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greenish light radiated from under its robe. It stopped when it saw him, raised its arm, and pulled back its hood. He gasped when he saw who it was. Darkness swam into his peripheral vision. The last thing he saw before he blacked out was the shock of recognition on Lara’s face.

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    A DAMP CLOTH PRESSED AGAINST Daren’s head. He stirred and opened his eyes into tiny slits. The dull ache in his skull returned as he slowly regained consciousness.
    “Thank the Unseen One you’re awake.” The voice was soft…reassuring. “You got a nasty bump on your head.”
    He looked up to see Lara gazing down. She was so close to him, and in the dim lamplight, something about the shape of her lips and the endless green of her eyes made his heart go faster.
    “Where am I?” His voice sounded weak, and he didn’t want to sound weak in front of her.
    “My home away from home,” she replied.
    Daren slowly sat up to get his bearings. The first thing he noticed was how soft the bed felt. He pressed his hands down on the mattress. He’d never felt anything like it before. He looked around to check his surroundings. The room was small and seemed to have solid metal walls. Beside the bed was a desk with a lamp on top.
    He turned to Lara, who sat on a chair beside him. He was so overjoyed to see her alive and all her limbs intact. He wanted to tell her that he missed her and that he was worried about her. There were so many emotions roiling inside him, and it surprised him when anger was the first to burst through the surface.
    “Where in the hell have you been this past week?” he shouted. “I’ve been going nuts wondering where you were!”
    “Wow.” Lara raised her eyebrows. “I didn’t know you cared so much.”
    “Every damn day for an entire week you didn’t show up to hunt,” Daren kept on. “Raiders killed three hunters from my village, you know. I thought they got you.”
    She smiled and ruffled his hair in an annoyingly condescending manner. “I never realized how cute you look when you show concern about my welfare.”
    “Knock it off!” Daren swatted away her hand. “I’m being serious here. And what’s with you going around like some ghost? You get your kicks scaring the crap out of people?”
    The smile dropped from Lara’s face, and he immediately regretted his harsh tone. She looked down at her lap, placed her hands on her knees, and squeezed them.
    “I don’t do it for fun if that’s what you’re thinking,” she said. “I need the robe when I go on a supply run to my village. It scares off any potential attackers.”
    “Supply run?” Daren remembered the can of beans he found at the edge of the woods. “You’re delivering food? Are you saying you have a stash somewhere? Of course you have. Why else would you stop hunting?”
    He noticed Lara hesitate. She was deciding whether or not to tell him anything. It pained him to think that after all the times they’ve spent hunting together, there was still a part of her that couldn’t trust him.
    “I know you have a lot of questions for me,” she said. “And I really do want to answer them. It’s just that I don’t want to open a door I can’t close. Do you know what I mean?”
    “Not really.”
    “What I’ve found out in the past few days has blown my mind.” She looked up at him. “And I think that knowledge could be dangerous. It’s just that it’s better if fewer people know about it for now.”
    He creased his forehead. “You’re not making any sense, Lara.”
    “No, I guess not,” she said. “You probably have to see it for yourself to realize the magnitude of the whole thing.”
    Daren wondered if she had gone completely nuts since he last saw her. Maybe she had nibbled on a weird root and it toasted her brain.What was with the Angel of Death disguise, and why was she staying in this strange, metallic dwelling? What was she trying to keep hidden? At the very least, he had to know about the can he