DISCLAIMER: What? You mean I don't own all of Star Trek, including Spock, tribbles, and all merchandising stock options? Well… damn.
CATEGORIES: Action/Adventure/Angst/Romance, Spock/OFC
SUMMARY: A young woman accuses Spock of killing her sister and captures him to seek revenge. However, they accidentally time travel back to the year 2004 and now have to work together to stay alive.
STRANGERS WHEN WE MEET
By: Hallospacegirl
CHAPTER TWO
The young cadet of the United States Air Force watched the red beam on the circular radar screen spin past for what seemed to be the millionth time, and stifled a yawn. He hated this patrol job, he hated the stuffy hotness of a July afternoon, and most of all he hated the tiny observation tower with its radar screens and incessant beepings and monitoring equipment and tiny window overlooking a patch of bland, uneventful blue sky.
The beam on the screen spun past again, and it reminded him of disco lights. This in turn reminded him of the party at Jenna's house last night, which reminded him of Jenna. She was the prettiest, not to mention richest, girl he had ever met, and she simultaneously attracted and repulsed him with her ready smile and flirtatious ways to every boy who came across her path.
All of which meant nothing, he despairingly told himself, twirling his chair around so he could see out of the window. He wasn't going to get her regardless of what he thought of her, because he was a pathetic lump who was stationed as a lookout boy in the middle of a lonely tower, and she only seriously dated men who had real jobs -- men who actually flew the planes instead of sitting on their asses and monitoring them.
If only he had actually studied for those damn written tests a year ago he would have probably been flying high on the weekdays and receiving blow jobs from Jenna on the weekends -- but he hadn't. And so here he was, gazing out of the window and watching the heat ripple.
A shrill screeching punctuated the silence and startled him from his waking dream. His heart skipped a beat and for a second he was disoriented; suddenly he realized that the sound was a warning for the appearance of an unidentified aircraft.
Adrenalin pumping, he bolted to the radar display. Sure enough, there was a small pixilated white triangle blipping across the screen. He frantically tried to lift the plastic shield from the emergency button on the side of the desk, but his hands were trembling too hard, and it was only after the third try that he flung it off. He leaned in and prepared to press the button down.
The alarms stopped.
What the hell?
In the silence that followed, all he could hear were his own shallow breathing and the steady beeping of the monitoring systems. The small white triangle was nowhere to be seen and the radar screen was once again calm.
The cadet removed his hands the undisturbed emergency button, his brow creasing in confusion. How could an aircraft just disappear like that? The only explanations had to be that either the monitoring equipment was malfunctioning, or that he was malfunctioning from the heat, or that his superiors had decided to test him to see if he was awake. He sincerely hoped it wasn't the last possibility, and sighing, sank back into his chair.
And then it started again.
The alarms wailed even louder than before, and a large white object in the shape of a flying seagull's silhouette floated onto the radar. He stared at it in disbelief, backing away from the desk as though the radar panels had suddenly grown lethal. He did not know of any plane that looked even remotely similar to the birdlike shape the radars were showing. A Russian spy plane, maybe? No way -- the first little triangle had been suspiciously fake enough -- this gigantic bird image was definitely a malfunction or a joke.
He calmed himself and sat back down and listened to the blaring alarms, wondering when it would all be over.
That was when he felt the rumbling and hot air at his neck. He wheeled around to face the sky outside the tiny window; coming at him was a massive scaly green -- thing -- that could hardly be called a plane, with two wings and a metal beak. It was roaring and radiating intense heat and making the tower shake like a stick hut in the middle of an earthquake.
Okay. This was not a joke.
The cadet slammed into the emergency button with all his weight and screamed into the microphone just as the scaly green ship skimmed across the top of the observation tower, "Emergency! UFO sighted at tower three! UFO sighted at tower three, Goddamn it! Get your fucking asses over here!"
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A quick glance at Spock proved what Ophelia had suspected about him from the beginning: that perhaps Vulcans did have feelings after all. Because at this moment his straight, thin eyebrows were plunged together in a deep frown, and his lips were pressed firmly closed.
She sighed, returning her attention to manually steering the Esmeralda over the crowded, metropolitan city. "I admit that wasn't the best thing to do under the circumstances. But I did not want to sacrifice the computers in order to raise the cloaking shield," she said.
"Without the cloaking shield activated, we have a ninety nine percent chance of receiving enemy fire," came the Vulcan's usual, colorless response.
"If you're mad at me, say so."
"I am not. I simply think your decision was irrational."
"Which means you think I'm an idiot. Don't forget you're still my prisoner."
"I do not think you're an idiot, and yes, I know I am still under your capture."
She didn't know whether she wanted to slap him or fry him with the phaser, so she concentrated ahead and did neither.
Three quarters of an hour ago they had entered Earth's atmosphere to the warning that due to the ship's low power, the Esmeralda could sustain cloaking shields only if all computers were deactivated.
Spock had directed auxiliary power to the activation of the shields, and had shut down the computers with a quick command in Vulcan. He'd then requested to manually steer the ship until they reached a suitable landing site; she had scathingly reminded him that it was her ship, and had swiftly regained her position in the captain's chair by literally throwing the Vulcan out.
Spock, after stiffly straightening his rumpled clothing, had then proceeded to recite in his deep and gravelly baritone a list of boring -- and in Ophelia's opinion, inconsequential -- facts about the Earth's current history, ecology, space travel, and aerial statistics, until she'd fallen half asleep and almost crashed the ship against a mountain.
Logically, the Vulcan had remained silent after that.
When they had crossed over the mountain range, which Spock had called the Sierra Nevadas, and above a region of large buildings and small individual dwellings, Ophelia had summoned the computer in frustration, commanding it to locate a landing zone at least five miles away from the eyes of prying Earth inhabitants.
With an abrupt shout that sounded like a Vulcan curse, Spock had batted her aside, flicking off the computers and reinstating the cloaking shields at maximum.
"Ophelia, Earthlings at this time perceive all foreign vessels as hostile. They will shoot us down," he'd said forcefully.
"Without the computers, we won't be able to find a landing site in -- who knows how long!" she'd argued. "Less than an hour without the shields --"
"My calculations are that the chances of finding a landing site without computer assistance in one hour is one to three, while the chances of coming under fire without shields is one to ninety --"
Ophelia had flung her hands up in defeated acquiescence.
Now, forty-five minutes later, Spock sat forward in his seat and gestured to the outskirts of the rapidly thinning city below them. "Beyond the city is a series of hills, and even further, flat plains. We may land with little difficulty on the plains."
Ophelia squinted ahead at the hills; they were significantly smaller than the Sierra Nevadas, but mountainous all the same. A thin ribbon of highway wound through them, continuing across the plains and into the distance. She bit her lip hesitantly. "We'll be getting most of our supplies to fix the ship in the city, right?"
"Yes, I assume."
"Then if we land in the fields, we'll be placing ourselves very far from the city. And those damned hills will be blocking our way." She groaned. "Is the transporter working?"
"No, there is not enough power. We will need to fix the ship before we can operate it."
"Then we'll have to land as close as we can to the base of those hills."
"Doing so will increase the risk of crashing. We no longer have computer aid."
"If we can turn off the shields and turn on the computers for one minute --"
"The highway offers a full view of the surrounding areas. Traffic is heavy, averaging forty-seven vehicles per minute past a given point. People will see the ship."
"Well, we'll wait until traffic isn't heavy."
"This will only happen in the evening, but it will be dark, and most of our guidance lights, save one, have been destroyed by the Klingon --"
"Damn it!" Ophelia screamed, hitting the front of the control panel with her fist. New pain reverberated through her shattered knuckles, and she swiftly drew her hand to her chest, nursing it with the other. She glared at Spock, whose impassive, hooded eyes gazed back below steeply angled eyebrows. The last remaining thread of reserve snapped inside of her. "Your pessimism is not helping the situation, asshole!"
He only blinked, looking a bit pensive but otherwise expressionless.
"Listen here," she continued before he could make another scientific observation regarding her insult, "I'm trying to decide a course of action and all you can do is tell me what can't happen. Who the hell do you think you are? You're not my -- my father, understand?"
No. She regretted the words the instant they left her mouth. She remembered the mind meld, the distant nightmares he had drawn up within her and shared with her. With a tight shake of her head, she pushed the memories to the back of her brain and let her anger rise. "I am the one making the decisions!" she snapped.
"And I am merely giving you the statistics."
"Your statistics are destroying every chance we have of getting out of this century alive! Why must you calculate all these statistics? Why can't you do things based on faith instead of logic?"
"Faith alone will not save us," Spock said.
She swallowed. "Logic alone did not save my sister, Mr. Spock."
He didn't respond for a long time. When he did, his voice was level, but strangely, Ophelia thought she could detect a hint of tension behind the controlled monotone as he said to her, "The chances of successfully landing at the base of the hill is one in ten. You can let your faith carry you from there."
"I'm truly thankful I have your vote of confidence," she replied dryly.
"I have enthusiastically given it to you."
Ophelia was surprised. "Was that sarcasm? From a Vulcan?" she said, taking the steering module and maneuvering the ship downward as they rapidly approached the hills.
"I believe it was so."
"Fascinating..." She trailed off, their conversation quickly forgotten as she buried herself in the concentration of the landing. Now she could see that some areas below were densely packed with trees -- pines and various deciduous species, mostly -- which fanned out into clearings of low shrubbery and grass. She spied a wide patch of sparse bushes, and decelerated the ship as she steepened the angle of descent.
She steadied her hands on the controls; the path of the Esmeralda needed to be as straight as possible to ensure that she didn't miss the clearing and explode into a fireball among the nearby trees. Five seconds later she gently began to ease the ship parallel to the slope of the hill. A few more seconds and she would have it...
Pain surged through the muscles of her right hand.
The Esmeralda pitched into a sickening nosedive. Ophelia swore, regaining her control and forcing the lever upward, just as the tips of several tall pines clawed against the underbelly of the ship with a metallic screech.
Now the ship convulsed and shuddered noisily as it ascended spiraling into the sky. A loud hissing sound began, and a blast of heat burned steadily into her back. "Something's very wrong, Spock!"
"The cloaking shield is breaking and the left engine has caught fire," the Vulcan replied from behind her. She darted a glance at him; he had bolted to the rear of the cockpit and was flinging open a panel in the wall as sparks and flame rained around him.
"Don't stand next to the engine!" she shrilled. "It'll explode!"
"I am keeping the shield and engine intact," he shouted above the crackling sparks. "Resume landing."
"You'll die!"
"Resume landing!"
She clenched her teeth and guided the ship into a wobbling trajectory. Trees flew up to meet them, but she pressed forward. About five hundred feet ahead was a grassy clearing. She began to calculate the exact distance required to land, but gave up and killed the engines anyway, letting the momentum of the flight carry them -- hopefully -- into where they needed to go.
The Esmeralda met the floor of the clearing with a brutal jolt. Ophelia half expected to hear an explosion and feel the blessed oblivion of death take over, but neither happened, and now they were skidding across the clearing like riders in an old-fashioned sled car.
The unbearable heat inside the cockpit was building. "Spock, come here!"
"Keep watch. We will --"
Crash.
The ship met with the trunk of a towering oak and smashed to a stop. Ophelia was tossed forward by the sudden halt, stars exploding across her blackened vision as she hit her head against the viewscreen. Glass and metal and a thousand different materials, all painfully sharp, rained down on her in a relentless torrent. The air had been forced from her lungs and she gasped for breath, only to inhale a choking mouthful of smoke and debris that sent her doubling over in agony.
She closed a palm over her nose and reeled away from the annihilated controls, stumbling blindly through the smoke-filled cockpit. "Spock?" she coughed.
A circuit fired, but there was no other answer.
"Spock?"
The opaque smoke was too thick for her to see past the length of her arm, but somehow she could tell that he was no longer standing at the engine panels, and her stomach lurched to her throat at the realization. "Spock? Spock!"
She saw him.
He was a dark black shape crumpled in the corner, thin and unmoving. Dust and sparks snowed upon him, hissing hotly as they met with his body, yet he remained still, remained unmoving.
Panic welled up in her and she rushed to him and knelt by his side. He could not die now. He absolutely could not die and leave her all alone in this foreign place, all alone in this foreign time. "Spock! Wake up! Listen to me!" She reached out to his pale, serene face, bracing herself for the cold clamminess of death. His skin was warm.
Thank God.
Whimpering in relief, she crawled to the main entryway on her knees and pried the hatch open, dislocating it from its rusted hinges and throwing it clattering to the ground outside. Golden afternoon sunlight soaked in as the foul smoke began to billow out.
Ophelia backpedaled to Spock. He was illuminated in the light, and now she could discern the countless green scratches, burns and cuts that covered him from head to toe. "Oh God. I'm getting you out of here. Just hang on!" She kicked the path from his prostrate figure to the open hatch clear of as much jumbled debris as she could. Then she turned back to the Vulcan and wrapped her arms around his chest from behind. His head rested between her neck and shoulder and she could hear him breathing, shallowly. She laced her fingers together tightly, dragging him to the hatch.
She pulled him outside slowly, taking care not to aggravate his injuries on the jagged edge of the entryway. The ground of the clearing had been stripped clear of flora, due to the Esmeralda's faulty landing, and the dirt was smooth and soft beneath her feet.
And suddenly fatigue overwhelmed her and her knees buckled and she fell back, panting. Cool moisture trickled down her cheeks in tiny rivulets; Ophelia found that she was crying.
"Spock. Oh, Spock," she sobbed softly, not knowing why she was desperately whispering this virtual stranger's name or what she meant by it -- perhaps she simply needed to affirm her own voice. She was still holding onto him, the weight and heat of his body strangely comforting against her.
Ophelia reminded herself that he was unconscious and probably dying. She gently moved him to the ground and curled up beside him. His face, so odd with his white skin and pencil eyebrows and large pointed ears, was calm. His steady breaths came deeper now.
He was not dying. He was going to live.
Somehow she knew that for a fact, as if he had told her through that mind meld of his. Sighing, she took his hand and held it firmly between hers.
And it was only then that Ophelia saw the Esmeralda -- or rather, the absence of it -- in the clearing before her. She saw the ground smashed into the rough shape of a triangle, and she saw the forest and the rise of the hill beyond. A small brown owl balanced upon a scraggly tree limb and hooted a mournful song.
So the cloaking shield was still functioning. The blasted Vulcan had managed to keep it up after all. She laughed, wearily, but broke into a strangled cry when she realized what the shield was surely hiding from her eyes: a hideous, broken wreckage that could not hope to take to the air again.
The Esmeralda was dead.
Ophelia knew that for a fact as well, and it wasn't from some damn mind meld or spooky sixth sense or so-called lovers' connection. The Esmeralda was a part of her and now it was gone, and a new empty chasm had been gouged into her heart.
She distantly thought of the impossibility of ever traveling forward in time again, but she no longer cared as one phrase repeated itself with each aching heartbeat: The Esmeralda is dead.
Ophelia closed her eyes and wept.
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Images silently fluttered through Spock's healing trance like photographs from a faraway past. He felt as though he were sitting in McCoy's office on the Enterprise, absently flipping through a tattered antique history book while waiting for a wound to close. Now his katra was repairing his broken body; his mind was flipping through the book of his life.
People and places and objects floated past him, faces of his mother and father, and of the uniformed crew of a shining silver spaceship, but there was one face that made him stop. She had large violet eyes framed by thick black lashes, and her lips were pink and full.
Lavinia.
It all came back to him.
-------------
Spock feels cold to the bone now, despite the three thermal layers of his specially designed snowsuit, as he cups a gloved hand to his mouth and calls to his crew, "The blizzard is worsening and the temperature is dropping rapidly. Abandon all work and head out." His voice resounds through the interior of the cave.
Four pairs of approaching footsteps crunch unevenly as he sees his cadets trudge toward him. They sink with every step to the shins in ice and snow. "Harker, where is Lavinia?" he asks the boy who reaches him first. There are only the four male cadets; the girl is missing.
"She's refusing to come out now, Commander," Harker replies over the howling winds.
"Why?"
"She said she just discovered a living flower in the ice or something, and she wants to remove it without harming it."
Illogical. She will die from the cold.
"Lavinia!" he calls into the cave. Louder now: "Lavinia! I command you to abandon your post!"
The cave shakes with the echo, rumbles.
With shouts of warning, the four cadets scramble the remaining ten feet out of the cave until they are a safe distance away. They huddle together, unsure. Their science officer has not trained them for situations such as these.
"Lavinia!" Spock repeats.
Increasingly larger chunks of ice slough from the ceiling of the cave.
And then he spies her in the darkness, running. There is a metal container in her hand and her uniform is bulky and the ground is too deep with loose snow, and she trips. She picks herself up. The metal container has fallen; she fishes in out of the snow, tucks it under her arm, and resumes in determination.
"Let go of the specimen! It is slowing you down!"
"This is important!"
He begins to sprint to her, but has hardly gone two feet when he hears a call from behind him. "Commander, Captain Kirk requests that we beam up immediately," Mahoney says. "I've told the rest to prepare for beam --"
"No! Negative!" He stumbles out of the quaking cave, barely missing a falling icicle, waving his arms and shouting, "Do not beam! We beam up when Lavinia comes out!"
"But Captain's orders!" Harker protests.
"No," Spock says. He does not know why he says it; it is illogical to disobey a captain's orders.
Suddenly, a massive, deep roar startles him.
"Commander Spock!" Mahoney's eyes grow wide as he stares past his shoulder. Spock spins around to see that the mouth of the cave has been sealed in an avalanche of snow. The swirling blizzard piles even more blankets of white against the bank, condensing it, compacting it.
Lavinia is still inside.
He calls for his cadets, leading them to the collapsed cave. Already his mind is calculating the thickness of the fallen mound of snow and the speed in which the cadets and he can dig through.
"Lavinia!" he shouts.
A muffled female voice, barely audible, replies from within, "I'm buried. I can't move. I can't prepare for beam."
"We are digging you out," he assures her, and gives the order to the boys beside him.
It is bitter cold, and their bodies no longer possess any feeling, but they dig. The exertion warms him up for the briefest of moments, until the temperature plummets in a gust of fierce snow, and then all he can sense is the frigid storm. It is now too cold; the cadets are slowing, their faces frosted stiff with ice.
But they are almost there. At this rate they can rescue her and beam up safely within a quarter of an hour. He knows it. He is certain of it.
And then, as if in affirmation, the boy named Dei barks out, "Commander! She's here! I have her!"
He climbs through the snow to Dei's side, and sees that the cadet has uncovered Lavinia's hand. It is a pale, white hand that is as cold as ice when Spock reaches out to enclose it within his own. But her fingers move and jerkily tightens around his.
"We must go faster," he says to the cadets, digging to free Lavinia's arm.
His communicator beeps in his pocket. No, he has no time to answer! He ignores it, but it continues beeping and beeping, and finally, he plucks it out of his clothes and holds it tucked under his chin. "Spock here."
"Kirk here." The captain's words are tinny and distorted by the storm. "Listen to me, Spock -- get the hell out of there! That's an order!"
"We almost have her --"
"Spock, I know this is the most difficult decision an officer can make, but you must prepare your men to beam now! They will die!"
"I will not leave her behind, Captain."
"Spock! It is either her, or all six of you! You know this! Calculate the impossibility!"
He does. And he understands.
They are too slow. The cold is too fast. The numbers are right. But he can't move.
"Spock?" he hears. It is not Captain Kirk, but Lavinia. She is whispering, but somehow he hears her through the screaming storm. "Spock, leave me. It's the logical thing to do."
"Lavinia --"
"Go, Spock. Just go..." And her hand slips from his, limp.
"Commander?" Harker is speaking. "We almost have her. Do you want us to --"
"No," Spock says. He stands, swaying unsteadily in the wind. "We will leave her. Prepare to beam, everyone."
"But there must be a way!" someone protests.
Yes, Spock thinks in agreement, there must be a way! But -- damn it -- what is the way? It is too cold to reason clearly and logically! The men are already dying of hypothermia, their biological systems shutting into painless, peaceful deaths as the temperature continues its merciless descent.
Spock clears his throat. "Abandon your work, men," he says. "Prepare to beam. This is an order."
-------------
The image ended in his mind, flitting past like a butterfly, soon consumed by the oceans of other memories and thoughts. He drifted in semi-hypnosis, letting himself lose mental focus as his katra soothed and repaired the last wounds of his body. He felt his femur, fractured from bracing his leg against the Esmeralda's hard, burning engines, finish fusing together, and he felt the open gashes across his skin stop bleeding and fill with new epidermal cells.
The process was almost over; his awareness was quickly condensing like mist gathering into pools of dew. And now his katra had fused with his mind, and Spock rose from the depths of his sea of consciousness, and gently broke the surface.
He opened his eyes to the glittering darkness above him. He was staring up at a clear, star-speckled night sky, while below him he felt the porous soil, and around him he smelled a musky, earthy scent underlaid with the odor of burnt metal and fuel.
Seven point two hours had elapsed since he and the young woman had crashed into the clearing, he calculated. This made the time now twelve thirty at night. He hypothesized that most of the inhabitants of the early second millennium Californian coastline would be asleep by now; the faint sounds of the occasional car rolling down the distant highway confirmed his hypothesis to be correct.
But he could not sleep, of course. To do so at this moment would be illogical. He peered at the young woman warmly nestled and sleeping at his side, and shook her softly. "Lavinia," he whispered. "Lavinia, wake up."
The woman frowned at the name and fidgeted almost uncomfortably against him.
A full second passed before Spock realized his mistake. Lavinia was not the name of this woman, he remembered, but the name of her older sister who had died on Articos two years ago. It was strange that he should call her by this name, as though something from his human subconscious had dragged it out of him.
"Ophelia," he tried again. "Ophelia, wake up."
The woman sighed, her eyelids fluttering open. She stared at him for a moment and murmured, her voice thick with sleep, "What's happening? Who are you -- wait -- Spock?"
"Yes, I am Spock."
She froze. Then she bolted to a sitting position, gasping, her hands flying to her forehead. "Oh my God, it's true. I was hoping this would all be a bad dream."
"It is not," was all he could think of to say.
"So we traveled back in time? So the Esmeralda is really done for?" Ophelia demanded shrillingly, now jumping to her feet and glancing about her in the darkness. "Can I see it? Is the cloaking shield still on?"
"Yes, it is," he replied, sitting. His leg and several inner organs objected to this action by resisting with pain, but the pains were dull and muted, and signaled a near recovery. He slowly stood. "The ship is in front of you, five paces. You can feel it, but the cloaking will prevent you from seeing it."
"It's okay. I want to feel it. I want to know that it's there." She walked forward with arms stretched in front of her, until there was a small thudding sound as her hands met with the exterior of the ship. And then she was crying and splaying her arms over the invisible metal surface, her sobs carrying loudly through the quiet midnight forest. Her silhouette, precariously balanced in the center of the empty clearing, was outlined by a sliver of moonlight, and it shook with every cry and breath.
He did not know humans could show grief over an artificial object such as a small, broken ship, and found that he could not stop watching her weep. And, stranger still, when he searched his mind as to why this was so, both his Vulcan and human halves declined to offer any answer.
He walked to her instead. He held out his hand and laid it on her shoulder.
Ophelia abruptly stopped crying at his touch, instantly fixing him with eyes that shone with glistening tears. "What do you want?" she hiccupped. "The ship's gone now. We can't do anything anymore."
"We can survive, Ophelia."
"You don't understand! My ship is broken beyond repair! We can't travel forward in time!" She stepped away from him, angrily shrugging him off. "We're stuck here forever, okay? Time travel hasn't been invented yet, and when it is, we'll be old and drooling, or dead."
"Then what do you suggest we do?"
"I don't know. I -- all I know is that this situation is completely fucked. All I know is that --"
"Ophelia," he said firmly.
"What!"
"You said to me before that logic alone could not save lives. You also said to me that at certain times, one must not merely act on statistics, but on faith as well. I believe that this situation requires that we overlook the statistics of time travel, and base our actions on faith."
The young woman fell silent. As she stared at him, Spock saw that her thoughts were waging a war behind her eyes, a war that abruptly ended as she growled and furiously wiped the tears from her face with the back of her forearm. "Fine. We'll do as you say. We'll leave right now," she said. "We'll leave the ship here, find the highway, and contact civilization from there."
"This is a rational choice."
"No, it's not. It's a fool's plan based on the useless thing known as faith, but it's better than having no plan, Spock." She continued to look at him as if in expectation, and then finally marched to him and grabbed his wrist in a tight grip. "Well, what are you waiting for? Let's go!"
Spock held his ground as she began to pivot away.
"Now what is it?" The woman snapped, turning accusingly to him when he did not move.
"You are going the wrong direction," he replied. "The highway is in this direction." He pointed behind him.
Ophelia glowered in response, dropping his wrist as though it were made of acid. With an emphatic "I hate you," she stomped past him toward the route to which he had indicated. "I hate you, Spock," she repeated as she disappeared into the rustling pines. "Don't forget it, and don't forget that if we ever get out of this century alive, I will follow through with my plan of killing you."
He knew better now than to correct her words. He followed her instead, and as he stepped into the motley shadows of the thickening forest, he almost felt that he was smiling.
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END OF CHAPTER TWO. MORE TO COME!