FINAL FANTASY: POINT OF INTERSECTION
BOOK 1: THE APPROACHING STORM


CHAPTER 16

Darkness.

All he could see, all he was aware of, was darkness. Not the murky gloom of an unlit house or the dim blanket of a starless and moonless night, but darkness. Blackness that had never known and could never hope to know that strange, alien thing called light. An utterly opaque ebony veil undulating as though it were a living thing. And perhaps it was.

She was in there somewhere, trapped. Somehow, he could feel it, could feel her. She was afraid, understandably enough, but at the same time, determined to find a way out, to find answers. There were so many questions, and they flooded his mind even as they surfaced in hers. Maybe the link had bound him to her more closely than he had anticipated.

Images seared his consciousness, visions of flame and blood and shadow. Ebony wraiths devouring like locusts the last of a barren world, one he at times recognized as his own yet somehow it was not. The blackened stumps of what once had been trees, the seared, lifeless hills and valleys where nothing but rock and ash could thrive. The future? The past? He wasn't certain, but he knew these visions, these nightmares, were hers. They had tormented her for many nights, weeks perhaps.

And at the center of it all was the tower.

A black, foreboding obelisk thrusting defiantly up at the roiling skies, the structure loomed like a pillar of solid shadow over the blasted landscape. Darkness emanated from it, darkness surrounded it, darkness flowed into it. The darkness pulsed and breathed, watched and waited. Its black, scorched Hand was ever reaching, grasping all within its lightless fist. Even he who had long ago chosen to dwell ever in the shadows couldn't help but shrink back from this terrible darkness.

Yet if he was to save her, he would have to endure it, for as he well knew, it was all around him. Cold seeped beneath his skin, made his bones throb from within the folds of his flesh. How could such sensation be possible in a dream? It was like standing alone in a graveyard on a black, moonless winter night. Only here, there was no hope of dawn.

He tried to move, to step forward, but nothing happened. Then he remembered he didn't have a body here. This was a dream, after all. If he wanted to go anywhere, he would have to do so in another way. Stray thoughts teased the edges of his mind as he struggled to concentrate, musings on the futility of this course of action or whether the one who had sent him here could be trusted. He wondered what his friends were doing, if they were still there, in the waking world.

Banishing the extraneous thoughts with a sudden, fierce surge of will, he strained to bring his mind to bear on the situation at hand. Images swirled around him in a confusing array of blurred orange and gray hues of fire and ash and smoke amidst the ever present blackness, but he ignored them as he fought to overcome the dream's transient nature and take what control of it he could.

Finally, he felt himself move, though it was more a sensation of motion than actual physical movement. Though still shrouded in darkness, he knew that he was no longer where he had been. He was closer to her, but at the same time, nearer to the source of the shadows as well, and he suspected that where he found one, he would find the other.

Again, he willed himself to move, concentrating on the sensation of her presence and attempting to get to her before she slipped out of reach. The closer he came, the greater the resistance he encountered and the more difficult it was to concentrate.

Whispered voices began to taunt him, memories of his own past began to surface, and his focus began to break down. He saw himself, a bitter youth in Wutai so long ago, cold and aloof even then. Though half-Wutainese, his western blood and looming height still had earned him the scorn of other adolescents, and so he had kept to himself, brooding and alone. It was their voices he heard now in the dream, twisted and chill with hate as they taunted him once more.

For a moment, he faltered, but only for a moment. They were ghosts, bodiless spirits that could do him no harm. In any case, he cared little for their whispered insults, for he had long ago moved beyond them. He felt himself move closer to her, though she still was some distance away. Either that, or whatever dark power had bound her in his hellish place was attempting to keep him from reaching her, from bringing her back to the waking world and to safety.

Again, whispers teased his mind, but this time, the voice—for now there was only one—was different. It was a cold, apathetic, and highly analytical wheeze he knew all too well, and he had hoped never to hear its slightly nasal yet quietly sinister tones ever again. The man was dead, after all, but the memory still lingered, as the probing darkness had no doubt discovered, and when Vincent gazed intently into the darkness once more, he saw his old nemesis standing before him, those penetrating eyes he knew so well staring back at him from behind a pair of rounded spectacles.

It was Hojo.

"I cannot let you pass," the twisted scientist murmured, his voice echoing more in Vincent's mind than in the shadows around him.

Vincent willed the image away, strove to regain control of the dream, but the figure in the white lab coat refused to fade back into the darkness where he belonged. He was no more real than the remembered voices of Vincent's unhappy childhood, but the gnarled man represented a far darker memory, one Vincent could never forget, for it had burned itself into his very being.

His surroundings changed, and now he was in a dimly lit laboratory whose stone walls and wooden shelves of countless books and reports were as familiar to him as his own name. This was where Hojo had destroyed him, had made him into something less than human for his own twisted pleasure. This was where, in a way, Vincent had been reborn.

Hojo still stood in front of him, a solid and implacable presence, and Vincent knew he could not overcome him, not this time. He watched the memory of that day happen once more, the madman's reworking of his very body until it was something strange and bestial. The loss of his arm, to be replaced with that bronze thing, that claw that was ever a reminder of all he had lost.

"No," he whispered. A simple word, but it was enough.

The effort to say even that left him drained, but as he watched, the laboratory was swallowed in gloom once more. Hojo remained a moment longer, a shade out of a hellish past that Vincent knew he could never escape. As he at last began to fade from sight, Hojo's lips curled upward into an arrogant sneer, and then with a last cackle of maniacal laughter, he was gone.

Once again, Vincent was alone in the darkness. Perhaps, in truth, he had always been here, but now was not the time to ponder such things. Ellone needed him, and she was very close. He heard her calling out, but whether it was to him or to anyone at all, he did not know. Her need, however, was clear enough, for he felt it even as she did.

Concentrating once more, Vincent moved closer, and as he did so, he felt the dark one's malice surround him, freezing his blood. Or at least, that was what it felt like. He felt himself hurled backward, back toward wakefulness, and he fought against it like a swimmer in the ocean fights against the undercurrent until he finally managed to dive back down into the depths.

Reaching out, he took her hand in his own.

Ellone grabbed onto him, wrapping her arms tightly around him, and Vincent strained to pull her away from her prison. For a moment, he caught a glimpse of an orb so utterly dark it made the blackness he was in seem like broad daylight in comparison. It was from the orb that the shadows came, whose will bound Ellone within these dreams. And yet it was not just that black sphere alone. There was something else, as well, something far more terrible but which Vincent could not put a name to.

There was a sudden lurch, and Vincent glanced down to see a monstrous, charred black Hand pulling Ellone away from him and back into the darkness of her prison. She cried out, grabbing desperately at Vincent's outstretched arms as he dove after her, and for a moment it was like some macabre game of tug-o-war with Ellone as the prize. It was a contest Vincent did not intend to lose.

He dug his claw into the blackened flesh of the Hand, and the darkness around him shuddered. Seeing the vulnerability, Vincent repeated the attack, and the shadows grew more and more unstable, splinters of light seeping through the cracks. Ellone caught on to his idea and kicked another finger with her free leg as hard as she could while Vincent raked his claw across the back of the hideous appendage.

The darkness crumbled, and the Hand's grip fell away under the onslaught of burning white light. Vincent held Ellone close to him, his good hand around her waist as he willed himself upward toward the source of the light. She leaned close against him, her arms about his neck, and let her head rest softly against his chest. Though it was just a dream, he found he could still feel the pressure of her body against his, and to his surprise, he didn't actually mind the contact.

He kept her close as they entered the light.

Ellone slowly opened her eyes, blinking a little as she tried to discern her surroundings. Where was she? What had happened to her? The softness of mattress and pillows told her she lay comfortably in bed, and her initial glance at the familiar panels of the wooden ceiling above her confirmed what she had already started to realize. Someone, most likely Vincent, must have brought her back to the house and up here to her room after she had collapsed.

A cool, icy touch against her forehead jolted Ellone to full wakefulness as though she had been slapped across the face, and she found herself looking at a strange, blue-skinned woman with hard, crimson eyes that burned with the intensity of the exertion she must have been going through until now. Elle shivered at the aura of cold that seemed to cloak the stranger like a shroud.

The woman took her fingers away from Elle's skin, though the chill lingered for a moment. "The shadow has passed, for the moment at least."

Ellone frowned in puzzlement at her words, but said nothing as she looked past the stranger to see her friends gathered nearby. Tifa sat near the fireplace, sighing in relief on seeing Elle finally awake, and Cloud stood not so far away from her, his posture easing a bit now that Elle was out of danger for the time being. Propping herself carefully onto her elbows so that she was sitting up, she noticed Vincent stirring as well from his chair by her bedside.

"Elle, you're awake!" Tifa exclaimed, giving her hand a squeeze. "For a while there, I thought we were going to lose you!"

Managing a small, weary smile, Ellone returned the gesture. "I'm alright, Tifa. Whatever it was that you guys did, it worked. Vincent found me and brought me back."

At the mention of her other friend, Elle gazed at him for a moment, hazy memories of their shared nightmare surfacing in her mind. In spite of the darkness of many of those thoughts, what she pondered most was the strange bond she had felt with him, as though their minds had been linked together to a certain extent. Even now, she felt it, sensed hints of the things she had seen and heard with him in the dream, things from his own past which in her mind had appeared as little more than blurred images whose meaning she couldn't quite discern.

A dark-haired man in glasses, wordless taunts from faceless young voices—these were among the bits and pieces lingering within Ellone's mind, and she knew they related to Vincent somehow. What meaning they had, she did not know, since the visions had been less clear to her in the dream than to Vincent, for whom they had been intended in the first place, but a name floated up to the surface of her memory now. Hojo. Was it the dark-haired man? Ellone thought it might be, but what significance he had to Vincent, she couldn't say, though she doubted it was anything benign. She would let her friend tell her in his own time, however, if he chose to.

The bond apparently worked both ways, she realized, for she felt him pondering the visions of flame and shadow that she had seen in her own dreams and in the dark prison her consciousness had been dragged into after she had collapsed in the bar. Ellone thought of the tower, that utterly black yet strangely familiar structure that in her visions had loomed ominously like some ebony finger thrusting upward at the roiling, blood red sky from the blasted plains of Centra. What was it? What did it mean?

Shaking off her dark musings, Ellone turned to the strange, blue-skinned woman who sat on the edge of the bed eyeing her coolly with her scarlet orbs. Yet behind that haughty mask, Elle thought she could see hints of apphrension and doubt in the icy siren's face. She guessed that the other woman had been the one responsible for Vincent appearing inside Elle's dream state to begin with, although how she had accomplished that feat or why, Ellone didn't know.

The frost maiden swirled her fingers together through the air in short arcs, her slender hands curving deftly in complex, rounded patterns that grew ever closer together with each repetition. As Ellone watched in fascination, a small sphere of bright bluish crystal began to materialize out of the very air, hovering between the woman's palms. The crystal's initially smooth surface began to segment and divide into hundreds of glittering facets, and the sphere itself gradually flattened and elongated until the softly glowing object resembled a flawless, shimmering sapphire set within a silvery, pale blue pendant. A final motion of the woman's hand crafted a length of fine, bluish-silver chain dangling from the top.

"Take it," she ordered brusquely.

Ellone grasped the pendant tentatively, wincing at the bitter cold it emanated. "What is this?"

"My kind refers to it as a dream ward," the other woman explained. "It is a talisman woven of ice and magic, designed to guard against mental intrusions. Wear it next to your skin at all times, and your rest should remain undisturbed."

"Thank you," Ellone murmured wonderingly.

To her surprise, the woman simply shrugged and rose to her feet. "I was repaying a debt, nothing more. Perhaps this will be enough so that there will be no further need of me."

The frost maiden's eyes met Cloud's for a moment, and Elle wondered what might have been happened between them. Tifa had mentioned a few days ago that there had been an incident the same night Vincent had found her, and now that she thought about it, Ellone guessed that this strange woman must have been involved somehow. Elle hadn't pressed her friend for any further information, however, since it didn't really seem to be her business and because she respected her companions' privacy, but she still remained a little curious about it nevertheless.

"It's good to see you up and awake, Ellone," Cloud remarked, shifting his attention away from the blue-skinned woman. "You had us worried there for a bit."

Carefully sitting up and swinging her legs over the side of the bed, Ellone nodded. "I'm really not sure what happened. How long have I been out, by the way?"

"Three days," Vincent murmured.

Elle froze, her eyes widening. "What? Three days?"

"You have lain here unconscious for that entire time, yes," he answered solemnly.

"We tried everything we could think of to wake you," Tifa seated herself next to Elle on the bed and laid a hand on her shoulder, "but nothing worked until Cloud brought Iseldra here to help you."

Three days? Ellone's mind whirled with the suddenness of it all. Were Squall and the others even still looking for her now? She hadn't been able to find any way of contacting them, of letting them know that she was alright. Come to think of it, she still didn't even really know where she was or how she was going to get back to the Garden.

A gentle squeeze on her shoulder brought Elle from her thoughts, and she turned to see Tifa gazing thoughtfully at her. "Just before you fainted, you were looking at that portrait of Aeris, remember? Can you tell us what happened?"

"I think so," Elle replied. Taking a breath to calm herself, she began her tale, speaking of the two strange visions she had experienced in the bar and the things she had seen and heard while that frightening presence had imprisoned her within her nightmares. Vincent nodded slightly at this, and Elle sensed that he perhaps understood now better than anyone what she had been going through. He had seen some of it himself firsthand, after all.

Ellone hesitated a moment, then went on to explain about the maddened, hellish voices that also had plagued her dreams and waking mind. She said nothing, however, of that other voice, that mysterious yet oddly reassuring feminine whisper that had called to her in the lake in Trabia and once more later that same night. Something held her back, although she did not know quite what, just that for some reason, she knew it wasn't the right time to speak of it.

"What you told us, that first vision you had," Cloud's pensive murmur broke the few moments of stillness that had followed the end of Elle's narrative, "it actually did happen, four years ago. Aeris, she… she died in front of me, just like you saw."

"But why would Elle have seen it in her vision?" Tifa wondered. "She never even knew who Aeris was until I told her that night."

Ellone sighed, as puzzled as her friends. "I'm not sure, but… I think I was supposed to see it. But the vision, I don't think I saw all of it. Something didn't want me to."

"The entity whose Hand you saw in the second vision," Vincent surmised.

"Right," Elle agreed, shivering at the memory. "And that's when I collapsed."

His hand propped under his chin in thought, Cloud looked to his wife. "Tifa, how's Ellone recovering from her injuries? I'm thinking we should pay Red a visit soon and see if he can't help us figure out this puzzle and get her back to her own world."

"She's doing pretty well, actually," Tifa replied, "but it'll still be several days yet before her ribs and wrist are healed enough for me to take off the bandages. I don't think a ride in the Highwind over to Cosmo Canyon will be anything to worry about, though."

But Ellone wasn't listening, instead staring at Cloud and struggling to comprehend what he had just said. "Cloud, what… what do you mean… another world?"

It was the frost maiden who answered. "You do not belong here, girl. There is power within you that you have not yet begun to comprehend, and it is that, I believe, which has brought you here. For what purpose, however, I cannot say."

As strange as it sounded, Ellone knew it to be the truth, and as she thought about it, faint murmurs of comprehension began to dawn in her mind. Something or someone, perhaps the as yet nameless owner of that oddly familiar feminine voice, had called her here to this world. But why? What was she supposed to do here? Where was she supposed to go?

"It explains a lot, now that I think about it," Elle murmured, "but I can't help feeling as though my coming wasn't an accident after all. There's something I have to do here, I know it. I just… I just wish I knew what it was…"

"We'll help you figure that out, Ellone," Cloud reassured her. "Don't worry about that. I'll call Cid and see if he can't swing over here in a day or two and bring us to Cosmo Canyon. In the meantime, though, I should be taking Iseldra back to the woods."

Tifa glanced worriedly at him. "Are you sure that's necessary, Cloud? I'm sure she can find her own way back to her home, can't she?"

"Your concern is touching," the frost maiden sneered acidly. "Just leave me at the edge of town, warrior, and I will make my own way from there."

"Fine," Cloud agreed. "Shall we get going, then?"

The woman he had identified as Iseldra nodded and headed out the door to wait in the upstairs hall. Cloud glanced after her for a moment, then turned back to Tifa. Approaching the bedside where she sat with Ellone, he bent and brushed a kiss lightly across his wife's lips, as though perhaps trying to reassure her in a way words never could. Elle understood well enough what Tifa worried about, what with her husband being alone with that icy vixen even for a short time.

"I'll be back soon, Tif," he told her.

She sighed pensively, and in a moment Cloud was gone, leading the snowy siren down the stairs and out the door into the frigid winter night. The sound of the front door closing behind them was loud in Elle's ears, and although she was relieved that the stranger was gone, she nevertheless wondered what more of herself she could have learned from the woman.

Tifa rose carefully to her feet, stretched her arms a bit, and turned to Ellone. "Well, I think I'm going to go lay down for a bit. I haven't gotten much sleep since you fainted on us, Elle, since I've been here most of the time, so I'm a little tired. Wake me if you need anything, though."

"Alright," Ellone nodded.

Quiet hung in the air almost palpably after Tifa left, and Ellone supposed she knew why. She and Vincent had shared a frightening yet at the same time intimate experience together, and she wasn't exactly sure where to begin talking about it. Hesitation filled her, yet she wondered briefly if some of it wasn't his own as well as hers.

"You saved me again," Elle murmured at last, a small, shy smile playing across her lips.

His gaze lingering thoughtfully over the bronze appendage that was his left arm, Vincent glanced up as she spoke, his expression typically unreadable. "It was… what I had to do, Ellone. But, I admit… I am relieved that you are safe."

Ellone reached out and tentatively took his good hand in her own. His was so much bigger than hers, yet not massive like a larger man's might be. Rather, his slender fingers reminded her more of those a musician or an artist might have, and given his pastimes of gunmanship and woodcarving, she could see why. A few butterflies fluttered lazily in Ellone's stomach as her fingers clasped his, the almost electric sensation of it sending her heart thudding in her ears.

"I'm glad that… that it was you in there, with me," she told him quietly. "Somehow, it just… made me feel better. I knew you would bring me back. Thank you."

Vincent tilted his head in acknowledgement. "Do not let it trouble you, Ellone. But, if I may ask, do you… do you feel it as well? This link between us?"

"That feeling of us touching each other's mind? Yes, I… I think so. What is it?"

"I do not know," he sighed. "It would seem to be a side effect of the ice witch's power when she brought me into your dream, but I cannot be certain."

Thinking of the ice witch reminded Ellone of the pendant the woman had given her to wear. Now was as good a time as any to put it on, she supposed, although with her right wrist still held in a cast, she wasn't quite sure how to go about it. The jewel's cold weight rested in her good hand, the chill seeping determinedly beneath her skin.

"Um, Vincent," she asked, extending her hand, "would you…?"

He nodded, understanding well enough what she meant. "Of course."

Rising from the chair he had occupied by the fireplace, Vincent joined Ellone on the bed, sitting to her left and taking the silvery blue pendant in his good hand. Elle turned her body to face away from him so that her back was to him, and soon enough, he had hung the shimmering pendant around her neck, the fine chain glistening silvery blue. Ellone nestled the pendant snugly inside her blouse, where it lay comfortably just above her breasts. She could get used to the mildly cold feel of it lying against her skin, she supposed. It was, after all, a small price to pay to have some peace of mind.

"Do you think it will work?" she wondered.

Vincent sighed pensively as she turned back to face him. "Perhaps, perhaps not. I cannot be certain."

"Well, I guess we'll find out sooner or later," Ellone glanced down at the sparkling pendant for a moment. "I just hope it won't be too late."

Quiet hung over the woods like a soft blanket as Cloud led the lithe figure of the ice witch past the last outlying homes and into the clusters of snow-covered evergreens that grew all along the edge of town. A soft, cool breeze left his cheeks slightly red and playfully tossed the trailing ends of his scarf, and his breath steamed in the air with every exhalation.

"We're here," he murmured simply.

Iseldra nodded wordlessly, her crimson eyes gazing into the nearby copse of pines and the wilderness that lay beyond. She walked lightly atop the snow, leaving no tracks and making no sound as she caught up to Cloud and paused at his side.

He turned to her. "You know the way from here, right?"

"I am native to these lands, warrior, or have you forgotten?" Iseldra sniffed disdainfully. "I can find my way back without help from you."

"Alright, then," Cloud nodded. "Just thought I'd ask."

Iseldra shrugged indifferently. "I care not. Your concerns are of no importance to me. My debt to you is repaid, as we agreed. I have no reason to aid you further."

"So, if we meet again, we may be enemies," Cloud stated flatly. Somehow, he didn't really care for the idea all that much.

"It is a possibility," Iseldra agreed.

Cloud had figured as much. Now that she was no longer indebted to him, Iseldra might as well be just another one of her kind for all he was concerned. Except he couldn't quite bring himself to believe that. But why? Why should she be any different than the others? She had only helped him because he had practically twisted her arm into doing so.

"Does it really have to be that way, though?" Cloud wondered softly.

The ice witch frowned but said nothing. She turned and treaded noiselessly across the snow, intent on disappearing into the woods. Yet halfway to the nearest tree, she stopped, and for a long moment she simply stood there, seeming to gaze off into the gloom as though trying to make up her mind about something. Finally, she glanced over her shoulder back at Cloud, her expression cold yet uncertain.

Her red irises seemed almost to challenge him. "Why do you care what happens to me? What difference does it make to you whether I live or die?"

To be honest, Cloud wasn't actually sure himself. But he knew that, dangerous as Iseldra might yet prove to be, he did not want to fight her. He didn't want to see her die, either, in spite of the things she had done. Maybe, he thought, she had put a face to something he had always before thought of as just another monster, and that face was one he couldn't easily ignore.

"I don't know, really," he answered, "except that I do care. I used to think your kind were all the same, but… I'm not so sure anymore."

The hardness in her gaze faltered so briefly that Cloud wondered if he hadn't simply imagined it, so quickly did she catch herself. "I told you before, warrior. Do not waste your pity on me."

"Why do you call me that?" Cloud asked curiously.

Iseldra shrugged. "It is what you are, is it not? And what you are is as much a part of your identity as the name you are called. This is true for all of us."

"So, in that case," he wondered, "what would I call you? What are you?"

"I… do not know anymore," the frost maiden murmured softly, the haughty mask inexplicably crumbling. She looked away, unable to meet Cloud's gaze, and her eyes seemed to find sudden interest in the nearby woods. The light breeze tossed a few strands of her blue silken hair across her face, but she made no move to push them aside.

Cloud took a tentative step forward. "Are you alright?"

"Tell me something, warrior," Iseldra asked. "Why… why do you fight? Our doom is coming, yet still you will not let it take you. Why?"

The question caught Cloud off guard for a moment, and he had to admit it was one he had asked himself on occasion. Yet it always came back to the same answer, although how to convey it to the ice witch eluded him for the moment. It wasn't something he really thought much about but had simply accepted long ago as part of who he was.

"There's always a chance, no matter how small," he explained, "that you can change how things turn out. I fight because… because I want those I care about to be safe. And because maybe, just maybe, I can help make a difference for others, too."

Iseldra slowly brought her eyes up to meet with his, her blood-hued irises not quite as hard as they had previously been. "You have strange motivations, warrior. Where I come from, we look out only for ourselves. That has ever been our way, even amongst each other."

"But you're not with them anymore," Cloud pointed out.

"Something that was not entirely my doing, I will admit," she agreed. "My sisters are blind fools, ignorant of what they know is coming. They think that by ignoring it, the Shadow will simply cease to be. I tried to tell them otherwise, but…"

Cloud thought he understood now, at least in part. "They threw you out."

"Yes, although I suppose I was glad to leave. We are a solitary race, but even so, we generally keep some amount of communication with each other. They would know if I ever tried to go back, not that I have any desire to do so."

"So what can you tell me of this danger you feel?" Cloud asked pensively.

A shiver passed through the ice witch's body as she spoke. "Little enough, to be honest. But it will not be long now before the storm begins to break, I can feel it in my blood. I will tell you this, however: whatever happens, that girl will be at the center of it."

"Ellone?" Cloud wondered. "Why's she so important?"

Iseldra's gaze grew suddenly intense, her scarlet orbs narrowing. "I do not know, but there is unimaginable power within her. She will be either our salvation… or the death of us all."

Before Cloud could question her further, Iseldra disappeared into the woods with little more sound than the snowflakes gently drifting down from the skies might make. A soft, icy breeze whispered through the trees as he gazed off for a time in the direction the ice witch had gone. He didn't think he would see her again, nor for some time at least.

Her words echoed in Cloud's mind as he finally turned away and began to head home, the scents of pine and fir and wet bark filling his nose and dark thoughts filling his head. Ellone was the key, Iseldra had said. But the key to what? What was she here for? The answer was there, he knew, hovering maddeningly just beyond his reach. It was something he ought to have seen already, but still it continued to elude him as he made his way back into town, walking quietly down the side of the slush-drenched road. The more he pondered it, the more he couldn't help the almost overpowering sense of urgency that was steadily beginning to gnaw relentlessly at him.

Time was running out.