The climb down this vast canyon—even larger than the Grand Canyon—is not as easy as the previous mountainside. I expected that. To start, we scaled and skidded our way down an enormous drop that ended in a ridge which extended about ten feet from the side wall. We landed with a grunt and a yelp, but made it to the safety of that precipice with minor scrapes on our elbows and knees. From there, we finagled along on a diagonal path with rocks and dirt sliding under our boots, making our hike treacherous and heart pounding. That trail was decent and got us to a point about halfway down the canyon, but not without labored breaths and stressing us to the max.

From there, it got tricky as we followed a narrow ledge, ending in a vertical cliff face that stands at least two hundred feet above the canyon floor.

To compound the problem, the sun's dying embers leave a shaft of light that brightens the forest's edge above our heads, but does nothing for us. So most of our descent has been with little light to guide our feet. The last few minutes have been in virtual darkness save for a lamp shining from Jinx's video screen. Turns out he can hover backwards and tilt his screen down at an angle to brighten our way, without blinding us.

But now, we're stuck on the edge of the vertical cliff, trying to figure out how to get down from a height equivalent to twenty-stories. Judging by Eve's frustrated sighs, she's not happy about it, and neither am I, but Jinx has an idea. He thinks it'll work best with Eve, but with me, he has doubts.

"I'm going to give both of you a ride down," he says.

"You mean carry us?" Eve replies. "That can't be the safest way down."

"It's the only way. I'm still emitting the high-pitched noise that's keeping the alpha away. He's waiting for my defenses to drop. His pack is hanging back, like they don't want to leave their territory, but their leader is hungry and desperate."

"What about the air from your jets?" She presses. "Won't I get in the way if I'm underneath you where all the air comes out?"

"The designers positioned my nozzle cones on the outer rim of my sphere on the bottom. My arms drop out of a compartment in the center where you'll be. You may feel like you're in the middle of an intense windstorm, but you won't hinder my thrust from providing lift to get us airborne. So I should have no problem carrying you down to the canyon floor."

"Okay... should be like a snow lift, sort of." Eve rolls her head on her shoulders, her eyes big and round, with lots of white around her irises. "Not that I've ever ridden a snow lift. We lived in Florida and never made it this far out west."

I glare up at the canyon rim.

As she worries about the ride down, I can't get the vile wolf off my mind. The alpha. Basically, the biggest, baddest of his pack, ready to devour us. As he leers at us, his eyes glisten red with the last vestiges of sunlight as it drops lower in the sky.

"Our journey has almost drained my battery," Jinx says. "I have enough to get Eve down, and enough to get Noah most of the way."

"Now, the truth comes out," I reply.

"I've spent more energy than I would have if we had been without peril, but every action I took to keep you safe pulled my reserves down even further. Once I'm gone, barricade yourself in the habitat to keep the alpha out. Cain and Jezebel left the rear airlock door open after their last visit here."

"Of course. I suspected they had been here before. After all, they killed the first two people sent down by Abraham, right?"

"That is correct. Cain may suspect I've brought you here, and he and Jezebel may be on their way as we speak. But my plan is not for you to stay here indefinitely. This is a stopping point and a place for you to even things out and put yourselves in fair competition with them. Abraham informed me of a few surprises you'll find inside the storage room next to the Animal Barn that will help you. Check there first. Then look in the cargo bay behind the garden area. But I can't explain now, time is running out. We have to go."

Jinx rises, air jets blasting him up to a spot above us. From beneath the sphere, his grasping hands extend down to Eve and loop under her armpits, bent at the elbow.

She shrieks as her feet leave the ledge. "Are you sure about this?"

Jinx doesn't answer her, and with a whoosh of air, they blaze over the edge of the steep cliff, rushing her down the canyon wall. She screams, her hands holding on to Jinx's arms, her head bent low, wind blustering her hair, while her legs thrash, grappling for solid ground.

I wait and watch with the growls from the alpha wolf as he nudges closer to my position because Jinx's defenses move further away from me.

The massive vile wolf—he's tall enough that he can almost look me in the eye—skitters down the same path we took. At the first fifteen-foot drop, I think he's stranded and afraid to risk a jump, but then the animal leaps down and lands with a thump of his paws on the short ridge, still high above my head. That's the location where Eve and I skinned up our elbows and knees. The wolf scuffs closer, moving down the diagonal trail, drawing near the beginning of the narrow ledge that leads to me, almost halfway down, but he halts there. He ducks his head with his ears pinned back like he's trying to force his way toward me, but the high-pitch ring of Jinx's dog whistle keeps him held back about thirty yards away.

Down below, Eve screams as Jinx races over the last drop off and sets her down with an abrupt landing, her boots scrambling for footing. I see it all because of the drone's lamp emanating from the video screen, illuminating the ground as Eve touches down. She says something to Jinx as he turns and heads back toward me, but her voice sounds muffled from so far away.

Jinx flies up the canyon wall toward me, and the closer he gets, the vile wolf retreats further up the diagonal trail, putting a safer distance between us.

The creature growls and whimpers; pain caused by the high-pitched whistle that only he can hear.

Jinx hovers above my head, hooks his appendages under my armpits, and then swoops me into the air. I shout and scream as my breath rushes from my lungs, the feeling of Earth's gravity drawing me toward the canyon floor while Jinx counters with the lift of his jets.

"Battery power almost drained," Jinx says. "Attempting for one last push to gain altitude to clear the last remnants of the canyon wall."

That doesn't sound good.

What if he gets higher only to run out of juice at the apex of our climb? Then I'll nosedive like a rock, crash, and die when my face bashes through the back of my skull.

"Jinx! What if you—"

Wind hits me full force and I never finish my sentence as we push higher in the air. My legs dangle beneath me, angled backward as the drone surges for more altitude.

My feet sweep above invisible waves of the night, carried fast enough to help me squeeze back the urine in my bladder.

A jolt wallops Jinx and we plummet before he regains control, his battery pushed to the brink. A hundred feet above the ground, Eve looks up at me with a twisted grimace and a cry of panic, spotlighted by Jinx's face-lamp.

My heart claws up my throat and I can't breathe with the wind slamming against me as we plunge toward the earth.

At the last second, Jinx musters his last reserves and a cushion of air brakes my fall for a split second before I strike the canyon floor.

Eve dives out of the way to keep from getting hit.

I careen six-feet above the ground, Jinx braking with all the force his nozzle cones can summon to stop us from a jarring crash.

Then the drone plops down, and I topple, head over heels, my elbows and knees absorbing the bouncing roll. The speed at which I hit the ground feels like I was running as fast as I could, jumped in the air, and then hurled myself into a bone-jarring tumble.

I grunt and groan as breath expels from my body.

When I whirl out of a final somersault, landing facedown, and glance up, I glimpse Jinx as he rolls and picks up speed like a runaway wheel off a moving car. Along the way, his sphere-shaped drone bounds over rocks, and then smashes against the rear of the habitat, ricocheting back toward us before coming to a halt, spinning on the ground. When he makes the final revolution and stops, the light on his video screen blinks out, and I think he's dead.

Until a weak blue line appears. "My defenses are down. The alpha is coming. Get inside the habitat now!"

And then his light blacks out.

I turn to Eve as she races toward me and helps me off the ground. A quick search of the canyon walls spots nothing but darkness as the sun vanishes over the horizon.

But in the darkness, the vile wolf huffs and puffs and charges down the narrow ledges and slopes. I wonder how it plans to make the two-hundred foot jump from the vertical cliff down to the canyon floor.

As the wolf grumbles in the void, intending to get to us, I kneel by Jinx to check on him. I put my hand over his darkened video screen and will him to live, but it doesn't work. He's lifeless, his battery dead, and with the habitat as dark inside as it is outside, I sense we'll have no way to charge him to bring him back online.

"We have to go," Eve says. "The alpha will find a way down. I don't know how, but he's determined to get us."

We rush through the airlock, last left open by Cain after he murdered the first people sent down by Abraham. I slam the door and twist the wheel to lock it, but it won't turn all the way. Without power, the security passcodes are useless. It's all manual now.

I look at Eve in her disheveled state. "I'll stand at the door—"

"Use this to leverage the locking wheel." She pokes a bent metal tube in my face.

"Where did you find that?"

She shrugs. "On the floor. Probably a makeshift weapon or something. I don't know. The people before us might have used it to defend themselves."

I swallow the tension as the thought turns inside my gut. It didn't work for them, hopefully it'll work for us.

I jam one end of the steel tube between the spokes of the wheel-lock and garner the strength to give it half a turn. The bolt engages and the door won't open, but it doesn't feel completely secure. As I back away, and we stumble into the habitat's interior, I see the skylight where they had left the roof retracted. Dust from the canyon covers the polycarbonate, but the wind has kept it from collecting so thick that moonlight can't shine through. It allows us to see our way around in a murky setting marked with shadows.

A boom rattles through the hallway that leads back to the airlock door.

The alpha found his way to us—how, I don't know—but he'll breach the passage in minutes. This could be our last stand.