Night fell over Jaguar Ridge like a heavy curtain. The air grew thick and still, the kind of oppressive silence that usually precedes a disaster.
Aria sat by her fire pit, finishing the last of the beef stew. She watched the sky. The heavy grey clouds that had gathered earlier were now a solid, bruised mass blocking out the stars.
"It's going to pour," Leo whispered from his tent, hugging his knees.
"My husband is bored," Aria mumbled, checking her watch. "8:00 PM. Prime time."
As if on cue, a siren wailed from the distant coastline.
Then, the sky opened up.
It wasn't a natural buildup. It was the sudden, violent deluge of weather modification cannons. Rain hammered the jungle canopy like shrapnel, turning the dirt clearing into a mud pit in seconds.
"My tent!" Lucas screamed.
He had pitched his single-person tent in a slight depression in the ground—a natural bowl. Within moments, that bowl became a swimming pool.
Aria unzipped her fly just enough to peek out.
