Shesh didn’t know how big the Red Zone really was, but he imagined five small shapes darting through an unending dark forest. His little gang; all he held most dear in life, and then, the horrors that were in hot pursuit.

The hunters and the hunted.

Pratik, Azizul, Basir, Sana, and Shesh shot through the fat fronds of meter-tall ferns. They punched through vines and ricocheted off of Neem trees and Banyans, in the moonlight. Barely keeping together, they sprinted past rotting fences and haphazardly jumped over razor wire. Shesh’s ears rushed with blood and the sound of the five runners powering through the brush. He registered cuts and scratches, but felt no pain.

Their bare feet pounded through the desolate ivy-covered ruin of what looked like a factory, as the Dogs made chase. The children had passed a number of buildings. Some were like the one where they had been discovered; corporate marketing, call centers, or electronics manufacturing.

Some of the crumbling edifices were like this one. This place must have been a huge industrial or military factory.

Shesh slowed a little to look back into the darkness behind them. The forest obscured much, but he could still hear the pursuers.

The Rust Dogs’ servos whirred. Their carbon fiber and plastic limbs skittered in uneven time behind the gang, through the darkened rubble. Few had seen the Dogs up close. No one seemed able to describe them accurately. Shesh knew the basic chassis of the robots was based on military units old armies from the west had designed. The machines were quadrupedal, heavy, and very fast. Shesh had no interest in learning anything more about their monstrous pursuers.

The boy could see the mechanical hunters move decisively over the crumbled concrete and folded steel. They waded through the exposed abandoned, and bombed-out manufacturing machines. The four-legged drones crashed through the trees and bushes. Their scanners flickered in the warm night air with light spectrums far too alien for humble human vision.

Shesh turned to follow his friends…and they were gone.

His pulse thudded with terror. He knew the Dogs had many tricks and techniques for capturing prisoners. They were not supposed to kill, but they did shoot marker barbs. The barbs were a volley of sharp needles with tracking devices on the ends. Shesh had seen people with those buried in their flesh. He also knew those that were marked would sometimes disappear. Gone in the night, stolen from the slums of Sun City.

He darted past a thicket of high growing ferns and jumped behind a massive hollow industrial chem tank. He slammed his back against it and listened for the sounds of the others. His small chest burned and heaved, trying to find the air to replace the fear now filling his lungs.

He couldn’t help but think of Pratik’s contribution to the game. How the victims of the Rust Dogs would be dissolved to make a protein paste to feed the privileged Arcology bastards.

In truth, he’d heard all sorts of insane rumors about what the DevaGuardian Security Company did to their captives. The stories swirled through the handmade houses in Sun City like the scent of Plentils and shrimp-shell curry.

He’d heard whispers of bodily dissolution to make up the stem-cell slurry used in the cloning printers. He even heard that the Rust Dog artificial intelligences were actually repurposed prisoners.

The most likely punishment was indentured slave labor. There were work farms and mines where they would send criminals and their whole family to work off their debt to society. Shesh tried not to imagine living the rest of his life in the confines of an undersea mining operation.

A flash of movement caught his eye, and Shesh spotted Pratik charging through the brush at an angle away from him. He hissed as loud as he could, trying to get the boy’s attention. The rat faced boy glanced in Shesh’s direction, right as he was hit by a lumbering form in the darkness.

Pratik’s scream cut through the buzz of insects over Shesh’s head and then, suddenly stopped. From behind cover, Shesh dropped to his haunches and covered his own scream with his hands. Tears welled in his eyes. He dared to peek around the yellow and black industrial chemical tank. His thick black hair picked up glints of moonlight and his almond eyes were wide with shock and fear. His pupils consumed his irises, trying to pick up any hint of movement in the dark ruins of the building behind him. He couldn’t see where Pratik fell.

Shesh began to move from his hiding spot, toward Pratik, when another scream made him jump. He clenched his dirty hand over quivering lips to keep his cries from giving away his position. Shesh prayed to his grandmother’s colorful gods, though he didn’t know most of their names.

That scream. Was it Azizul the Map? Basir, with his big ears? No. No. No!

Shesh allowed himself another brief look back to make sure there were no Dogs nearby and took flight, again. Away from where Pratik was hit.

His spindly legs scrambled along the cracked surfaces of concrete risers. He wove through the steel skeletons of the decaying buildings, breath tore from him in ragged gasps.

“Shesh!” Azizul yelled. He ran up beside Shesh and the two of them hunkered down beside the remains of a large assembly robot. The stenciled logo on its sprawling counterweight read: ChiraliTech R&D.

“Where’s Sana? Basir?” Shesh gasped, between heavy breaths.

“Basir…fell,” said Azizul, shaking, “Those fuckers killed him. Killed him, Shesh!”

“But they aren’t supposed to–” Shesh began.

“I saw them kill him,” the Map said. He began weeping.

“They killed Pratik. Oh god, they’re dead,” Shesh said. His own tears streamed hot on his face, "We have to find Sana. Something has changed in their protocol– It must be this place!” He looked again at the logo, but had never heard of such a company.

At that moment, Sana ran by at full speed. Her dark hair was plastered to her face with tears and sweat. Her yellow shirt with mounting unicorns was torn and stained with blood. It looked black, in the moonlight. She held the grenade in front of her like a boiled elephant yam that was burning her hands. She was wildly tugging at the pin and cursing.

“Sana!” the boys screamed, as they ran after her.

The three remaining children pelted along a steel walkway that had become exposed during a storm or battle. Below them, rows of assembling machines sat rusting in thick mud and river plants.

There was light combing the forested ruins behind them. The Rust Dogs had lost the scent.

After they crossed the catwalk, the three squatted in a thick copse of bushes.

“Let me see that,” Azizul said.

Sana handed him the grenade, her chest wracked with sobs, after they told her about Pratik and Basir. Her tears seemed to only squeeze from her one good eye.

“The pin is to keep it safe,” Azizul the Map said, his voice muffled by another cartoon mouse LED in his mouth. His patterned fingers ran over the crescent moon shaped safety lever. “It looks like you have to squeeze the lever into the body, pull the pin hard, and then throw.”

“Uh…uhh…oh,” Sana stuttered, between sobs. “Thanks,” she said, as Azizul handed back the hexagon engraved device.

Shesh hushed them. Overhead, there was a high-pitched buzzing sound. An air drone was helping in the search for them. The sound of its tiny propellers tearing the air faded and was gone.

“We have to get out–” Shesh began.

They were suddenly bathed in white light. In five languages, a mechanical voice shouted, “Halt!”

“Run!” screamed Sana. She yanked on the pin curled in her index finger and the silver slice of moon popped off the grenade and twirled into the air in what seemed like slow motion.

Azizul sprang into action. He grabbed Shesh’s arm and dragged him to his feet.

“Eat it, you murdering son of a whore!” bellowed Sana, and she threw the chaff-bang into the heart of the bright light. “Run, Sana!” shouted Shesh. The boys bounded over a tangle of banyan tree roots. Shesh tripped as he looked back and fell flat on his face. Azizul slowed to see what happened.

Sana turned her hack to the piercing lights and dashed several steps behind the others, before the chaff-grenade went off. Her throw had found its mark. The combination frag and chaff grenade exploded under the belly of the great metal and plastic monstrosity. The Dog seemed to evaporate into darkness, as the bright white lights mounted on its chassis imploded from the blast.

Sana staggered a few more steps in the afterglow of the drone’s demise. Shesh scrambled to his feet in time to see Sana drop to her knees. All around her tiny form, billions of silvery filaments of chaff glittered as they slowly fell in the moonlight. Her good eye and even her dead eye looked pained for a moment. Then her whole body relaxed. As she slumped forward, Shesh and The Map could see shrapnel from the exploded Dog, buried in her back.

Azizul grunted a sob, then sprinted into the trees. The light and dark geography on his back faded into the dim light of the jungle. Shesh barely noticed.

“Sana!” Shesh sobbed, collapsing at the foot of the banyan tree. He cried for a moment in the moon shadow it cast. Then, he heard the whine of the air drone’s blades, returning to the scene. He knew the chaff wouldn’t last long. Looking back at the smoking remains of the dog that killed Sana, he saw her tiny yellow shoulders, still in the darkness.

Shesh ran.