A/N So here it is! The fifth and final (definitely, this time; definitely) instalment in my "What Happened Next?" series. This has been a ridiculously long time in the making. This final product is nowhere even remotely close to what I originally started working on five and a half years ago, and it's been the bane of my existence, a never ending source of frustration and self doubt and obsession, but I am very grateful for the learning and growing as a writer that it has forced me to do. I've gained more from battling this story than I have with all of my other writing combined.

I'm not going to delve too much into the plot or background or anything else in this note, because that defeats the purpose of me writing the story and weaving that information through it, but I will say this: it's been a very long time since I uploaded the story that preceded this one (All Or Nothing), so if you've never read it or can't remember what happens in it, maybe just go and have a quick skim of the final few chapters, just so you're not totally confused- like I was, when I kept trying to write things into this story that were impossible or ridiculous given what I'd already established in the earlier instalments. Whoops.

I'm excited to be back on this site as a writer, not just a pain in the arse reviewer. I'm hoping to keep plugging away at a couple of other ideas for stories that I have once this one if finished- and that it won't be another five and a half years before I complete and start to load one of them up. Here's to hoping that this story is as enjoyable to read as it was to write, but without the hair pulling madness that came with it.

Bear with me, too. You're getting the prologue now, purely because having it on this site is going to make me finish off the rest of this story. Once I've finished writing the rest, and editing, and tweaking, and I end up as happy with it as I can possibly get, I'll start putting the rest of the chapters up. Just gimme a bit longer; I'm a bit critical of myself :P

Em

PROLOGUE

Find the car.

Get to the car.

Get out of the woods, get to the car, get the hell out of here.

She stumbled, her foot catching on something in the undergrowth. A tree root, a low branch, a rock- she didn't know, she didn't care.

Don't fall over.

For God's sake, keep your feet under you.

She had no idea where she was, no idea where she was heading, just that it had to be away and it had to happen fast.

Don't trip. Don't fall.

You trip, you fall, you're dead.

You're dead.

Panic wrapped its cold embrace around her chest, fighting against what little breath was making it into her bursting lungs. The night was frigid. She felt like she'd been tossed into icy water, each breath she pulled from the air agonising and difficult.

Where was Ria? Linden? She wanted to call out, she wanted to scream for her friends, find them and help them, get them to help her. But she had nothing. No air. No words. No way past the debilitating fear that had sent her bolting blindly into the trees, crashing and racing like a spooked animal.

There was no warning. One second she was running and the next she was crashing to the ground, her hands- out to try and break her fall- sliding into a thick layer of wet leaf litter. Adrenaline had taken control of her system, numbed her senses, and she could only think that she'd taken a tumble until she went to push herself back up and found her left leg buckling under the strain. Was she caught in something? A trap? A hole? Had she twisted her ankle? Her hand went to her leg, starting at her knee, sliding down, gripping, patting, probing, until her fingers slid into something wet and sticky coating a tear in her jeans at her calf. It was dark; she could barely see her hand as she brought it up to her face, but there was no mistaking the sweet smell that turned her stomach and sent a fresh wave of fear over her.

She'd been shot.

The realisation hit her, then the pain did, white hot, shooting up her leg. She cried out, just a brief shriek before she bit down on her lip so hard she broke the skin. She didn't even feel it, her whole world consumed by the bullet in her leg.

The nail in her coffin.

The bubble that had surrounded her, made up only of her gasping breaths and pounding heart, suddenly lifted. Everything sounded incredibly loud, whirling around her, crashing into her like waves pummelling a rocky shoreline. To her left, to her right, still yet to be seen but definitely heading towards her, she could hear her pursuers. No shouts of discovery reached her ears, but she knew that she had to add a 'yet' to that, and it couldn't be taken as a relief nor a guarantee. It would only be a matter of time. She couldn't move, she couldn't defend herself, she couldn't even pull herself to her feet and meet them head on, go down with a fight.

A bright band of light from a torch cut through the trees to her left. She was still out of reach of it, but only just, and the crashing was getting louder. She had seconds left before they found her, and the realisation had her shaking, sobbing. As the beam of light found her face, she turned away, tucking her head under her arm and shutting her eyes tightly, burrowing into the leaf litter even though she knew it was pointless. She wished she could shut her ears as well, as the first cries of discovery reached her.

Seconds.

That was all she had left.

She thought of her mum, home in front of the fire, no idea her daughter wasn't upstairs asleep in bed. She wouldn't know that she was missing until the morning. She might never know what happened to her. She thought of her two friends, hoped that even though she hadn't made it back to the road, that they had; she hoped they hadn't waited for her, hadn't tried to come back and find her.

You don't go into the woods off Farrow Lane.

It was an unspoken rule, a unanimous one that everyone knew but no one could explain.

Except for Charlotte; she could have told them now.

You don't go into the woods off Farrow Lane.

You'll die in the woods off Farrow Lane.