'Wolf Seven to Serpent. Acknowledge.'

'Received, Seven. Report.'

'Made contact with four of seven targets.'

'Elaborate.'

'Let's see, one stuck up and unresponsive bitch, one cationic lady, one shellshocked convict and a rather compassionate gal; quite bearable when you compare her to the rest of the shit. She'll die first; bottle of Narx says it right now.'

'Radio discipline, Seven.'

'Yeah, sure.'

'Anything of significance to report?'

'Yes, I need a request. Are we still linked into the courts?'

'More or less.'

'I need a release order, on an asset. /Unknown: Heavy interference: Possible encryption/

'I'll get the line to Callidus.'

'Appreciate it, Serpent.'

'Be advised /Unknown: possible bombardment/ making another advance in /Unknown: heavy interference/ Friendly forces overrun in the third quadrant. Counter attack is imminent.'

'Affirmative, Serpent. Good hunting.'

Audio recording of intercepted wireless transmission between unknown persons. Ordered review of all release orders issued within the past 24 hours, and renewed security measures imposed upon legal databases. Warning issued to Frontline elements.

They found Chris, and to their surprise, Matt, inside the prison.

Given the fact Chris looked as if he were to hit someone, and in fact looked to have already struck Matt at least once, Mike could only presume events had escalated to a boiling point when he, along with Sam, Jessica, and Stig walked in through the front door.

He was nearly incoherent by the time Mike was able to help drag him away from the officer he had previously confronted, who looked as startled as a deer caught in the headlamps, as he attempted to wipe some of the spittle from his eyes.

'Jesus, Chris,' Mike exclaimed, once they were at a safe distance, 'what the hell happened to you?'

'You don't think you can turn your back on me!' he screamed past Mike, at the officer, who had been headed off by Stig in the process before he could produce a pair of handcuffs, 'why the fuck did you do it?'

'Matt, what the hell happened?'

'Not a lot of good,' Matt admitted, before he studied his ally, and realisation dawned on him, 'Oh. Mike. What are you guys doing here?'

'We came to help get Ashley; what're you here for?'

'Guys,' Sam suggested, as she stepped into Chris' sight, replacing the petrified officer he had previously been directing all manner of abuse at, ''maybe we should get him outside before we chat. Come on, Chris.'

'Alright,' he started suddenly, as if the anger had suddenly flushed from his veins as soon as he broke eye contact with the poor man, 'alright, alright, let's, let's just get out of here.'

'Chris, man what the hell got into you?'

'I don't know, man, it just came over me. Have you seen her?'

'Who?'

'Ashley! I mean, goddamn, they...I don't know what the hell they did to her, but whatever it was-'

'And if you know what's good for you, stay out of my sight!'

They jumped at the vehement command that reverberated from the station's doors, and moments later, Stig barged out, with, someone under his arm.

'Ash?'

Chris was right. No one knew what they had done to her. Her right eye was sunken and shy to the light, where some tremendous application of force had closed it up, and similarly dark patterns marked her face. Her lip was split in several places, and even her remaining eye failed to register them, as she gazed onward with a vacant stare.

'Please,' she whispered softly, 'don't put me back there.'

'Ashley?' Chris pleaded with her softly, 'it's okay, no one's going to put you anywhere. My God, what did they do to you?'

'Please, don't leave me alone.'

'Who would have though solitary confinement would work so well in fucking the mind?' Stig mused quietly, as he exhaled the exhaust of the cigarette clasped between his fingers. 'Fucking genius, that's what it is.'

'You think this is a joke?' Mike asked, rising to his feet.

'I'd applaud the thought if we were ignoring the ethical argument,' Stig replied immediately, taking in another rich cloud of the fumes, 'Think about it; lock someone on their own, in the dark, after a night of being hunted by your nightmares. No better way to shut someone up. In their own head.'

They had left the penitentiary in their wake, before Ashley had been unable to progress any further without weighing Chris down as she grew smaller and smaller in his hands, until she had sunk to the ground, sobbing. It had been no easy task to remove her from the street, to get her to a nearby park where they had finally been given a chance to address her wounds.

'Why would they even do this?' Jessica asked in disbelief.

'The esteemed sergeant told me she attacked a visitor; some prick in a suit from Washington. Then, well, she 'fell down' a flight of stairs on her way back to solitary. Which is on the ground floor, mind you.'

'Seriously?' Mike was unable to control that outburst, before he realised that the sarcasm laden in Stig's voice should have already told him of the older man's true attitudes towards the incident.

'Personally? I think she just turned down an offer to, collaborate with government interests.'

'What do you mean?'

'Like it or not, your government seems to be unusually eager to bury everything about the Blackwood Pines incident. Where do you think your old partner got the cash to set the dogs on you? And mind you, her father's position doesn't come cheap. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if someone approached him with the choice to flay a former acquaintance or himself.'

'You mean that was government funded?'

'Who else? And Sam's 'crime' against the Blackwood county is thin. Hell, manslaughter? How did you think the damn case is still afloat?'

They sat in silence as they realised what was being said. That is, Mike and Jessica remained in silence. Chris, Sam, and Matt were a couple of benches away, attempting to soothe a scarred mind. Like all of them, a traumatic evening had left Ashley in desperate need for company. Company she could trust, and company she had been deprived of, when she was not seeing the wrong end of the a baton.

'They're going after you one by one,' he stated bluntly. 'Anyone associated with the incident on that mountain three months ago.'

'But why?'

'I ain't a textbook, Sherlock. But you want my guess, those things might have attracted some, interests, after the war started.'

'War' was certainly a stretch. America was a large continent, and it's West Coast, despite nearly a month of warfare, was relatively unchanged. People still drove about the streets, distracted by music, the media, or the inherent need to persecute someone, all the while heedless of the danger in the distance. Occasionally, someone might catch some atrocity in the newspaper, and exclaim 'how horrible!' before flipping the page to the market, or the sports. It was certainly peculiar, considering the fact America had, for all intents and purposes, been invaded, but that sensation of horror had quickly abated after nearly a week, and the enemy was on the run, back to their stronghold on the West Coast. Their gains had been brief and pathetic when compared to the entire American landmass, and if one ignored the casualties, it might have earned as much attention as a foreign war; a topic to occupy the breakfast conversation.

But it was still difficult to ignore the numbers, for they numbered in the thousands. Three thousand was the latest figure in the most recent offensive, and thousands more wounded; far worse than the collective war of Afghanistan alone. And the number of civilians lost continued to climb.

It was all that was needed for a resurgence in patriotism; a short, bloody war against a despicable foe, with victory an inevitability on the horizon, and recruitment lines for the National Guard, which were being pressed to the frontlines to supplement bloodied regular divisions, ran on for streets at a time.

Of course, the survivors of the Blackwood incident had other concerns besides a marauding army on the opposite side of the continent. And the inevitable triumph only seemed to render it all the more redundant, as peacetime resumed, having never truly left.

'I don't have much experience in mad science,' Stig went on, 'but I'd be damned if someone didn't hear about a bunch of cursed creatures that hunt in the dark and didn't see a weapon in them. And I'm fairly certain the government was thinking along the same lines.'

'You mean,' Mike asked in a stilted manner, 'they're-'

'Trying to catch the psychos? No, someone high up has brains. But as for the enemy; it could be, um, an interesting means to turn the tables, no?'

Understanding dawned, only to be replaced by anxiety. The thought of Wendigos being unleashed as a weapon was a prospect that no one particularly welcomed.

'Army's probably content to keep it a secret,' Stig continued, hardly aware that his cigarette was nearly finished, and close to singeing his fingers, 'but it's a matter of time before someone decides to weaponise your nightmares. If it ain't going to be the enemy, it'll be the army itself. That's why I'll bet my client's interested. This way at least, no one gets their hands on the apocalypse.'

'So what do you want from us?'

Stig contemplated the question for a time, before a wry smile crept across his face. It was not a kind one, Mike thought. It was one tinged by morbid amusement, and sadism.

'To go back there with us, to Blackwood Pines.'

Everyone was alive with protests in the very moment Stig let that crucial piece of detail into the air.

'You've got to be kidding me!' cried Jessica.

'No fucking way!' protested Mike.

Even Matt and Chris added their own assertions, having only heard the phrase 'Blackwood Pines' to know something was amiss. Once they had all been brought up to speed on the matter, those protests only grew in magnitude, as Sam joined in, and Ashley seemed to come close to breaking down at the thought.

'Why can't we just tell you what you need to know?' Sam demanded, always the logical one in the face of despair. 'That was our agreement.'

'We said you'd meet the old man. Call him a skeptic if you will,' Stig rumbled, 'my word, what did he call it? Ah, yes. Insufficient. Like it or not, you're the only ones with any knowledge on what happened up there, or what is awaiting us, and I'm not taking back a second hand report to get beaten over the head with.'

'That's complete horseshit, man,' Chris said, at a far lower volume than his peers, only for Stig to turn his gaze upon him.

'Christopher, right? You're the data monkey of this band, aren't you? Tell me then, ape, do you trust everything you find on the Internet? Because I've seen enough shit on there to break every toilet on this damn planet!'

Chris was lost for words. Despite being taken aback by the primate comparison, there was a degree of truth in that rhetoric. Analyst or not, Chris would be the first to admit that one area his skepticism did not extend to in sufficient depth was in the Internet. Somehow, disbelieving one's eyes always easier than something that someone had taken the time to construct deliberately with their hands, or rather a keyboard.

'I trust people,' Stig went on, 'as does my employer, arse as he can be. I'm not paid to act as a courier, and I'm not paid to have my head separated by a lack of intelligence on the ground. What happens when we find something you conveniently left out in a recording? Ring you up while something uses us to test it's teeth?'

He could see that they were coming around to his line of thought, but that did not mean they were any more convinced, so he played his final card.

'There was another among you, wasn't there? Who didn't come back.'

'Oh God,' Sam whispered.

'Joshua. Washington wasn't it?' As he said the name, he reached into the overcoat, producing a thin sleeve of plastic, before hurling it into Mike's arms.

It was a resealable bag, but within it, there was something red. Like blood had stained the edges of the flexible container as it had traveled down its walls.

'We found that when we were looking for the first team we sent down there.'

'You've already tried to go down there?'

'Why do you think I'm here? If we found out what the hell was going on by ourselves, ya think we'd be talking right now?'

'What is this?' Mike asked, hefting the bag up to his eye, although the query was tinged by a hint of unease, as if he had already come to suspect it's contents.

'Forensic residue,' Stig replied, 'found it on the ground beside some empty shell casings belonging to the lead team. DNA matches that of Joshua Washington.'

'You're not saying-' Chris broke off, unable to finish the sentence, as his mouth moved in the air without producing a sound, like a fish gasping for life, out of water.

'Your friend is still up there. I'm giving you a chance to bring him home.' He paused, letting the message sink in, before he looked down, and realised the cigarette, now only a butt, had fallen from his gloved hands on it's own accord. Irritated, he turned away, stalking back into the night as he provided a final offer.

'I leave in the morning. The choice is yours.'