Part 3
"Man, you look terrible!" The cheerful observation greeted Jesse as he slouched into the kitchen in search of coffee, rubbing at gritty eyes. He cast a baleful glance towards its source, finding Brennan grinning back at him from his perch on the work surface by the fridge. "Here," the big elemental continued, proffering a large glass of some thick greenish liquid, "have some of this. It'll do wonders for you."
Jesse shuddered visibly, not bothering to grace the suggestion with a response, and turned away to resume his mission. Behind him, Brennan made ostentatious lip-smacking noises which he endeavoured to ignore until he'd at least got the first mouthful of hot coffee down, after which he felt almost able to open communications again. Pulling out a chair, he made himself comfortable at the table, cupping the mug in his hands and savouring the caffeine kick.
After a couple of days checking out leads and rumours, they were still no nearer to knowing whether the unexplained disappearances were actually connected. Even the police reports Jesse had managed to hack into had told them little more than that no-one had seen what had happened to them, and that no bodies had been discovered. There didn't seem to be anything in the little they could glean on their backgrounds - apart from the two who were in the New Mutant database - which might have made them targets, or given cause for them to have just upped sticks and moved without telling anyone.
The phantom paramilitary group were equally mystifying. There were whispers that they were set up and funded by someone with a lot of money and a grudge of some kind, but no-one seemed to know what their agenda was or how they were recruited. Why couldn't they just have a website like any other self-respecting white supremacist or 'right to bear arms' groups, Jesse thought morosely, instead of making it this hard to track them down. Because Adam hadn't been prepared to let him stop searching until he'd covered every base. And that had meant two more nights for him to struggle through, desperate for sleep but too frightened of what it would bring to give in to his need without a fight.
"Rough night?" Brennan asked, still grinning as he slid into the chair opposite and leant back, tilting it onto two legs. "Well, gotta say I'm not surprised - told you cold pizza right before bedtime was a bad idea. All that cheese..."
"Yeah, yeah, and you always know best, right?" Jesse snapped before he could halt the words. He ducked his head and took another swig from his mug, using the time to take a deep mental breath and kick himself towards a more positive frame of mind, knowing that his day was likely to get a whole lot worse if he didn't. Then he looked up again with an apologetic half-smile. "Sorry," he said, thinking that he was doing that rather too much these days. "Guess I could have done with an hour or two longer in bed."
He could see Brennan had been looking at him speculatively, but after a few seconds he smiled back. "With you there, brother," he commented, stretching his arms over his head as he let the chair drop back onto all four legs. "But look on the bright side - there's been no more strange disappearances, and now you've scraped the barrel on the mystery gang, I can't see Adam having anything lined up for us today apart from that routine safe house re-stock gig we didn't get done yesterday. With a bit of luck we'll have time afterwards to kick back, play a little one on one, maybe?"
As if on cue, Adam's voice sounded over the internal comms system. "Brennan? Jesse? I need you in the control room." Mutant X's leader didn't sound in any mood to be kept waiting, and Brennan wasted no time in confirming both their attendance.
"Oh, you just had to go and say it, didn't you?" Jesse dropped his head into his hands and combed fingers back through tousled hair as he lifted a jaundiced glare towards his friend. "You had to go tempt fate like that. Couldn't you at least have waited until I'd had another cup of coffee?"
Brennan laughed and stood up, offering a helping hand to pull him to his feet. "Hey, where's your sense of adventure? Maybe he's found us a New Mutant to pick up in the Caribbean - or how about Hawaii?" He led the way from the kitchen as he spoke, leaving the younger man trailing in his wake.
"As if..." Jesse murmured, shooting a yearning glance towards the coffee percolator before hurrying after him, bare feet slapping softly on the wood floor.
Adam looked up distractedly as they hurried in, beckoning them to join Shalimar and Emma who were already gathered round him. The blonde feral raised an eyebrow at Jesse's unexpectedly dishevelled appearance, but his expression told her he wouldn't thank her for commenting. And in any case, the vibes she was picking up from the older man told her now wasn't the time for levity, which his next words confirmed.
"We just got a call through the emergency channel," Adam told them. "Female, young-sounding, giving her name as Connie. She said she thought she was being watched, that she was scared and needed help. When I got back to her, asked her where she got the number from, she said, and I quote, 'from Gayle - right before they took her away...'" He paused, dark eyes shifting a little anxiously across the faces around him as if expecting a reaction. And he wasn't disappointed.
"Gayle?" Jesse looked up sharply from his desultory inspection of the monitor in front of him, hearing Shalimar's sudden intake of breath. "Not Gayle Michaels?"
Adam sighed. "Yes, I'm afraid so - I just checked. She was reported missing less than an hour ago by the owner of the store she was working in. Seems she went to get something from the basement stockroom and never came back." He turned to Brennan and Emma who were looking at their shocked friends in confusion. "Gayle was one of the first New Mutants we helped, back when I'd just started Mutant X. She stayed with us for a while before we sent her into the Underground."
Voice heavy with suppressed anger, Jesse murmured, "Damn...", his gaze turning broodingly away again. Shalimar, though, true to her nature, showed her emotions through action, pushing herself away from the table she was leaning against and prowling across the room before turning to look questioningly at Adam.
"Where did she end up? Last I heard she was in Atlanta."
"Wherever it was, let's get down there!" Brennan said, impatiently. "Check it out, see if we can get some leads on what happened."
"Yes, but what about the girl, though?" Jesse put in. "Where's she?"
"Somewhere in the same town, from what I can gather," Adam responded. "I told her to stay put until we could get to her. But she sounded scared enough to run - which is why I want you to make picking her up your priority. Once we have her safe you can do some digging around down there, see what we can do about finding out what happened to Gayle."
"You don't think it could be some kind of trap, do you?" Emma, cautious as ever, voiced a thought that had already occurred to Adam. "A set-up to get us out there so they can take us too?"
He shrugged. "Could be. She sounded genuinely frightened, but we've been fooled before. I've already started running her voice pattern through the synthesizers but I won't know for sure for a while. In the meantime, I want you to proceed with caution. Don't take anything for granted, OK?" He waited for their confirming nods before continuing. "OK. I'll upload the co-ordinates to the Helix, along with the call - you can listen to it on the way."
He paused again, looking from one to the other with a half smile before his gaze alighted on the last of his team. "Just don't forget to get dressed first..."
Jesse's plaintive protests at the good-natured jibes of his friends carried back to him from down the corridor as he turned his focus to his screen again.
****
Their target - a small clapboard house barely clinging to the outskirts of the one-horse town Adam had directed them to - perched to one side of the pot-holed road leading from it to the next settlement several miles distant. Tall trees bordered the handkerchief-sized but neatly tended property on the remaining three sides, the forest rising away behind it to rocky outcrops marking the divide between this valley and the next, through which they'd seen a river raging as Brennan had brought the Double Helix in. The sight had left Jesse feeling strangely uneasy though he had no clear idea why, putting it down to pre-mission nerves.
"So, where do you think these mysterious watchers are?" Shalimar asked, as the plane settled invisibly into the nearest piece of open ground they could find and the engines shut down.
"Well, I'm not picking up anything on scanners," Jesse said, frowning at his monitor, "but that doesn't mean they aren't there somewhere." He swung round to survey his team mates. "OK, how do we play this? Going in mob-handed will probably scare the kid to death and will certainly tip off anyone out there that there's someone else interested in her."
"Not such a bad idea," Brennan commented. "Let them know they're not getting things all their own way any more."
But Emma shook her head. "Remember, we still don't know if this is a trap. No point in risking all of us."
And Shalimar and Brennan had to reluctantly agree to her suggestion that it made more sense for them to hang back and cover her and Jesse while they checked the place out. "If we just walk down the road openly, they'll hopefully think we had a breakdown or ran out of gas or something, and are just looking to use the phone."
There was no indication that anyone was there to believe or disbelieve their deception, though, as they headed purposefully towards the house. The front door was slightly ajar when they reached it and with no response from within to Jesse's call he pushed it open and led the way inside.
It was immediately clear that all was not well, and Emma was summoning the other two in before she'd taken more than a couple of steps into the cluttered living room. The signs of a struggle were unmistakable, and though it seemed someone had made a half-hearted attempt at clearing up, they'd been unable to do more than gloss over the damage.
"The back door's open, too," Jesse said, as he returned from checking out the rest of the house. "She must have made a run for it." His attention was caught by a photograph lying on the table in the remains of its frame, the cracked and splintered glass disguising the detail. But his expression told Emma it was significant and she moved so she could see it too.
"Gayle?" she guessed, taking in the serenity of the dark-haired woman smiling up at her.
Jesse just nodded, rearranging his features quickly into a bland mask that hid his feelings as he turned to greet Brennan and Shalimar's hurried entrance. "She's gone - probably out the back, assuming they were watching from the road." He stepped hastily aside as Shalimar pushed past him, eyes glowing gold in indication that her feral senses had taken over. "Shal?" he questioned, seeing her nostrils flare at whatever she was picking up from the place. But she didn't respond and he shared a glance with the others before they all followed her through the house to the kitchen and the open door there.
Once in the back yard she stopped, head lifting, eyes swinging to quarter the surrounding area until she suddenly froze, gaze fixed on a point just inside the edge of the forest where what could have been a path was dimly visible.
"That way," she said, pointing. "And they're after her." Without another word she took off, running in the direction she'd been indicating, leaving her companions flat-footed behind her.
"Shalimar, wait!" Brennan went follow her, but Jesse grabbed his arm.
"No - we'll have more chance tracking them in the Helix. We can get in front, get to her before they do."
For a moment he thought Brennan was going to throw his hand off, his eyes flicking almost desperately between him and the disappearing feral, clearly torn between staying with her and doing what might be best for the mission. But Emma took the decision out of his hands, calling back over her shoulder as she set off after Shalimar, "Jesse's right. Go - I'll watch her back. Just get to them before she does!"
Brennan's jaw dropped just a little at the psionic's turn of speed, but she'd vanished into the trees before he could say anything, and Jesse was already turning away, urging him to follow, to hurry. And he knew they were indeed right. The best way they could help Shalimar was to find the girl before her pursuers - with her out of the equation they'd be able to face them unencumbered and en masse. And their best shot at that was if he flew while Jesse worked his magic with the scanners. So, with a final yearning glance at the now silent forest, he set off after to him towards the plane.
**
The muted roar of the Double Helix passing overhead reached Emma as she paused for a breather. She was beginning to regret her rash decision to follow her feral friend a little; the path they were following was heavily overgrown - though beaten down to some extent by the obvious recent passage of several people - and wound upwards so steeply in places that she was reduced to using the trees lining it to haul herself along. The ground was muddy and slick underfoot, and she could only be grateful that she hadn't decided to wear her Gucci boots this trip.
She'd just started moving again when Jesse's voice crackled into life from her com-link, advising them all - including Adam, listening back in Sanctuary - that they were airborne and had spotted a lone figure heading into the next valley along with a small group, apparently in pursuit, maybe a half mile back. His comment that, once they'd found a place to land and got the girl safely on board, they'd come back so they could deal with the pursuers together was greeted in typical style by Shalimar.
"Yeah? Well, make it quick, boys, or there might not be any left for you to play with," she teased, sounding - much to Emma's chagrin - barely out of breath. But the clear mental image of the blonde scything her way through the tangled foliage up ahead proved more than sufficient a spur for her to pick up the pace again.
**
'Oh God, no, please... This can't be happening!' The words bouncing round Jesse's shell-shocked brain seemed to have become caught into a never ending loop that just kept repeating itself over and over again as he stared in horror at the scene before him.
The sense of unease that had been with him ever since they'd first flown in over this valley had started to gnaw in earnest at his mind once they'd found somewhere to land and had set out to intercept the fleeing girl they knew was heading their way.
He'd wanted to take a little more time to check out the maps of the area they carried in the Helix's database, make sure there were no unforeseen obstacles to steer clear of, but Brennan's keenness to be moving combined with Adam's seemingly constant demands for updates on their progress had driven him to ignore his instincts. If he'd checked, he would have known what they were walking into. But even that probably wouldn't have prepared him for what was waiting for him.
The surging roar of fast flowing water had grown as they'd picked their way down between the trees and rock-infested mounds of earth towards its source, the spray from the waterfall they could just make out away to their left filling the air with a fine mist that worked its dampness into their clothes and hair. A twisted knot of foreboding started to form in his stomach as the feeling of familiarity - recognition even - grew, as did the urge to simply turn and run in the opposite direction as fast as he could. But, perversely, his traitorous sense of right kept him following in Brennan's footsteps, doing what was expected of him, what his conscience would later try and tell him was the only thing he could have done with an innocent's life at stake. If there was a later...
It kept him going until they rounded a clutter of boulders and emerged onto the river bank. And walked straight into the impossibility of his nightmare made real.
Laid out before him, exactly as he remembered it, was the river gorge, the wooden footbridge connecting the sparsely grassed areas on either side that struggled for survival against the encroaching forest. The spray from the thundering waterfall gave the scene a ghostly quality, but couldn't hide the small figure who'd been halted in her flight across the bridge by their unexpected appearance, or the distant gaggle of dark shapes moving resolutely along the opposite bank towards them.
"Get them!" came the shout, somehow finding a way through the wall of sound that hammered at them, floating on the mist. And Jesse froze, stunned motionless by the memory of how his dream had always played out, his mind screaming for him to wake up, now, before it was too late. But this was no fantasy, not this time, and he knew there could be no salvation that way. So he allowed the fog of dread to wrap him in its beguiling blanket and tug him gently towards the inevitable.
****
"Man, you look terrible!" The cheerful observation greeted Jesse as he slouched into the kitchen in search of coffee, rubbing at gritty eyes. He cast a baleful glance towards its source, finding Brennan grinning back at him from his perch on the work surface by the fridge. "Here," the big elemental continued, proffering a large glass of some thick greenish liquid, "have some of this. It'll do wonders for you."
Jesse shuddered visibly, not bothering to grace the suggestion with a response, and turned away to resume his mission. Behind him, Brennan made ostentatious lip-smacking noises which he endeavoured to ignore until he'd at least got the first mouthful of hot coffee down, after which he felt almost able to open communications again. Pulling out a chair, he made himself comfortable at the table, cupping the mug in his hands and savouring the caffeine kick.
After a couple of days checking out leads and rumours, they were still no nearer to knowing whether the unexplained disappearances were actually connected. Even the police reports Jesse had managed to hack into had told them little more than that no-one had seen what had happened to them, and that no bodies had been discovered. There didn't seem to be anything in the little they could glean on their backgrounds - apart from the two who were in the New Mutant database - which might have made them targets, or given cause for them to have just upped sticks and moved without telling anyone.
The phantom paramilitary group were equally mystifying. There were whispers that they were set up and funded by someone with a lot of money and a grudge of some kind, but no-one seemed to know what their agenda was or how they were recruited. Why couldn't they just have a website like any other self-respecting white supremacist or 'right to bear arms' groups, Jesse thought morosely, instead of making it this hard to track them down. Because Adam hadn't been prepared to let him stop searching until he'd covered every base. And that had meant two more nights for him to struggle through, desperate for sleep but too frightened of what it would bring to give in to his need without a fight.
"Rough night?" Brennan asked, still grinning as he slid into the chair opposite and leant back, tilting it onto two legs. "Well, gotta say I'm not surprised - told you cold pizza right before bedtime was a bad idea. All that cheese..."
"Yeah, yeah, and you always know best, right?" Jesse snapped before he could halt the words. He ducked his head and took another swig from his mug, using the time to take a deep mental breath and kick himself towards a more positive frame of mind, knowing that his day was likely to get a whole lot worse if he didn't. Then he looked up again with an apologetic half-smile. "Sorry," he said, thinking that he was doing that rather too much these days. "Guess I could have done with an hour or two longer in bed."
He could see Brennan had been looking at him speculatively, but after a few seconds he smiled back. "With you there, brother," he commented, stretching his arms over his head as he let the chair drop back onto all four legs. "But look on the bright side - there's been no more strange disappearances, and now you've scraped the barrel on the mystery gang, I can't see Adam having anything lined up for us today apart from that routine safe house re-stock gig we didn't get done yesterday. With a bit of luck we'll have time afterwards to kick back, play a little one on one, maybe?"
As if on cue, Adam's voice sounded over the internal comms system. "Brennan? Jesse? I need you in the control room." Mutant X's leader didn't sound in any mood to be kept waiting, and Brennan wasted no time in confirming both their attendance.
"Oh, you just had to go and say it, didn't you?" Jesse dropped his head into his hands and combed fingers back through tousled hair as he lifted a jaundiced glare towards his friend. "You had to go tempt fate like that. Couldn't you at least have waited until I'd had another cup of coffee?"
Brennan laughed and stood up, offering a helping hand to pull him to his feet. "Hey, where's your sense of adventure? Maybe he's found us a New Mutant to pick up in the Caribbean - or how about Hawaii?" He led the way from the kitchen as he spoke, leaving the younger man trailing in his wake.
"As if..." Jesse murmured, shooting a yearning glance towards the coffee percolator before hurrying after him, bare feet slapping softly on the wood floor.
Adam looked up distractedly as they hurried in, beckoning them to join Shalimar and Emma who were already gathered round him. The blonde feral raised an eyebrow at Jesse's unexpectedly dishevelled appearance, but his expression told her he wouldn't thank her for commenting. And in any case, the vibes she was picking up from the older man told her now wasn't the time for levity, which his next words confirmed.
"We just got a call through the emergency channel," Adam told them. "Female, young-sounding, giving her name as Connie. She said she thought she was being watched, that she was scared and needed help. When I got back to her, asked her where she got the number from, she said, and I quote, 'from Gayle - right before they took her away...'" He paused, dark eyes shifting a little anxiously across the faces around him as if expecting a reaction. And he wasn't disappointed.
"Gayle?" Jesse looked up sharply from his desultory inspection of the monitor in front of him, hearing Shalimar's sudden intake of breath. "Not Gayle Michaels?"
Adam sighed. "Yes, I'm afraid so - I just checked. She was reported missing less than an hour ago by the owner of the store she was working in. Seems she went to get something from the basement stockroom and never came back." He turned to Brennan and Emma who were looking at their shocked friends in confusion. "Gayle was one of the first New Mutants we helped, back when I'd just started Mutant X. She stayed with us for a while before we sent her into the Underground."
Voice heavy with suppressed anger, Jesse murmured, "Damn...", his gaze turning broodingly away again. Shalimar, though, true to her nature, showed her emotions through action, pushing herself away from the table she was leaning against and prowling across the room before turning to look questioningly at Adam.
"Where did she end up? Last I heard she was in Atlanta."
"Wherever it was, let's get down there!" Brennan said, impatiently. "Check it out, see if we can get some leads on what happened."
"Yes, but what about the girl, though?" Jesse put in. "Where's she?"
"Somewhere in the same town, from what I can gather," Adam responded. "I told her to stay put until we could get to her. But she sounded scared enough to run - which is why I want you to make picking her up your priority. Once we have her safe you can do some digging around down there, see what we can do about finding out what happened to Gayle."
"You don't think it could be some kind of trap, do you?" Emma, cautious as ever, voiced a thought that had already occurred to Adam. "A set-up to get us out there so they can take us too?"
He shrugged. "Could be. She sounded genuinely frightened, but we've been fooled before. I've already started running her voice pattern through the synthesizers but I won't know for sure for a while. In the meantime, I want you to proceed with caution. Don't take anything for granted, OK?" He waited for their confirming nods before continuing. "OK. I'll upload the co-ordinates to the Helix, along with the call - you can listen to it on the way."
He paused again, looking from one to the other with a half smile before his gaze alighted on the last of his team. "Just don't forget to get dressed first..."
Jesse's plaintive protests at the good-natured jibes of his friends carried back to him from down the corridor as he turned his focus to his screen again.
****
Their target - a small clapboard house barely clinging to the outskirts of the one-horse town Adam had directed them to - perched to one side of the pot-holed road leading from it to the next settlement several miles distant. Tall trees bordered the handkerchief-sized but neatly tended property on the remaining three sides, the forest rising away behind it to rocky outcrops marking the divide between this valley and the next, through which they'd seen a river raging as Brennan had brought the Double Helix in. The sight had left Jesse feeling strangely uneasy though he had no clear idea why, putting it down to pre-mission nerves.
"So, where do you think these mysterious watchers are?" Shalimar asked, as the plane settled invisibly into the nearest piece of open ground they could find and the engines shut down.
"Well, I'm not picking up anything on scanners," Jesse said, frowning at his monitor, "but that doesn't mean they aren't there somewhere." He swung round to survey his team mates. "OK, how do we play this? Going in mob-handed will probably scare the kid to death and will certainly tip off anyone out there that there's someone else interested in her."
"Not such a bad idea," Brennan commented. "Let them know they're not getting things all their own way any more."
But Emma shook her head. "Remember, we still don't know if this is a trap. No point in risking all of us."
And Shalimar and Brennan had to reluctantly agree to her suggestion that it made more sense for them to hang back and cover her and Jesse while they checked the place out. "If we just walk down the road openly, they'll hopefully think we had a breakdown or ran out of gas or something, and are just looking to use the phone."
There was no indication that anyone was there to believe or disbelieve their deception, though, as they headed purposefully towards the house. The front door was slightly ajar when they reached it and with no response from within to Jesse's call he pushed it open and led the way inside.
It was immediately clear that all was not well, and Emma was summoning the other two in before she'd taken more than a couple of steps into the cluttered living room. The signs of a struggle were unmistakable, and though it seemed someone had made a half-hearted attempt at clearing up, they'd been unable to do more than gloss over the damage.
"The back door's open, too," Jesse said, as he returned from checking out the rest of the house. "She must have made a run for it." His attention was caught by a photograph lying on the table in the remains of its frame, the cracked and splintered glass disguising the detail. But his expression told Emma it was significant and she moved so she could see it too.
"Gayle?" she guessed, taking in the serenity of the dark-haired woman smiling up at her.
Jesse just nodded, rearranging his features quickly into a bland mask that hid his feelings as he turned to greet Brennan and Shalimar's hurried entrance. "She's gone - probably out the back, assuming they were watching from the road." He stepped hastily aside as Shalimar pushed past him, eyes glowing gold in indication that her feral senses had taken over. "Shal?" he questioned, seeing her nostrils flare at whatever she was picking up from the place. But she didn't respond and he shared a glance with the others before they all followed her through the house to the kitchen and the open door there.
Once in the back yard she stopped, head lifting, eyes swinging to quarter the surrounding area until she suddenly froze, gaze fixed on a point just inside the edge of the forest where what could have been a path was dimly visible.
"That way," she said, pointing. "And they're after her." Without another word she took off, running in the direction she'd been indicating, leaving her companions flat-footed behind her.
"Shalimar, wait!" Brennan went follow her, but Jesse grabbed his arm.
"No - we'll have more chance tracking them in the Helix. We can get in front, get to her before they do."
For a moment he thought Brennan was going to throw his hand off, his eyes flicking almost desperately between him and the disappearing feral, clearly torn between staying with her and doing what might be best for the mission. But Emma took the decision out of his hands, calling back over her shoulder as she set off after Shalimar, "Jesse's right. Go - I'll watch her back. Just get to them before she does!"
Brennan's jaw dropped just a little at the psionic's turn of speed, but she'd vanished into the trees before he could say anything, and Jesse was already turning away, urging him to follow, to hurry. And he knew they were indeed right. The best way they could help Shalimar was to find the girl before her pursuers - with her out of the equation they'd be able to face them unencumbered and en masse. And their best shot at that was if he flew while Jesse worked his magic with the scanners. So, with a final yearning glance at the now silent forest, he set off after to him towards the plane.
**
The muted roar of the Double Helix passing overhead reached Emma as she paused for a breather. She was beginning to regret her rash decision to follow her feral friend a little; the path they were following was heavily overgrown - though beaten down to some extent by the obvious recent passage of several people - and wound upwards so steeply in places that she was reduced to using the trees lining it to haul herself along. The ground was muddy and slick underfoot, and she could only be grateful that she hadn't decided to wear her Gucci boots this trip.
She'd just started moving again when Jesse's voice crackled into life from her com-link, advising them all - including Adam, listening back in Sanctuary - that they were airborne and had spotted a lone figure heading into the next valley along with a small group, apparently in pursuit, maybe a half mile back. His comment that, once they'd found a place to land and got the girl safely on board, they'd come back so they could deal with the pursuers together was greeted in typical style by Shalimar.
"Yeah? Well, make it quick, boys, or there might not be any left for you to play with," she teased, sounding - much to Emma's chagrin - barely out of breath. But the clear mental image of the blonde scything her way through the tangled foliage up ahead proved more than sufficient a spur for her to pick up the pace again.
**
'Oh God, no, please... This can't be happening!' The words bouncing round Jesse's shell-shocked brain seemed to have become caught into a never ending loop that just kept repeating itself over and over again as he stared in horror at the scene before him.
The sense of unease that had been with him ever since they'd first flown in over this valley had started to gnaw in earnest at his mind once they'd found somewhere to land and had set out to intercept the fleeing girl they knew was heading their way.
He'd wanted to take a little more time to check out the maps of the area they carried in the Helix's database, make sure there were no unforeseen obstacles to steer clear of, but Brennan's keenness to be moving combined with Adam's seemingly constant demands for updates on their progress had driven him to ignore his instincts. If he'd checked, he would have known what they were walking into. But even that probably wouldn't have prepared him for what was waiting for him.
The surging roar of fast flowing water had grown as they'd picked their way down between the trees and rock-infested mounds of earth towards its source, the spray from the waterfall they could just make out away to their left filling the air with a fine mist that worked its dampness into their clothes and hair. A twisted knot of foreboding started to form in his stomach as the feeling of familiarity - recognition even - grew, as did the urge to simply turn and run in the opposite direction as fast as he could. But, perversely, his traitorous sense of right kept him following in Brennan's footsteps, doing what was expected of him, what his conscience would later try and tell him was the only thing he could have done with an innocent's life at stake. If there was a later...
It kept him going until they rounded a clutter of boulders and emerged onto the river bank. And walked straight into the impossibility of his nightmare made real.
Laid out before him, exactly as he remembered it, was the river gorge, the wooden footbridge connecting the sparsely grassed areas on either side that struggled for survival against the encroaching forest. The spray from the thundering waterfall gave the scene a ghostly quality, but couldn't hide the small figure who'd been halted in her flight across the bridge by their unexpected appearance, or the distant gaggle of dark shapes moving resolutely along the opposite bank towards them.
"Get them!" came the shout, somehow finding a way through the wall of sound that hammered at them, floating on the mist. And Jesse froze, stunned motionless by the memory of how his dream had always played out, his mind screaming for him to wake up, now, before it was too late. But this was no fantasy, not this time, and he knew there could be no salvation that way. So he allowed the fog of dread to wrap him in its beguiling blanket and tug him gently towards the inevitable.
****