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something he hasn’t heard.
    She tenses, a frightened rodent, cheek twitching convulsively in terror. A low and horrible hum rises from her stomach, coming up to her chest and out through the flare of her nostrils. She twists in Reid’s grip, trying to slide free. He wants to hang onto her, but he is stunned, made useless by what she told him, so he lets her go. When she pulls away and glances at him, he finally understands. They have nothing to offer one another after all. She is simply too far gone.
    Still, Reid doesn’t want to leave her there. He can help her get to a safer place before they part ways. Before he can act, she moves two steps and locks up again. He is about to urge her to move when he feels it. They are not alone. He searches their surroundings, slinking slowly and carefully into the depth of the shadow she just left. There, near the path. Something moves with deliberate slowness. Reid sees Monica tremble. She hasn’t moved. And needs to, quickly. She only has a moment. He reaches for her, too late. She uncoils from her fearful freeze and dashes several steps toward the trail.
    The hunter is there in one fluid motion, snatching her out of the brush with a whoosh of air, dropping her into the open. Reid hears her scrawny body thud to the dirt, the gasp of escaping breath as she loses hers. Reid is forced to press his hands over his ears as her low hum begins again, turning into a piercing keen so loud it shakes him to his bones with its desperation.
    There. Beside the hunter. A form slides from the darkness. Another one. Them, she said. Them . She was right. Two hunters. Two killers in the night.
    He didn’t want to believe her. Now he has no choice. She’s proved it to him in the worst way possible. His horror growing, Reid forces himself to move on, to escape the sound and Monica’s final torment. Her death.
    He has gone less than ten steps when her humming protest, the last weapon she has in a terribly unbalanced war, is cut off abruptly. Forever.
    Reid runs.
     
    ***
     
    Chapter Six
     
    This time he runs without reason, his focus lost to him, as much an animal as she was in the end. He finds the edge of the trail and hates to use it, but has no choice, instinct forcing him to take the path of least resistance. He must run and run and never, ever stop. Not for anything or anyone. Rest is impossible, brief moments caught in jerking instances of gasping air, barely enough to restore his wind before he is off again, a new sound or flicker of motion chasing him deeper and deeper into the forest.
    He only peripherally feels the ground under his feet, the slap of branches against his face when he gets too close to the edge of the trees, usually after he spins to check the trail behind him. Reid can’t think or feel or reason. He doesn’t have time and can’t afford the effort any of them take. He is legs and feet, ragged breath and burning muscle, sheathed in a world of pain and terror driving him onward, ever onward.
    He has only a heartbeat to register the barrier before he reaches it, but it is just enough to keep him from hurtling headlong into the chain link fence. He stops all at once, whole body twitching in response, gaping upward, feeling his skin tingle and the hair on his head and body stand on end in answer to the power running through it. The dull metal thrums a steady beat, vibrating its way down into the ground. Reid doesn’t need to check or even think about it. He just knows.
    There is enough juice running through the fence to kill him.
    Reid is so stunned by its appearance and obvious meaning, it takes him a while to react to it. His flight mode has been interrupted and he is so tired and strung out from stress and fear it takes him achingly long moments to register and understand what is going on. When he finally gets it, he wants to fall to his knees and quit. On top of everything else, whoever dumped him here has trapped him as well. The unfairness of it shrivels his soul a