Author's note: Thanks for the support so far guys! Sorry this one is a bit late: I'm gonna start releasing these over longer intervals so I can work with each chapter a little more. Thanks again and if you can, drop a review.

Bravo Company Inventory

3 M1A2 Abrams Tanks (Initial count: 14)

8 M1028 canister cartridge rounds (Sidenote: WE NEED MORE OF THESE: Their infantry are annihilating us in the field left right and center!)

14 M908 obstacle removal rounds

62 M830 HEAT rounds (Sidenote: why the hell do we still have these? I haven't seen a single damn tank since we got out here!)

200 50-cal rounds.

1600 7.62mm rounds

Requisition request: We need replacement tanks and crews, and some more Anti Personnel options ASAP before the next offensive. Company strength is currently an approximate of 20%.

Signed First Lieutenant Harold Dike, acting CO of Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 66th Armored Regiment. Time stamped: Operation Swift Fury plus 1.

He was still contemplating if the gun was in easy reach when he realised there was a second set of eyes upon him.

Cursing himself for having followed the traitor's direction, Mike could only watch on as the pair seemed to exchange a friendly greeting, shaking one another's hands and clasping the other about the shoulder as if they had known each other all their lives. All the while, he could sights lining up upon his skull. He did not know where it came from, nor how he knew; it was simple instinct; the ubiquitous sensation one could liken to a serpent sliding down one's back when the mind registered another set of pupils assessing its performance, without invitation.

Yet his inability to spot his tormentor nearly proved his bane, for in the vague hope that the watcher's eyes were not directly planted upon his forehead, Mike had begun to sink to the ground; a slow and deliberate motion, as the trigger encased in snow drew closer to his fingertips inch by inch.

'I'd leave it where it lies.'

The words chilled him to the bone, for it's proximity was nearly deafening, despite it providing little more than a whisper. He did not rise immediately, but rather, he shifted his eyes ever so slightly to the left, compelled by the insatiable need to know, that has plagued mankind as long as it's own existence.

What he witnessed nearly prompted him to leap from his skin, before he realised it would have effectively amounted to suicide: the speaker was nearly a clone of the man who had greeted Stig, only, he was far closer; less than six feet away, no less, and Mike found himself pondering on just how he had missed the colossal shadow. And his proximity made him all the more terrifying.

The blackened steel that encased his form left few places to exploit, presuming the fatigues worn by the man were not designed to stop a bullet, although the jointed nature of those plates might have been something he could take advantage of. But something seemed to protrude from the conjoining points in soldier's carapace. To his intrigue, Mike realised it seemed to have a fur like quality, as if he had donned the skin of a wolf atop his fatigues, after it had been dipped in a similarly hued paint to the rest of the uniform.

Upon his chest, furthermore, there was a crude insignia stamped into the iron, although unlike every medal he had seen in the past, this one reflected no light, nor in fact possessed any colour at all; the only reason he had noticed it in the first place was because it was not on the same level of the rest of the chest piece. It was as if someone had produced the sigil upon a separate sheet of darkened steel, before it had been welded upon his breast, producing shadows of it's own, that acted to denote it from it's sister plate beneath.

The design itself was a crude one; a broken skull, with a short blade pinned through it's shattered scalp. And it's jaw seemed to clasp another sheet: the outline of some parchment, perhaps, with a series of letters stenciled into it's design. Nav Quam Penitent, it seemed to read.

Most peculiar was the fact this one had yet to even draw his gun at Mike's transgression. The compact, box shape on his thigh that Mike could only assume to be the holster of a pistol was still fully occupied, as he simply stood there, with folded arms.

Then the blade appeared.

It was impossible to denote where it had come from; one minute his palm had been empty, the next, a short blade, maybe twice the length of one's fully extended hand, was held tightly in a fist. In the same instant, Mike lost all interest in recovering his only means of protection.

For all intents and purposes, their captors could have easily gunned them down to a man, and no one would be the wiser of their unfortunate fate.

But it was not to be.

'Sterodius,' Stig shot, catching the swordsman's eye, 'they're not hostile.'

'They're human,' the voice behind the helm blared, thick with mechanical distortion that made his voice closer to that of a devil than a man, 'there's reason enough.'

'They're the ones Praetorius wants,' Stig replied, seemingly unfazed by the hostility he faced, 'you cut them up, you can explain to the Fieldmaster why his company's missing their heads in two days time.'

There was a terse glance that passed between the pair, and Mike was left wondering for the moment if Stig had just succeeded in condemning them all to death, fearing his partner might suddenly just slay them all out of simple spite.

But nothing was to come of it, as the blade wielding sentry simply grunted in reply, before slipping the blade back out of sight and turned about, stalking off back into the dark.

'Is Watcher secure?' Stig returned to the first man, still in english.

His friend simply blurted a reply in the same foreign dialect, before gesturing back to the half dozen he had at his back.

'It's fine, Servus,' he said, shooting them another look, 'they're with us.'

There came no reply; only a stiff nod, and as quickly as they had appeared, the two spectres were gone from sight, fading into the night with such ease that for a moment, Mike could have sworn to have witnessed a ghost.

He was still staring when Stig shook him roughly over the shoulder.

'Hey, you still here? Get your shit, and follow me.'

It was Sam who posed the obvious question, as they followed the twisting trail to the cable car station.

'You knew they were up here, didn't you?' She asked, accusation ridden within her soft voice, 'you're one of them, aren't you?'

'What gave it away?'

'Why are you helping them?' she pressed on, casting a cautionary look over her shoulder. One never knew when a pair of scarlet lenses might appear, behind a matted gunsight, after their impromptu meeting with the cloaked figures at the gate, and her hand crept all the closer to the pistol's grip.

'Well I joined them,' Stig offered carelessly, before he realised his error, and he moved to elaborate before he could be accused of treason, 'five years ago, that is.'

'You expect us to believe you?'

'Well,' Stig considered, biting his lip, 'you did before. And mind you, I haven't exactly lied to you. Just...omitted a few details, here and there.'

'And you didn't think it would be important to let us know we'd be committing treason by coming back here?' Mike snapped. Now that Sam had opened the topic to scrutiny, every one was ablaze with their own inquiries, but Mike's had returned each to a somber realisation. 'I mean, if we help you, we're essentially criminals!'

'That's if they find out you were helping us,' Stig enunciated carefully, politically ignoring the blazing eyes boring into the back of his head, 'And let's be realistic; they got a war to win. What will they care about a bunch of teens on a mountain, exorcising a demon?'

'They will the ones they're at war with are the one's we're helping!' Mike retaliated, 'fuck, man, I knew this was a horrible idea. We should just get out of here, before-'

'Hey, hey, hey,' Stig said, without the slightest trace of concern for the fact he was currently speaking to half a dozen furious young men and women, with four firearms between them, 'let's back up maybe three thousand steps before we go doing anything rash, eh? First off, I don't even want to be out here, alright? None of us do. Not you, not me, not Praetorius, not Servus, hell, I could spend the night listing off the people who'd rather be elsewhere. But there's bad shit out here. Bad shit that will, if left unchecked, spread. And kill, and maim, and kill again. Is any of this going through to you?'

Mike fought down the urge to give any affirmation on that account.

'Secondly, I hate to admit it, but you ain't got much of a choice in the matter anymore, you understand? You know we're up here now, so until we're done here, you might as well call this place your home.'

'Oh, now you're taking the piss,' Mike protested, 'I say we get out of here right fucking now.'

'Believe it or not,' Stig began, 'I've actually grown slightly attached to you lot. A bit like a mangy stray dog you couldn't shake on your way from work; you don't know what the hell it is about him, but you don't want him to stick his head in a food processor, so I'll it down for you straight. You turn around, and you'll be dead before you can get back over that wall.

'Is that a threat?'

'A plausible outcome,' Stig answered indifferently, 'we can't let anyone know we're up here. If JSOC catches even the slightest hint of our presence here, they'll level the place completely. And that's a risk I can't take.'

'So what? You'll shoot me?' Mike didn't even flinch as he spat it in Stig's face.

'I won't. But Sterodius will.'

'You know what?' Mike sighed, looking to his friends for support, 'I'm just sick of this place. Sick and tired of this damn mountain haunting me in my sleep. And you know what? I couldn't give a rat's ass if they nuked it!'

'You think a nuke will solve your problems? You think spirits give a shit for radiation? The government couldn't give a damn for the Wendigo until it's on their front porch! Praetorius, he's a different story; he's done this shit before! But if you want to go and compromise him, I can assure you death will be around the next corner.'

'So what? You're kidnapping us?'

'That's a bit rich. Call it an alliance of convenience. You know it as well as I do that the big shots in charge couldn't be trusted to know what to do with a bunch of albino freaks with big teeth!'

'And how would you?' Asked Sam, 'you're no different. What the hell happens to us after we help you? You gonna to kill us?'

'Honor's debt will be paid,' Stig replied cryptically. 'Once the curse is gone, it doesn't matter if they know we're here. Once it's gone, you'll be homeward bound.'

'How do you expect us to trust you?'

'Oh, Sammy, believe me. You will.'

The rest of the trek was made in relative silence, save for the soft crunch of snow underfoot. No one spoke, understandably, as the slow realisation of reality began to take hold. The distance from the wall was too short to properly converse any attempt to withdraw, and the thought of those black uniformed sentries proved greater than the nerve to elude fate.

Somehow, their capacity as marksmen never seemed a question in the minds of the returning company. Something in the mind had a tendency to inexplicably connect the ability of stealth with one's capacity to put a lead projectile between another's eyes.

That said, no one was entirely pleased with the recent turn of events. Being informed of the necessity to remain on a cursed mountain for indefinite period of time with a band of foreign soldiers currently at war with one's own country, on pain of death noless, rarely did much to improve one's mood when they were already searching for a friend who, for all intents and purposes, could either rejoice at their arrival, or turn into the next Norman Bates before attempting to introduce them to the pointed end of a bloody knife.

So perhaps it was a blessing that the next face they met was a friendly one. Or at least, it was one that did not greet them instinctively with a weapon in hand.

'Venator!' the voice had shouted, as they entered the clearing beside which the cable car station was based, 'welcome back to the blacksite.'

'Novus Callus, it's good to see you again, Hunter.'

Sam's eyes had snapped up almost immediately at the sound, half expecting a skeletal creature to come bearing down upon her face at any moment. Instead, she was greeted by another one of the dark clothed uniforms, descending down from the station's steps, only this one seemed, friendlier.

'Who's this?'

'Uh, let's see; Mike, Jess, Sam, Chris, uh, Ash, and Matt,' he identified, picking out each face with an outstretched finger as he turned back to the six friends. 'this is Novus Callus. Owner of the biggest foot and mouth in the entire Fifty Ninth Shadow Guard.'

'He's just a little bit bitter,' Callus replied easily, eying the newcomers. 'It seems I've usurped his rightful place.'

Callus was by no means ordinary. In fact, the easy tone seemed most peculiar when one considered the fact that he was an exact replica of the grim faced Sterodius they had all encountered earlier, and his voice was still filtered through the grim voice changer that the sentries had used earlier. That said, there were a few noticeable differences Sam could identify. Callus' suit of interlocked armored pieces seemed to be...cleaner than that of his brother in arms, and the fur lining had yet to be attached to the fatigues that ran exposed between each segmented plate. His cloak was still more or less intact, whilst the others had clearly seen better days, marked with rents and tears as they were, but aside from that, there was little she could have used to separate him from the impatient guards at the main gate; he stared back through the same maroon coloured eye slits, that concealed even his eyes from the assessment of sight. For all she knew, Callus could have been an old man, missing both his eyes and his hair, although his voice suggested otherwise.

'So why exactly did Viriditus drag you lot up here? Sightseeing?'

'They're here to make sure we're the hunters this time.'

'Ah, so you're the ones Praetorius wants to see,' he mused idly, 'mind you, you might want to give that meeting a bit of time, if you know what's good for you. He hasn't been taking it so well since we-'

'Nip it, Callus!'

Despite towering over the man who had brought them back to the mountain, Callus promptly clamped up, appearing suitably chastised before his mouth evidently developed a mind of it's own.

'Well, there I went again. Never could shut up, could I?'

'Not even if I buried you seven feet deep,' Stig replied in the same tone, before he let a wry grin pass across his face, 'Watcher Two is manned?'

'Yeah it's manned. Mallus, Cornelius and Itrinus are holding the fort. Last radio check said they're just putting down the motion spines.'

'Callus?'

'What? Oh, right. You lot didn't hear any of that.'

Sam, for the most part, was lost as to how she was supposed to respond. Somehow, Callus had managed to defy every expectation of someone who wore an insignia of a cracked skull on his chest.

'You calling the carriage?'

'Yeah, I signalled it when Sterodius spotted you on the outskirts. It should be here soon. You lads and lasses want to get out of the cold? Heard humans don't take too well to subzero temperatures.'

'Why exactly do you keep referring to us like that?' Jessica blurted out before she could stop herself, 'aren't you...you know? Human too?'

Callus gave Stig a pained look.

'Ah, Viriditus, what did you get yourself into?'

'You have to understand,' Stig started, once he had gotten them each settled down in the relative shelter offered by an open cable car station on the windswept mountain, 'There are some things that you just don't tell people when you first meet them-'

'Can we just cut the bullshit, man?' Matt interjected, cutting him off, 'what the hell are you people?'

'Guardsman of the Fifty Ninth Guard, Shadow Regiment. Most of us are Korai, from Titan IV, though you do get the odd transfers in from around the Council.'

'Titan?' Mike asked, 'Ten bucks says that ain't in Stockholm.'

'Heima system. Two jumps out from the Arche sector, if you want to be exact.'

'Wait, wait, wait.' Stig fell silent at Ashley's rapid fire demands, awaiting the inevitable, though it took more than a moment for the thought to be translated into speech. 'Are you really saying you're...you're-'

'Alien?' Stig shrugged, as if it meant naught. 'Matter of perspective. You all look a little bit odd yourselves, if you ask me.'

Ashley's jaw nearly hit the floor, and Chris inadvertently seized her by the shoulders, as if he were fearful she might suddenly lose all control of her legs. It was hardly an unfounded fear; after three months in lockup, it all seemed like a dream. Her friends inexplicably arriving upon her doorstep to break her out of hell on earth, before it slowly descended back into the nightmare; it was all too much, and she expected to awaken any second; back in a padded cell, where the only company would exist at the very heart of cold, distant memory.

Others, though, were not so easily convinced. Matt looked unfazed, clearly perceiving it all to be some ill-thought joke, while Mike seemed to eye the strange man through a sidelong stare, uncertain if anything that left his mouth could be taken for fact.

'Then why do you look like one of us?' Jessica asked half heartedly. She had tried to add a slightly impish element to the question, in an effort to defuse the situation, as well as convince herself of what she wanted to believe, but something about Stig's savaged grin broke the effort halfway through her delivery, leaving the challenge as a simple question as she tailed off, entirely uncertain once again.

'You saying that ain't your body?' Chris asked, disbelief laden in his tone, 'whaddya do? Body Snatching?'

'Nothing quite so crude,' Stig replied. At least, they hoped it was Stig who said that, because mid-sentence, that free and uncaring tone had started to dissipate, crackling and distorting until it very much resembled the robotic monotones of his comrades in arms.

In the same moment, he seemed to flicker, and shimmer, as if some invisible barrier that surrounded him had been hammered with an unseen force. To her astonishment, Sam watched the air that had previously surrounded him begin to shift as well, as the light began to bend unevenly, until it seemed like she was viewing him through a prism, where the lines and scars upon the cement at his back no longer aligned with one another.

Then the light peeled away entirely, revealing the titan beneath.

Ashley let out a short scream, though to her credit, she was able to suppress it quickly. Matt let out an exclamation of his shock, and he, alongside with Mike, who had proven to be positioned closest to their mysterious contact, leapt back with all haste, seeking to put as much distance between themselves and the cloaked monstrosity.

Like the others, he easily towered over them. The air above him was removed to reveal a helmet like the others; grim and undecorated in it's simple unpolished finish, like that of a fallen knight. His limbs were clothed in the steel plate they had witnessed before, and the black cloak worn by each of the shadows outside seemed to unravel from his back as the air continued to flicker out of existence, until the illusion had concluded its demise.

'What the hell was that?'

'Holographic mimic,' the figure replied, bereft of any humanity, 'brainchild of a Nius Caius; Master of Shadows in the Twenty Third Legion.'

'Well holy shit,' Chris muttered beneath his breath, quite unable to subdue his own amazement, before he realised the chances of his acquisition of the gadet were practically aligned with his chances of getting of the mountain alive.

To his eternal surprise, Stig waved a small contraption before his eyes; it's appearance made all but a blur with the briefness of which it was held within his sight.

'It's all yours,' Stig said. For a moment, no one moved. Then he spoilt the effect somewhat, and if he were still human, they all could have sworn he would have been that same wry smile, as it disappeared again behind his back.

'If you're still alive when when this is all over.'

The silence was becoming unbearable, Sam decided. She, Mike and Ashley were all crammed into the small space available within the cable car, alongside their seven foot captor, as they were taken upwards, in defiance of the laws of gravity, toward the summit they had once strove to escape. The weight limit of the car had defied any effort to get them all up in a single journey, and so Stig had selected the three of them to accompany him on the first run, before he would double back to retrieve the last trio of the friends.

It was likely due to the fact the car still had doors, though Sam was uncertain if she would have tempted fate so much as to take a plunge out the cable car's doors, had Stig not been present to dissuade her from the beginning. Somehow, left with the choice between the options of collaboration, escape at a later date, or breaking one's legs to await the wolves and other predatory denizens of Blackwood Mountain, the latter seemed the least preferable.

But Stig must have either attempted such himself some time previously, or borne witness to a similar desperation in the past, for his eyes were not removed from any of them throughout the entire journey.

Neither did Ashley remove her own eyes from the soldier, for her part. Shock had been replaced by intrigue, and, now convinced that death was not on the immediate agenda, she seemed unable to take her eyes away from the scarred suit of steel, her eyes noting each and every tear in the fabric; every rent in the alloy, trying to discern what course of events lay behind each injury visited upon the self professed Guardsman. There were more than a few to keep her occupied, though perhaps of particular interest, Sam noticed that on the occasions she allowed herself a direct view upon Stig's eyes, they were either centered upon her own being, or Mike's, who was being perhaps too obvious in his plotting to elude the self professed xeno. Never once did he meet Ashley's eyes directly.

Perhaps it was because he knew it would only terrify her all the more. Perhaps he had decided she had endured enough.

Or maybe, the cynical but logical side of Sam's mind suggested, he simply did not perceive her to be a threat.

After all, she did not exactly have a gun on her.

It had amounted to no short amount of amazement that Stig had insisted they keep their firearms before they had boarded the cable car, but elsewhere, his considerations were elaborate, if cruel.

He had fiercely vetoed Jessica's request to journey up the mountain with Mike, as well as Chris' insistence to accompany Ashley, and Sam was beginning to make sense of the cruel logic behind it. Although the thought of leaving any of their number behind on a mountain with cannibalistic creatures was already a strong enough argument to remain behind, Stig was clearly taking no chances. By separating up the closest of the band, he at least reduced the chances of their other half wandering off into the woods in his absence, if Callus didn't stop them, or worse, Sterodius and Servus.

But the journey was a long one, and the awkward silence was driving her mad. She was still trying to come to terms with the fact that they had, only a couple of hours ago, been on relatively friendly terms with an alien, and she tried to remind herself of that fact as she opened her mouth to speak.

'Why exactly are you here?'

'Well,' Stig replied, carefully considering his words, 'we drove out here.'

'Ha, ha. I meant the war. I thought you were being a little tight lipped on it earlier.'

'Well congratulations, Sherlock. Well, if you must know, it's quite a tale if you haven't heard it yet, and I don't want to be repeating it to those who ain't present.'

'Is there a short version?' She pressed, trying to salvage the conversation.

'Can you summarize the meaning of life in a sentence?'

'If you use a lot of commas.'

'Nearly made me laugh,' Stig sighed, shifting his seating ever so slightly. 'For now at least, I'll say this: no need to worry about armageddon, or abductions or - what the hell did they call it? Probing? This ain't a science mission, not that I've ever been involved in that shit. The Fifty Ninth is a strictly military regiment.'

'What exactly do you look like?' Ashley suddenly piped up, 'I mean, why do you wear that?'

She made a vague gesture at the armored suit to indicate her point, and Stig's eyes dropped, trying to discern what she was speaking of before he emitted a slight chuckle. That is, it begun as a chuckle, but through the vocal distortion unit, it seemed more akin to that of a horse's snort.

'I'm afraid I couldn't take this off even if I wanted to, Ash.'

'You don't mean-'

'No, I'm not sealed in it; that came out wrong. No, it's one of moral obligation, let's call it. Council Doctrine prohibits us from, you know, showing non-Council species the truth behind the helmet.'

'Why?'

'Psychological shit,' Stig tried, 'there's an element of mystery that the Guard prefer to maintain, if you understand. People see what's underneath, you get all kinds of different nicknames you know? Squid face, pincers, crab, to name a few of the things I think you lot would come up with. You remove that, there's...detachment from the mortal. People know you as the Black Cloaks, and that's that. At least that way, they tend to run away a bit more; saves the trouble of killing a bunch of kids who joined up thinking they could kill something that looked more like a bug than a spectre, you understand?'

Ashley nodded her understanding, though that did not mean she was satisfied, much to Sam's relief. She had feared initially that the trauma would have simply shut her up in her head, and every foray she made back into the world of the living could only herald improvement.

'I mean Stig, you couldn't, make an exception, or something?'

'In time,' Stig conceded gently, 'when you've earned the right. And Ash, something you should all know, my name ain't really Stig. It's Viriditus. Natus Viriditus.'

'Why the deception earlier?'

'There aren't many people on the American continent with names like Viriditus, don't you think Ashley? Too suspicious.'

'That's a shame,' Mike sighed, evidently having come to the same conclusion Sam had arrived at nearly ten minutes ago, that had convinced her that jumping was an unhealthy proposal, 'Stig was easier to pronounce.'

'It's just Viriditus.'

'Viriditus,' Sam repeated, earning an encouraging glance from a nearly demonic figure.

'See? Easy as that.'

'Why just not Nat?' Mike proposed. Then, seeing the glare that was provided from the Black Cloak's direction, he moved to defend the proposal. 'I mean, it's short for Natus, right?'

Something in that unflinching stare should have told him he had failed to impress.

'Viriditus is fine.'

They docked in at the second station without incident, mainly due to the fact that the station's door, which acted to prevent the uninvited from breaching the mountain should they have somehow acquired the keys to the cable car, but not the upper station, was no longer present. Stig, or Viriditus as they now knew him to be, did not seem fazed that the heavy set door was now lying on it's side maybe six feet away from where it had once obstructed Sam and Chris on their ascent, nor by the jagged indentations torn into its flank.

When Sam voiced her concerns, he simply shrugged.

'That was us. Solveris was a little bit too eager to get out. Now let me just find Mallus, before he decides you're up to no good.'

They found him shortly. That is to say, Viriditus found him, nestled beneath his cloak, amidst a snowdrift that the three friends would have easily taken for a little area where it had snowed perhaps harder than the norm. But as soon as his eyes had fallen upon the little ridgeline in the snow, Viriditus had taken off upon a straight path for it, before unceremoniously rapping an armored gauntlet upon it's length.

To their eternal surprise, the snow drift did not explode, despite the fact that peculiar spot Viriditus had decided to hammer proved to be the exact same location Mallus' head occupied. The snow had abated slightly, revealing a trace of black cloth, before a few words had been exchanged between the pair in the same foreign tongue, at a volume that left little to be ascertained at such a distance.

'You fellas just flake out here,' their accomplice had instructed them when he returned, 'I'm just going to get the rest of the gang and we'll be off for the lodge.'

'The lodge?'

'I guess it beat hanging out in the cold; Praetorius seems to have set up the CP there, so that'll be our waypoint. Until I get back, try not to do anything stupid?'

With that, he was gone.

'Well,' Mike started, as they made their way over to the snow encrusted bench that sat upon the station's veranda, 'this is not how I thought I'd be spending my weekend.'

'I think we're all in the same boat there, Mike,' said Sam, resting her back upon one of the wooden supports that upheld the extended roof, but as soon as she did, the building began to express it's age with a soft creak, and she promptly leapt away, before she brought the structure down, 'Jez, I did not think we'd see this place again.'

'Why are we even here?' Ashley's voice seemed hollow and frail; distant once again, 'I mean, what are the chances he's still alive?'

Someone should have berated her, but neither did. Sam would not threaten her with confrontation, and Mike was unusually reserved on the matter, as he watched the shadows close in around them, clearly unnerved by the entire night.

He had watched Hannah, or what had once been Hannah, drag Josh away. Screaming and clawing at her skeletal remains through the mud and mire, and he had done nothing. There had been no impulse to dive out and retrieve him from the monster's claws. By the time he had finished tearing across the Sanitorium and plunging into the bowels of the earth, Michael Munroe had simply snapped. It had been so easy to write him off as 'dead', considering how the stranger, that had saved their lives that evening, had informed them all of the Wendigo's feeding habits.

Mike was no hero, and he would be the first to admit it. It was a cruel game of survival upon the mountain top; it was what had driven him, in a bout of survivalism intermixed by paranoia and fear, to come so close to taking Emily's life.

It was only in the lodge, when Sam, despite having a clear run to the door, choose to stand rather than leave him to his fate that the insatiable guilt began. It was a hideous feeling; the kind that tore at the gut with sharpened digits day and night. Too many times had he seen Josh's face in his sleep, as he screamed his name, begging him to help as he hid, cringing in the darkness.

Had she left him, he would have understood entirely. He would have forgiven her. But in saving him, Sam had unwittingly destroyed Mike's conscience. He was not ungrateful, no, but memory begged the question of why he had been unable to find his voice in the mines. Why he had been unable to deliver Josh from a horrible fate, and what changed the situation so much so that Sam had been able to do the same, and live to tell the tale.

And now that he was alive, Mike feared the day as much as he feared the night. What accusations would come when they finally found him? What vengeance would the friend he failed pursue?

In a odd way, and he so hated himself for even registering the thought; it was easier when he knew Josh to be dead.