Fragments by Dan Wells Page A

thought. I’ve seen them during the day—panthers and lions and once, I swear, I saw a tiger.
     Refugees from a zoo or a circus, well fed by the herds of wild deer and horses that
     roam Central Park. There are even elephants—I heard them last year. Do they feed on
     those, too?
    Focus, she told herself. They’re going to feed on you if you don’t find a way out of this. Lions or panthers
     or worse.
    Panthers. A terrifying thought occurred to her: Panthers are supposed to hunt at night, but I’ve only ever seen them in the day. Do
     they hunt in both now, or is this thing in the darkness something worse—something
     so dangerous the panthers had to change their habits to avoid it? Am I being hunted
     by a nocturnal panther, or are the panthers hiding, scared in their dens, to escape
     the creature that’s hunting me? Memories of the ParaGen brochure leapt unbidden to her mind—dragons and intelligent
     dogs, engineered lions and who only knew what else they’d done. They’d designed the
     Partials as the ultimate soldiers—had they designed an ultimate predator as well?
    Kira stole a glance back down the street where she’d come, shaking her head at the
     long string of derelict cars and delivery vans; this creature could be hiding behind
     any one of them, waiting for her to pass by. It was the same with the plaza in front
     of her. Her best bet lay across the street, in the lobby of what might once have been
     a shopping mall: fallen mannequins, faded posters of bodies and faces, rack upon rack
     of ragged clothes. The beast could be in there, too—for all she knew the cluttered
     hallways could be its den—but there were doors as well, human-size and closed, and
     if she could get inside one and close it again behind her, she would be safe. Safe
     until it went away, safe until morning if it took that long. She heard the same rumbling
     growl, closer now than ever, and set her jaw fiercely.
    “It’s now or never.” She leapt to her feet, charging across the broken street to the
     mall beyond, dodging around the corner of a car as a rush of air tore past behind
     her. She imagined giant claws swiping inches from her back, and struggled to regain
     her footing as she raced in through the shattered glass facade of the building. Debris
     clattered in her wake, far more than she could ever dislodge by herself, but she didn’t
     dare look back; she raised her gun over her shoulder, firing wildly behind her, turning
     again as she reached a cracking pillar. The interior of the mall was bigger than she’d
     expected, glistening metal stairways climbing up and down in pairs, a vast courtyard
     yawning wide in the center of the floor below her. It was too dark to see the bottom
     or the top; too dark to see much of anything. The door she’d been aiming for was on
     the other side; she turned to the right, skirting the pit, and brought her gun back
     in front of her, switching on the light. The thing seemed to be scrabbling on the
     slick floor; Kira found the first door she could and sprinted straight toward it.
    The light beam jerked wildly as she ran, up and down, back and forth, shining back
     from the tiled floor and the metal stairs and the mirrored plates across the walls.
     In a flash of reflected light the wall before her showed her own image, a massive
     black shape bearing down from behind, and then the beam jerked again and the scene
     was gone, a strobing nightmare of light and darkness and fear. She fixed her eyes
     on the doorway, running like she’d never run before, and moments before she got there
     she lowered her rifle, sighted on the doorknob, and fired a semiautomatic burst. The
     lock blew clear, the door fell open, and Kira dove through without a pause, slamming
     her hand against the left wall to help propel her toward the right and another open
     door. She grabbed at this one as she passed, slamming it closed behind her, and leaned
     against it just as something hit it from the other