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A rush of smoke swirls around us, but thankfully, only a few flames lick into the room. The door gets hung up for a moment on what'd been holding it shut—which I now see is the end table from the lobby—but with enough pressure I'm able to slide it aside and open the door all the way.

Heat rages everywhere.

Flames are already consuming the walls. Much of the floor is also on fire, but there are enough spots that look free of the blaze that we should be able to get to the nearest exit door.

“Go on!” I holler to Charlene, and she leads the way, holding the glass in front of her. I follow closely behind. I'm not sure how effective the glass shield is, but it does seem to be keeping some of the flames away from her face.

Even though in my shows I've been set on fire, escaped from burning buildings, and been blown up innumerable times by Xavier, those were all controlled situations. None of that compared to the heat singeing my face and arms, burning my throat with every breath right now.

After only a few steps, I notice a body lying nearby. It's scalded, and I can't identify who it is until I see the metal bracelets encircling one of the charred wrists.

Abina.

A thick knot of anger forms inside me.

Whoever did this can't be far. Find him. Stop him.

Charlene doesn't pause, and I take that to mean she hasn't seen the research assistant's body. It's a small thing, but at least it's one thing to be thankful for.

We shuffle forward.

The air is rigid and fiery in my lungs.

We're about ten feet from the exit door, but by now I can tell that the glass idea doesn't seem to be working as well as I'd hoped. It's awkward for Charlene to maneuver and seems to be slowing us down. In front of us, blocking the way to the exit door, is a pool of flames.

“Tip it forward!” I yell. She does so immediately, and the glass hits the floor and shatters across the floorboards, sending a whoosh of smoke and displaced flames to every side. But the place where the glass fell is momentarily clear of the blaze, so we rush across the glass shards, make it to the exit door.

“You okay?”

“Yes!” Her reply is muffled by the popping, crackling fire.

I lean my hip against the push bar and the door pops open, but only about six inches, then catches on a stout chain.

No!

A rush of desperation.

I shift Dr. Tanbyrn's weight to keep him balanced on my shoulders, then smash my side against the door, but it's useless. I study the chain and see that it has a keyed lock, not a combination lock, holding the two ends together.

Oh yes.

“Charlene, my belt!”

She's worked with me on hundreds of escapes and knows about the belt buckle, the narrower-than-normal prong. I have no idea how many locks I've picked with it while sealed in trunks, coffins, airtight tubes—

She tugs the jacket off her arms, unbuckles the belt, snakes it out of my belt loops, and hands it to me, buckle first.

Holding it carefully, I slide my hand outside.

A one-handed pick, not easy, and it's been months since I've picked this brand of lock . . .

But I haven't lost my touch. It takes less than ten seconds, the lock clicks open, the ends of the chain dangle free. I grab one of them and yank the chain loose even as I throw my hip against the door.

It bangs open.

Charlene and I emerge from the building and run toward the clearing to escape the smoke and the raging flames.

You're okay. You made it!

Hopefully, Dr. Tanbyrn did as well.

As gently as I can, I lower him to the ground.

Charlene leans close. “Let me.” She's more experienced at first aid than I am. I clear out of the way.

She tilts Dr. Tanbyrn's head to open his airway. Checks to see if he's still breathing.

I stand, look around.

The day is still damp, still gray, smudged darker now by the heavy black smoke from the blaze.

The guy who set that fire is probably still on the campus, probably—

I see someone standing just off the trail that leads along the edge of the forest behind the building and recognize him as the man who was waiting in the reception area when Charlene and I arrived.

“He's still alive.” Relief in her voice.

The man is half-hidden by a tree, and he must have seen me watching him because he turns and heads into the woods, limping.

From last night's knife wound.

That's it.

You're mine.

“Take care of Tanbyrn,” I shout to Charlene. I'm already sprinting toward the woods, wrapping my belt around my left hand. “I'll be right back.”

Glenn glanced behind him.

The guy was pursuing him.

Alright. Let him follow.

The fog would help.

Find a spot out of sight from the rest of the campus.

Take care of this guy for good.

Then get to the parking lot and clear out before the fire trucks and the cops show up.

I throw a branch aside, jump over a root, and race toward Abina's killer, eighty yards ahead of me, barely visible on the edge of the fog.

You're a runner. He's injured.

You can catch him.

Catch him, yes. But then what?

Stop him. Do whatever it takes to stop him.

Whatever it takes.

Seventy yards, maybe sixty-five.

He killed Abina. Tanbyrn might die. He tried to kill Charlene.

Yeah, I would stop him.

With my lungs still feeling like they're filled with smoke, I'm short of breath and I can sense that it's slowing me down, and despite the wound in this man's leg, he's amazingly fast. Last night he had a knife sticking out of his thigh, now he's racing through the forest like he was never hurt at all. It was quite possible the knife hadn't gone in as deeply as I thought it had.

But still, I'm gaining.

Sixty yards.

He reaches a ravine and disappears into a patch of thick fog that has settled into the valley. Logs covered with moss. Dense ferns on the ground. The trees here are ancient. Primeval. Fog lurks between them like threads of living smoke.

The mist brushes against my face and arms and it feels good, cooling the reddened skin. I can only hear the sound of my choked breathing, my muted footsteps on the forest floor. Other than that, all is still and quiet in the fog.

I'm jacked on adrenaline from the fire, the chase, the thought of fighting this guy, and my heart is slamming against the inside of my chest. I arrive at the edge of the ravine and then descend into it, trying to find the path through the underbrush where he might've gone. At last I come to a small clearing in the trees.

Fog all around.

No sign of him.

I slow to a jog.

Stop.

No sound of him running. The ground has leveled off and the fog is thicker here. I can only see fifteen or twenty feet in any direction. Towering trees surround me. He could be anywhere.

Puffs of breath circle from my mouth in the cool air as if they were bursts of steam evaporating before me. I listen but hear nothing apart from my ragged breathing.

I was in a fire only minutes ago, now I'm in the chilled forest and a shiver runs through me.

Backtrack? Did he backtrack?

No, he's here.

Fists raised, I crouch. Ready stance.

If he were still running, I would hear him, at least be able to tell what direction he was heading in.

But I hear nothing.

He's close.

He's here. Behind one of the trees.

I inch toward a large tree to my left, one wide enough to conceal a person.

“They're following me,” I shout, I lie. “You won't get away. I've seen your face. I can identify you.”

That much was true.

I move closer to the looming tree and hear a crunch of leaves ten feet to my right. Instinctively I whip around toward the sound, but no one is there.

A trick.

Misdirection.

Tossing something away from yourself—it's what you would have done!

I snap my head in the other direction and see a branch as thick as a baseball bat swinging toward me. I try to duck, drop to the side, but I'm too slow.

The branch collides with the left side of my head and sends me reeling to the side. I fall hard, face-first onto the forest floor. A rock that's jutting up between the roots smacks into my right side, and I hear a muffled crack.

A burst of pain shoots through me.

My rib.

My head throbs, feels like it's filled with its own heavy, thunderous heartbeat. The world becomes a splinter of dots, stars splintering apart in my vision. I try to push myself to my feet, but the world is turning in a wide, dizzy circle and I can't seem to make my limbs obey me. My side screams at me, and I don't make it past my hands and knees.

Focus. Focus!

Out of the corner of my eye, I see the man approaching me.

I don't make it to my feet. He kicks me hard in my injured side and the ground rushes up at me again. I barely hold back a gasp of pain when I land. If the rib wasn't fractured before, it's almost certainly broken now.

Everything around me seems to be edging outside of time, but in my blurred vision I see him raise the branch, step closer. I roll away from him and feel the whoosh of air beside me as he brings the branch thwacking down right where my head had been only a moment earlier. A spray of mud splatters across my face.

My injured side squeezes out a jet of pain that courses through my chest every time I take a breath.

Get up, you have to get up to fight this guy.

Forcing myself to stand, I feel another swoop of dizziness, but I hide it from him. Face him.

He discards the branch, flips out a knife.

So he has a weapon.

But so do I.

Carefully, I wrap one end of the belt around each hand. It's one of the simplest ways to defend yourself when someone comes at you with a knife. If you know what you're doing, you can trap the wrist of your opponent's knife hand, control the arm, and take him down.

And I know what I'm doing.

As long as you can stay on your feet.

The pain coursing up my side and pounding through my head makes it hard to focus.

He's stationary, less than ten feet away, studying me, no doubt planning how best to attack me.

He holds the blade straight out to slice at me like he did last night when he went after Charlene.

No ice-pick grip this time. He's learned his lesson.

As I breathe, breathe, breathe, try to relax, somehow, even though I'm distracted by the pain, my senses seem to become sharper, more focused. I catch the sound of a stream nearby that I hadn't noticed. I smell the pine needles and the moist decay of the soil, feel the droplets of sweat trailing down my forehead and the warm blood oozing from the side of my head where he hit me with the branch.

He watches me.

Don't black out. Do not black out.

But I'm unsteady and feel like I might.

I blink, rub the back of my fist across my eyes, and my vision clears enough for me to see the streak of blood splayed across his sleeve. I can only guess what he did to Abina before setting her on fire.

A shot of anger tightens my focus again.

“Her name was Abina,” I tell him.

“What?”

“The woman you killed in there. Before you started the fire.”

“Ah.” He taps the edge of his lip with his tongue. “Stuck her in the belly like a squirmy little pig. She would have squealed and squealed. Died quick, though. When I did her throat.” He demonstrates how he killed her, miming the action with the knife. “Burned kinda nice in that outfit too. Almost like she was dressed for the occasion.”

Rage, white and hot and like nothing I've ever experienced, overwhelms me and I like it. Feel fueled by it. I snap the belt taut between my hands and realize I'm no longer thinking in terms of stopping this man. That's not exactly the right word.

Everything becomes clear: only one of us is going to walk out of this forest alive.

“How's your leg? How about we do the other one too?”

His grin flattens. He flips the knife into his other hand. “Wound for wound.”

Stall, Jevin. Stall long enough and help will arrive.

But no, I don't want to stall.

I want to take care of this right now.

Besides, I know help isn't on its way. We're hidden in the fog more than a quarter mile off the trail and down a ravine. Even if I called for help, the dense forest and the drizzling rain would devour the sound. No one knows where we are, no one is looking for us. Besides, there aren't any cops around, so even if someone from the center did come, that would only mean one more unarmed person for this guy to attack.

Glenn eyed the man who'd bested him last night in the chamber.

A line from a movie came to mind: “You are the pus in a boil I am about to pop.” Glenn thought that, thought it, but did not say it.

But yes, popping a boil was a good way to describe what he was about to do to this man.

I move toward him.

He's passing the knife back and forth from hand to hand, trying to intimidate me. Not wise—it leaves you unprotected for a fraction of a second each time you do it.

“I like it better this way.” His voice is all acid and filled with disdain. “I can make it last longer than the fire would have.”

“So can I.”

He feints left, lunges right, sweeping the knife toward me. I stop the attack with an inside block and let my momentum carry me through and land a left leg round kick to his side, then I twist away, sweeping my leg backward to take him down, but he's quick and plants himself, blocks with his left shin.