The forest had grown quieter in the days since the cabin escape, but the silence was deceptive. Each step through the pines carried weight, as if the trees themselves were listening. Soufiane moved ahead, knife drawn, eyes slicing through the gloom for any sign of movement. Behind him, Amal walked steadily now, though the pale scar on her arm remained tightly bound in makeshift bandages.
The antibiotics had worked. Her fever had broken two nights ago, and though exhaustion lingered, her sharp gaze had returned. Every so often, she caught Soufiane watching her—relief flickering across his otherwise hardened face. It was the only sign he had been worried, but it was enough.
Meriem whispered as they passed through a narrow clearing. "She looks better."
"She is better," Abderrazak said, his voice carrying relief—and something else, a quiet respect. "We needed that."
Soufiane didn't respond. His focus stayed on the horizon, where faint columns of smoke curled through the treetops. Too straight, too controlled to be from an accident. Someone was out there.
They crouched behind a ridge of rocks, catching their breath. Soufiane pointed through the branches. Down below, moving along a dirt track cutting through the woods, a group of men marched in a loose formation. Their clothes were mismatched—fragments of uniforms, scavenged armor, civilian rags. Some carried machetes, others rifles slung lazily across their shoulders. But it wasn't the weapons that held the group's attention.
It was the prisoners.
A line of figures trudged ahead, hands bound, heads low. Some stumbled, shoved forward by rifle butts or kicks. Even from a distance, Soufiane could see the weakness in their steps. Survivors, captured, being dragged toward an unknown camp.
Meriem's breath caught. "We have to do something."
Amal leaned against the rock, her voice quiet but firm. "We're barely holding ourselves together. If we go down there—"
"They'll slaughter us," Abderrazak finished. "Four of us, against half their weapons."
Soufiane's jaw clenched. His hand tightened around his knife until the skin went white. "And if we don't? They'll die. Or worse."
The weight of his words pressed down like the heavy canopy above. No one wanted to imagine what "worse" could mean. They'd seen enough.
For a moment, only the wind moved through the needles of the pines. Then Amal, still pale but burning with quiet strength, broke the silence. "We can't fight them head-on. Not like this. But maybe… maybe there's another way. Watch them. Learn where they're going. Find their weakness."
Soufiane looked at her. Her voice was steady now, no trace of fever. The fire was back in her eyes. Something in him eased, though it did nothing to quell the storm inside.
"They'll be back," he muttered, gaze locked on the procession moving deeper into the forest. "The question is—will we be ready when they are?"
The prisoners disappeared into the trees, swallowed by shadows and distance. When the last echo of their footsteps faded, the group stayed crouched in uneasy silence. Each knew what Soufiane was thinking: to do nothing was to let the world keep devouring itself. To act was to risk becoming the next set of bound figures marched into the dark.
The choice loomed over them, heavy and suffocating as the pines.
And for the first time since the cabin, Amal straightened, her voice low but resolute.
"We'll be ready."