Chapter 5 · Tamer of the Ash Wilds - Chapter 5: The Tag in the Sand

Lin didn't wait for the crowd to finish screaming.

He grabbed Crunch by the scruff and hauled the furball toward the exit tunnel, boots slipping in sand that was still wet with something he didn't want to name. The grey beast was twice as heavy as yesterday, muscles twitching under his grip, eyes still glazed with that red-edge focus that had torn through the Hookclaw like wet paper.

"Move," Lin hissed. "Now."

Crunch made a sound, half-chirp, half-growl. Not the soft noise from the den. This was sharper. Wired.

The iron gate to the tunnel was already grinding open. The arena crew didn't wait for losers to bleed out anymore, not after what happened in the last match, but winners? Winners got ten seconds to clear the sand before the cleanup crew dragged out whatever was left.

Lin counted six seconds in his head. Then seven.

Somebody whistled from the third row. Another voice, deeper, shouted something about odds and coin. Lin kept his head down and moved faster. The tunnel was right there, fifteen feet, ten—

His pocket was empty.

He stopped.

Crunch bumped into his leg, claws scraping stone as the tunnel mouth swallowed them into shadow. The noise from the pit dropped to a muffled roar behind the iron door. Lin pressed his back against the damp wall, heart hammering, and shoved his hand into his jacket pocket again.

Nothing.

The other pocket. His pants. The inside lining he'd torn open two days ago to hide the last of his ration chits.

Nothing.

The tag was gone.

"Damn it," he breathed.

Crunch sat, head tilted, watching him with those black-button eyes that had gone from feral to curious in the span of ten seconds. Blood crusted the fur around the beast's mouth. The Hookclaw's blood, maybe some of Lin's from where he'd hit the sand wrong and split his forearm open on a rock.

Lin's arm still throbbed. He'd wrapped it fast with a torn sleeve before the ref could call a medical stop, because medical meant fees, and fees meant another month of fights just to break even.

But the tag.

The tag with the sample code.

His sample code, from a lab that shouldn't exist in this world, printed on a bent piece of metal he'd found half-buried in the sand right after Crunch ripped the Hookclaw apart.

He must've dropped it.

When Crunch slammed into him after the kill, or when he'd rolled to avoid the ref's boot, or when the crowd started chanting and he'd scrambled to his feet too fast, hands shaking, brain still trying to process what the hell that code meant.

He pressed his forehead against the cold stone and tried to think.

Two choices.

Walk away. The tag was small, crushed into the sand, probably buried under blood and dirt by now. The cleanup crew would sweep through with rakes and hoses, dump it all into the chute with the bones and the torn limbs and whatever else didn't sell. No one would see it. No one would know.

Or go back.

Go back into the pit, under the lights, with the crowd still watching and the Boss probably reviewing the fight footage in his glass box above the north stands, and search the sand for a piece of metal the size of his thumb.

"Stupid," he muttered.

Crunch chirped.

Lin looked down. The beast was licking blood off one paw, casual, like this was just another morning in the den. Not like he'd just killed something three times his size. Not like he'd moved faster than anything Lin had seen in the Wilds, fast enough that even the crowd had gone quiet for a half-second before the bets started flying.

Fast enough that someone might've noticed.

Lin crouched, eye-level with Crunch, and kept his voice low. "If I leave that thing out there, and someone finds it—"

He didn't finish. Didn't need to.

If someone found the tag, and if they knew what a sample code looked like, and if they put it together with Crunch's performance tonight, then Lin's story about hatching a dud egg from the scrap market fell apart. Then people started asking questions. Then the Boss decided Crunch was worth more than the debt Lin owed, and they'd take the beast and carve him open to see what made him tick.

Lin had seen that happen before. Back in the lab. Different world, same logic.

He straightened.

Crunch's ears swiveled forward.

"Stay," Lin said.

The beast didn't move.

Lin turned and walked back toward the iron door.

The tunnel guard was leaning against the frame, half-asleep, a shock-stick hanging loose from his belt. He didn't look up when Lin approached.

"Forgot something," Lin said.

The guard grunted. "Pit's closed. Crew's in there."

"I know. I'll be fast."

"Not supposed to let winners back in. Boss's rule."

Lin pulled the last ration chit from his boot and held it out. The guard's eyes flicked down, then up.

"Thirty seconds," the guard said, pocketing the chit. He slapped the door control. The iron gate groaned open.

The arena was still bright. Overhead lights buzzed, white-hot, casting hard shadows across the sand. The cleanup crew—three men in stained coveralls—were already dragging what was left of the Hookclaw toward the chute on the west side. One of them saw Lin and shouted something, but Lin ignored him and dropped to his knees where the blood was thickest.

Sand, hot under his palms. Rough. Stained dark in patches.

He sifted through it, fingers scraping, eyes scanning for the dull gleam of metal.

Nothing.

He shifted left, near the crater where Crunch had landed the killing blow. More blood here, clumped and sticky. He dug faster, breath shallow, aware that the crew was moving closer, that the guard was probably counting in his head, that every second he stayed here was another second someone could see—

There.

Bent. Half-buried. One edge crushed where something heavy had stepped on it.

Lin's fingers closed around the tag.

It was warm.

He froze.

Metal didn't hold heat like that. Not in the Wilds, not after sitting in cold sand for five minutes.

He pulled it free and turned it over in his palm.

The sample code was still visible, stamped into the surface: N7-V03-XULIN.

His code. His name, broken into parts, the way the lab used to file biological samples before they were archived or incinerated.

And now, as he watched, a hairline crack along the tag's edge began to glow.

Red.

Faint at first, then brighter, pulsing in a rhythm that felt wrong, too steady, too deliberate.

Lin's throat went dry.

The glow pulsed again. Once. Twice.

Then the air changed.

Not sound, not exactly. More like pressure, a low hum that started somewhere behind his ribs and spread outward, vibrating through his chest, his teeth, the bones in his hands.

The lights overhead flickered.

One of the crew members swore.

And from somewhere beyond the arena walls—out past the scrap market, past the Zone Three perimeter, deep in the Ash Wilds where nothing should be awake at this hour—something answered.

A sound.

Low. Rolling. Not wind. Not thunder.

Closer to a growl.

Lin stood, slow, the tag burning against his palm.

The red light pulsed again, faster now, and the sound from the Wilds grew louder, closer, like it was moving.

Like it knew where he was.

Behind him, the iron door slammed open. Crunch bolted into the pit, claws tearing through sand, and skidded to a stop at Lin's feet. The beast's fur was standing on end, ears flat, eyes locked on the north wall.

On the darkness beyond it.

Lin shoved the tag into his pocket, grabbed Crunch, and ran.