Erica stood there in front of the unconscious man. He almost looked like he was sleeping soundly. Though she knew he could be on death’s door as she thought of this. She felt bad for treating him so harshly, and she was somewhat worried about him. But she just couldn’t trust him. Not yet, and most certainly like the others could. She sat down right next to him and she stared at him for a moment, he looked peaceful. His face was rugged and warn, he looked a bit older than twenty-three. But to be fair, if he had been living in this world since he was eleven and was alone. He would’ve had to grow up quickly to survive this world, especially this world. She sat back on her hands as she thought about what he had told them and thought it through.

“Geez, how did you keep It together for all this time?” She said, she knew he wasn’t all that good mentally too. He did ask if they were real and was talking to animals as though they were people. But if he had been alone for twelve years since he was a kid, how was he so stable? Stared at his face while he lay there. He looked very peaceful, which Erica was kind of envious of. How could he look so peaceful in his sleep when he lived in such a hopeless world? An absolutely hopeless world.

Her mind slowly began to wander from his words and how bad his life was to how much she changed when she was younger. She remembered she was so hopeful. She had so much hope in saving this world as a child. She remembered how she disappointed her parents by not wanting to follow in their footsteps to go into the Federation but instead the “CPU-heads and Cyber-hippies” and laughed about it with her friend. But she had hope then in saving this world, and saving humanity along the way. But she was no longer that person. She no longer had hope for humanity or this world. She looked back at Andrew, she sighed to herself as she stared at his warn Federation armor and weapons he carried. Maybe he wasn’t as peaceful as she thought he was if he had to wear the armor constantly. Maybe he was terrified of what this place was just as much as she was. She would try harder to give him the chance to earn her trust. But she still couldn’t trust him.

She noticed how quiet the area had gotten, the birds had stopped chirping and the insects had become quiet. She stood up and grabbed her rifle off her back. She kept the stock of the rifle close to her shoulder, she wasn’t sure if it was a weather change or something else. But she knew it could mean there was a predator nearby. She quickly checked to see if there was a bullet inside. And there was. She looked around, surveying her surroundings. She couldn’t see much through the chest-high grass around the clearing they were in. She held the rifle to her shoulder and looked down the sights of it. She noticed compys scurrying out of the long grass to her left. They weren’t looking for food, they were running away from something. She turned to her left, aiming her rifle in that direction and controlling her breathing as she did. At first, she didn’t see anything. But as she looked more closely into the field of grass. She noticed an arc of black that was poking out of the grass. She aimed and fired. The animal moaned with death as she heard a thud. She killed it, and the animal sounded like a big cat. She wanted to go check to see what it was, but she heard the growling. She looked to the right of her and saw something in the grass began to rush her. She loaded a tranquilizer dart and shot the animal below the shoulders. The animal howled but continued running at her, she loaded another dart in and shot again hitting the animal in the head as it lunged at her. She rolled out of the way of the animal’s lunge landing on her knees. She looked up to see what it was. A sabertooth cat, a large and battle-experienced one. Scars all over its snout and body. The animal growled and snarled at Erica, it swung its paw in a false attack as it began to pace drunkenly back and forth. Erica smirked, seeing that the darts were taking quick effect.

‘Only one more’ she thought as she grabbed another dart. The cat then charged her, she quickly rolled again, landing on her knees again, and immediately stood up as she loaded the new dart into the gun. She held it against her shoulder as she looked around to see nothing. The animal was gone, but she didn’t think it was torpor running. It was going for a different approach, ambushing. She took a moment to think if she should switch to a lethal round, but why waste a perfectly good travel mount that you already shoved two darts into? She heard the growling of the cat and aimed in that direction, the animal roared as it began to charge though not keeping in a straight line. She aimed and fired. The dart hit the animal in the neck just next to the head, the animal roared intensely and charged at her, but the animal was so drugged it didn’t seem like it would even reach her. She lowered her rifle and her guard, thinking that the anim