The horse driving the tender saw the ship and spun the wheel, but the vessel turned too late.

Ben hadn't seen the ship before it hit the tender. It bashed them aside like a rubber duck as it hit the seabed and kept going. The next thing he knew he was underwater. He managed to surface quickly and took a sharp breath of fright before the waves unleashed by the ship swept over him, spinning him round and round. The current hissed in his ears. His shoulder collided with the rocky floor. Pain slashed through the cold like serrated teeth. He spun twice in the roiling current and hit it again. He caught the tiniest glimpse of the muddy cloud erupting from seabed as it ground against the ship's hull.

The current calmed as the waves blended into the shallows, releasing their grip. Ben came to his senses and saw the surface mere feet above him. It took him a few seconds to reach it.

He understood what had happened when he saw the ship looming over him, the bow cutting midway through the beach some distance from the derelict harbour. The sand moulded dunes against the hull. But what had caused the ship to lose control in the first place?

Ben spun in the water as he treaded it, searching for the others. Nick. The NEST agents escorting them at gunpoint. No other heads were bobbing in the water. Just the half-capsized orange shape of the tender. When Ben shouted his name, the fox didn't answer. He let himself sink back under the water and braved the salt to search for the fox. Nothing. Ben felt sick, yet a part of him still hoped. Nick was a good swimmer. He had to be okay. Getting out of the water would be the first thing on the fox's agenda.

Ben's shoulder ached, but at least his arm still functioned properly. He swam gently, saving his energy, wondering every now and then what had happened to the ship. Did someone on the bridge screw up, or had someone stopped them from preventing the crash?

The docks in front of the building had been messily cleaved in two, perhaps by another out of control ship long ago, but by a stroke of luck one of the wooden walkways had sunk into the water by one end. Ben quickly used that to climb out.

Dripping wet, cold and sore, Ben still felt that could have gone a lot worse. The aquatic exhibit of the Natural History Museum said that shark attacks happened most often at twilight…

The docks, or what remained of them, looked uninhabited. The warehouse looming above him looked cold even in the reddened sunlight, and just as deserted. Ben had thought the same thing when Cunninghorn had brought him to Founders Mount Asylum, and that had allowed Sedor to get the drop on them. He got chills just looking at the structure.

Déjà vu in the flipping tropics. This is my life, now.

When he looked again at the beached ship, he finally saw activity. One of the side doors within the hull lay wide open. Ben only saw four large mammals emerge from it via a ladder, but even from this distance he could also see the weapons they carried. A cow held one small white-furred mammal in each hoof.

"Oh, man." Ben breathed. Those mammals could only be Agents Savage and Skyefall, taken by the enemy once more. There was nothing he could do for them except head into the warehouse before they could spot him.

After squeezing through a pair of warped doors, Ben saw nothing that stood out in the decrepit building. Peeling walls. Rusted rails. Containers and pallets left to rot. Bits of fishbone littered the floor. There was blood, too. Of course, there was blood. There was a short smear right there on the wall. Ben sat down on a still-intact machine. His fur dripped onto the crumbly floor while he stared into space.

What the heck was he supposed to do now? When he'd woken up in a cell on that ship, he'd resigned himself to becoming a prisoner clinging to the hope that someone had gotten away and called for help. He wasn't a badass like Mansa or Skyefall. It didn't matter if he already had blood on his hands. But now some buttwad had thrown all that out the window.

So, what could he do now? Option one? Give up? Turn around and run right back into their clutches?

Ben hugged his knees tighter. He didn't like option one.

Option two? Find a way home. Unless he knew how to drive a boat or fly a plane, that wasn't going to happen.

Option three? Find Nick?

Ben looked to the open toolbox left behind by whatever mammal had been trying to fix the machine he sat on. A dirty newspaper lay atop it. The headline adorned read;First Predator Nest Officer Charged with Savaging Senator.

He grabbed a heavy-duty screwdriver and stood up.

Find Nick? That he could do.

What had made Ben think of Nick had been that blood stain on the wall. Elba had told him once that blood stains turned brown as they aged. This one wasn't even orange. The stain also happened to be low on the wall. As in fox-height low.

Ben looked down at the floor. Water had dripped here. Maybe Mansa's hewn instincts were rubbing off on him, but now he had hope. And a lead.

Ben squeezed part of his shirt as he crossed the massive room, sticking close to the wall. The water drops tapped the floor like footsteps. A partly open door stood on the other side, adorned with a broken fire exit sign.

A scrabbling sound above his head made him stop. He looked up at the roof and the metal supports holding it up. The dying light seeped through cracks here and there, but it was too dark to make anything out.

When nothing lunged out of that shadowy space, Ben released his breath. It must have been a bird. He crossed the rest of the space to the door with heightened urgency. Nick couldn't have gone far. Not if he was hurt enough to bleed.

He had to stop pushing when the door wouldn't open any further without letting out a nasty screech. He squeezed through the gap instead, thankful that Elba had convinced him to take a tetanus shot. He came out the other side with a sharp gasp. To think that even a year ago that would have been impossible.

"Nick?" He kept his voice low. There was no sign of the fox in the yard he now found himself in. What he did see gave him more chills.

The moment he'd entered the yard he knew that something bad had happened here. The overturned carcase of a white semi-truck lay at the base of a mountain of debris that had once been a set of industrial shelves and their heavy contents. A horse's skeleton, picked clean of everything but the rags it sat in, still rested in the driver's seat. Ben had seen worse things, but the sight still made his breath quicken.

"Nick?" He hoarsely called. Still nothing, but his nose caught the scent of fresh blood, coming from up ahead.

The only way forward, the only way Nick could have gone, was under the semi, propped up by the debris. Ben got down on knees and made the stomach-churning journey under the thirty-ton vehicle.

The truck cast a shadow so dark the ground was black. Every innocuous sound sounded like the creaking of the truck about to give way. Ben reached the other side, only for a fallen, warped chain link fence to keep him from getting up. He kept going, still searching for a hint of red fur ahead.

By now the sun had sunken fully beneath the earth, leaving a fiery aura and an encroaching night sky. Ben didn't like the idea of drawing attention to himself, but he'd need to find a source of light, and soon. Cheetahs couldn't see well in the dark.

The fallen fence ended near the industrial shelves still standing, and he finally got up. The shelves were metal wiring and mostly empty save for some rotten cardboard boxes.

"Nick?" Ben called one more time.

The smell of the fox's blood guided him to the open gate on the other side of the shelves. Nick had to be close, somewhere up the road ahead. Oh goodness, he had to be hurt bad. Ben had to find him. He stepped under one of the wired shelves and started striding the length of the structure.

Clang!

Halfway along the shelf he froze. Something had just slammed onto the wired shelf above his head, showering him with dirt and rust.

After the clang came a low sound, like the hiss of a snake. Suddenly he found himself back in the church, staring into the face of a demon.

The memory tore at his heart, then he returned to his equally awful reality, back under its shadow. His tense muscles wouldn't let him look up. He didn't need to. Now he knew what had happened on the ship. He didn't know when NEST captured it, or how long it had been onboard, but somewhere along the line its captors had screwed up. He squeezed the handle of the screwdriver, so his weakened fingers wouldn't drop the heavy tool and give him away.

The creature's shadow shifted as it slowly turned its gaze left and right, scanning the area just like Ben had done. Searching. Hunting. Surely it knew he was there.

He stood rooted where he was, paws gripping the supports, scared stiff. Any second it would come down from its perch and tear him apart. Like Cunninghorn. The instrument of his murder turned back upon his murderer.

Subject 0 crawled along the upper shelf, its shadow passing over the shaking feline. Ben watched its silhouette through the wired grating. He expected it to drop down and take off through the open gate in front of them.

Instead the silhouette vanished into the dying light.

Ben looked to his left toward the warehouse, searching for the creature.

Gone without a trace. Just like that.

Nick.

Ben got moving again. He didn't dare make a sound. The smell of blood grew stronger. If he could smell it, he realised to his growing terror, then Subject 0 could smell it, too.

He reached the end of the shelf and ran the rest of the way to the gate. The cracked and aged road lay empty before him. Dark jungle quivered in a weak breeze on both sides. Ben smelled the blood and kept going.

His eyes adjusted to the growing darkness as he went, following the scent. Trudging forward through the thick leaves felt like descending, heading deeper and deeper into the grim unknown. He'd been right. It was Founder's Mountain all over again. Subject 0 no doubt lurked among the trees, just out of sight. Ben listened for any sound that wasn't his own. He watched for a glint of blank yellow eyes.

Along the way, his body began to cool. The rain came out of nowhere as the clouds snuck up on him. Light drops rattled on the bushes.

The side of his shin brushed against something hard and narrow. Leaves crunched as the limb-like object shifted. In his fright Ben dropped the screwdriver and stopped dead.

His dark ears rose to the night sky. Had something heard that?

He looked down, making out a fallen branch with no twigs attached. Not a dead body.

Those crunching footsteps just now, to his left… were they the footsteps of NEST agents hunting for their wayward prisoner?

They were too heavy to be Nick's.

Ben inched his way down until his outstretched paw grasped the screwdriver. He slowly rose back up. No other sounds reached his ears. So, the hunt continued.

He stepped into wet, soft earth and heard running water. An ankle-deep stream. Nick could have crossed that. Ben stepped into the water and reached the other side, and then he saw the first a new sign of life.

The light of a torch flashed through the doors further ahead. The torch shone a solid beam of light that cut through the dark.

Ben gripped the screwdriver and slowed his approach.

Whoever held the torch moved silently, heading sideways, oblivious to the cheetah's presence. He turned the screwdriver in his paw, so the pointed tip pointed down.

The beam eventually turned away and became blocked by a large silhouette. The mammal had turned their back on him. Ben thought about what he would do. Whatwouldhe do? What was hedoing?

He stepped through the last barrier of dark green separating him from the mammal. If he could just get the screwdriver to that guy's throat, he could convince the guy to give up his weapon, maybe get some info about-

"Mansa!"

He took the torch beam square in the face and recoiled as Bogo spun in the mud, lowering his gun the instant he recognised the cheetah. Beside him, Nick laughed despite the fact his arm was bloody.

Ben didn't feel relief right away. Between his two friends, in the bushes behind them, he glimpsed a long needle-like tail lashing the leaves as its owner retreated into the drizzling night.

Ben let Nick embrace his mid-section as he wondered if they were any better off in enemy hands or out of them.