The Annex file closed on a Tuesday.
A clerk signed it off, stamped it reviewed, no further action, and filed it with the rest. Valen's report went the same way. The semi-supervised status stayed exactly where it was, printed on the next rotation notice without comment.
Nobody told Squad 7. There was nothing to tell them.
---
The ridge-hound report had worked its way through the grounds office and landed on a desk. Two days later, a ridge patrol went up the western trail to check. They came back with tracks.
Squad 7 got the assignment the next morning. No Halden at the gate. Just a notice on the board and a map that marked the western trail in red.
They were halfway up the ridge when the groundskeeper caught up with them.
He was older than Halden, with a heavy coat and boots that had been resoled more than once. He didn't introduce himself. He just fell into step beside Drake.
"You're the ones who saw the ridge-hound."
"Yes," Drake said.
"Where?"
Drake pointed back down the trail. "About a mile back. Near the service road."
The groundskeeper nodded. "That's what the report said. We sent a pair up the ridge two days ago. They found tracks."
"What kind?"
"Ridge-hound. More than one. Heading down."
---
They kept walking.
"Ridge-hounds don't come down this far," the groundskeeper said. "Not usually. They stay high. Cold ground, good hunting."
"Not usually," Xander said. "But sometimes."
The groundskeeper glanced at him. "Twice in twelve years. Both times after a hard winter. Game got thin up top, they came down for a season, went back up when the snow cleared."
"This isn't after a hard winter," Luna said.
"No," the groundskeeper said. "It isn't."
He stopped at a bend in the trail and pointed up. "Tracks start about half a mile up. Follow them. If you find the animals, don't engage. Just mark the location and come back."
"And if we don't find them?" Kara asked.
"Then you mark what you can and come back anyway."
"What tier are they?" Xander asked.
"Two. Maybe three, depending on the pack. Not dangerous unless you corner them."
He turned and walked back down the trail toward the grounds office.
---
The tracks were easy to follow.
They started just above the tree line, where the ground was still soft from the last rain. Ridge-hound prints, clear and deep. Three sets. Maybe four. The spacing was even.
Luna knelt beside the first one. She pressed her palm flat against the earth and stayed there for a moment. When she stood up, she was frowning.
"They're not running," she said.
Drake looked at the tracks. "Walking?"
"Walking. Same pace. No sign of panic." She pointed at the prints. "When something's running, the weight shifts forward. The heel doesn't settle. These settle. They're just walking."
Xander crouched at the edge of the trail and looked at the slope above. "They came from higher up. There's an old trail above the tree line."
"How can you tell?"
"The vegetation's been worn down. Not recently. But consistently. There's a path there."
The groundskeeper had mentioned the old survey route. Xander hadn't needed him to.
They followed the tracks for another half mile. The trail narrowed. The trees thinned. The ground got rockier.
Drake stopped at one point and looked back down the slope. "They're not stopping to rest."
"How do you know?" Kara asked.
"No scat. No flattened patches. Nothing where they'd have settled for a while. They're just walking. Continuously. Same direction."
"Same pace," Luna said. "The whole way."
---
The tracks stopped.
Not vanished. Stopped. The last set of prints ended at a flat shelf of rock, and beyond it there was nothing.
Xander walked the shelf. He checked the edges. He held his hand out over the stone and waited.
"Anything?" Drake asked.
"Nothing."
"Nothing at all?"
Xander didn't answer right away. He walked back to the last set of prints and crouched beside them.
"They stopped here," he said. "All of them."
"That doesn't happen," the groundskeeper said.
"I know."
---
They spent the next hour searching the shelf.
Drake walked the perimeter. Xander checked the rock face. Luna knelt at the edges of the shelf, pressing her palm to the stone at intervals. Kara worked the brush along the treeline, looking for signs they'd doubled back.
James stood at the last set of prints and looked at them for a long time.
The groundskeeper stayed at the edge of the shelf and watched them work.
"You're not going to find anything," he said after a while.
"You don't know that," Kara said.
"I've worked this ridge twelve years. When something goes to ground, you find scat or you find fur or you find a trail. When something just disappears—" He stopped. "You don't find anything."
Xander came back to the prints. He looked at them again.
"The tracks are real," he said. "They came this far. That's not in question."
"They came this far," Drake repeated. "And then they didn't."
"Or they went somewhere the ground doesn't hold prints," Luna said.
"There's no corresponding disturbance at the edges," Xander said. "If they'd climbed out onto exposed rock, we'd see scuff marks. There aren't any."
"So what does that leave?"
Nobody answered.
---
Kara found the fur twenty minutes later.
It was caught on a low branch at the far edge of the shelf. A few strands. Coarse, grey, matted.
"Ridge-hound," the groundskeeper said, examining it. "Could be."
"Could be?"
"Could be one of them. Could be something that came through here weeks ago and left it. Fur doesn't tell you when."
Kara handed it to him. He looked at it for a moment, then tucked it into his coat.
"I'll log it," he said.
---
Drake marked the location on his slate. Xander wrote down the direction the tracks had been heading before they stopped. Luna noted the terrain and the pace and the absence of any sign of distress.
The groundskeeper stood at the edge of the shelf and looked down the slope. The service road was visible far below, a thin grey line cutting through the trees.
"They came down," he said. "Then they stopped. Then they disappeared."
"Or went somewhere we can't track," Xander said.
"Same thing."
---
They walked back down the trail. The groundskeeper left them at the gate.
"I'll file the report," he said.
"Thank you," Drake said.
The groundskeeper nodded and walked off toward the grounds office.
---
That evening, Xander sat on the low step outside the barracks with his notebook open.
He wrote down what they'd found. Three sets of tracks. Maybe four. Walking, not running. Heading down. Then stopping.
He looked at the list. Every line was true. None of them explained the stop.
That was the part that stayed with him. Not the tracks. Not the direction. The stop. Everything else about the movement made sense. They'd walked at a steady pace, in the same direction, over terrain that should have held their prints. And then they hadn't.
He couldn't think of a single reason why.
He turned the page.
The word Interaction was still on the last one.
He looked at it for a long moment.
Then he closed the notebook.