Pattie’s first task, modifying a dozen or more wrist-lamps, consumed her time while the others packed up the camp gear. D6 decided that the group would travel with the minimum amount of equipment: food, phasers, medical supplies, and critical gear like the neural shielding devices. The rest would be secured and left to be beamed back up to the township at the appropriate time.

To avoid being disturbed, she sat apart from the others, her tools spread out on a table, intent on the task before her. Each fearful thought that bubbled up from her subconscious was pushed aside. There was no question in her mind of the potential dangers they faced, but letting her imagination run away with her would hardly help matters. The longer she worked, the more rote the wrist-lamp modifications became; her mind wandered, worried. She resolved to direct her energies toward a more productive topic.

Since her visit to the Red shell in the health center, Pattie had rarely thought of the map project she’d been working on. She’d brought the projections with her, fully intending to further analyze them in her downtime, though now it appeared downtime would be rare, if not nonexistent. Conjuring up a picture of the three township maps in her mind, she let them twirl around in her head while she worked. What’s there that I’m not seeing? Each tree is a map of the township, from deep in the past to the present. When you’re looking for an answer, focus on their commonalities. Focus on their commonalities, P8.

The perimeter. Quiets lived near the perimeter. The tremor damage and discovery of toxins came in the perimeter. And on the ancient map? She couldn’t recall each pictogram and rendering, but she had a vague memory of a specific directive regarding the township boundaries. What was it?…

She had it: the oldest map indicated a ring of territory that was forbidden to build in. No reason was given—at least nothing specific like, “if you build in this area, you’ll activate a latent disease.” The same territory that now sustained damage. The same territory that had been gradually built up, after hundreds of years of being left alone, in the last twelve seasons.

We violated the edict and we’ve stirred up something. But what and why? Pattie made an adjustment to the last of the wrist-lamps. We’d better figure it out fast.

Amidst the neek-breek, breek-neek amphibian choruses, a distracting rustle came from the bushes off to her left. D6 must have dispatched shells to tear down her workspace. Probably eager for me to finish so we can start moving.

“If you’ll let me pack up my…” her voice trailed off.

Not a single shell appeared within five meters of her table. Clusters of them worked on packing up the last of the storage crates. A few scouts emerged from the woods. She twisted to look behind her; she scanned the area but saw only the glints of moonlight reflecting dully off pools of water, the scrubby ground cover, and the scabby buttress roots rising like monoliths. She had a new, keen awareness of her swishing pulse thrumming in her ears.

The forest became expectantly quiet.

A snapping twig refocused her attention. Something was behind her. She sensed it. Like before. Rising from her workbench, she tentatively stepped forward, forcing her leaden limbs to move. She parted the bushes behind her table. A thwupt-thuwpt of wings rushed up into her face and in startled shock, she staggered back, watching the avians become dark specks spiraling through the low-lying trees.

Inhaling deeply a few times to settle herself, Pattie leaned back into her seat-hammock. She closed her eyes…. Lack of sleep must be catching up with you, she thought, suddenly feeling warm, drowsy….

A soft, cool pressure curled around her neck—-and pinched!

She flew out of her chair, screeching, clutching at her neck, spinning around, searching. “Where are you? What are you? Show yourself!”

Across the now nearly deserted camp, shells looked up from their work.

“I know you’re here!” she cried, continuing to whirl around, trying to peel away, pry away, that thing, the cold fingers—

“Pattie.” Tarak’s soft voice steadied her.

Turning toward him, she stopped spinning; dizziness convulsed her vision.

His hands touched her face; Pattie instantly felt the stability of his mind melding with hers. The surroundings blurred, her body slackened, and her mind cleared as he probed her consciousness. From Tarak’s gentle questioning she instantly knew that whatever she’d experienced had been hers and hers alone, for she felt no recognition from him when she attempted to recall the memory. None of the others had seen or felt it. And for a brief moment she wondered if she was going mad, like quiets were often thought to do. That her defective brain had played games with her, tormenting her with imaginary sensations. Anxiously, she reassured Tarak that she wasn’t hallucinating, pleading with him to believe her. And he accepted her thoughts as truth.

Gradually, he broke away from the meld, continuing to gaze deeply into Pattie’s eyes. “Be careful,” he admonished her. “I do not understand what you see.”

Pattie nodded.

A gentle, balmy breath of breeze gushed through the trees. A clatter in the sky warned of a storm. Within seconds, the clouds opened, sending a warm torrent of rain.

Blinking droplets out of their eyes, Tarak and Pattie rushed to gather the adjusted wrist-lamps into a carrypack to give to D6. The team leader immediately distributed them to the security services officers, who took point at the front of the group. Following the spindly line of Nasat, Tarak and Pattie walked hand-in-hand into the dark, blustering forest.

*  *  *

For a time, Pattie believed she could see ghoulish white-purple shimmers as the wrist-lamps unmasked them. She trudged dutifully behind the others, wondering what horrible place this path led to. Soon, the veil of rain shrouded her view entirely; her world became mud splashing on her limbs, slippery black-green tendrils slapping as she pushed ahead. She kept her eyes down, watching for erupting roots or slippery rock. Tarak walked ahead of her, pushing the low-hanging foliage out of their way. The rain crashed and shooshed, pounding them mercilessly. Lightning crackled, answered by percussive thunder.

Without warning, a Red pushed past, clicking frantically. Pattie couldn’t understand what he was saying and stopped to call after him when another shell shoved her aside, hurriedly chasing after the first. Looking up, she saw crisscrossing lavender light streams shooting off in random directions. Muffled Nasat cries pierced the rushing water. Her own wrist-lamp offered short-range illumination, not nearly enough to discern what was happening ahead.

“Sloth!” a Brown hissed as he scrambled past.

She saw vague outlines of shells dropping, presumably into defensive curls, on the pathway ahead; light beams flashed through the trees as the others scattered into the wood.

A guttural howl pierced the air.

Run.

Though her first instinct was for self-preservation, Pattie looked over at Tarak. He had drawn his phaser, but was watching and waiting to see her choice before he moved.

For Pattie, there was no decision to make. She would not abandon a friend.

Indicating the opposite direction from the rest of the group, she shouted over the pounding rain, “This way!”

Without looking back, they picked their way through, over and under every barrier in their path, feet splashing through puddles, limbs scraping on sharp twigs. Y29 Brown chased after, quickly catching up to Tarak and Pattie.

Another howl sounded closer than the first; Pattie felt she had no choice but to pick up the pace. A thorn hedge lacerated her abdomen. Flinching from the pain, she pushed on, with Tarak and Y29 following her lead.

She rounded the corner of a gargantuan bolder when a screech—a Nasat screech—chilled her.

“Pattie!” came Tarak’s call. “Y29 has fallen!”

Breathing hard, she hurriedly retraced her steps, dropping on all eight limbs to scoot under a fallen log. When she found Tarak, he was pushing a sapling palm tree down toward a shadowed bog. And she saw Y29. Sinking fast.

Quicksand.

“Stay still!” she shouted, her words nearly drowned out by the rain. Cupping her pincers around her mouth, she continued, “If you move, you’ll sink faster. Try to pretend you’re floating!”

The ground where she stood thudded beneath her. She smelled the sour, malodorous stench of wet mammal hair. A howl came from around the bend.

Tarak shoved the sapling trunk as close to Y29 as was feasible. Severing the sapling with his phaser wouldn’t work because he needed the springy flexibility of the green wood to give the Brown buoyancy once he grabbed hold. Old wood might snap, sending Y29 deeper into the slippery sand.

“I’m going after him!” Pattie jumped onto the limb, crawling carefully along the trunk, trying to avoid slipping into the quicksand herself. Tarak threw all his weight onto the sapling, using his considerable strength to keep it as still as possible. Moving quickly, yet safely, proved difficult, but she could see Y29 thrashing his limbs, propelling himself deeper into the pit. She reached the end of the sapling.

About one body length short.

She gulped. Not much of a choice. Gripping the bouncing sapling with six of her limbs, she allowed herself to tip over so she was shell down to the pit.

“Grab my limbs!” She reached toward Y29.

“Can’t—breathe—can’t—”

“Brown! Do it!”

Y29 gave up thrashing and stretched for Pattie’s limb.

She saw him straining to touch her, so she kept shouting encouragement.

A thunderous bellow sounded. Pattie glanced over and saw a pair of glowing green eyes through the grasses.

Extending herself as far as she could, Pattie thrust her arm as far as it would extend. Y29 wavered, bob-bled. With one last straining effort, she reached when he reached. Their pincers touched. She grabbed his hand with her own.

“Hold on, Brown!”

Two limbs holding Y29 and six gripping the sapling trunk, she scooted her way back toward solid ground, knowing that the sloth ambled closer by the second. As Y29’s fear subsided, he allowed himself to “float” in the quicksand. Dragging him along became easier as the viscous sand lost its grip on him. With one groaning heave, she shoved him toward the bank. Tarak grabbed the Brown by his hands, lifting him to safety. Pattie scurried down the branch in time to see the sloth rising on two legs, mere meters away.

He swiped his claw-encrusted paws, baring his fangs with a snarl.

Pattie met the creature’s eyes. Without looking away, she said, “Tarak. Take Y29. Move along the bank. I need you as close as you can safely be to the quicksand. I might need you to catch me.”

Dragging the Brown beside him, Tarak ducked into the tall reeds. She heard the rustling as he moved in deep enough to be hidden from view, but close enough that he could see her.

The sloth stepped toward Pattie; Pattie stepped backward onto the bent sapling, testing the bounce with each step. A few more steps and she would be out over the quicksand. While she believed she could jump to shore, she didn’t want to test her luck. Hoping the beast would take the bait, she made a quick, jerking fake to the side, knowing that from the beast’s perspective she would appear to be running away.

A paw swiped at the sapling. Pattie dove into the reeds. The sloth lost his footing, sliding through the slippery mud into the quicksand.

Without looking back, Tarak, Y29, and Pattie ran, paying no heed to direction or rain, seeking the first sanctuary they could find.

*  *  *

How far they’d traveled when they arrived at the stone mound, Pattie couldn’t tell. It wasn’t until they had been moving for at least half an hour that Pattie realized that, in her rescue of Y29, she’d lost both her Nasat-issued personal communications device and her Starfleet combadge. The storm hadn’t let up in hours. Neither she nor Tarak wanted to check while they traveled and thus risk accidentally losing or damaging a precious tricorder under such poor conditions. Rivulets of water carving through the soil had created unexpected crevasses in the weakened crust, making each step more dangerous than ever.

Tarak had seen the formation first, at the edge of a clearing. In their exhausted state, they had decided finding a safe place to wait out the storm took precedence over locating the other team members. Flash floods weren’t uncommon; as they had discovered earlier, rumors of predators hadn’t been exaggerated.

Dragging themselves wearily inside, they found a dry, sandy interior that smelled musty, as if the cave had been abandoned for a long time. As tired as she was, Pattie had no desire to fall asleep, only to awaken with a meaner, hungrier neighbor than the sloth. Tarak removed his tricorder from the carrypack and took a reading. The cave was vacant. That was the only news she needed to determine if she wanted to stay. Pattie pushed aside her impulse to drop at the first opportunity when Tarak urged them to go deeper inside, assuring that their presence would go unnoticed to the outside world. They trudged another twenty meters before deciding to stop. Neither Y29 nor Pattie had the energy to chew on a ration bar. Throwing down her carrypack, shutting down her wrist-lamp, and dropping to the ground, Pattie curled up to sleep.