Now she was alone with two empty-eyed ciphers in the dead of night and the middle of nowhere. Beneath the intermittent camaraderie, the humanitarian pitching-in, and all the best-laid plans, one fact remained unassailable: she was a prisoner. She'd been a prisoner for weeks.

How could I have forgotten that? she wondered, and answered her own question: because they hadn't hurt her...yet. They hadn't threatened her...lately. Neither of her captors seemed to indulge in violence for its own sake; hereabouts that was the very pinnacle of civilized behavior. She had simply forgotten to feel endangered.

Which was pretty stupid, when you got right down to it. After the failure at Portland, there was every chance that Lubin would revert to Plan A and take her vehicle. Laurie might or might not go along with that—Taka hoped that some bond remained beneath that cool reinstated façade—but that might not make much difference either way.

And there was no telling what either of them would do if Taka tried to get in their way. Or if they ran out of more efficient alternatives. At the very best, she could be stranded in the middle of the wildlands—an immunized angel with clipped wings, and no Miri to back her up the next time some red-eyed man came looking for salvation.

"I'm getting a signal from Montreal," Ken said. "Encrypted. I'm guessing it's a scramble."

"Lifters?" Laurie suggested. Ken grunted an affirmative.

Taka cleared her throat. "I'll be back in a sec. I have to take a wicked pee."

"I'll come with you," Laurie said immediately.

"Don't be silly." Taka waved downhill into the darkness, where the peak they occupied emerged from threadbare woodlands. "It's only a few meters. I can find my way."

Two starlit silhouettes turned and regarded her without a word. Taka swallowed and took a step downhill.

Ken and Laurie didn't move.

Another step. Another. Her foot came down on a rock; she wobbled momentarily.

Her captors turned back to their tactics and machinery. Taka moved carefully downhill. Starlight limned the bare outlines of obstacles in her path. A moon would have been nice, though; she tripped twice before the tree-line rose before her, a ragged black band engulfing the stars.

As it engulfed Taka herself, a few moments later.

She looked back up the hill through a black mesh of scrub and tree trunks; Ken and Laurie still stood at the top of the hill, motionless black cutouts against the sky. Taka couldn't tell whether they could see her, or even whether they were looking in her direction. She'd be plainly visible to them if she were standing in the open. Fortunately, not even their night-creature eyes could penetrate tree trunks.

She had a few minutes at most before they realized she was gone.