school, but only one makes it onto the back lawn in time. Everybody comes outside; they can hear her screaming, ‘Please, help me, help me!’ but as soon as she hits the clearing—bam. She drops to the ground, writhing in pain. Instructors try to help, but they can’t figure out what’s going wrong. Nothing’s touching her, but she’s being tortured in her mind. The pain gets so intense, her eyes roll back, and just before the color drains from her face, she says it: ‘The light. It’s in his brain.’ And she’s gone. Not a single, physical sign on her body that she’s been hurt, but she’s dead on the ground in front of them.
“After that, there was a ten-year ban, no going out into the forest. It’s been so long now, nobody even believes it anymore. But the instructors, the ones who’ve been here the longest, they swear some nights they can still see a tiny light, blinking deep in the forest.”
It was silent for a moment. The story was impossible. Peter had gotten even basic facts of the school wrong, but it still gave Evan a creeping feeling about being in the woods this late, about all the strange patterns of the school that weren’t explained. Eventually, Neesha couldn’t hold her tongue anymore.
“Yes, okay, spooky, but you’re basically just butchering failed science experiments to make a story. The technique you’re referencing, using light to control neural activity? It’s called optogenetics, and it’s never even worked. We tried in Pharma.”
Peter sighed. “You had to fucking kill it.”
“So, the guy is fifteen feet tall?” Aiden asked.
“Yeah, he’s an alien.”
“Oh, yeah, you didn’t make that very clear.”
Evan froze. The rest of the group stopped behind him. At the farthest reach of his flashlight, the trees stopped.
“I think it’s the timber line,” Neesha suggested. “The end of the forest.”
They started again, slowly, reaching the edge of the forest and emerging into a clearing, nothing but black rock in every direction, as far as they could see.
“Are we past the front gate yet?” Aiden asked.
“I think the gate is that way.” Neesha pointed. “So it must be farther.”
“No,” Peter argued. “We’ve gone at least two miles. We should be way past it.”
They stood in silence. With no trees left to block it, the wind whipped their faces and necks. Neesha took another step into the clearing. “I guess we keep going—ahh!”
Her scream rippled across the mountain. When Evan’s flashlight found her, she was terrified, pointing off in the distance. Fifteen feet in the air, a tiny red light was blinking.
Neesha.
THEY STARED AT the light, but it didn’t get any closer, hovering perfectly still.
“I made that up,” Peter said quickly. “It was the best I could remember the story, but I made most of that shit up, including the part about the light.”
She scanned the area. “Look.” She pointed. Fifty feet along a horizontal line, another red light blinked. She checked in the other direction—another light. “It’s a fence,” she said.
She crept forward. The beam of her flashlight landed on stone pillars and chain-link fence in between. She traced the fence upward; it didn’t stop for twenty feet, nearly disappearing into the sky. At the top, there were rows of spikes, angled in both directions to prevent anyone from climbing in, or climbing out. Every twenty feet or so, there were stone pillars, resolute against the mountain, anchoring the fence.
“What the fuck?” Peter whispered. “Who would put a fence out here?”
“They would.” Evan’s flashlight landed on one of the stone pillars. Etched into its stone, covered in debris and surrounded by thick-growing vines, was the Redemption crest, its book of knowledge at the top, shining light into the heavens.
Step by step, they approached it. “We should climb it,” Neesha suggested. When she was a kid, the park near their home was one of the only places her parents would let her go without supervision. She used to spend entire afternoons racing against friends to the tops of the trees and fences.
“No way.” Zaza waved his flashlight at the top. “They’ve got spikes.”
“I’ll climb around them.” She reached for the fence. “I used to do it all the time at this park back home—”
“Hold on.” Zaza stopped her hand. “Why are you even trying to get over it? Then you’re on the other side?”
“To prove it’s possible!” Neesha answered.
“I’m sure it’s possible, but it doesn’t get us any closer to finding her.”
“I don’t think you understand science—”
“I don’t think you understand probability.”
She noticed Evan pulling