There was a brief moment where the floodlights went out, plunging the woods around us into a velvety darkness, and Fiske and I had a quick, intense argument in furious whispers.

“Go on without me, Vee. You have to run.”

“We’ve been over this, I’m not leaving you.”

“This may be your only chance—”

“No.”

We were interrupted when another flood of light hit the woods, and we both froze, going quiet. In the seconds that followed I could hear Fiske panting, and my own heart pulsing in my ears. Light was spilling over the trees just in front of us, and it seemed like I could make out every crack and crevice on the tree trunks, every line in every leaf in the bushes around us.

Panic rose in my throat, making me feel like I was choking. We were slightly shadowed right now, but when they went deeper into the forest we’d be completely obvious. The blaze of light made it impossible to hide.

Fiske was right, we had to run. But he’d also been right when he’d said he wouldn’t make it. A thought occurred to me in the space of that moment. Something horrible. If I stayed behind for Fiske, I risked us both being killed, and there would be no one to go back and warn the others.

At least I could try to make it with him. Reluctantly, I reached down and touched his back. Fiske jerked his head up and I gestured behind us, counting on his ability to see in the darkness.

Fiske turned sharply and began to make his way into the underbrush, slinky away so quietly he made no noise. I waited for a few seconds to follow him, knowing that he was naturally quieter than I was. He was low to the ground and wouldn’t attract as much attention. The moment I started to move I’d attract their attention.

The spotlights swept through the trees, and I ducked down, turning, creeping as silently as I could in the direction that Fiske had vanished. It was awkward slinking so low to the ground, I was too tall for this.

Suddenly the light was brighter, bouncing off the trees around me in a yellow blaze before it flickered away again. Someone in the distance gave an excited shout.

“There! I saw something moving!”

“Turn it back,” a second voice barked, low and gravely. I knew that voice. I was pretty certain it was the man who had talked to Cain in front of my plastic prison. The man who had Kalda killed. My body seemed to have stopped moving of its own accord. My chest was so tight I could barely draw breath, and my nails cut into the palms of my hands. I could turn back now, I could go find that man and rip all the water out of his body a droplet at a time. Avenge Kalda’s death.

But Fiske had gone in the other direction, and they had spotted me. I hesitated, torn, and the light flicked my way again, right in my eyes. Being momentarily blinded was enough to send an electric jolt of panic through me, and I turned and ran out of instinct more than anything else.

Crashing in the woods behind me, an angry shout. They could see me. They knew I was running.

Putting on a burst of speed, I ran as fast as my legs would carry me, the cold night air tearing in and out of my lungs painfully. I hated feeling the cold. It made me feel weak.

The crashing was so close. They were only minutes behind me.

Part of my panic was due to how dark it was. All I could see were the outlines of trees looming over me, the canopy of branches above me was a solid black mass, blocking out any moonlight that the night sky might have given me.

I couldn’t see, so when I tripped over the still dark form in the middle of the path, I never saw it coming.

Fiske.

My hands and knees hit the ground painfully, twigs and rocks digging into my palms and cutting my knees.  Feeling the ground beneath my bare legs made me flinch, remembering that I was only wearing what amounted to a hospital gown. My clothing was long gone. I had walked through the woods barefoot plenty of times, but never had I run through the woods at a breakneck pace in a flimsy white gown, like some kind of escaped mental patient.

Instantly my thoughts went back to Fiske, to the small dark form I’d tripped over. He was lying in the middle of the path, completely unmoving. Frantic, I darted over to him and dropped to my knees, ignoring the grit that dug into the cuts on my legs.

“Fiske,” I hissed his name through my teeth, desperate. He needed to get up now. We needed to go. “Fiske, please get up.”

I wound my fingers into his fur, shaking him. When he didn’t move I had the sudden horrifying thought that maybe he’d up and died on me. That couldn’t be, could it? He’d been walking and talking not more than a minute ago.

“Fiske, damn you! Don’t you dare be dead!”

A high-pitched whine made me gasp in relief. Angrily, I tried to yank him up by his fur, and received a low, angry growl in return.

“Leave me.”

“Screw that. Get up, you lazy runt!”

It was a low blow, but I knew that was what the pack sometimes called him, and that it made him livid. Maybe if I could make him mad enough he would get up.

There was only a hoarse, wheezy laugh in the darkness. “Nice try. Now get out of here before I really do bite you.”

            I was opening my mouth to say something else when the lights began moving again, jerking up and down, the beams bouncing over the trees around us. They were moving deeper into the woods, searching for us. Now Fiske and I were both silent, listening to our pursuers voices as they called to one another.

            We were being hunted like prey, and there was no way out of this.

            Again, I had the same thought…if I didn’t get away I couldn’t tell the others about this place. They would never know. People would just keep disappearing like we had. Like Kalda  had. I couldn’t let that happen to anyone else.

            Swallowing past the lump in my throat, I placed one hand on Fiske’s warm fur, momentarily weaving my fingers through hit.

            “I’ll miss you, old friend.”

“Thank the gods, you’ve finally come to your senses,” Fiske wheezed.

Yes, and I’d hate myself forever for it, I knew that.

As I straightened up, I had to fight myself. Every instinct in my body was screaming that this was wrong. I couldn’t leave a friend behind in this place. What would they do to him once they caught him? What would he think of me, when he had more time to think about it? How could I just leave him?
            I have no choice.

            The lights flickered, closer and closer, and so I finally turned away from them, into the dark forest, bracing myself, blinking back tears.

            Something made me stop. It was as if I sensed something…no, someone. It was the same feeling I’d had when the man had come to stand in front of my plastic prison. When I’d sensed every inch of him, the water throughout his body. I could feel more water, somewhere nearby, could sense the potential. The things I could do with it.

            It wasn’t normal water though, not like a river or a stream. It was upright, walking water. Living, moving, breathing. A person, a man I thought, if the height of the person was any indication.

            I stayed frozen where I was, hunched over Fiske, like I was guarding him. I was, I realized. I couldn’t leave him behind, it would drive me insane. I couldn’t protect Kalda, and I wasn’t about to do the same thing with Fiske. It was in my power to do something, so I would do it.

            The water…the man….whoever he was, was creeping closer and closer, moving stealthily through the woods. Was it one of our captors? The way they moved was different, slinking and catlike instead of the blundering, stomping that the rest of them were doing. This was someone at home in the forest.

            I was busy searching the darkness of the woods before me, looking for the prowler, when the sound of branches breaking made me whirl back around, heart slamming against my rib cage.

            A single, smaller light was bobbing through the trees, and then it stopped, no more than ten feet away. I knew that whoever held that light could see me, there was no doubt. The light had stopped abruptly, like the person holding it had stopped.

            Blood rushed through my ears, and I braced myself to fight. Whoever this was had water in his body too, I could feel it running through him with each pulse of his heart, trapped in between the cells of his blood, swishing around in his stomach. So much of him was water, and it was mine to do whatever I liked with.

            Curling my hands into fists I took a step forward, surprised that the man with the light had moved or spoken to me yet. Or yelled to his friends.

            A voice through the darkness made me jump. “I never wanted to get stuck with all of this.”

            Cain. Cain was the one holding the light.