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Mike Pinocchio was having an extremely good week.

On Monday he'd finalized the plans for his daring (suicidal, many had said) jailbreak. He'd spend the last three months finding the men he needed and convincing them to come along on his daring (and suicidal) jailbreak, and when brought together in one room, none of them had tried to maim or kill each other, which on its own had been enough to make the week a good one. On Tuesday he had led a successful raid of a large Republican Guard border patrol base, and had captured ten cases of weapons and ammunition, which had made it a very good week. On Wednesday he had received confirmation of some very important information, and that had made it an extremely good week. He would have gone ahead without the confirmation, but it was nice to have it all the same.

Now it was Thursday, and he had managed to break into a high-security detention area, rescue an old friend, and get back out again. And if he could get out of the area without being captured or killed, the week would be just about perfect.

Bullets whined past his head. Hold that thought. He swerved off down an unpaved side-road, deeper into the cover of the trees. If he could just get to the main road…

He shot a glimpse up at the mirror. One humvee with two guardsmen a few hundred feet behind, and that looked to be it. So it was doable; he just had to do it.

The road dipped down into a stream-bottom. He drove through it at full speed, mud and water spraying up around the car. For an absurd second he thought about SUV TV commercials back home and almost laughed. Everyone wants to take a car tear-assing through the woods. No one wants to do it actually running from something.

A gap appeared in the trees to his right. He hesitated, and then turned, hard, and he was bumping and rattling over branches and through brush. He cast another look behind him. No humvee, but that didn't mean anything. If they hadn't seen him turn it might be all right, but assuming things was dangerous. He saw another gap ahead, possibly a deer path, and took it. A small sapling had the misfortune to get in his way; its branches briefly smacked the hood and then it snapped under the wheels and was gone.

Beside him in the passenger's seat, his head lolling back and forth drunkenly as the car shook and bounced over the forest floor, was the man he had done all this for. At least Pinocchio thought it was him; it was honestly hard to tell for sure, under the hair and the beard and the filth. And God, he was so thin, the old camo pants and t-shirt Pinocchio had hurriedly stuffed him into almost swallowing him up… But the eyes had been the same. Paler, wider, blue almost consumed with freakishly dilated pupils, but the same.

He hadn't said a word, and the total lack of recognition in his eyes had been disturbing, but there wasn't time to deal with it now. There were humvees to get away from.

He turned again, the brakes squealing in protest. Up ahead the trees seemed to be clearing. Whether it was the main road, or just where he'd originally come from was hard to say, but at least it was something. He pressed the gas pedal to the floor, gritting his teeth as the car bounced so high that he felt his stomach drop.

He broke the treeline in a shower of twigs and leaves, the wheels hitting blacktop with an almost audible sigh of relief. The road. Fuck yeah. He looked back and suddenly things weren't so fuck yeah anymore; seeing not one, but two humvees full of Republican Guard bearing down on one's ass had a way of doing that. He cursed loudly and lavishly and tried to consider his options in five seconds or less.

Go back into the trees? No. They were thick on both sides now, and even had there been a place he could turn, he wasn't sure the car would handle it well. Or at all. No, he was on the road, he had to stay on the road. He'd hope that further options would present themselves. In the meantime he'd just have to try to outrun them.

Up ahead was a straightaway, and that was bad. The car was agile and good on rough roads, but in a plain race against a humvee it would probably lose. Pinocchio chewed his lower lip, uncomfortably close to panic. He was running out of choices.

…Or was he?

Something gleamed in the sun several hundred yards ahead. Something on top of a small rise. Something that looked a lot like…

He was suddenly conscious of a growing rumble in his ears. He looked to his left and almost yelled with joy and disbelief.

On the left, bearing down on the road crossing, was a long freight train.

Trains had been a distant memory in this part of the country until Santiago had moved in and started logging operations along some of the main lines. He had started up a short-distance rail service to carry the lumber from the logging sites to the larger mills; it ran infrequently, and was heavily guarded.

It also usually involved a lot of freight cars.

Pinocchio jammed the gas into the floor, cursing and swearing and praying under his breath. Behind him were eight men with guns; in front of him was something huge and fast that was going to kill them both very messily if the timing was wrong.

He just had to trust that it wasn't.

The car screamed forward. The train roared. The humvees were only a hundred feet or so behind him, now, pulled up side by side. If they flanked him… well, he couldn't let them. In the mirror he saw one of the guardsmen raise his gun and ducked just in time to avoid the bullet that whizzed over his head. It crashed through the windshield, spidering a crack up the glass. He shot a hand up, pulling Hobbes down with him; Hobbes was still unconscious, and he supposed that was a good thing. Easier to handle him this way. Although it would have been nice to have an extra pair of shooting hands.

He raised his head just enough to see where they were and how far they had to go, and whether or not they were about to die. The tracks were less than forty feet away. The train seemed to be less than inches. Pinocchio sank back down again, squeezed his eyes shut, and, although he knew it was useless, stomped all his weight onto the gas pedal.

One second passed. Then two. Then three. The roar was deafening now, but they weren't dead. Pinocchio raised his head, turned—and burst out laughing. They were past. The humvees were stuck on the other side of the tracks. It was too perfect. It was something out of a movie. A few more shots made it past his head and he dropped down again, still laughing, reaching up to keep the wheel steady.

He turned to his right and haggard blue eyes met him. The laughter died on his lips.

Those eyes were completely feral. They looked terribly out of place on what was, despite how poorly it was kept, a human face; they would have looked more at home on a wild dog. Or a wolf.

"Jesus, Hobbes," Pinocchio breathed. "What the fuck did they do to you in there?"

Hobbes said nothing. Pinocchio grimaced and pulled himself back into the seat, reaching down and pulling Hobbes up with him. He turned to look behind them again; the train was receding on the horizon, but it still looked like it was going strong. For now, they were safe, and heading back into some heavy tree cover.

"You okay, Hobbes?"

Hobbes still said nothing. Just looked at him with those awful, spooky eyes. There was something obscene about them, Pinocchio decided. The Thomas Hobbes he'd known had been warm, friendly, deeply compassionate, and almost frighteningly intelligent. That Thomas Hobbes was nowhere to be seen now, not in those eyes. The spark in those eyes was either dead, or buried so far down that it might take years of digging to get it out. He'd taken Hobbes out of the cave, but maybe Hobbes had brought the cave with him.

Of course, maybe that was all bullshit. How could he know any of that? Maybe Hobbes just needed a while to adjust.

"So," he said, feeling more than a little awkward. "I guess you're wondering how I found you."

Hobbes didn't say either way.

"It actually wasn't that hard," Pinocchio went on firmly. "Once I found out you were alive, there were only a few places they could have taken you. I got together with a few people who knew some things about the inside of Santiago's operations in this area, and they told me where you were most likely to be found. Then I ran into someone, a guy who actually somehow got out of where you were, and he told me he'd seen you." Of course, there had been the nightmare months when he had been sure that Hobbes was dead, sure that the night he'd seen him dragged away by Santiago's soldiers, in Santiago's truck, in Santiago's cuffs, was the last time he'd ever see him. The thought of Santiago gaining a victory in that way had been terrible. The thought of a life in Harsh Realm without Tom Hobbes had been, unexpectedly, startlingly, even worse. There had been a time, a short time but still a time, when he had entertained dark thoughts about himself, thoughts he was ashamed of now, and ashamed that he would allow his own life to be so entangled with that of someone else.

But it was all moot now, wasn't it? Hobbes wasn't dead. Hobbes was here.

Sort of.

"The one thing I can't make sense of is why they didn't just kill you," he said. "And the only thing I can think is that the soldiers who took you were all complete tools and didn't recognize you, and no one knew you were down in the pit at all. Isn't that such a fucking joke?"

Hobbes didn't disagree. He stared.

"…Hobbes?" Pinocchio looked over at Hobbes, feeling slow horrible realization creeping over him. "Hobbes, do you know who I am?"

Hobbes said nothing.

"Hobbes, can you speak?"

Nothing.

"Hobbes… shit, Hobbes, if you can understand what I'm saying, give me some kind of sign."

Nothing.

Pinocchio slumped back in his seat, feeling his stomach drop for the second time in an hour. "Fucking wonderful," he muttered. Suddenly the week wasn't so extremely good after all.