They emerged from the hole spluttering and coughing lungfuls of smoke. Fresh tears carved paths through the grime on their cheeks. The journey out of the sub-lab had been nearly as bad as the trip down. Up through three levels of burning clouds searing their eyes. The temperature had jumped what felt like a hundred degrees. The last level before the surface was engulfed in flames. Ellen led the team through the smoke by memory, knowing that a wrong turn could mean their deaths.

Outside at last, they welcomed the driving, frigid rain. They tipped back their face shields and drank the fresh night air in greedy gulps. The officers spat into the weeds as they caught their breath, all of them knowing just how close they had cut their escape. Another minute and they'd have been goners. Only the Reichman girl seemed collected, staring into the sky in a narcotic glaze.

The ground trembled with a series of explosions. They backed away from the hole as a column of black smoke billowed out. Twenty yards away the ground collapsed, and a fireball erupted upward. The flames guttered and rose, buffeted by the rain and wind.

"We need to move out fast," Ellen said. "This will attract people for miles."

"Can we hole up somewhere for the night?" asked one officer. He was doubled over holding his side, in obvious pain. The others were donning ponchos to prevent from getting more soaked. From the frying pan into the freezer, Ellen thought.

"No," she answered after a brief deliberation. "We'd risk hypothermia. Change of plans. It's too far to Ol' Federal. We'll bust straight east until we hit the river. We'll follow it south and cut over to the Tombstone. Keep it tight. Hold a diamond formation with our escort in the center. Let's move, people."

They covered the first two miles past the collapsed overpass without incident, but slower than Ellen hoped. They wound to south, waiting to cross the water at the narrowest point. The bridges were ideal for ambushes and, with the guards walking wounded, she couldn't risk it. Ellen felt jumpy, even paranoid as they stole through the night. She still couldn't shake her blanket of unease.

They followed the meandering river down to a small spit that allowed for a thigh-deep crossing of only twenty yards. Thick stands of trees on either side meant they could quickly be back among the shadows. Once across they'd catch their breath and double-time it the final couple miles to safety. She wouldn't relax until they were all back safely, including the missing Reichman. She grimaced as she strode into the water, feeling the warmth of her body being carried away by the frigid current.

The river crossing was dark, and thus it was impossible to determine exactly from whcih direction they were attacked.

Ellen's team was midway across when automatic gunfire tore through the night. She slipped on rock and went under, pulled down by the current. She emerged choked and desperately searching for her bearings, not wanting to open fire and hit her own teammates. A figure floated next to her rose and then sank beneath the water's surface. Muzzles flashed on the banks and as she tripped towards shore; a grenade detonated on the bank and she was sent tumbling backwards into the river.

Ellen clawed her way back up the bank puking water. "That way, that way!" she heard a voice shout upstream and she realized how far south the current had carried her. But her survival would be short lived if she lay panting on the shore like a landed fish. Her rifle was at the bottom of the river but she still had her sidearm and a field knife. She wasn't going to go down easy.

As she made her way along the bank she saw shadows, both real and imagined, sliding from tree to tree in pursuit. It wasn't a forest as much as a wedge of trees between the water and the encroaching city. When she reached the ruined Bembeneck Bridge, collapsed in the middle and sagging into the water, she knew she still had well over a mile to go. Her hunters tried flanking her, penning her in. This was no random rabble they'd come across. Their attackers knew what they were doing.

Ellen tipped back her head and tried in vain to drink some rain. Half-drowned yet still parched. That was the kind of day it had turned out to be. And she knew she had ahead of her a very, very long night.