Me, 10 and 399 rode out before sunrise.
The horses were warm between our knees, steam lifting from their flanks like prayer. The compound gates yawned and shut behind us with the quiet of a decision already made. Past the last fence, the land shuddered into scrub and slope, a sprawl of low ground that pulled the cold into your lungs and kept it there.
We were three when the forest closed around us.
Me. 10. 399. Three days. No supplies. No interference. Survive. That was the rule. Or at least the version of the truth they offered.
It was not wilderness alone. It was a stage. He He... And we were the performance.
10 set the pace because pacing was something he could govern. Shoulders squared, chin fixed, his steps came down like punctuation that never forgot the period. He didn't scan so much as measure. Every glance left a nail in the forest: that stump is a marker, that stone is distance, that shadow is not yet a threat because threats announce themselves in ways a trained man recognizes. He wore his discipline like a uniform you couldn't take off.
399 moved as if gravity negotiated with him separately. His lips shaped fractions of numbers, a murmur so small it bent the silence without breaking it. "Three, five, eight… thirteen…" The cadence wasn't prayer, it was scaffolding. He let his fingertips brush certain trunks as he passed, as if he were checking the forest's pulse and waiting for it to answer in a rhythm he knew.
I kept to the middle because the middle sees both ends. It wasn't trust. It was intuition. In the middle I can turn either way without wasting time.
The first water found us before thirst became our enemy. Its surface caught light in shards, then broke them into smaller truths where the current snagged on stones.
10 crouched and cupped his hands so fast the motion had to have been rehearsed many times in rooms without rivers. "We drink," he said, already lowering his palms.
"No," I said, and the forest pressed the syllable thin, but not thin enough to ignore. "Not like that."
He looked up with the kind of stillness that means the rest of him is holding very still too. "We need strength now."
"Not if we pay for it later," I said. "Boil it."
"With what fire?" The words were flat, not loud.
His hands hovered over the water, trembling once, the tremor of a man who hates being right later. He withdrew slowly.
399 only smiled, slipping two fingers into the current and pulling them back to watch what the water did with the absence. "Poison's a patient teacher," he said, voice like a coat he wore when he felt like it. "But it always finishes the lesson."
We left the water without drinking. The ache in my throat wrote itself into the day's spine, but it was clean ache, not the kind that multiplies inside me.
The forest thickened as the hours passed. Trunks crowded closer, roots knotting like veins just beneath the soil, forcing our steps into uneven rhythms. Birds called in sudden bursts, their voices sharp as broken glass. Every sound lingered too long, as if the trees wanted to replay it.
By late afternoon, the light had thinned into a gray wash. Hunger started showing his teeth.
"We stop here," 10 said abruptly when the land opened into a shallow hollow where the ground dipped toward a ring of stones half buried in moss.
At the spot where we had decided to build our campfire, we came across a few things already left behind: a small iron pot, a half-used box of matches, and even a container with some water inside. It looked as though someone else had camped here before us and simply forgotten to take everything along.
10 pointed in the items, already assigning purpose. "Shelter. Fire. Watch forest." His tone carried command. Only survival.
"Fire first," I said, cutting across 10's plan. My hands were already gathering deadfall, testing each branch for dryness. "Water after. Shelter after that."
10's jaw tightened, but he didn't argue. He stalked to the tree line, pulling down longer branches with sharp, efficient movements. The sound of splintering wood echoed off the hollow as if the forest itself was taking note of his obedience.
399 dropped into a crouch beside me, his fingers busy with a handful of birch bark, peeling it back in long curls that caught in the wind like shavings of bone. He hummed, then let the sound fracture into numbers again. "Four, seven, eleven…" His lips shaped them so quietly they almost belonged to the trees.
When the fire finally caught, its glow pushed back the gray that had been gathering all afternoon. Shadows jumped along the moss, retreating just far enough to remind us they'd still be waiting.
10 squatted by the flames, knife across his thigh, sharpening it with measured strokes. The scrape of steel on stone was steady, like another heartbeat in the circle. His eyes flicked from the fire to us, then back again.
"This will work for a night," he said.
We boiled the stream water in silence, using the old trick of fire-stones: heating them until they glowed and dropping them into a hollow of bark wedged between rocks. The water hissed, spat, then stilled into steam. Bitter, metallic, but safer than hope alone. The ache in my throat eased, replaced by something heavier, the stillness of three strangers sharing air they hadn't yet agreed to trust.
It was 399 who broke it. He lay back on one elbow, staring into the fire as if the sparks spelled out equations only he could read. "Three of us," he said lightly, his voice catching on a laugh that wasn't quite real. "Strange how we haven't bothered with names." The fire hissed as sap cracked inside the wood. Shadows bent across his face, turning his grin into something sharper than it was.
10 didn't look up from his knife. His strokes stayed even, steel rasping against stone. "Names don't matter," he said. His voice was clipped, soldier-flat. "They won't keep you alive."
399 tilted his head, eyes narrowing in the firelight. "Everything matters. Even numbers matter. But three without names?" He tapped the dirt with one finger. "That's an equation missing variables. Dangerous."
His gaze shifted to me. He was waiting.
Testing.
The words slipped out before I could stop them. "This isn't called psychological just because they've left us in the forest," I said. My mind flicked back to the weight we'd carried in the second trial. "That wasn't about endurance alone, it was about watching what we did to each other when exhaustion made choice cruel. Now it was silence, hunger, time, forest and distrust. They never told us outright, but the sequence began to make sense. There was a logic to it."
10's knife paused mid stroke, the steel pressed against stone but unmoving. His eyes flicked to me once, sharp, then back to the blade. "Speculation," he said flatly. "Useless unless it keeps you breathing."
399's grin widened like he'd been waiting for that exact reply. He propped himself up, firelight burning in his pupils. "Not useless. She's right. First test was about movement, measure the body. Second was strength about phycological endurance. Third…" he waved a hand at the trees, "this. The people. What it does when hunger and silence start clawing at it."
10 finally sheathed his knife, slow and deliberate, as though ending a chapter. "Doesn't matter what they call it. Survive the forest. That's all."
"No," I said, and this time my own voice surprised me, unwilling to be filed down. "Not all. If survival was the point, they'd want to see who comes back alive, not what we notice in each other."
399 leaned forward, the grin gone now, his tone lower. "Exactly. They're not just measuring how we last. They're measuring what we see. Whether we can see the equation in front of us before it kills us." His finger tapped the dirt again, this time between us. "You. Me. Him. Three unknowns."
For a moment the fire popped, spitting sap, and the silence stretched.
10's gaze lifted, pinning me across the fire. "Then say it," he said. "What have you seen?"