Any semblance of safety was slowly fading away.  The chance that either of us were still in the line of fire was too great for us to risk moving, but with us unable to see where we were going, we decided to stay put and hope that we were just taken hostage.  A Molotov Cocktail a few metres to our right, smashing over someone who was sneaking up on us and torched the soldier, who screamed until his lungs filled with up with too much smoke for him to utter more than a cough.

Needless to say, I was shocked.  Rembrandt had to take it unto himself to shove me to one side, and it was only after a few minutes as he was dragging me that I understood he was leading me away from where we had just been to escape anybody who had seen us under the light of the fire.  Any attempt on my behalf to vocalise any opinion just resulted in a glare from Rembrandt, and we did not get a chance to stop for at least an hour when we found ourselves what we could just make out to be a cave. 

"Well" Rembrandt muttered.  "No chance of getting the caviar treatment this time, huh?" 

"This has to be some sort of mistake."  I had dug out the small timer that we had been given, but there was no way it would open prematurely for us.  "Four days, twenty-two hours…"

"Oh knock it off!  You should know that we can't get out of here!  Damn, I thought the Consortium would have just done the standard execution, not do some lame James Bond death-sequence!"

"So you think that the Consortium dumped us here?  What is it that you have against them?  If it wasn't for them, our Earth would have been torn apart by now!"

"Yeah, I can give them that.  And if it wasn't for them you'd be dead and a three-minute microwave meal.  But I didn't trust them before, and I definitely don't trust them now."

"And what do you suppose I do with myself?  I want to get out of here, and you cannot expect me to believe that you do not want the same Mr Brown!"

"Oh, so we're back to the title-slash-surname approach?  Well, Mr Arturo, I propose that we shut up for the night, and try to find this base that the Consortium wanted us to go to."

"That is if we are even in the dimension we were meant to go to!"

"Well, I think it is."  

By this time I had given up with the timer and had tucked it back into my pocket.  "And by what leap of logic have you come to that conclusion?"

Rembrandt had found a flat-looking rock to sit down on.  "Well, who-ever was shooting at us was aiming for the vortex."

I followed Rembrandts example and rested against the wall.  "So, that would indicate that the Consortium is not liked here."

"Some sort of revolt?  For all we know it could be Kromaggs."

"Wonderful.  Just, bloody wonderful."

Silence kept us occupied for a few minutes.  There was no sound from outside, so we could speculate that there was little chance of us being found by whoever the enemy was.  The cave itself led further into the ground than we thought it would, and as it was starting to get cold, we thought it prudent to move closer in.  Rembrandt had kept the bag of clothes and as I had my lighter with me, we started a fire.  With nothing else to do, and not wanting to go outside until we could actually see something, we spent the night in the cave.

One good three-piece suit had gone up in flames.  The cave was high enough that we did not choke to death on the fumes, but we did notice the smoke blowing towards the opening of the cave when we woke up.  There was a draft from further in the cave.  With nothing much else to do, we followed it, guessing that the smoke may attract any hunters looking for us.