This was it. Sami was going in. It was midnight, and most of Bonde Wakulima was asleep.
Sami had spent hours choosing her outfit. Now she stomped across no-man's-land in mottled green combat boots, which clashed horribly with her light blue leggings. To that, she had added form-fitting shorts with an impractically short skirt over them. She had forgone her tube top, which was too cold for this late in the year and wouldn't keep away the mosquitoes. Instead, she had gone with a black jacket with metal spikes on the shoulders. Not even her hairdo had survived the makeover. She had re-dyed her hair purple and scrambled it with drops of syrup. She looked horrible, but hopefully she also looked like a good candidate for the Mauves.
According to her cover story, Bonde Wakulima's security was light today because Sami had sabotaged the schedule. In reality, the guards were doubled, but hidden, waiting in ambush in case Sami's news convinced the Mauves to attack again. Either way, Sami would use the projector attached to one of her molars to call home and tell everything she could find out. That device hadn't been cheap, but she would make it worthwhile.
As she approached the looming jungle, she put on the false identity that she would wear for her stay with the Mauves. She remembered how she had felt as an adolescent. She conjured the storm of confusion, change and disapproval that had been her life for three years. That's it. I'm alone in the world. I hate that town. I hate my life. I hate my parents.
At that last thought, she twitched a little. Hating her living father was one thing, but hating the dead was another.
She entered the jungle, wobbling as she took her first few steps onto the messy ground. The first thing to strike her was the dark. This time of year, no light made it to the ground. Occasionally, the sun reached a tree trunk, and orange sunshine reflected off green moss to cast a lame glow over her path. Sami pulled her night-vision goggles down over her eyes.
Sami had expected the Mauves to materialize out of the greenery and take her in. Instead, she marched into enemy territory for what felt like ten minutes, and nothing happened. With a grunt, she began to make a lap around the town, keeping track of no-man's-land so she wouldn't wander off into the wilds.
Boredom quickly overcame her fear, and she cupped her hands and called out, "Hello! Mauves, are you out here?"
The next moment, she remembered that there were roving thieves in this forest. Sami, you idiot! She drew her pistol, and a few tense minutes passed. Incredibly, no one attacked her.
For an hour, she picked across the logs, moss and ditches, periodically shaking her head to get her hair out of her eyes. She stepped into a clearing, and her foot sank through the ground. From her ankle down, her flesh went cold. Panic jolted through her, and she flayed the air with a scream. She jumped back, panting, adrenalin tingling around her joints, and saw that she had only stepped in a pond. Its moss-covered surface still rippled where her foot had disturbed it. She pressed her fist to her forehead, exhaling her fear.
To the northeast of town, things were a little clearer. Crooked sheets of rock reached out from the mass of vines and moss, and brooks ran wherever there was a slope, cradled by stands of leaning trees. Ahead, the ground became even sparser, with trees spaced as widely as four meters apart. She came upon a rock shelf and looked down at a shallow, fan-shaped basin, where dozens of little tufts of smoke rose from the canopy, barely visible against the black and orange sky. "This is it," she said. Bracing her legs, she slid down the slope and onto a sandy expanse, where low, split trees grew disks of leaves that made a canopy only a meter above her head. A flash of color caught her eye, and she saw a long, twisted, pink-haired figure perched on a branch. In its hands, the muzzle of a rifle stared straight at Sami.
