Once I saw that the Reaver had spotted us, I did the first smart thing I could think of: I grabbed the kid and rolled off the stack of containers. The kid weighed less than I expected and, thankfully, didn’t slow me down too much.
I landed on my feet and quickly made my way deeper into the maze. Just like with any predator, I hoped that changing our position would buy us some time, at least. But when I looked back, I could still see its outline on its perch, completely unmoving. It hadn't rushed toward us. Instead, it crouched down and let out a warbling scream of challenge.
Imagine the sound of shredding metal mixed with a human shriek, and you'd have a pretty accurate description of what that sounded like.
I turned a corner and slowed to a stop, dropping the kid before peeking around to see if the Reaver was on our tail. It stood like a motionless shadow, and even from this distance, I could sense that it knew exactly where we were. So why wasn’t it coming for us?
We had to keep moving, so I reached for the boy, but this time he wriggled just out of my grasp. Great, we were back to being best buddies. But I really didn’t have time for this. Everything I’d learned about Reavers in my last year at the Rose Garden taught me that they were not to be messed with. I wasn’t planning to stick around and find out if our curriculum had exaggerated.