"Stunners first, live if we're in imminent danger and the stunners aren't working. If we need to bolt, Ashley, you take Will and Henry, John, take Kate and me, unless the storm has got to us and it's generating too much EM." Magnus said, not for the first time, once all six of them were standing beneath the pines, where the freshest known tracks of the abnormal were.

"Going by best to worst shot," Ashley started as Kate and Henry approached the tracks. "wouldn't it be better to swap you and Will?" Magnus frowned.

"That puts first, second and fifth best shots together, then third, fourth and sixth. I don't follow, Ashley." Ashley frowned.

"Oh yeah. Sorry. Never said math was my thing." But there was something odd about the way she said it. That hadn't been her reason. Was she still trying to keep her and John apart? What did she think he'd do?

"Does it smell like anything you recognise, Henry?" She asked.

"No. Not even a bit. I'm not even sure I'm smelling it yet."

"Call yourself a tracker?" Kate asked. Henry smiled.

"Oh, Ash, Druitt, are your EM scales reading the same?" John showed Ashley his mutely. Whatever he said to her, she responded badly or not at all, so he barely spoke to her.

"Yeah." Ashley said. She was tense, tenser than a hunt alone would explain. She had been on the first hunt John had been on too. This was getting ridiculous. John had been in the Old City Sanctuary for more than three months, Ashley was still behaving as though she expected him to attack her, and insisting she wasn't behaving unusually.

The sun sank below the treetops as they walked, faster now, Henry had a strong scent and was almost running some sections. The sun disappeared entirely, the sky turned grey, clouds rolling in.

"This is so much less creepy to do by daylight." Will said, as a distant rumble of thunder started.

"Come on Will, you're getting to be an old hand at this." Magnus said, smiling and brushing her hair out of her face. The wind was getting up.

The rolls of thunder grew louder and more frequent as they went on, distant flashes of lightening could be seen to the South on occasion. John started counting the interval.

"It's one big storm." Kate remarked, when John's count got down to fifteen. It was too dark for her to track now, Henry was fine on his own.

"I am not teleporting anywhere near that thing." Ashley said.

"Probably very wise." John agreed.

By the time John's count had got down to five, it was starting to rain. At a count of three, it was raining hard and lightening flashes lit the sky maybe twice a minute.

"If it gets any wetter I'm gonna lose the scent!" Henry shouted over the thunder.

"We can't teleport now." Ashley shouted back. "Storm's too close."

"Keep trying, Henry." Magnus ordered. He nodded.

"I think it's close, real close."

As Henry turned, his torch beam caught something, something that hadn't been there a minute before, something colossal, something galloping towards them. Henry yelled and dived out of its path. Everyone else opened fire. The abnormal reared and, for a moment, Magnus thought they had it. But it swatted at the stunner blasts as though they were flies, then landed back on all fours. She stood directly before it. There was no cover she could reach that would protect her. However fast she ran, it would run faster. Her only hope was to bring it down before it reached her. She holstered her stunner and drew live, it was already running towards her. Thirty metres. She brought the gun up, twenty, safety off, ten, she shot in to its shoulder, it carried on, it wasn't stopping, she hadn't hit anything important. It was going to crush her. Fire. Pain.

o0o0o0o

Will was firing frantically at the abnormal. It was going to trample Magnus. The stunners weren't doing anything to it. They had to go to live. Lightening lit the sky again and Will saw Magnus throw her stunner aside and reach for her pistol. Druitt was running, but towards the abnormal, not away from it. What?

"Lives!" Ashley roared in to the rain. It wasn't her order to give, it was Magnus's, but Will obeyed. He heard a live shot go of, then saw fire flash in front of the creature. Druitt. Druitt had grabbed Magnus and tried to teleport out. The storm was right on top of them. They could both be dead. But if he hadn't done it, Magnus would have been crushed. That had been suicidaly brave. But Will had known all along that Druitt would take any risk to protect Magnus. The creature staggered and fell on to its side, four people shooting at it now. Ashley sprinted towards its head end.

"Mum!" She turned around. "Mum!"

"She's not here, Ash." Kate shouted through the rain, which was still getting heavier. "Druitt took her. He must have." Ashley tensed.

"She'd be dead if he hadn't Ashley." Will shouted. "We couldn't have brought it down fast enough." Ashley ignored him. He knew she would, she simply could not acknowledge needing Druitt in any capacity. Druitt having saved Magnus, assuming they were alive, was going to make Ashley very angry. Kate walked towards the unmoving abnormal, slowly and from behind.

"It's dead, I think." She called after a moment. "We need to get out of the rain."

"I think I saw a cave a quarter mile back." Henry shouted. Ashley didn't respond. Forked lightening came down somewhere ahead of them.

"Ash, c'mon!" Kate called.

"Magnus wouldn't thank us for putting ourselves in danger when there's nothing we can do!" Will shouted. "You can't teleport now and radios won't work in this." It was still a moment before Ashley nodded and started moving.

Henry's sense of direction was, as usual, perfect, but all four of them were still soaked to the skin by the time they reached the mouth of the cave. Ashley and Kate levelled their stunners again and set about sweeping the perimeter, dripping water everywhere they trod, startling bats once or twice. Will shook his head, feeling weight of the water drag at it.

"I swear I do not get this wet taking a shower." Henry muttered. Will nodded in agreement. He was freezing.

"Nothing else in here right now." Kate called from the far end, starting to walk back towards them, wringing her hair out. "We got lucky."

"Did we?" Ashley asked. No one answered her. Will sat down. Henry and Kate both copied him, Ashley didn't.

"How likely do you think it is that Druitt made it out?" Kate asked after a minute.

"There's no way to know." Henry said. "Druitt has been doing this for a while, maybe you get a feel for it."

"You kinda do." Ashley said. "I feel strong EM fields a little bit now. But if they're OK, where are they? Mum'd have tried to come back and find us."

"Ash, we won't know what happened until the storm clears and we've got radio back." Kate said. "Maybe they just went back to base and they're waiting the storm out."

"But you'd think if they got out, they'd be able to get back." Henry said. Ashley shook her head.

"Not necessarily. Teleporting through EM…" She shook her head. "That's not something I'm ever gonna do again."

"You remember?" Will asked. Ashley nodded.

"Both of us, me and the other mutant, ended up in the same place. I don't know where it was, but it was really cold. We were both injured, really badly, torn open, limbs missing. We didn't feel pain, which was something I guess, but neither of us could teleport and we both knew we needed to kill the other one before they were strong enough to kill us. It felt like it went on for weeks, lying there healing, watching each other, attacking each other, separating, healing again… But I healed faster. It took weeks, it might have been months, but I killed her in the end. Then I went after the Cabal. That's why it took me a while to..." Ashley had been talking at the ground, as though she'd forgotten the rest of them were there. Will glanced around and saw that he wasn't the only one staring at her. That must have been the start of Ashley's truly psychopathic phase, before the schizophrenic stuff had started; voices in her head, social isolation, targeted, remorseless killing…

Ashley shifted, uncomfortable at having revealed so much of a part of herself she guarded so closely.

"Ashley," Will began gently. "The causes for what happened to you are long gone. I know that doesn't change what happened to you, but it does mean that it's over. You're not the same person anymore, that stuff will never hurt you, or anyone else again." For a moment, Ashley didn't reply, then,

"Cut the psycobabble." Just like Magnus. Ashley couldn't accept that she could be helped, she saw that as an admission of weakness. The Magnus women didn't show weakness, wherever Magnus was.

Please review.