Three ways Darcy could've met Anders—
"Run."
"Are you injured?"
"You shouldn't be here."
—and how it actually comes to pass.
1.
Having stepped through portals before, Darcy can say with certainty that this has been the least… turbulent of her trips. She picks up her foot in Washington and sets it down in another world. It takes her another five steps to realize it, and two deep breaths before she unclips her communicator.
"Hey." Her thumb digs into the talk button. "Jane."
The forest around her is no less green or damp than the one she was just traipsing through—charting temporal fluctuations, ostensibly, but mostly eating a bag of trail mix and watching the light on her flux-capacitor-whatsit blink steadily—but something indefinable has changed. The air quality, maybe? She waits patiently for a response from the other end, tonguing a bit of peanut in her back molar and staring up at the (unremarkable, at least to a city girl) foliage.
There's a burst of static, then nothing.
The energy reader remains quiet through all of this, the red light blinking placidly. Darcy, not for the first time, questions the reliability of equipment held together with duct tape and prayer. She gives it a shake.
Nothing.
The general rule is to stay put when one is lost in the woods, but Darcy doesn't think that that guidebook was written to encompass situations of interstellar displacement. Any illusions of merely being teleported elsewhere in the same forest were dashed when she got a good look at the trees—and the sky above them.
Two moons.
Two moons and no "Binary Sunset" accompaniment.
It's a tragedy on many levels.
So, fickle energy reader in hand, Darcy sets out under the foreign sky, two pale crescents mocking her even under the watchful eye of the sun. And, hey, at least there's that. The nearby star looks to be a near replica of Earth's sun. And those birds? Very Earth-sounding. Even the voices sound huma—
Darcy nearly drops the blinking device in her shock.
People.
Granted, they sound like angry people, but a people's a people, and on an alien planet, Darcy will take an angry mob over being lost alone in the woods with only faulty equipment and a dwindling bag of trail mix for company. She turns to locate the distant shouting, squinting through the uncertain light. She thinks it's coming from somewhere to her left, but it's hard to tell with the trees splintering sounds and bouncing them back in slightly different directions. Still, Darcy gamely makes her way forward—
—Only to be met with a solid body rocketing through the undergrowth. Darcy is too startled to even scream, and then what air she might've used to raise an alarm is punched from her lungs as she becomes intimately acquainted with the rocky soil of this world. She falls in a tangle of limbs and—ow—elbows, the heavy form of a human-looking man pressing her into the forest floor. Normally, Darcy would have a thing or two to say about strange men lying on top of her—and a taser close at hand—but the dude seems infinitely more alarmed than even she, his glass-shard eyes wide and panicked, the whites showing all the way around.
He looks hunted.
Darcy flounders, gaping, hoping to reinflate her shriveled lungs, but the man slaps a hand over her mouth, looking back towards the voices and pressing her, if possible, even further into the ground. There's a rock digging into her spine, and Darcy still. Can't. Breathe.
Vague memories of a freshman year self-defense course float to the surface, and she executes a very messy escape maneuver, only made possible by the fact that this guy isn't really trying to restrain her—he's just unfairly tall and made entirely of limbs.
"Gah," Darcy heaves. She turns half on her side, gasping into the not-Earth leaves, one leg still trapped beneath the offending company. The shouting is definitely getting closer. Darcy can put two and two together, and the four is looking a lot like a mad dash through an alien forest is imminent. She just needs to catch her breath—
A howl pierces through the fog of her oxygen-deprived thoughts, joined in chorus by several others. The baying picks up as the last howl tapers off, and it's unmistakably the triumphant sound of hounds who have locked onto their prey. They are close—much closer than the men. A spark of adrenaline races through her extremities, setting every nerve alight, and Darcy turns to meet the man's sharp gaze. She can feel a fine tremor through his contact with her leg. The look that they share transcends any culture or language barrier.
Fear.
The man is upright before Darcy can really comprehend the movement, a flurry of robes and fear-tight motion. He jerks down, scooping something—a staff, she thinks—from the ground, before turning to regard her. His jaw is tight, set to match the steel in his eyes, and Darcy is already scrambling upright before he reaches for her. His long fingers find her upper arm, steadying her with the briefest pressure. He glances back in the direction of his pursuers, then at Darcy, nodding once in some silent agreement with himself.
His lips part, and when he speaks, it is with accented, but clearly understandable English.
"Run."
Darcy doesn't need to be told twice.
End Note:
In case it's unclear, this takes place during one of Anders's attempts to escape the Circle. Is he successful? Hmmm...