When Hoskins awoke among the wet grasses, he felt a strange sensation in his mouth.
A part of it was numb and tingling.

As he raised his hand to his face, he felt some swollen flesh but to the touch, the sensation was not painful and he realized that the flesh was not his. A leech.
Fixed to his lips, sucking his blood, it was almost in his mouth.

With a grunt of disgust, he tore it off and threw it away. Some warm blood flowed in his mouth. He got up quickly and in the light of his flashlight, he scanned the rest of his body.

He saw another leech one his forearm and tore it off too, leaving a dark red mark on his skin.
The damp hollows such as those where he had tumbled down were infested with them.
There were surely others, that had slipped under his clothes, looking for dark and warm places...

Intending to check for other leech only once he will be back in a safe place, Hoskins looked up towards the top of the slope.
In the middle of the ash fall, he managed to distinguish the headlights of the tipped hummer, still pointing towards the ink sky.

Aside from the eruption's rumble that became usual, there was not the slightest sound, not even those of the shantungosaurs treading the grass.

He pointed the beam of his flashlight behind the wrecked vehicle and was relieved to see that the hadrosaurs were gone.

He then looked around him, by reflex and as if to reassure himself.
Behind him, beyond the bushes in the damp hollow, was the edge of the wood that they had crossed when they drove from the east and which stretched between the safari village and the central fields.

Before heading south, he intended to go to the hummer in order to find a weapon or any other useful item and to see if Bucephalus had left survivors. However, when he started to climb the slope, he began to hear the roar of a two-wheelers' engine.

Not knowing who it was, Hoskins turned around and preferred to hide behind a tree at the edge of the wood where he turned off his flashlight.

He saw two motorcycles arrive from the village. They stopped only a few meters from the hummer.

The bikers dismounted and weapons in hand, they approached the vehicle and scanned the surrounding area with alert moves.
Hoskins immediately saw that they were neither keepers, J-SEC officers, nor even mercenaries he hired since the outfit the bikers wore consisted in a dark grey-green uniform covered with a breastplate and a helmet with cheek pieces and a spectacle guard that protected a large part of the face, which was hidden behind a balaclava under eye-level. Night-vision goggles allowed the bikers to see in the dark.
Grey guards, tasked with finding the InGen Secuirty's hummer which had disappeared in the Reserve.
Even tough Hoskins was not surprised by their presence, as his capture could prove very useful for the insurgents, he couldn't help but to feel vulnerable at that moment.

One of the guards put a radio near his mouth and described the scene, not in English but in Russian.
A woman's voice, that of Nataliya Darbinian, spoke to the guard, also in Russian.
In their conversation, he heard her ask about his whereabouts, to which the biker answered negatively, as he didn't saw his body.

The other biker, Russian as well or at least someone who could speak Russian, hailed his companion, pointing with his head to the fading tracks that Hoskins had left when he tumbled down the slope.
The first informed Darbinian of this discovery and the two started to follow the tracks.

The fear of being discovered seized Hoskins.
As he couldn't stay there, he had to shook off the guards at all costs.

Remembering his experience in the Special Forces, he decided to go deeper in the woods, trying to follow the direction of the south, as quietly as possible and progressing in total darkness, touching the elements of his surrounding environment like a blind man.

But seeing that the tracks stopped in the hollow, as Hoskins had covered them by passing where there was still some water, the bikers stopped and looked at the wood, not without apprehension. They didn't wanted to venture there alone.

While they hesitated to track down Hoskins, their radio made noise and this time it was Brunet who spoke to them, in English, ordering them to join him in the east, on the slopes of the Misty Mounts.

They obeyed and climbed back on their motorcycles, driving along the road that the hummer had taken earlier.