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in its “eyes.”
    Finally, in the late afternoon, bone tired and increasingly desperate, she rounded a bend and found deliverance. Her narrow canyon descended sharply into another, the juncture marked by a stand of bright green cottonwoods. Stopping at the top of a twenty-foot limestone cliff, she spied the Y she sought. One leg continued down to the intersecting canyon. The other wound through the trees and switch-backed up the wall behind them.
    Laughing with relief, she descended the switchbacks alongside the cliff and was just starting across the grassy swale toward the beckoning cottonwoods, when a low voice sounded behind her: “I don’t think you want to go that way, miss.”
    Callie whirled with a cry. On the rock behind and above her crouched a brown-skinned, bearded man with glowing blue eyes.

CHAPTER
    3
    He was not another alien after all, but human, like her. And his eyes didn’t really glow—they were just so blue, they contrasted dramatically with his beard and tanned skin. Dirty brown hair curled over his shirt collar, and he wore a scratched leather vest above filthy jeans and sturdy hiking boots. A sheathed knife as long as his forearm hung at one hip, a holstered gun at the other. He carried a rifle with a rubberized stock and a white ceramic barrel encircled with wire rings.
    Was he another participant? Or one of the distractions that rule three instructed her to avoid?
    “What’s down there?” she asked.
    “Swarm of harries.” His voice was low and pleasant, at odds with his appearance. He dropped lightly to the ground before her. “Believe me,” he added, squinting at the trees, “you don’t want to stir them up.”
    She inspected the cottonwoods doubtfully. He pointed past her, sleeve and forearm layered with dirt. The smell confirmed his need for a bath.
    “There in the tallest tree,” he said. “That blob hanging in the middle.”
    She finally saw it—a pale mass suspended from a stout, bright-leaved branch. Other smaller shapes hung scattered around it. She shaded her eyes. “Harries, you say?”
    “They look like flying manta rays. Paralyze their victims with the venom in their stingers, then suck the blood out of them.”
    Callie shuddered. Suspicion swirled through her. She turned back to him. “I thought the white road was a safe zone—a place where things like that can’t hurt you.”
    “It is.” He eyed her appraisingly. “I figure you left it, oh, on the first or second branching.”
    “Left it? What—”
    “Look back the way you’ve come.” He gestured over his shoulder. “It isn’t white, it’s pink. You’re on a sucker path.”
    She was well aware of the road’s dinginess, but the manual had said nothing about sucker paths. “Who are you, anyway?”
    “Just another ‘participant.’ ” The man’s lips twitched bitterly.
    “So why are you off the road?”
    He shrugged. “After you’re here long enough, you realize there’s no point to it.”
    “But if it’s a safe zone—”
    “It goes nowhere.”
    She regarded him with renewed suspicion. Antagonists within the Arena work to prevent you from attaining your goal . . . avoid all distractions . “So, uh, where do you think I ought to go?” Callie asked.
    “I’m headed for camp now. You can come with me, or go back and try to find where you went off. I wouldn’t advise that, though.”
    “Naturally not.”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “Nothing. You say you have a camp? There are others of you, then?”
    “Yeah, we have a good-sized group.” He glanced past her shoulder. “Look, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get going. I’ve got fresh meat with me.” He pointed up the rock, and Callie saw his backpack leaning where he’d left it. Twice the size of hers, it had a dog-sized lizard tied across its top. Rock dragon, perhaps?
    “They’ll be hunting soon,” he added. “I’d rather not be here when they break.”
    The old pressure-sale method , Callie thought wryly. Pitch your product