Another roar tore through the trees.

  It wasn’t a distant animal sound—It was right behind them. Loud enough to feel in your chest, alien enough to make the hair on the back of your neck stand up straight.

  “Back to Alpha Base. NOW!” Marcus yelled, taking charge of the large group of steadily panicking trainees. He moved down the line pushing people on the shoulder as they went by to try and get them to move a little faster.

  Alex caught his eyes as he made it to the back of the line. “What is that?”

  Marcus just shrugged though and grabbed Maddie, who was moving slowly and looking over her shoulder, and pushed her towards the retreating group. Her head snapped forward but Alex saw the wild look in her eyes. And she wasn’t the only one.

  The two classes moved as one body: shoulders hunched and boots slipping on damp leaves as they hustled down the trail in a messy wedge, packs bouncing, weapons out and pointed at the ground.

  The path was wider than the one A Class had come into the forest on, but everyone was too bunched up to make any real speed. Alex growled in frustration as he tried to help Marcus get everyone spread out so they could go a little faster.

  He pulled up his HUD and embiggened the minimap app. It was almost 14 kilometres back to the base camp where they had started this challenge from, although that included the distance back to the other trail they had used… so maybe a little less than 13 kilometres on this path. It had taken them about 2 hours to cover that at a brisk walk on the way in.

  He glanced over his shoulder at the trail behind. He couldn’t see anything and really hoped that whatever was making all that noise had encountered the Sounder of feral pigs and not their trail.

  He turned front again and picked up his pace as the group started, finally, to speed up a little. His ribs were still complaining with each breath and every heavy footfall but he ignored it and kept his eyes scanning the forest around them. The ANIP overlay hovered in the corner of his vision, counting down the distance remaining. He looked over his team's vitals and noticed all the extra dots representing B Class moving down the invisible trail on the minimap. He wondered if there was a way for him to pull up their stats if he ever needed to, or if each team was silo’d and separate. ”

  The overlay flickered.

  Strange. He expanded it to get a better look. He could still see the ground in front of him just fine, only the parts of the HUD he focused his eyes on really solidified in his vision. That action had taken a few days to get used to, but it was as ingrained as ‘swipe down to refresh’ now. Everything else on the HUD was still visible, just mostly transparent.

  As the screen opened in front of his eyes though, he knew there was a problem. The interface was buzzy. There were tracers of static tearing across his vision and the straight lines that boxed in various pieces of information weren’t staying straight—they fuzzed and moved like the reception was getting worse.

  This was the first time he had encountered any sort of glitch with the HUD. He didn’t know what could cause it. It couldn’t be distance. He wasn’t actually sure what the company was doing to boost the signals and connectivity this far away from the village, but the HUD had been fine back at the clearing with the flag, and they were at least a kilometre closer now.

  He watched as menus and the minimap smeared into static, icons doubling and then snapping back. A faint buzzing sound filled his ears briefly, like a cheap speaker that had been pushed too far.

  Apparently Hiro noticed it too. He stopped suddenly and stepped off the path. His head turned, eyes narrow as he scanned the forest behind them.

  Alex caught up to him and was about to ask what he thought was going on when there was another loud roar behind them. Closer. Way too close actually.

  So much for the pigs being the target he thought.

  Almost immediately there was a loud cracking sound, like a rifle being shot. Then a cacophony of noise as a pine tree smashed its way to the ground.

  Hiro and Alex looked at each other, then back at the forest behind them. Marcus had stopped and jogged back to them to watch as well.

  Another roar. Whatever it was, it was close now. They could see small trees swing erratically, as if in an invisible wind and the saplings stubbled across the forest floor in between the larger trees started to sway as something large made its way through them.

  “Shit. We should run. Maybe it will lose interest,” Marcus said.

  They turned and ran. Hiro and Marcus yelled out to the rest of the group to move faster and a chorus of cries carried up the line as they realized they were being chased.

  Something heavy hit the ground behind them as they ran. The thump so deep Alex swore he felt it like a wave of bass coming up through the dirt as he ran.

  Then someone screamed.

  Alex twisted and looked back. There was movement now, between the trunks.

  A bear. The word barely even started to cover the reality of it though.

  It was a bear in the same way that a Stallion was a Shetland Pony.

  Behind them, the creature burst through the last of the underbrush and out onto the game trail, at least a hundred metres back. It paused there to get its bearings, holding its head high in the air and snuffling. It didn’t take long. It turned towards them and let out a roar that was so loud it shook the branches around it and so long that Alex had enough time to feel shock that it didn’t run out of breath.

  He had never seen a bear in person before. There were black bears around where he lived. The males were maybe a hundred and sixty pounds fully grown, although he had never encountered one. Like big teddy bears. There was also a giant stuffed bear inside the Silver Gate Tavern. Huge. At least as big as a grizzly back on Earth.

  The animal that exploded into a run behind them was bigger. Much bigger. Even running on all fours its head was almost on level with Alex’s own. Its fur was a patchwork of grays and browns stitched together like a quilt. The face was broad, boxy and scarred.

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  Its mouth opened and the roar hit again. Hot breath rolling down the trail, carrying the smell of blood and death.

  Some of the trainees started pushing their way forward, trying to go faster than the people in front of them. Others started to falter.

  “TRAINEES - Keep moving - Don’t push and don’t stop!” Marcus screamed over the other panicked voices. “Upper Years - To me!”

  Marcus stopped and spun in the middle of the path. Shield up, sword held loosely at his side. Alex looked over his shoulder at him. He knew deep down that they probably couldn’t outrun a bear that wanted to catch them, but Marcus was fucking crazy.

  Kieran and Laina rushed past Alex and ran down the path to join Marcus and Hiro.

  Damnit.

  Alex stopped. He pulled up his HUD to send a message to his team, but the static was getting worse. He closed it down with a mental jerk and yelled instead. “Jay! We can’t leave them to do this.” He turned around and started back down the path without looking to see if Jay followed.

  The bear saw them waiting across the path and stopped fifty metres back. It roared, close enough now to see the rows of giant teeth, and stomped the ground in an awful display. After posturing for a few breaths, it stood up to its full height and roared at the sky, taking a couple of steps forward. It was at least fifteen feet tall.

  “Should we scream back at it?” Hiro asked calmly.

  Kieran shook his head at the idea. “Think it will work? Anyone fought anything this big yet?”

  “We fought a big bastard a few weeks back. Ogre looking thing with two heads. But I think the bear might be bigger,” Marcus answered. Hiro nodded beside him. Kieran just shook his head as he stared back at the bear.

  Alex thought Laina summed it up best though as she whispered a single word:

  “Fuck.”

  A crossbow snapped behind him and Alex turned to see Ethan standing there, crossbow raised, alongside Jay, Sarah and Brandon. Danny, Rae and Mel stood a little further back and it looked like everyone else had stopped further up the trail with Emily on her way back down in their direction. Alex smiled.

  None of them wanted to leave the upper years alone despite how terrifying this bear was.

  Brandon raised an arm and used one of his spells, although Alex didn’t know what his gear enabled him to do yet and turned around to watch the streak of bright light hiss through the air, hot and intensely white.

  The crossbow bolt hit the bear's flank at an angle and didn’t get much purchase, but stuck. Brandon’s missile spell slammed into the bear's chest in a small burst of white light that Alex thought was going to catch the fur on fire, but quickly fizzled out like a match thrown on a damp cloth. He shook his head, thinking that the same blast would have knocked a human sized creature on its ass.

  The bear ignored the quarrel and roared at the fire blast, dropping to all fours, charging forward in an immediate burst of speed.

  Alex felt his chest go tight. Not fear exactly, but anxiety in general. It felt like a train engine was barreling down the trail and they were tied to the tracks. He had no idea how fast bears could run but this one was chewing up the distance far too quickly.

  His HUD popped open in his vision, glitchy and hard to read—worse than before. He minimized it completely so it wouldn’t distract him but the static remained for a moment, crawling across his vision.

  Jay took a step forward and off to one side, giving himself room to swing that giant axe he carried. He was setting up a second line of defence behind the upper years. His usually happy face was gone. His posture shifted into something calm and heavy, knees bent. He looked down the path at the bear the way a person might look at a collapsing ceiling: inevitable.

  Marcus, Laina and Kieran stood ten metres in front of Jay; a bristling wall of shields and swords. They’d done this before and were facing the charge with shoulders squared. There was no bravado. No swishing of swords or fancy footwork. They simply put themselves between the bear and the trainees. It gave Alex some much needed confidence to see.

  He forced himself to breathe deeply, calmly. He could feel mana in the environment, a pressure like invisible current. It started to appear around him, winking in and out of his sight. He could at least create a wall or something to slow the bear down. He reached out for the mana he needed… but it didn’t come.

  No—worse. It came, but felt like oil and slipped away again before he could grab onto it. It felt like he was trying to scoop up water with bare hands while someone shook the bucket. He could see the mana around him everywhere. It moved towards him like he expected, but he just couldn’t hold onto it or shape it.

  The bear lowered its head, still 30 metres away.

  Marcus raised his weapon and stepped to the side, creating a little more space. He called out something short to Kieran—Alex didn’t catch the words, only saw the way they synced up with matching stances, coordinating without needing a longer plan. Alex wasn’t sure if they could stand up to the animal and desperately reached for the mana around him.

  Then the bear blurred and disappeared.

  Alex thought maybe his HUD was glitching again, which would be terrifying, but he heard a gasp from behind which told him that he wasn’t the only one that couldn’t see the bear. That was much more terrifying. An invisible bear? Where the hell did it go?

  He heard the upper years cry out and watched them shift again. They pointed their weapons out and braced, but Alex couldn’t even hear the bear anymore. If it was just invisible, shouldn’t they be able to hear its feet on the path still?

  For a breath, nothing happened, and then the bear reappeared right on top of the upper years, its front paws in the air, coming down hard on Marcus’s shield. He went down with a yell, pinned between the ground and the bear that was now standing on his shield.

  Not finished, the bear immediately brought a giant paw around, smashing through Kieran and Laina’s defenses with claws like long curved blades. Alex heard the screeching sound of claws tearing into their metal armour and hoped they were ok but he watched as the two upper years flew off the trail like characters in a bad physics video game—arms and legs akimbo.

  Kieran hit the ground hard, but Laina smacked a tree and spun in a corkscrew off to one side. Neither moved.

  ***

  One of the most consistent and dangerous errors made by Earth-origin personnel is the assumption that visual familiarity implies behavioral familiarity when it comes to Earth-3 Flora and Fauna.

  Earth-3 organisms repeatedly converge on body plans, locomotive strategies, and sensory layouts that mirror terrestrial fauna: leporine and other megafauna, cervid analogues, insectile swarms, even near-identical predator–prey habits when found in similar habitats. This is not coincidence, nor is it evidence of shared ancestry. It is convergent evolution under comparable environmental pressures, expressed through entirely different biochemical and energetic substrates.

  There are differences. The problem is not that these creatures look like animals we recognize. The problem is that recognition activates expectation within the personnel themselves.

  When a trainee sees something that resembles a beaver, they unconsciously import an Earth-based model: mass, aggression thresholds, response to pain, territorial behavior, limits on endurance, and predictable reactions to force. Those assumptions are often catastrophically wrong.

  On Earth, megafauna were largely hunted out by the human predator. The creatures that remain now, generally, have an inherent distrust of us.

  On Earth-3 megafauna largely remain intact. Not hunted out by humans, and not afraid of us.

  And while the similarities that evolutionary biology has taken on this new planet, at least in some ways, help us feel like our new surroundings are familiar, this is also a trap as most of the creatures we have looked at have drastic differences to the analogues we know from back on earth.

  Internal Research Memo | Restricted Distribution

  Dr. Elizabeth Vance, Senior Comparative Biologist

  HEX Xenobiology Division

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