Author's Note: The chapters are appearing so quickly these days! I should make you wait longer, but don't worry, there is so much more ahead.

Chapter Twelve

Through the Woods

The SHIELD base was enclosed by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire and cameras. Within the fence, there was nothing except the building, a few outbuildings, and bare ground. On the other side, some thirty feet away from the fence, tall trees formed a dense wood as far as one could see in every direction. Fury led them along the least-lighted way that he could find. He had to grimace quite a bit to keep from crying out at the pain in his shoulder. With his uninjured arm, he pulled something out of a jacket pocket. It was a specially insulated wire-cutter made of adamantium, which would cut through the fence in seconds. They reached the fence in less than four minutes.

"So, now what?" asked the Doctor.

"Now, you cut the fence with these," said Fury, handing the wire-cutter to the Doctor.

"Right," he said, and set to work. "How long before they find which way we've gone?"

"It should take them ten minutes to figure out that we're not inside."

"Ten minutes? Are they really that bad at their job?"

"No, but I'm that good at mine. The base is specially constructed to be difficult to navigate unless you're familiar with it. And there are no directories or maps on the walls."

"But you said someone on the inside is helping them?"

"Someone at external security. Those people don't know the inner rooms or the lower levels very well. If someone closer to the inside is helping them, it'll take them a few minutes just to find one another."

"Terrific. Full marks for that! Where do we go, then? We should be able to get into those woods before they figure out we're outside."

"If we hurry. Once we're in the woods, we can head north. There's no civilization that way for a while. D.C. is to the south."

"And if they follow us?"

"I've made a point of knowing these woods, Doctor. I thought I should know my own territory."

"Turns out that was a good idea. Well done, Nicholas Fury. There we are!" The Doctor stepped back from the fence, pulling a man-sized piece away with him. "Now hurry through, all of you!" he said to the others. "We haven't got much time!"

"Will, come," said Hannibal Lecter, grabbing Will by the arm and leading him through.

Mary also passed through, nodding to the Doctor to thank him. Booth walked with Temperance. She stopped to look at Fury's arm again.

"There isn't time, Doctor Brennan," said Fury.

"If you bleed out, you won't be able to lead us," she said. "Your wound is in danger of—"

"My wound is slight. If you have to know, my blood is full of a formula which halts my aging and helps my body heal itself quickly. I could survive a much more direct gunshot wound than that. It's healing by itself already. Now hurry!"

Temperance looked worriedly at his arm one more time.

"Come on, Bones," said Booth, grabbing her shoulders and pushing her ahead of him through the fence.

Rose ran through next. The Doctor began to, but Fury grabbed his arm. He said, "Put that piece of fence back up. It might keep them from seeing where we exited. At least for a minute or two."

The Doctor said, "Right then, through you go," and made way for Fury. Once Fury was through the hole, the Doctor picked up the separated piece of the fence and walked backwards with it through the hole. He left it propped up against the standing fence, and then he turned to run into the woods with the others.

Fury led them through the woods at a fast pace. All of them were breathing heavily after a minute or two. Most of them were whipped by at least one young branch, which they were walking too quickly to avoid or divert. It was fortunate that the moon was full; otherwise, at that pace, one of them might have stepped in a hole or tripped over a log. That could slow them down much more than a cut on the face. So far, so good, he thought.

Temperance wondered at Fury's ability to run that quickly with his wound. She took this as evidence that he was telling her the truth about the formula in his blood. She would slow down every few minutes to look back at Booth, but he would say "Go!" in a loud, hoarse whisper.

About five minutes after they left the fence, they heard shouting behind them. "They haven't found us yet," said Fury, between loud gasps. "They're still outside of the woods. Keep going."

"Where?" asked Mary. She stopped running. The others did too, after a moment. Several of them noticed that she was not out of breath. Fury tried to keep running, but when she didn't follow, he too stopped and turned to face her.

"It doesn't matter right now," said Fury.

"It does to me. My husband is somewhere in the city, and for all you know he might be the one they're after."

"What do you want me to do?" Fury's voice was louder than before. He took a deep breath, then brought it back down to a loud whisper. "I can't help your husband right now. I need to get you to safety first."

"I appreciate that, and it's a good strategy, but I think it would be best if we parted ways. I'm going to find John."

"That is insane!"

"I'm perfectly capable of missions like this, as you know. I'll find John, and then we can find you."

"I can't let you do that. If anyone leaves, we risk losing what little team morale we have. The others might panic and decide to split too."

"That's not my responsibility. John is. I'm sorry, Nicholas, I have to go."

"And I can't let you."

Booth stepped toward her. He said, "Look, Mary, I'm sorry, but Fury's right. We need you to stay with us, for your own safety if nothing else."

"Do you propose to stop me?" she asked.

Hearing her tone of voice, Booth almost stepped back. "Mary…" he said helplessly.

She said, "I'll see you soon. Goodbye." She took off running, going to the left of the path which Fury was taking.

"What was that all about?" asked Rose. She had not been close enough to hear Mary's words.

"Don't worry about it," said Fury. "Keep moving."

Steve Rogers and John Watson made it back to the coffee shop just a few minutes after leaving it. When they entered, Sherlock looked up from the table and said, "Back already?"

"Mary called. She says they're leaving the base. She said it's not safe there."

"There. Told you. So, did she propose a way to get in touch?"

"No." John swore again angrily. "Why didn't she tell me where they were?"

Sherlock said, "She was afraid—"

"That someone was listening in, yeah, I know. What do we do now?"

"We wait here."

Rogers said, "We're visible from the street here. I could take you back to my place."

"How far?" said Sherlock.

"Hang on," said John, "what if he's the one they're after?"

"Hardly likely. Fury contacted him just a few minutes before we found him. And it took us only a few minutes to reach the coffee shop and begin talking. If Fury was already evacuating the place when you reached the car, then the attack must have occurred just a few minutes after Fury was done talking to him. It wouldn't make sense to attack the base before he could have arrived."

"Attack? I didn't say anything about an attack!" John suddenly looked even more frantic than before.

Sherlock did little to comfort him. "Oh, don't be thick, John. You, Rogers, where is this place of yours? Is it far?"

"Just a few minutes. I was on my way to a parking garage to get my bike when I found you."

"Excellent. Take us there."

In a private room at the Diogenes Club, Mycroft Holmes received a text message. The ringtone was the one he had assigned to Mary Watson. He instantly put down his volume of Arendt to read the text:

SHIELD base north of D.C. is compromised. Last known location of mutual friends.

His eyes widened and he sat up straighter in his chair. He sent a text back:

Separated?

The reply came quickly:

Yes.

He took a deep breath, looked around the room, and then sent another text to Mary:

Olympus is descending.

Then, he pressed a button on the desk where his volume of Arendt lay unfinished. In a few moments, a well-dressed man with shoes covered in white padding came into the room.

"Yes, sir?" the man asked.

"Have them bring a taxi round. I'll need it to go to the airport."

"Very good, sir."

The man left. Mycroft took another deep breath. It would be risky, staying incommunicado for nearly a day. The military and economic progress of several sovereign nations might suffer tremendous setbacks as a result. And then there were the germs. And the noise. And the smells. But there was nothing for it. If the enemies were bold enough to attack SHIELD headquarters, then they must be very powerful and very desperate. And the situation was much more dire than he had expected. He could not control things from afar any longer. Mycroft Holmes was going abroad.

The shouting voices were in the woods now. They didn't shout as often as they did before. Fury had picked out seven distinct voices. He didn't recognize any of them. Maybe more people had come in the car which brought the fake policeman.

He kept leading the six others, glancing back every minute or so to count them in the moonlight. Brennan, Booth, Lecter, Graham, Tyler, and the Doctor. All of them were keeping up fairly well. It was fortunate that Doctor Brennan had come in the middle of the night. She was wearing tennis shoes, not the high-heeled shoes which he had noticed whenever she appeared on television or in the papers. He had expected Lecter to have trouble keeping up, but the well-dressed psychologist ran as if he jogged through the woods every week. Maybe it was his upbringing in some harsh Slavic state.

Two voices shouted again. Fury noticed that they were farther apart than they had been before. A third voice responded, farther away than either of them. They were trying to enclose the whole area. They wanted to hem in the group he was leading.

His shoulder continued to ache. He had to keep swinging his arm to keep up the pace he was enforcing. Every time he did, it ripped something in his deltoid. It would be better soon. He had to keep reminding himself of that. Doctor Brennan didn't know it, but he had pulled out the bullet on his way to the cafeteria before she had seen the wound at all. His body had nearly sealed off the wound by the time she commented on its bleeding. The blessings of inheriting the Infinity Formula from his father: it allowed him to run through a dark woods, chased by his own people, without bleeding out.

Still, the pain of using that arm to run was getting to him. They had been running almost twenty minutes. His heavy breathing made it worse; he knew that he had to swing the arm when he exhaled, and the rhythm of his breathing allowed him to dread this motion every time. No doubt he was tensing as he did so, making it worse. How many breaths in a minute? How many moments of dread per second? Even he had his limits. He turned around again, to count heads. All there.

Rose Tyler kept her eyes on Fury. If she looked at the Doctor, she would worry whether he would make it out alive, and then she would be too anxious to keep up this pace. She had to stay calm to force her body onward. Anxiety might make her collapse. She could pretend she was with the Doctor in some ancient Celtic game or other, she told herself. She could pretend to be traveling in time, competing to see who gets to eat the shoulder off the boar or something. She gave up the idea in despair. She couldn't pretend. They were running in order to survive. She couldn't hide that, but she could avoid the fear that they might not succeed. She was with the Doctor, after all.

A thousand thousand thoughts raced through the Doctor's head every second. Contingencies, consequences, probabilities, strategies, all contemplated with the intensity of a year of human study, only to be set aside for a new set. And then, every few seconds, the single, all-excluding thought: Rose.

Booth felt as if he were on a mission again. He declined to think of some of these people as comrades in arms. Most of all, he didn't want that for Bones. She didn't belong to that side of his life. It was unacceptable that she had been brought this close to it. And that made him think of Fury as something of an enemy. If this guy could get them to safety, then Booth would tolerate him. If Fury screwed up again, then they were out. He could get them out of the States if he needed to. How long were they going to run at this pace? Basic was a long time ago.

Will was struggling to keep up. He was glad that he jogged a few times per week, when he wasn't too exhausted from his nightmares. A part of him was surprised at Hannibal's endurance, while a part of him remained unsurprised by any excellence which Hannibal ever displayed. Irritating as it was, it was also pretty remarkable. This was not how he had expected to die: caught up in a much bigger matter, not targeted because of revenge or near-exposure but simply because he was part of a set of people who knew about a secret weapon. Still, nothing went as planned.

Hannibal was enjoying himself. All of these people showed admirable spirit. It had been too long since he was the one being chased. He had forgotten what it felt like. A gamble he hadn't risked in a while. Once he left this wood—with or without the others—he would have to try it again soon.

For one of the few times in her life, Temperance didn't have time to think.

Fury kept leading them through the trees, trying to listen for the noise of their pursuers, plotting out which course to take. He knew that they would need to stop soon. He had to push them enough to get them to his goal before their stamina gave out.

This was his last thought before a man dashed through the trees to his right and almost slammed into him. The man raised a semi-automatic rifle. He pointed it at Fury. A light on the scope of the rifle illuminated the director of SHIELD and kept him from seeing his confronter. Fury stopped his furious pace and raised his hands. He could hear someone else crashing through the brush behind him. He hoped it was another hostile and not one of his charges.

"Where are the others?" the man demanded.

He didn't see them? Maybe they had spotted the man in time and had hidden. "Others?"

The man moved his rifle slightly, threatening Fury. "Tell me. Now."

Fury thought as fast as he could. If the others were hiding, they wouldn't be able to run until the man was gone. But which way would they go once they could run? They would probably think to follow Mary, who had gone west.

"I sent them east," he said.

"Did you really?" said the man. "It took you that long to remember?"

"I had to collect my thoughts. I've been running."

Fury felt a fist impact the region above his kidneys. Together with the pain in his shoulder, this was enough to make him fall to his knees. The man who had walked up behind him was definitely a hostile. "Don't mess with us, Director Fury. Is that the right way?"

Fury collected his breath. "I don't mess with men carrying guns. You won't catch them anyway. They left hours before you reached the base. I didn't evacuate until I was attacked."

"That's a lie," said the man behind Fury. "There was another one with him, the one called the Doctor."

"The Doctor isn't with the others," said Fury. "I'm not stupid. I sent them off in different groups, at different times."

"Send half the units east," said the first man. "Have the others keep going north. Fury, you're coming with me."

"Why don't you shoot me now?" asked Fury.

"Come on," said the man, moving his gun in the direction he wanted Fury to go. So, Fury went that way.