The Kryptonite job – Chapter 8

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Splash, squeak. Splash, squeak.

Eliot counted their steps behind him. It felt like the sounds echoed through the hills, drawing every living being towards them. He knew that wasn't the case. It was only his strained nerves reacting on every impulse.

Both Florence and Sterling had stepped into that creek where they'd been hiding. Their shoes were already soaked, so he'd decided to use it, and continue through the water that would cover their tracks. If one Korean had noticed their steps on the frost- covered grass, the others would too.

"This creek will lead us to Stickney Brook," he said to the two shadows behind him.

"What the hell is Stickney Brook?" Sterling said.

"The thin blue line on Florence's map. The creek connecting Sunset Lake and the Connecticut River."

"Marvelous. What about it?"

"There are several cottages on the lake. They are probably full only on weekends, but even now there'll be at least one with a land line, and a car."

Splash, squeak. Splash, squeak.

So, that was how Sterling's thinking really sounded.

He couldn't hear Flo behind them. If there weren't occasional thumps of her club, which she used as a walking stick on slick stones, he wouldn't know if she was there or not.

He'd had trouble filing her under Finished even when she had been in another hemisphere. Now, only ten steps away, it was impossible. All his senses were turned back, to her, instead of to the full circle around him.

That shit had to stop; they were heading into more open terrain before they reached the hills again, and he had to concentrate. The banks on either side weren't as good a cover as they'd were when they started. Every hundred yards the banks grew lower, and soon they'd be level with the terrain, leaving the three of them exposed again. He needed to hurry, but his pace was already too fast for an exhausted woman and a wounded man.

He could continue this way for three more days; his mind was set on survival mode, conserving the amount of strength he needed for walking. And he needed every ounce of it to lock the pain down. The fight with the last Korean almost depleted all of his reserves. He'd been damn close to going down – in the end, only one hit decided which one of them would stay on the ground. The Koreans were trained to kill and incapacitate; they weren't just blindly pummeling their opponents. Every hit he received damaged his joints, tendons, muscles. He was slower. Every move hurt. He took inventory while walking, searching for broken bones and internal injuries, but he was lucky. At least for now. A third encounter might finish differently, and that set a slow, creeping dread in his mind. The moment he went down, Flo and Sterling were dead.

He gritted his teeth and hurried.

He kept twenty feet of distance between him and the two of them, and the pale moonlight wasn't strong enough to let him see how they really coped without any rest. One thing he could see, though. Every time he turned around to check on them, she avoided his eyes, lowering her gaze to the water.

He stopped turning around.

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The first bullet hit the bank only one foot from his elbow, and Eliot ducked.

"Stay there!" His warning wasn't needed – Sterling caught Florence and held her down, below the edge of the bank.

Two more bullets whizzed above his head, and Eliot heard shouts. The shooter was on their right, in a thicket. Not an expert, not alone, and not in experienced company.

Eliot ran thirty yards away from Flo and Sterling, and bullets followed him. He ducked again, below the edge of the bank, when the shooter caught up with his steps. "Wave to them just in case! You're hostages. Show them you're glad they're here!"

Sterling obeyed. Eliot moved a few yards farther away, just to show the entire group that he was the bad guy they were searching for. "I'll draw them away – you continue up the stream. If they stop you, stay with them. These are not cops. I'll return to get you out before the cops come."

"How do you know these are locals and not cops?" Sterling asked from the ravine.

Sure, now was the time for chit-chat. He cursed the bastard inwardly, as three more bullets plowed the bank above his head. "It's a Remington Sendero SF II, Beanfield Sniper – it's a very distinctive sound. Best deer gun for long, accurate shots."

"Bullshit. You can't possibly – What if there's only one local in a group of cops? Sprinkled with three Koreans on top?"

"The cops would never reveal their positions by shouting all over the thickets."

"Even better – one local hillbilly, and four Koreans who are shouting to deceive us?"

Or maybe he could go back and kill the Interpol bastard first, before he drew the others away from Florence. "The Koreans wouldn't join a group of locals," he said. He peered over the bank, careful not to disturb any branches. The shouts were closer, and now he could see shapes running towards the stream. No time for chatting. "You're the smart one, figure out why." With that, he surged up and sprinted across the open field, counting seconds. After three, he changed direction. A bullet whizzed close. The Sendero was a heavy rifle, and a shooter needed a good stand for support. A target going quickly to the left or right would add a second to readjusting the aim. If the shooter had a scope, it was one more second for searching for him again, after he turned.

The field wasn't that big, and only four shots followed him before he reached the bushes on the other end and plunged face first into the leaves under them. The bullets sprayed the trees above him, blindly searching, and he stayed down.

A pause showed him that the shooter thought he was either dead or that already at the other end of the woods. Either way, the shooter would join the others.

He got up. Nothing happened.

He turned right, making a circle, and went back.

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"Horrible, horrible, I say!" Sterling held his hand on his heart while speaking with the three guys that gathered around them. Florence couldn't not think that his show was a little exaggerated. "You don't have a signal either? Bloody shame. Can you tell me where the nearest group of cops is? No?"

She rubbed her forehead with both palms. As a hostage saved from deadly danger, she sat on a rock, her elbows on her knees, pretending to be shocked and overwhelmed with gratitude. Just for a moment, she covered her ears to silence Sterling's voice and the gunshots, which brought much needed calm. But not for long; she had to hear what was going on.

"And yes, I insist – you have to proceed after him, that'll be the best help. I saw him staggering; he is hit, and if you press now, you will be the ones who caught the killer. We'll be safe here and wait for your return. Leave us a first aid kit, and that bottle this fine young man is carrying. The lady is in shock. That will warm her up."

She couldn't stop the trembling waves that came up from her wet feet, freezing her whole.

The men cleared out.

"I bet you miss your blanket now." Sterling's voice sounded normal now. He stood over her, watching her slumped on the rock. Even thinking about straightening up was exhausting – just like the surge of hate that rushed through her when she looked at his half-smiling face.

"I miss my chair," she said.

I miss our yesterday.

And worst of all, this wasn't entirely his fault. Hating him was so much easier than admitting that all three of them had brought this upon them. She was the one he'd used; she was the reason Eliot was stuck here, instead of already far away. And Eliot…she couldn't even start on all the shit in his life that he'd dragged after him.

It was foolish to think they could've made it, to hope their love stood a chance.

"We have to go," Sterling said. He handed her a small package and a bottle that the guys had left. She put them in her backpack. He looked as if he wanted to say something more, but changed his mind and looked away. Good. She didn't want him to see the angry tears that filled her eyes.

Freezing water bit at her ankles again when she stood up. She needed a distraction from the hate, from listening to the chase, from the cold and the shaking, so she asked, "Why did he say that the Koreans wouldn't join the locals, but only the police?"

Sterling gallantly let her pass before him. "The answer is in the question: why did they join any group at all? They'd split up. It seems illogical, doesn't it? If they'd stayed together and found us, Spencer wouldn't last five seconds."

"Answer, Sterling. You really like the sound of your voice." And while saying that, she realized he needed the distraction more than she did. He had a hole in his shoulder, and he was maybe more chilled than she was because of the blood loss.

"Phones with no signal," he said. "Only the police have radios and communication sets. A few of the Koreans joined the police groups to have the reports of our position first-hand; the rest of them probably hunt alone or in one group."

The memory of a silent silhouette on their trail sent a shiver through her, but she concentrated on the stream and protruding stones. She still had the shoes she'd worn at the Convention. Comfortable with low heels, good for a full day of standing and sitting – but not so good for muddy forest paths and creeks. Wet leather gnawed at her skin. She would leave a blood trail behind her very soon.

They walked in silence for five minutes. She listened to every sound, trying to hear where Eliot was. No sound was a good sign. If he got caught or killed, they would be calling and cheering, right? Or not, she answered herself. He could have been hit while evading bullets and be lying somewhere, without any help. The damn creek mocked her desperation, murmuring nonsense around her feet; it covered the distant sounds.

They were far away from the flickering flashlights in pursuit. If Eliot was drawing them away, he was doing a good job. In another five minutes the lights were swallowed by the forest at the other end of the valley and disappeared completely.

But so did their creek. It didn't stop, but the banks leveled with the terrain, and the creek rushed under a thick, impenetrable mess of low trees and thorny bushes. No way could they go under that.

"We'll have to go around this thicket and find where water comes out," Sterling said.

She turned around to the waste land around them. "We can't leave the creek. He won't be able to find us."

Sterling said nothing. He took a few steps to the side, to the first tree, and sat there. She almost growled at him to get up, but bit her lip on time. That sitting down looked more like a stopped fall. Sitting by him would give her a few precious minutes to catch her breath.

She found a half-rotten log and carefully sat. "You could've stayed with the rescue party," she said. "What would've happen if you had?"

"They would have carried me back," he said. She was right – his voice was weak, almost a whisper. "Or call the paramedics with a stretcher, in the middle of this. Both would take time. We would meet other groups, some of them with the Koreans. Or my agents who might be working with them like Denise was. Either way, I would be dead before we reach civilization again – and maybe that entire group, too. The same goes for you." He closed his eyes and leaned his head against the tree. "I would trust only Maddox," he continued after a few moments of silence. "But I wouldn't trust his ability to protect us from killers – not from the Koreans. They would find a way."

But he trusted Eliot, she realized. This was some strange sort of trust.

Maybe it was the moonlight that gave that ghostly nuance to his skin. She was close enough to see how hard he shivered. She wore Eliot's jacket, and a huge cop's jacket over that, and she was frozen; Sterling, only in a shirt and suit jacket, must've been hypothermic by now.

Her hatred crawled into the back of her mind, and she sighed. "Take off that suit," she said, taking her backpack.

"Why?"

"From now on, first do what I say, then ask questions." She slid of the backpack, suppressing a bitter smile at the memory her words brought. He huffed something under his breath, but, clearly too weak to argue, did what she said.

She had two more t-shirts in there. Both red. One with the Japanese character for 'wolf'. Her fingers caressed it for a second. No, no way she would give him the first t-shirt she'd bought for Eliot. And probably the last.

She took the other one, which had a different Japanese character on the front. "Put this over your shirt. When you button your jacket, one more layer will keep the warmth better."

He eyed both t-shirts and flinched. "Can I have the other one?"

"No, you can't; that one is Eliot's. Why?"

"Yeah, Sterling, tell her why."

She almost dropped both t-shirts in the mud when she heard Eliot's voice behind them. He stepped from the bushes closer to them; no holes in his shirt, no blood, but no smile either. At least not for her. When he looked at Sterling he smirked.

"It isn't a real word," Sterling said. "Japanese doesn't define-"

Eliot's smirk grew evil. "It isn't ookami, it's mesu ookami."

"Who would put that on a t-shirt? It's used only for veterinarian purposes!"

"Keep telling yourself that."

She watched that quick exchange, not following it, but she said, "You're arguing about the t-shirt? Now? What's wrong with you?"

Eliot waved his hand to his shirt. "Mine says wolf – his has a kanji for bitch. She-wolf."

Sterling's voice grew stronger. "As I said, the Japanese language doesn't define gender for animals … What the hell, think what you want." He put the shirt over his head, fighting with it with only one hand.

She shook her head and decided to say nothing. This half-mocking smirk was the closest thing to a smile that had showed on Eliot's face for a long time, and she wanted it to last.

Yet, the moment she thought that, he looked at her and it faded. "Give me the map and all flashlights I gave you," he said.

He had taken three flashlights from the first group he fought. He took two from her and handed one to Sterling, keeping the third for himself. "Keep 'em ready. You'll need 'em. We're changing direction." He opened a map and covered the bulb with his hand. A diffuse light was enough for them to see letters. "When this group reports to Maddox, he will have our second confirmed position."

"The second?" Sterling asked.

"You were out through the first encounter with the cops and the first Korean. I dealt with all of them, hence the map and the flashlights. Here and here. " Eliot touched the map two times and then drew a straight line through both dots with his finger. "Maddox will send all the cops to this line, anticipating our direction. If we continue north, they will wait for us. We're taking a sharp turn west, directly to the lake."

"Why flashlights?" said Sterling.

"Rough terrain."

"How long?"

"Three hours at least."

Florence raised her hand, and both men turned to her. "That lake," she said. "That will end this? You'll get us a car, and we'll first put some distance between us and the chase, and then go our separate ways?" It took one hell of an effort to say it with a casual note in her voice. She kept her gaze on Eliot, pretending she didn't see his face slowly freezing. "The Koreans don't know where to find you, and as soon as you're gone, and far away from this weasel who brought them with him, they'll give up." She spared one glance at Sterling now, but it seemed his attention – and a whole lot of it – was directed at Eliot, not her.

The silence that fell after her words felt heavy.

Eliot was the first to break it. "There might not be a car," he said slowly. "We'll talk about everything when we get there and see."

That wasn't the answer to her question; that was evading it. He diverted his eyes from her and she knew he was hiding something. Sterling's narrowed eyes lay heavy on him, as if the agent was waiting for something. Whatever Eliot was hiding from her, Sterling either knew or guessed.

She took one deep breath and exhaled it slowly. "Eliot," she said. "I'm not stup-"

He got up. "We have to go." His voice sounded tired, tired and rough. "Follow me." He started, not waiting to see if they would follow, and she pushed the map into the backpack and jumped to her feet. Sterling was busy buttoning his jacket – or he just kept his head lowered so she wouldn't ask him anything.

"Florence," Sterling called.

She stopped.

"When we reach a place with a signal," he said, "you have to tell him to call Nate. We have no means to deal with the Koreans here, alone. We need help, and I can't trust my team."

"So you can have them all, not only Eliot?"

"You don't know why I was searching for Nate, do you?"

"Eliot knows better than me whether it's safe to call Nate or not, and not only because of the Koreans, but also because of you. It's his decision."

He looked beside her to the darkness where Eliot had disappeared, and lowered his voice. "Spencer is irrational and distraught right now, and we both know why. His decisions might not be the right ones. You won't tell him you played him so he could escape?"

"No, and if you even think of-"

"I won't. But I can tell you one thing: he won't win the next fight with the Koreans. They'll get him, and he will be taken who knows where. And then, when there'll be nothing left to do, you'll be sorry you didn't call Nate when there was still enough time for something to be done."

The snake had recovered – but this time his whispers resonated with her fears. Whatever his motives were, he was right. She was thinking the same – they needed Nate and the team here.

"What is he hiding from me, Sterling?" she asked.

"Whatever it is, it's his decision. And you trust his decisions, as you said. Keep trusting him, and see where it will take you."

Sterling didn't wait for her response; he passed by her and followed Eliot into the darkness.

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If there was one damn thing Sterling didn't expect, it was being caught in the middle of a melodramatic love story with Eliot Spencer as a tragic hero. He cursed his bad luck silently. Annoyance with that shit was helping, though, keeping his mind away from the hole in his shoulder and the lightheadedness that attacked in waves. He couldn't allow himself to faint again; he had to stay awake, present, controlling the situation. Those two were so deeply involved in their love drama that he seriously doubted either of them paid any attention to the cruel facts of this shit.

He could deal with all kinds of shit, but he needed to be in it, actively, not carried as a bag over Spencer's shoulder, unconscious and unaware of surroundings.

He was pretty surprised when he realized that he trusted Spencer to get him out of this and not leave him in some ditch with a broken neck – that thought actually crossed his mind only when he dismissed it. Spencer was many things, but he wasn't dishonest. One more death wouldn't mean a lot, knowing his record, but Sterling remembered that he hadn't seen the man kill anybody in those few encounters he'd had with the Leverage team. Maybe that was just an exception to the rule. Maybe it hadn't been needed then.

He reminded himself to press Florence again. He watched her TV show; she wasn't stupid. However, it seemed she had only two modes of operating: tragic sorrow when she watched Spencer, which she thought nobody noticed, and fierce snarkiness – with traces of tragic sorrow – when she was talking to Sterling, the man she blamed for her decisions.

He stumbled. His annoyance with them didn't help in guessing the secure spots to put his feet on. They used the moonlight for now; it wasn't yet time for flashlights. He was falling behind. Too slow.

They both noticed when he almost fell, and they turned to wait for him.

"I'm okay," he snarled at the two silent figures. They just stood there, separated by ten feet of empty space. She clutched her jacket and Spencer stood stiff; they looked in opposite directions, yet when he stepped between them it felt like ripping a shroud of accumulated tension.

He stopped, and looked left, then right. "What an adorable couple you two are." He gloated for a second when they flinched. "When you're happy, I am happy, too." He would have added more, but Spencer slowly tilted his head – and the difference between snarkiness and suicide suddenly blurred. He walked away; the level of discomfort behind him rose ten notches.

Next time they stopped to rest, he would talk about the situation, the plan, logic, logistics – because that was the main plot here, not their soap opera.

Yet, there was one thing that surprised him. When looking at this woman, the Eliot Spencer from his file, the cold muscle with psychopathic tendencies, seemed almost… human.

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Midnight in Portland wasn't Hardison's usual time for sleeping, but he wanted this day to end. Tomorrow, which was Wednesday, promised to be a busy day from the very beginning. He had arranged the first oca delivery as early as he could, just in case.

Switching the days' menus was only a Band-Aid – tomorrow they had to have that damn oca menu ready. If everything went as planned, by six a.m. he would have enough oca for the entire day. Four large boxes could feed half of Portland.

He was just one minute and three steps from joining Parker in the bed, but…there was one more thing he had to check before he went to sleep. He had set a warning to show on his computer in the apartment above the office and brewery. The moment Eliot's phone went online, he would know.

Nate hadn't seemed happy because his hitter was out of reach, but Hardison secretly – and not so secretly – approved. God knew Eliot needed that time without the supervision of the control freak who needed to know everything. Nate would live. Nate would also, if this thing between Eliot and Florence worked, learn to accept it as something normal.

He decided to take a look at his workstations in the office, just in case, to see if a notification of Eliot's status had gotten stuck there amongst all his search results. His algorithms were complicated, and sometimes his own firewalls, specially designed to keep everyone out of his business, could mess up the priorities of the reports.

Parker was sleeping when he silently sneaked out and went downstairs.

He pulled all automatic searches up on the screens and went to check George's dehumidifier. Eliot had set it on high and George looked happy, flexing his shiny leaves just like a human would stretch on a sunny beach.

When he turned to the screen again, to the dozens of Matrix-like streams of data, he momentarily saw that Eliot's line was still red. Nothing surprising; it was about three a.m. Boston time, and if he hadn't turned his phone on before, he wouldn't do it now.

Hardison wasn't worried. Yet Nate's attention to that matter gnawed at him just a little, so he didn't shut everything down and go to sleep. He sat at the working table and zoomed in on all reports that flashed red. Nothing was urgent; all warnings were a low priority, so he scrolled through all the red dots that showed activities of useful people, useful news, code words and key phrases. He had numerous web crawlers scattered all around the internet, reporting anything suspicious.

Everything seemed just fine.

He changed the filter level, to take a look at more results with even lower levels of priority, and this time he didn't set it on scroll; he spread them on the screens and zoomed out, until the screen showed thousands of tiny reports in green.

He squinted at the sea of green that blurred in front of him – the sea of green with tiny, tiny clusters of red.

One move of his hand, and the green disappeared and only red remained, now in full size.

And there it was – a strange, screaming peak in activity on Kim Leske's Facebook page.

It wouldn't be strange if she was a real person and a friend or a relative checked her photos and posts, but she was created only yesterday. Also, nobody had clicked on her pictures of her grandchildren, the books she read, or her crocheting. No, only her posts and pictures about her new cottage were viewed.

He had tagged all the photos he posted on her wall and set up the traps, and now he followed their visitors back to the source.

It didn't take long - not for him - to see which organization had poked at his masterpiece.

He sighed and grabbed the phone. "Nate, we have a situation."

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As dawn drew closer, the weather changed; clouds started to gather faster, and Eliot had to force them all into a faster pace before the moonlight vanished completely. It wasn't yet safe to use the flashlights. They still hadn't reached the deepest part of the forest that would hide their treacherous lights. But without the moon, they would slowly stumble in the darkness, losing too much time.

"We'll rest when we reach that black line," he said, pointing to the shadow at the end of the row of low hills that spread in front of them. "The lake is behind that forest." He didn't expect an answer. Florence was breathless and staggering, and Sterling was half-dead on his feet.

He felt pretty much the same, but he knew what he was doing. If daylight caught them in the open, they were dead. He led them up the hill, following a darker line of trees. A not-so-recent forest fire left a scar in the bushes. The ground was still dark, and the many dead trees gave them good cover. No hoarfrost here.

Yet, they weren't the only ones who thought that using the remains of the forest fire would be a good idea. The flashlights from an incoming group danced in a thicket on their right side, and Florence and Sterling weren't able to run.

He eyed the distance and decided the best way to approach them. "You two take cover, and stay in the darkest part while-"

"Right, slamming into people is your first response to everything," Sterling said. "How about using some brains?"

"How about moving your sorry ass to cover, now?"

Sterling pulled out his flashlight before Eliot could stop him and pointed it directly into his eyes for one second. "What the fuck-" He made one step towards the agent, but damage was done.

"Hey, you!" Sterling's voice rose; he waved with his light towards the group. "Is Robert with ya? Robert Wyle?" His accent had changed into a dreadful interpretation of how British people thought Americans sounded. "There's a text message from his mother. A guy in the group behind us has it."

"Are you nuts?" A half-hissed response came from the thicket. "We are in a chase, you idiot! Stop shouting!"

"Geez, okay, no need to get nasty. We just checked this part, and we're going left. This part is clear. You should go back a little and then take the course to the right, if you want to find anything."

"Of course it's clear – now, after your yelling." The voice became quieter. "I told Maddox that calling the locals in would be a mistake." Their lights turned to the right, going away from them.

"And if you see Robert, tell him to call his mother!" Sterling yelled after them. He continued to wave his lamp, as if still searching and walking.

Eliot crossed his arms – okay, stopped halfway there because the movement pulled every hurt joint that the Koreans had so precisely aimed at – and waited for the bastard to stop waving. In the pale light, Sterling's smirk scraped over his last remaining, relatively sane nerve.

"See? Of course, if you want, you can still catch up with them and bust some heads."

"Do that again, and I'll break you in half, wound or no wound."

"Seriously, Spencer, you ought to-"

Eliot glanced at Florence, who stood silently, leaning on a tree. "Those were cops, so there was a chance a Korean was with them." He managed to sound normal, for her. "I know what I'm doing. If I attacked them, it would be under my conditions. Now I can expect an eventual attack if he decides to check on us – this time it's his move, not mine - and that means we have to change our course again, to put some distance between us. Sterling, the two Koreans I fought were better than Quinn."

That silenced the agent for a moment. "That is…not good."

"No, it ain't. I can continue, but it would be extremely helpful if the next fight could be on my conditions."

"What, you plan to deal with this with by simply taking down one Korean after another? Quinn's report was thorough, and I know how close you were to going down. After the fight with him, you had a concussion and two broken ribs. If they are better than he was, and you still have eight of them to fight… That's bollocks. We both know how long you will last. Avoiding, deceiving, and staying the hell out of their way is the only way to live through this, not running through the forest hoping you'll bump into them!"

"That's your plan? Running through the forest hoping you won't bump into them?"

"Spencer, the key word here is forest. All plans should wait until we're out of this."

"And that's the first thing we disagree on."

Sterling finally put the flashlight away and took a step back. No, it wasn't a step back – he swayed and stopped the fall. "We are outnumbered and surrounded." His voice, though, didn't lose the snarl.

"No, they think we are outnumbered and surrounded, and while it lasts, I can do a few useful things – like, let's say, getting rid of them one by one."

"You're going down the next time."

"And that leaves you only seven Koreans to deal with in your genius, non-existent, out-of-forest plan, so don't whine." He looked at Florence again, not really wanting to, but her silence was disturbing. She was slumped by the tree. He couldn't tell what she thought about this. "Now, start walking. We'll make a detour, and return to our path when I'm sure they are far away."

Sterling looked like he was about to add something, but instead he waved his good hand and gave up.

Eliot let him go first. It was clear, from every shaky step, that this conversation had spent a lot of his strength. After only a few yards, his pace faltered. Florence also barely put one foot in front another. He passed by them. "We can go a little slower in the beginning," he said, though everything in him screamed to hurry. But pushing them too hard would only result in more stopping.

He led them to the left, northbound, slowly, before he turned to the west and sped up again.

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"Eliot!" Florence's alarmed whisper stopped him short. He turned around in time to see Sterling hitting the ground, hard. Florence was too slow to stop him; the agent slid a few feet down a muddy slope. A fallen tree with a crown of roots in the air stopped him.

"Stay there, I'll get him." He returned a few steps and dragged Sterling up to rest his back against the tree trunk. A quick check of his bandages showed him that the bleeding hadn't completely stopped. Sterling was tougher than he thought, walking with two holes without any rest.

"I have a first-aid kit." Florence handed him a small package, but he hesitated. In the long term, it would be wise to lose a few minutes now, if it would mean Sterling would be mobile, but this wasn't either the time or the place for messing with those wounds. There was too much mud and rotten things around and on his hands; tetanus was the clear and present danger here. The whiskey bottle that followed from her backpack wasn't enough. He almost told her that alcohol as antiseptic was a lousy cliché. Almost.

"I'll only wrap bandages over the patches of t-shirt and tape he already has, to keep it tight and in place." He was busy with Sterling's shirt while saying that, so her silence probably meant she only nodded as a response. He didn't look up to check.

He worked as fast as he could. She turned on a flashlight, directing a narrow beam of light at Sterling's shoulder. The beam trembled.

"Do you have anything more to wear in that backpack?" he asked when he finished with the last piece of bandage.

The light jumped up. "Uhm. No."

He let it go and concentrated on Sterling's jacket, trying to find an irony in the fact that he was dressing him – but even that couldn't divert him from her presence. She stood above him, only one step away, and everything was full of her.

The backpack was on the ground by his knees; he took it before she could stop him. And he immediately regretted it. She had packed a couple of sandwiches in it – and their afternoon in the kitchen flashed before his eyes. The red shirt; the elephant hat. The hat was the last thing he needed to see – and remember.

"You should put the hat on, you're freezing." He managed to say that with the same tone he would use when asking her to turn off the flashlight. Of course he knew why she hadn't done it already.

"No, I'm okay." A small hand – and white, cold fingers – darted to the backpack and took the hat. "He needs it more than I do." She put the hat on Sterling's head and tied it.

And he couldn't think of anything to say on that.

He didn't know how to talk to her anymore. Everything except short directions was too personal; every word evoked something from previous days. Hell, who was he kidding? He didn't need words to return him there.

Kneeling in the mud and avoiding raising his head to see her seemed to be a good tactic in the beginning. It surely dulled his need to take her in his arms, a need so strong that it made him forget the pain and weakness – but every moment of this silence was harder to endure. There was only the two of them. They simply stood, not moving, not talking.

Very soon, he would have to talk to her, and tell her everything that was waiting for her. The creeping dread grew until he couldn't take it anymore.

He jumped to his feet and picked up the unconscious man, paying no attention to the pain that every move shot through his arms and chest.

He could only hope that he would have enough blind rage to fuel him to the lake.

.

.

.

.

The rest of their trip drifted by her in a fog. Deep down Florence knew it didn't last more than an hour, but Eliot set an insane pace. She had to almost run to catch up. She had no breath to cry.

Her spleen sent stabbing pain through her side after the first climb, and it hadn't stopped since. The club she carried became a crutch that held her upright.

Every step was a sharp pain; her feet were in agony, and her strained muscles throbbed. Never before had she lived through something like this crazy race; the madman before her was blind to everything except the next step. She could feel his fixation on the black line of tall trees where they were heading, a line that grew before them faster than she could have imagined. All her strength was spent by simply putting one foot before the other, and she was numb, and desperate, and just a little more conscious than the man he carried.

The sky went greyish, and the distant flashlights in pursuit faded.

She fell three times. Eliot didn't notice, didn't stop to wait for her, and that terrified her. And she could only hope that his rage would burn out in this struggle, before they reached their finish line, or at least it would turn to her, its main source. She would welcome his anger and pain, if only it meant he would calm down before he had to do anything.

They reached the forest when the sky was dangerously light. Eliot didn't stop when the thick roof above them hid them, and her last hope, that he hurried just because he wanted to reach this cover before the dawn, slowly faded. No, this was a destruction spree and she had seen it before, in Nate's apartment in Boston. That time he smashed the window with his bare hand, until the glass was in small shards. Now he had nothing to fight, nothing to release the accumulated rage – and she saw no calming.

They were hidden now, and darkness was once again engulfing her. Eliot was just a blurred dark shape amongst the others, and the tears didn't help in clearing her vision. Following him became impossible.

Right at the moment she thought she would give up, she almost stumbled on him.

He had laid Sterling down, and he knelt beside him, in the same position he had when he'd fought Jonas. That Korean had been a trouble. But this time Eliot looked more wasted; he could barely breathe.

Her legs shook. She trotted towards them and dropped in the mud. The last time Sophie was there to calm him down and help him. She wasn't Sophie. Her breaths came out in ragged sobs, and that sound pulled his head up. His eyes locked on her, fierce, in silent agony.

"Are we- are we there yet?" she managed to utter a few words. He waved his head to their left; he wasn't able to speak. She followed his gaze, and yes, there was something lighter in the trees, at their level. Too low to be the sky. The lake. Only a hundred yards away.

A moan and a movement broke her gaze. Sterling opened his eyes. One more who couldn't speak; he drifted in and out, clearly trying to stay awake.

She was too stunned to feel despair, but now, watching them all there in the mud, the reality hit her hard. Their situation was hopeless. Eliot was running on fumes. This last push, carrying Sterling, crushed him completely, and she, too, was a useless burden.

"If I were there…" Sterling's whisper was barely audible. "I would set a trap around those houses."

"Yeah, me too." Eliot's voice wasn't any louder. "That's why I'm goin' there."

She caught her breath. And he still hadn't found anything that would disperse this accumulated violence brewing in him; he would go there and fight blindly, and- Her fear grew into panic. She had no way of stopping him, and her mind whirled in a desperate search for something, anything that would erase this suicidal edge from his eyes. The Koreans weren't windows he could smash; he was dead tired, and hurt, and slow…

He looked at her directly now. "Before I go, I have to tell you something."

No, don't, please don't. "Are they really that good? The Koreans?" She blurted out the first thing she thought. If he had to stop to think, maybe that would slow down this spiral.

"Yeah, they are. Look, Florence…"

"And all of them are as good as you? Or only some of them? Is there a chance the next would be easier to deal with, or the opposite?" Think. Remember who you are fighting. Remember your odds.

His eyes didn't stray from her, but the fire in them burned the same. "It's the same training, the same skill, the only difference is…" He looked at the lake and narrowed his eyes. She counted seconds. Even Sterling withdrew; awake, but clever enough not to interrupt this. "The only difference is that they are good in taking people down," Eliot finally said. "I'm good at getting up." He turned his head again to her. "And that means nothing. Because I can't get you out of this."

This was too fast for her sluggish thoughts. One moment she tried to remind him that he wasn't indestructible, and the next he was sliding into defeat. She blinked, and her mind stopped working for a second.

"What?" she whispered.

"If I don't return, you have to know… you can't go back to Boston. The North Koreans know about you, and that information is now on the market. Even if we deal with this here, you're compromised, and the target for every enemy, every bounty hunter, every…" His voice broke; he stopped and took a long breath. "Your life, and your career, are ruined. No more Florence McCoy. We'll have to make a new identity for you, far away from the TV business, more secret than any witness protection program."

She slowly lowered herself and sat in the mud, still staring at him. It was strange how she heard pain bleeding into his words, while her own feelings were dulled. She felt nothing.

A strange sound broke the silence after his words; a frog from the lake.

This was surreal. This last blow caught her unprepared, and added a final shock to the line of earthquakes that shook her core, her life. When she opened her mouth to ask him about her series – her life project – no sound came out. He had already answered her question.

He shouldn't have told her that now. She was so exhausted she wanted to curl up in the mud and cry from the sheer weakness. Exhausted and miserable; one more shock was too much.

"Later," she whispered finally. She needed time to drag herself from this dullness, to think about this.

"No time for…"

"Stop!" The word escaped in a cry. "Just stop talking – I don't want to hear any-"

"You have to! If I don't return, you'll have to know what to do." His hand gripped her shoulder, straightening her up, forcing her to look at him.

If he doesn't return? She slammed his hand away, in a desperate refusal of his words, of his strained eyes, of his regret, of his… of everything. The tears erupted, and she didn't want him to see her cry. "Just stop talking," she whispered. Nothing else came to her mind. She backed away, slid on the mud, and brought her knees up. If she curled into a ball, everything would just bounce off of her – she put her forehead on her knees and protected her head with her arms. Silence and darkness, that's what she needed to function again. Just fifteen seconds, to shut her brain down, and restart it, and she would be able to talk to him.

But when she raised her head, only darkness was before her.

He was gone.

.