat in my face, and I shove them out anyway. “Whatever you think happened last night, you’re wrong. I didn’t ask for that inspection. I don’t know why he picked me at the rope. I don’t know why any of it happened. You saw exactly as much as I did.”