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The newscaster calls it voluntary compliance.

Behind her, a steel dome closes over hundreds of people lined between razor-wire fences. Tamurian soldiers guide them toward a row of white transports while a bright blue banner crawls along the bottom of the screen.

MUTATION REMOVAL BEGINS TODAY. REPORT WITHIN THREE HOURS.

Grady drops an empty backpack onto the kitchen table. “We’re leaving.”

I keep my attention on the television. The broadcast changes to a medical theater, where doctors in hazmat suits strap a sedated man to a narrow table. One of them raises a syringe almost as long as his forearm.

“The procedure’s supposed to keep future kids from inheriting it,” I say.

Aryan yanks open the pantry and sweeps protein bars into Grady’s bag. “Then they can volunteer when they’re old enough.”

The needle disappears into the patient’s thigh. His back lifts from the table despite the restraints.

I rub the metal band of my government watch with my thumb. The mutation beneath my skin answers with a faint vibration. “None of us planned on joining the military. We don’t need the abilities.”

Grady stops beside me. “You watched that man try to tear through four straps.”

“They said his body rejected the sedative.”

“They say a lot.”

The patient convulses again, the camera cuts away before the doctors regain control, and I mute the broadcast.

Grady and Aryan exchange the same look they use before running a play on the thrashball field. They inherited fire from their father and the stubbornness from somewhere worse. They’re seventeen years old, built like guards, and convinced every Tamurian order hides a blade.

I’m sixteen, a Metal Mutant, and the reason Mom still keeps emergency numbers taped beside the kitchen comm.

“We report, they remove it, and this ends,” I say.

Aryan slides three flashlights into the backpack. “Get your shoes.”

“I’m wearing shoes.”

“Better ones.”

The television returns to a wide shot of the camp, where a family disappears beneath the dome. The banner calls it a public-health victory.

Mom and Ronan will be home within the hour. They’ll pack identification cards, medical files, and enough food for whatever wait the authorities assigned us. Ronan will thank every soldier he passes. Mom will keep one hand on my shoulder and tell me cooperation protects all of us.

Grady rips the government watch from his wrist and throws it on the table, and Aryan does the same. “Take yours off, Ri.”

I hold my arm against my chest. “The second we leave, they’ll come here.”

“That’s why we’re moving first.” Grady pulls a second pack from the closet and shoves it at me. “Now.”

The clasp resists my fingers. Metal responds to fear faster than thought; the band tightens until it bites my skin. I force my breathing steady, loosen the clasp, and leave the watch beside theirs. The three dark screens look like severed eyes.

Tamurian soldiers already fill our street when we step out, as though they knew Grady and Aryan wouldn’t be the only ones giving them trouble before the deadline.

Two navy-cloaked men hold Mr. Wentz against the pavement near the corner. One pins his wrist beneath a polished boot while the other beats him across the ribs with a wooden baton. Mr. Wentz’s wife claws at the door of a black cargo van as soldiers drag her inside.

“Keep walking,” Grady says.

Mr. Wentz turns his gray head, where blood runs from his mouth onto the curb. His jaw drops in recognition as he locks eyes with me, but I turn my head and keep walking.

A crowd blocks the intersection ahead. Parents pull children toward the camp transports, and other families push the opposite way, carrying bags, blankets, anything they managed to grab before the soldiers arrived. A teenage boy flings both hands forward, and a ribbon of water snaps across a soldier’s face.

Three Tamurian Mutant Masters draw their swords, and the street erupts.

Stone tears through the pavement. Wind folds two boys against the wall of a row house. Metal rods rip free from a fence and coil around a man’s legs. A mother reaches for her son before a soldier catches her around the waist and throws her into the transport.

Grady moves toward them, but Aryan catches his shoulder. “We light up here, we don’t reach the trees.”

Grady’s fists glow beneath the skin, then darken.

I edge closer to them. “Those boys attacked first.”

Aryan stares at the soldiers’ swords. “Funny how their mutations stay legal.”

“They’re trained.”

One of the Masters kicks the water-wielding boy onto his stomach and presses a blade between his shoulder blades. The boy looks fourteen.

Grady turns away before the sword comes down, and we cut through an alley while the crowd swallows the intersection. At the far end, a wooden stile marks the border of the Colonial Park. Beyond it, barren trees crowd the hillside, their branches woven against a white winter sky.

I stop, realizing the camp is less than three miles east. Soldiers will already be at our house, checking the watches and waiting for us to return.

Aryan takes my hand.

“Let go.”

“Once we’re inside.”

“You don’t get to drag me into a forest because you think you’re right.”

His grip loosens, but he keeps hold of me. “You saw the street.”

“I saw people fighting soldiers.”

“You saw what happens to anyone who keeps what they were born with.”

Grady climbs the stile and scans the tree line. “Argue while moving.”

Aryan pulls me over after him.

Frozen leaves crack beneath our shoes. The shouting behind us thins with every yard until the forest absorbs it. Grady sets a hard pace through the bare trees, away from the marked trails and surveillance posts.

My pack knocks against my spine. “Mom and Ronan will report. They’ll tell the soldiers where we went.”

“They don’t know,” Grady says.

“They know you’ve talked about hiding here since October.”

“That was before Tamuria filled the park with patrols.”

I almost stop again. “Patrols?”

Aryan releases my hand. “Keep your voice down.”

A low beat rolls through the trees.

Three strikes, a pause, then three more.

Grady crouches.

I listen until a thin whistle threads between the drums. “It’s probably a ranger signal.”

“No ranger uses that.” Aryan slips his pack to the ground.

Grady moves behind a fallen log and motions us down. “They’re closer than the stories said.”

My knees sink into cold mud. “What stories?”

“The men in black.”

I almost laugh, but Grady’s face stops me.

For years, independent reporters claimed strangers crossed into the Colonial Parks from other worlds. Their fringe broadcasts called them smugglers or feral cults. But the mainstream media knew them for what they were: elaborate hoaxes. One reporter vanished after showing grainy footage of seven-foot men in black hats. Another was found dead beneath a ridge three provinces away. Served them right.

Aryan peers over the log. “Five of them.”

I follow his gaze, where black shapes move between the trees a quarter mile downhill.

They’re men, though none look built to ordinary scale. The shortest stands a head taller than Grady. Black Stetsons shade their faces, and long trench coats brush the dead leaves above combat boots and gray-black fatigues. Swords hang at their hips, each hilt cut from a different stone.

The tallest man walks in front, and a pearl glows at the pommel of his sword.

Grady grips my shoulder and lowers me behind the log as the drumbeat and whistling stop.

Through a gap beneath the fallen trunk, the leader turns his head toward us, and Aryan’s fingers kindle.

“Don’t,” Grady whispers as the pearl-hilted sword clears its sheath.

A pressure passes through my chest. It touches the metal eyelets in my shoes, the zipper on my coat, and the clasp on my pack. Every piece vibrates at once.

When the men spread out, Grady leans close enough that his breath warms my ear. “When I tell you, run uphill.”

“We can still explain.”

His fingers tighten. “Tamuria says they don’t exist.”

The leader raises his sword, and Aryan springs over the log and fires.

An ember streaks between the trees. One of the black-clad men cuts through it with a bronze-hilted blade, and fire bursts harmlessly around his shoulders.

Grady shoves me backward. “Run, Riley.”

He vaults the log before I regain my footing.

Aryan launches a second ember, but smoke pours from another sword and swallows it. The pearl-hilted leader flicks his wrist, and Aryan lifts from the ground with both hands locked around his throat.

Grady sends a flare into the leader’s chest, and the blast tears open the black trench coat. But the man stays upright.

A Water Master steps from the smoke. His blade flashes blue, where a column of water strikes Grady and hammers him into an oak.

Grady’s head snaps against the trunk, and he drops at its roots.

“Grady!”

Aryan’s shoes kick above the ground, but the leader closes his fist, and a crack carries through the forest.

As Aryan falls, the Water Master drives another surge into Grady before he can rise. Bark splinters around his shoulders, and Grady’s body slumps sideways, one arm bent beneath him.

The black-clad men turn toward me, and I run before I can think.

Briars cut my bare legs below my shorts, branches whip my face, and the hillside pitches upward, forcing me to grab trunks and roots while my lungs scrape against the cold.

Behind me, boots strike frozen earth at an easy, measured pace.

The stories were freaking true. Tamuria buried every report, mocked every witness, and stationed soldiers around the same men who killed my brothers.

A bronze flare passes my left shoulder and bursts against a tree, forcing me to dive behind a boulder.

Smoke curls over the top before I can move. It plunges into my nose and mouth, thick enough to chew. My throat closes and I claw at the stone, metal flecks trembling beneath my nails, but the smoke follows me to the ground.

Two pairs of boots stop beside my face.

Rough hands lift me by the ribs, and a black shoulder replaces the forest floor.

I cough until a cloth covers my mouth.

The last thing I see is the bronze-hilted Master watching the hill where Grady’s and Aryan’s bodies lay.

Then the world folds inward.