Part 4
Back down the wooded slope on the far side of the river, Emma halted in her breathless climb, the sudden shocking image of Jesse in a white room, screaming soundlessly at some unseen spectre that forced him to his knees, flashing vividly into her head and forcing her to put out a hand to steady herself against a convenient tree.
"Jesse?" she whispered, frowning as she tried to get a clearer sense of what was happening, before raising her com-link and calling his name out loud. But there was no reply, nor to her second attempt – none but the sound of Shalimar's querying voice. Emma was moving almost before she heard her words, though, sparing just enough breath to say, "Shal? Jesse's in trouble," before throwing herself totally into the task of getting to him as soon as possible.
*
"Jesse! Snap out of it, dammit! They're gonna kill her!!" Brennan's bellow finally penetrated the trance-like state that Jesse had become ensnared in and with a shudder he managed to pull himself back into the real world again. And found it not a place he really wanted to be...
Glancing automatically in Brennan's direction he saw the elemental curving the fingers of his right hand as if gripping a ball, saw the telltale flickers of blue light sparking from his fingertips as he tentatively attempted to power up one of his lightning strikes. But the all-permeating moisture in the air had already soaked him through and all he succeeded in doing was enmeshing himself in the electrical discharge. And with a jolt almost as violent Jesse realised that there were no other options, no way he could avoid this thing playing out. As if to confirm that, Brennan snarled, "What are you waiting for – an invitation? I can't stop them, not in these conditions."
He looked out across the gorge again, towards the approaching men, seeing as expected the guns they carried, guns they were already starting to raise in their direction. He heard Brennan calling to the girl to run but saw her indecision, the fear on her face at being caught between two probable dangers, fear that held her immobile in the centre of the bridge, crouched there like a cornered animal. He felt certain that if he stepped out onto that bridge he'd die – in one of the worst possible ways he could imagine – but he just couldn't see any other way of helping her. Perhaps, once she was safe, he could do something, something different enough to change that future... perhaps...
"Jess!!" Brennan called again forcefully, but Jesse was already moving, eyes on the men who were now only perhaps fifty yards away. Their weapons moved his way as he hit the end of the bridge at a run, flinging himself in front of the wide-eyed girl and spinning her into the shelter of his body as he took a deep breath and massed.
And just in time too; the volley of shots impacted against him like an angry swarm of bees, stinging as they hit but dropping harmlessly to the timbers under his feet. Worn timbers, battered by the elements over time, held together by rusting nails and equally worn supports into an unsteady structure that he could already feel creaking under his unimaginable weight... 'Please, please, no...'
He heard Brennan shouting to the kid, telling her to move his way, knowing that Jesse himself couldn't say the words while he was like this. But he could sense her shuddering with fear behind him, and wasn't sure she really understood. And he really needed her to start moving, needed to get them both to safety before he had to take a breath, before things came apart, before... "Oh God, no...' So he started shuffling backwards, trying to disrupt the fragile balance of the surface beneath his feet as little as possible, gently nudging her until she got the message and went with him.
But it was all happening too slowly. The clock in his head was telling him he was running out of time, that in seconds he'd be reaching the limits of his known capacity to hold his breath, but still the onslaught continued as the obviously well trained group re-loaded in sequence and kept up their barrage of fire. And he knew they were still too far from safety for him to believe they had a chance of avoiding taking a hit without the protection of his solidity.
Desperation started to take hold right about the time he felt the panicking girl finally succumb to Brennan's urging and make a break for where he was sheltering. The thud of her scampering footsteps reverberated through the wooden slats, setting up a reciprocal tremor that proved too much for the brittle construction, and Jesse could feel that, for all his efforts to the contrary, what he feared most was about to happen.
His mind cried out to him to take a breath, revert to normal, to run for cover, to do anything other than stand there and let the unthinkable happen. But he knew he couldn't outrun a bullet, knew he wouldn't get five feet before one of the goons over there got him, and the stubborn streak that had kept him going through all the years of heartbreak and loneliness growing up in a family that didn't care told him that if he was going to go, he should go down fighting, doing some good, not shot in the back trying to run away. At least with the bridge down the gang wouldn't be able to reach those he'd been protecting...
So, ignoring the building pain of lungs gone too long without breath, he cast a final glance over his shoulder to confirm the kid was safely away. There was a split-second locking of eyes with Brennan that conveyed everything and nothing, before he turned back and took a deliberate step forward – and felt the screeching timbers of the bridge finally give way underneath him.
The plunge down into the icy flood was far quicker than he could have imagined, his dense weight dropping him too fast for him to be able to take the breath of life-saving air he'd intended on the way. He was under water before he knew it, the river in spate sucking him under its foaming surface and dragging him straight to the bottom. And it was every bit as terrifying as his dream – and more.
*
Shalimar didn't need Emma's sudden shocked gasp and pained, "Shal!" to know that things had suddenly gotten a whole lot worse. Even without the amplifying power of their com-links or her feral hearing, she could clearly identify the alarm and horror in Brennan's shout of, "Jesse! No!!" that rolled down the hillside towards her.
Emma's voice came again, still breathless from her attempts to catch up, and – it seemed to Shalimar – making no sense. "Oh God, it's... it's the nightmare. But how...?" She shook her head impatiently, already moving again as she snapped out, "What?" before immediately calling, "Brennan, what's going on?"
Everyone suddenly started talking at once, Brennan's almost inaudible and strangely static-filled response buried under Adam's questioning and Emma's oddly distressed pleas for her to wait for her. In exasperation, Shalimar ignored them all, focusing solely on the fact that Jesse – her Jesse, her brother, her cub – was in trouble and that she needed to get to him, to be there for him.
*
The strength of the current washing around Jesse tugged at him, trying to move him out of its path, and the grating sound as he was dragged across the rocks and gravel littering the riverbed resonated through him. He knew what he needed to do, what it would take to survive, to condemn the nightmare to the dreamworld it belonged in, but the very sensation of the water trying to flood his ears and nose was enough to induce a panic in him that made the level of control he needed as hard to reach as the sun.
Fear such as he hadn't felt since he was a child gripped him, held him in its vice, clawed at his mind in its attempt to drive away all rational thoughts and send him voluntarily to his doom. And he wasn't sure any more that he had the energy or the will to fight it.
"You do," whispered a voice somewhere deep inside. "You're strong enough." And though he didn't believe it, the sound was so reassuring that it made him want to try.
"Slowly," said the voice, just a little louder. "Let it go slowly," and he somehow knew what it meant. Fighting his lungs' immediate demands to release the stale air they were still holding in one sustained rush, to give them something to work with, to relieve the agonising burning pain that wracked them, he let a slow trickle of bubbles escape his lips. The internal pressure lessened immediately, dropping even faster as the trickle became a stream.
"Slowly!" cautioned the voice again, but the relief was so great that he couldn't stop, and the river caught him as his body lost its massive density, whipping at his arms and legs and cartwheeling him forward at increasing speed.
His lungs were now out of his control, the automatic reflex forcing out their remaining contents in preparation for the needed, the expected influx of fresh and oxygenated air and, hard as he tried to prevent it, he could feel the unwanted onset of uncontrolled phasing as they reached empty. Water molecules rushed full pelt through his, jostling them, pulling them apart as if the river was trying to integrate them into its ever-flowing self, and his soul screamed out in denial of what was to be.
"Look outside you," came the voice, harsh, demanding. "Use it."
But it all seemed too hard, too much, the pain too all-encompassing and the idea of becoming part of the endless stream, letting it wash everything away until there was only the peace of nothingness, was suddenly very appealing.
"No, no surrender!" the voice insisted. And again. "Use it!"
"I can't!" his dwindling consciousness wailed. But a flash of something, some instinct, some fleeting primal desire for survival emerged from the dark depths of his psyche, and he latched onto it, reaching out blindly into the howling raging torrent in a final desperate search for salvation.
And just as he felt the bonds that kept him intact start to tear asunder, he found it.
What it was, he had no idea. But somehow he felt himself pulling aback from the oblivion he'd come so close to, boosted by a surge of life-giving energy that snapped him back together once more.
His aching limbs started to flail again as they grew solid enough to disrupt the water's progress, and for one marvellous moment his hand caught... no, slipped... but caught again at some outcropping as he was hurled against the side of the gorge. The river gave him sufficient time to drag his head above the surface, to gulp in a brief mouthful of what turned out to be equal parts liquid and air, before it yanked him bodily away again. But he knew nothing would ever taste as sweet again, even as his lungs feasted greedily on the oxygen and strove at the same time to repel the water in heaving coughs.
Giddy, light-headed, drunk on the sensation of survival, of having defied the fates, outsmarted his dreams, he ignored the ominous whispering of his inner self. But the unforgiving current tugged at his legs again, giving notice that it wasn't prepared to release him that easily, and he was forced to listen, to accept the awful truth that would, in the end, condemn him to the very fate – albeit in a different guise – that he'd just fought so hard to evade.
As the waters closed over his head again he had to swallow a bubble of ironic laughter at the realisation that he was still at the mercy of the fears of his childhood, fears that had stayed with him, fears that would now be the last thing he'd ever experience. Because his aqua-phobic refusal to learn to swim back then left him totally unable to counter the dominance of the tumbling, roiling, bruising rollercoaster that carried him remorselessly along now, intent on taking him to a watery grave. And his dread of drowning was what would ultimately deliver him there.
*
Trailing in Shalimar's wake as she loped along the sloping, broken ground above the river, Emma tried to come to terms with what she knew had happened, but didn't want to believe. Jesse was gone – there was no other explanation for the dark quiet space in her mind where mere minutes ago there'd been terror, anger, distress...
She'd burst out of the trees onto the riverbank some hundred yards below the waterfall with howls and yells ringing in her head, unsure which were real and which imagined. But she'd been just in time to take out several of the gun-wielding thugs Shalimar was about to tangle with, using a few choice mental bomb-blasts to floor them before they'd overcome their shock at the sight of the snarling blonde wildcat racing towards them sufficiently to actually fire at her.
The feral had vented some of her apprehension on the remaining men, not an experience they would have enjoyed, but once there was no one left to fight she'd come to rest staring desolately at the shattered remains of the bridge, not even registering Emma's approach.
Into the comparative silence had come another vivid – and familiar – image of Jesse locked in mortal combat with an unseen foe, being driven to the ground again and again until he didn't have the strength to move any more, and Emma had known that he was indeed living his nightmare. And losing. But Brennan's appearance on the far side of the gorge, a hand resting with deceptive casualness on the shoulder of the girl who'd brought them all here, had seemed to jolt Shalimar into action, his answers to her shouted questions – how long? alive when he went in? – appearing to confirm whatever she was thinking. Because, with a single wild glance at Emma, she'd taken off again, following the river downstream like a cheetah on the trail of fresh prey.
"Stay with her," Brennan had called. "We'll go back to the Helix, look for a landing site down that way, catch up with you."
And stay with her was what she'd tried to do, though she was becoming heartily sick of the dampness and the mud and the slipping and sliding. But that had become as nothing when the jumbled emotional clamour she'd still been distantly aware of suddenly shut down. She thought she might have cried out at its abrupt cessation, but there was no one there to hear it. She might have used her com-link to share her suspicions, but there was no way that she wanted to be the one to bring an end to hope. So she struggled on.
Shalimar was running with senses maxed, the yellow of her feral vision adding an eerie cast to the shadowy gloom of her surroundings. If she'd allowed herself to think rationally she would have had to have said their chances of finding him alive were slim to zero, but she was anything but rational right now. There was no way she could give him up without at least trying to find him, because if the positions were reversed she knew he wouldn't give up on her.
The overrun path she'd been following disappeared beyond a curving bluff, but when she fought her way round it to a point where she could see the river again she pulled up short, eyes narrowing as she strove to make out the detail of what had caught her attention.
Up ahead, where the river bank briefly lowered itself to the level of the foaming waters, a tree had fallen to its death, the rotting trunk reaching the straggling fingers of its branches out into the flood as if in supplication. And caught up in those branches, half in and half out of the icy torrent that was doing its utmost to tug it free, was an ominously unmoving dark mass, barely recognisable at this distance as human. But Shalimar knew without question it was him, even before she got close enough to see the features partly obscured by the ribbons of wet hair plastered across them.
She dimly heard Emma shout something from way back behind her but she ignored her totally, eyes desperately seeking signs of life as she bounded over the clutter of vegetation-encrusted rocks that littered the path, unnerved by his stillness and lack of response to her calls. A stillness that became even more frightening when she felt the chill permeating the hand she grabbed to try and pull him up onto the bank beside her, splashing into the water without any of her normal innate distaste for it in order to free him from the tree's grasp. His visible skin was a waxy blue-white, a colour and texture she'd only ever seen before on a corpse, and if it hadn't been for the conviction she held in her soul that she would know if he had died, she would have been more scared than she'd ever been in her life.
Ignoring the discomfort of the liquid sloshing in her boots and soaking through the bottoms of her jeans, she dropped to her knees beside him and turned him onto his back, cupping his chin in one hand to hold him steady while she brushed the wet strands of hair back off his face. Blood from a jagged gash at his hairline tinted the dark blonde a muddy red, and the bruise he'd picked up in the dojo when she'd disturbed him stood out starkly against the translucence of his temple, but there was nothing there to indicate life. No other colour, no flicker beneath the closed eyelids, no discernible rise and fall of chest or rasp of breath.
But still she couldn't believe the evidence of her eyes, dropping a hand to rest over his heart and trusting her animal instincts to tell her what her normal senses couldn't.
Scrambling around the bluff, Emma saw Shalimar bent over the motionless body that could only be Jesse, watched her gather him into her arms and cradle his head against her shoulder, her hair cascading in a curtain that hid his face, and her heart tried to snap in two. Trying to calm her panting breathing she approached cautiously, almost tiptoeing as if not wanting to disturb what felt too strongly like a deathbed vigil, and opened her shields just a little, expecting to feel a wall of grief that she knew she wouldn't be able to defend herself against. But despite what she was seeing, the emotion she picked up was one of relief mixed in with the overtones of anxiety, and she allowed herself to hope things weren't as bad as she'd feared. "Shal?" she questioned, coming to crouch beside them, seeing the tears spilling from the dark brown gaze raised to hers.
"He's alive, Emma," Shalimar whispered, pulling Jesse closer and hugging his cold wet body to the comparative warmth of hers. "But only just. We have to help him..."
To Emma it seemed that the normally determined, impetuous feral had lost all ability for decisiveness, all sense of purpose, as if her life's work had been to find him and now that she had she was at a loss to know what to do next. So it was left to her to call Brennan in with the Helix and explain to Adam what to expect when they got back.
**
"Joshua? That's a lovely smile - what's got you so happy?" A pause. "Joshua?"
"Sorry... what?"
"You were miles away there! Looks like it was somewhere good."
"Oh... yes, you could say that. Well, not somewhere, exactly, but..."
"That's nice, dear. So, can I get you anything? Something to drink? Some soda? Or some nice iced water? "
"No!" Almost a shout - then quieter... "No, I'm really not thirsty right now."
"Well... if you're sure. I think it's going to be a hot one today." Another pause. "I'd better get on, then. You'll be alright here? Do you have enough to keep you occupied?"
"Plenty, thanks. Don't worry about me – I... I have some thinking to do..."
****
Back down the wooded slope on the far side of the river, Emma halted in her breathless climb, the sudden shocking image of Jesse in a white room, screaming soundlessly at some unseen spectre that forced him to his knees, flashing vividly into her head and forcing her to put out a hand to steady herself against a convenient tree.
"Jesse?" she whispered, frowning as she tried to get a clearer sense of what was happening, before raising her com-link and calling his name out loud. But there was no reply, nor to her second attempt – none but the sound of Shalimar's querying voice. Emma was moving almost before she heard her words, though, sparing just enough breath to say, "Shal? Jesse's in trouble," before throwing herself totally into the task of getting to him as soon as possible.
*
"Jesse! Snap out of it, dammit! They're gonna kill her!!" Brennan's bellow finally penetrated the trance-like state that Jesse had become ensnared in and with a shudder he managed to pull himself back into the real world again. And found it not a place he really wanted to be...
Glancing automatically in Brennan's direction he saw the elemental curving the fingers of his right hand as if gripping a ball, saw the telltale flickers of blue light sparking from his fingertips as he tentatively attempted to power up one of his lightning strikes. But the all-permeating moisture in the air had already soaked him through and all he succeeded in doing was enmeshing himself in the electrical discharge. And with a jolt almost as violent Jesse realised that there were no other options, no way he could avoid this thing playing out. As if to confirm that, Brennan snarled, "What are you waiting for – an invitation? I can't stop them, not in these conditions."
He looked out across the gorge again, towards the approaching men, seeing as expected the guns they carried, guns they were already starting to raise in their direction. He heard Brennan calling to the girl to run but saw her indecision, the fear on her face at being caught between two probable dangers, fear that held her immobile in the centre of the bridge, crouched there like a cornered animal. He felt certain that if he stepped out onto that bridge he'd die – in one of the worst possible ways he could imagine – but he just couldn't see any other way of helping her. Perhaps, once she was safe, he could do something, something different enough to change that future... perhaps...
"Jess!!" Brennan called again forcefully, but Jesse was already moving, eyes on the men who were now only perhaps fifty yards away. Their weapons moved his way as he hit the end of the bridge at a run, flinging himself in front of the wide-eyed girl and spinning her into the shelter of his body as he took a deep breath and massed.
And just in time too; the volley of shots impacted against him like an angry swarm of bees, stinging as they hit but dropping harmlessly to the timbers under his feet. Worn timbers, battered by the elements over time, held together by rusting nails and equally worn supports into an unsteady structure that he could already feel creaking under his unimaginable weight... 'Please, please, no...'
He heard Brennan shouting to the kid, telling her to move his way, knowing that Jesse himself couldn't say the words while he was like this. But he could sense her shuddering with fear behind him, and wasn't sure she really understood. And he really needed her to start moving, needed to get them both to safety before he had to take a breath, before things came apart, before... "Oh God, no...' So he started shuffling backwards, trying to disrupt the fragile balance of the surface beneath his feet as little as possible, gently nudging her until she got the message and went with him.
But it was all happening too slowly. The clock in his head was telling him he was running out of time, that in seconds he'd be reaching the limits of his known capacity to hold his breath, but still the onslaught continued as the obviously well trained group re-loaded in sequence and kept up their barrage of fire. And he knew they were still too far from safety for him to believe they had a chance of avoiding taking a hit without the protection of his solidity.
Desperation started to take hold right about the time he felt the panicking girl finally succumb to Brennan's urging and make a break for where he was sheltering. The thud of her scampering footsteps reverberated through the wooden slats, setting up a reciprocal tremor that proved too much for the brittle construction, and Jesse could feel that, for all his efforts to the contrary, what he feared most was about to happen.
His mind cried out to him to take a breath, revert to normal, to run for cover, to do anything other than stand there and let the unthinkable happen. But he knew he couldn't outrun a bullet, knew he wouldn't get five feet before one of the goons over there got him, and the stubborn streak that had kept him going through all the years of heartbreak and loneliness growing up in a family that didn't care told him that if he was going to go, he should go down fighting, doing some good, not shot in the back trying to run away. At least with the bridge down the gang wouldn't be able to reach those he'd been protecting...
So, ignoring the building pain of lungs gone too long without breath, he cast a final glance over his shoulder to confirm the kid was safely away. There was a split-second locking of eyes with Brennan that conveyed everything and nothing, before he turned back and took a deliberate step forward – and felt the screeching timbers of the bridge finally give way underneath him.
The plunge down into the icy flood was far quicker than he could have imagined, his dense weight dropping him too fast for him to be able to take the breath of life-saving air he'd intended on the way. He was under water before he knew it, the river in spate sucking him under its foaming surface and dragging him straight to the bottom. And it was every bit as terrifying as his dream – and more.
*
Shalimar didn't need Emma's sudden shocked gasp and pained, "Shal!" to know that things had suddenly gotten a whole lot worse. Even without the amplifying power of their com-links or her feral hearing, she could clearly identify the alarm and horror in Brennan's shout of, "Jesse! No!!" that rolled down the hillside towards her.
Emma's voice came again, still breathless from her attempts to catch up, and – it seemed to Shalimar – making no sense. "Oh God, it's... it's the nightmare. But how...?" She shook her head impatiently, already moving again as she snapped out, "What?" before immediately calling, "Brennan, what's going on?"
Everyone suddenly started talking at once, Brennan's almost inaudible and strangely static-filled response buried under Adam's questioning and Emma's oddly distressed pleas for her to wait for her. In exasperation, Shalimar ignored them all, focusing solely on the fact that Jesse – her Jesse, her brother, her cub – was in trouble and that she needed to get to him, to be there for him.
*
The strength of the current washing around Jesse tugged at him, trying to move him out of its path, and the grating sound as he was dragged across the rocks and gravel littering the riverbed resonated through him. He knew what he needed to do, what it would take to survive, to condemn the nightmare to the dreamworld it belonged in, but the very sensation of the water trying to flood his ears and nose was enough to induce a panic in him that made the level of control he needed as hard to reach as the sun.
Fear such as he hadn't felt since he was a child gripped him, held him in its vice, clawed at his mind in its attempt to drive away all rational thoughts and send him voluntarily to his doom. And he wasn't sure any more that he had the energy or the will to fight it.
"You do," whispered a voice somewhere deep inside. "You're strong enough." And though he didn't believe it, the sound was so reassuring that it made him want to try.
"Slowly," said the voice, just a little louder. "Let it go slowly," and he somehow knew what it meant. Fighting his lungs' immediate demands to release the stale air they were still holding in one sustained rush, to give them something to work with, to relieve the agonising burning pain that wracked them, he let a slow trickle of bubbles escape his lips. The internal pressure lessened immediately, dropping even faster as the trickle became a stream.
"Slowly!" cautioned the voice again, but the relief was so great that he couldn't stop, and the river caught him as his body lost its massive density, whipping at his arms and legs and cartwheeling him forward at increasing speed.
His lungs were now out of his control, the automatic reflex forcing out their remaining contents in preparation for the needed, the expected influx of fresh and oxygenated air and, hard as he tried to prevent it, he could feel the unwanted onset of uncontrolled phasing as they reached empty. Water molecules rushed full pelt through his, jostling them, pulling them apart as if the river was trying to integrate them into its ever-flowing self, and his soul screamed out in denial of what was to be.
"Look outside you," came the voice, harsh, demanding. "Use it."
But it all seemed too hard, too much, the pain too all-encompassing and the idea of becoming part of the endless stream, letting it wash everything away until there was only the peace of nothingness, was suddenly very appealing.
"No, no surrender!" the voice insisted. And again. "Use it!"
"I can't!" his dwindling consciousness wailed. But a flash of something, some instinct, some fleeting primal desire for survival emerged from the dark depths of his psyche, and he latched onto it, reaching out blindly into the howling raging torrent in a final desperate search for salvation.
And just as he felt the bonds that kept him intact start to tear asunder, he found it.
What it was, he had no idea. But somehow he felt himself pulling aback from the oblivion he'd come so close to, boosted by a surge of life-giving energy that snapped him back together once more.
His aching limbs started to flail again as they grew solid enough to disrupt the water's progress, and for one marvellous moment his hand caught... no, slipped... but caught again at some outcropping as he was hurled against the side of the gorge. The river gave him sufficient time to drag his head above the surface, to gulp in a brief mouthful of what turned out to be equal parts liquid and air, before it yanked him bodily away again. But he knew nothing would ever taste as sweet again, even as his lungs feasted greedily on the oxygen and strove at the same time to repel the water in heaving coughs.
Giddy, light-headed, drunk on the sensation of survival, of having defied the fates, outsmarted his dreams, he ignored the ominous whispering of his inner self. But the unforgiving current tugged at his legs again, giving notice that it wasn't prepared to release him that easily, and he was forced to listen, to accept the awful truth that would, in the end, condemn him to the very fate – albeit in a different guise – that he'd just fought so hard to evade.
As the waters closed over his head again he had to swallow a bubble of ironic laughter at the realisation that he was still at the mercy of the fears of his childhood, fears that had stayed with him, fears that would now be the last thing he'd ever experience. Because his aqua-phobic refusal to learn to swim back then left him totally unable to counter the dominance of the tumbling, roiling, bruising rollercoaster that carried him remorselessly along now, intent on taking him to a watery grave. And his dread of drowning was what would ultimately deliver him there.
*
Trailing in Shalimar's wake as she loped along the sloping, broken ground above the river, Emma tried to come to terms with what she knew had happened, but didn't want to believe. Jesse was gone – there was no other explanation for the dark quiet space in her mind where mere minutes ago there'd been terror, anger, distress...
She'd burst out of the trees onto the riverbank some hundred yards below the waterfall with howls and yells ringing in her head, unsure which were real and which imagined. But she'd been just in time to take out several of the gun-wielding thugs Shalimar was about to tangle with, using a few choice mental bomb-blasts to floor them before they'd overcome their shock at the sight of the snarling blonde wildcat racing towards them sufficiently to actually fire at her.
The feral had vented some of her apprehension on the remaining men, not an experience they would have enjoyed, but once there was no one left to fight she'd come to rest staring desolately at the shattered remains of the bridge, not even registering Emma's approach.
Into the comparative silence had come another vivid – and familiar – image of Jesse locked in mortal combat with an unseen foe, being driven to the ground again and again until he didn't have the strength to move any more, and Emma had known that he was indeed living his nightmare. And losing. But Brennan's appearance on the far side of the gorge, a hand resting with deceptive casualness on the shoulder of the girl who'd brought them all here, had seemed to jolt Shalimar into action, his answers to her shouted questions – how long? alive when he went in? – appearing to confirm whatever she was thinking. Because, with a single wild glance at Emma, she'd taken off again, following the river downstream like a cheetah on the trail of fresh prey.
"Stay with her," Brennan had called. "We'll go back to the Helix, look for a landing site down that way, catch up with you."
And stay with her was what she'd tried to do, though she was becoming heartily sick of the dampness and the mud and the slipping and sliding. But that had become as nothing when the jumbled emotional clamour she'd still been distantly aware of suddenly shut down. She thought she might have cried out at its abrupt cessation, but there was no one there to hear it. She might have used her com-link to share her suspicions, but there was no way that she wanted to be the one to bring an end to hope. So she struggled on.
Shalimar was running with senses maxed, the yellow of her feral vision adding an eerie cast to the shadowy gloom of her surroundings. If she'd allowed herself to think rationally she would have had to have said their chances of finding him alive were slim to zero, but she was anything but rational right now. There was no way she could give him up without at least trying to find him, because if the positions were reversed she knew he wouldn't give up on her.
The overrun path she'd been following disappeared beyond a curving bluff, but when she fought her way round it to a point where she could see the river again she pulled up short, eyes narrowing as she strove to make out the detail of what had caught her attention.
Up ahead, where the river bank briefly lowered itself to the level of the foaming waters, a tree had fallen to its death, the rotting trunk reaching the straggling fingers of its branches out into the flood as if in supplication. And caught up in those branches, half in and half out of the icy torrent that was doing its utmost to tug it free, was an ominously unmoving dark mass, barely recognisable at this distance as human. But Shalimar knew without question it was him, even before she got close enough to see the features partly obscured by the ribbons of wet hair plastered across them.
She dimly heard Emma shout something from way back behind her but she ignored her totally, eyes desperately seeking signs of life as she bounded over the clutter of vegetation-encrusted rocks that littered the path, unnerved by his stillness and lack of response to her calls. A stillness that became even more frightening when she felt the chill permeating the hand she grabbed to try and pull him up onto the bank beside her, splashing into the water without any of her normal innate distaste for it in order to free him from the tree's grasp. His visible skin was a waxy blue-white, a colour and texture she'd only ever seen before on a corpse, and if it hadn't been for the conviction she held in her soul that she would know if he had died, she would have been more scared than she'd ever been in her life.
Ignoring the discomfort of the liquid sloshing in her boots and soaking through the bottoms of her jeans, she dropped to her knees beside him and turned him onto his back, cupping his chin in one hand to hold him steady while she brushed the wet strands of hair back off his face. Blood from a jagged gash at his hairline tinted the dark blonde a muddy red, and the bruise he'd picked up in the dojo when she'd disturbed him stood out starkly against the translucence of his temple, but there was nothing there to indicate life. No other colour, no flicker beneath the closed eyelids, no discernible rise and fall of chest or rasp of breath.
But still she couldn't believe the evidence of her eyes, dropping a hand to rest over his heart and trusting her animal instincts to tell her what her normal senses couldn't.
Scrambling around the bluff, Emma saw Shalimar bent over the motionless body that could only be Jesse, watched her gather him into her arms and cradle his head against her shoulder, her hair cascading in a curtain that hid his face, and her heart tried to snap in two. Trying to calm her panting breathing she approached cautiously, almost tiptoeing as if not wanting to disturb what felt too strongly like a deathbed vigil, and opened her shields just a little, expecting to feel a wall of grief that she knew she wouldn't be able to defend herself against. But despite what she was seeing, the emotion she picked up was one of relief mixed in with the overtones of anxiety, and she allowed herself to hope things weren't as bad as she'd feared. "Shal?" she questioned, coming to crouch beside them, seeing the tears spilling from the dark brown gaze raised to hers.
"He's alive, Emma," Shalimar whispered, pulling Jesse closer and hugging his cold wet body to the comparative warmth of hers. "But only just. We have to help him..."
To Emma it seemed that the normally determined, impetuous feral had lost all ability for decisiveness, all sense of purpose, as if her life's work had been to find him and now that she had she was at a loss to know what to do next. So it was left to her to call Brennan in with the Helix and explain to Adam what to expect when they got back.
**
"Joshua? That's a lovely smile - what's got you so happy?" A pause. "Joshua?"
"Sorry... what?"
"You were miles away there! Looks like it was somewhere good."
"Oh... yes, you could say that. Well, not somewhere, exactly, but..."
"That's nice, dear. So, can I get you anything? Something to drink? Some soda? Or some nice iced water? "
"No!" Almost a shout - then quieter... "No, I'm really not thirsty right now."
"Well... if you're sure. I think it's going to be a hot one today." Another pause. "I'd better get on, then. You'll be alright here? Do you have enough to keep you occupied?"
"Plenty, thanks. Don't worry about me – I... I have some thinking to do..."
****