“There!” cried Jumper. “He’s right there.”

Dahlia forced her head to turn a half inch—an effort that seemed impossibly difficult—and saw Jumper leap toward a tree, step off the side of it, pivot in mid-air and drill a devasting punch toward a shadowy figure who moved away from Nathan. Dahlia knew what Jumper’s leaping punches could do. They were bone breakers, neck-sprainers, teeth snappers. Except they needed to land in order to do damage. The figure—and she realized now it was someone wearing forest camo and foliage as a disguise—shifted away from the punch, allowing it to miss by an inch. Then a stiff forearm chopped laterally across Jumper’s upper chest. The impact turned the arm into an axle and Jumper’s body into the wheel; he rotated in midair and then fell hard on his face. The figure squatted and drove a two-knuckled punch into the base of Jumper’s skull and the free-runner flattened out and did not move again.

Then Trash, Serena, and Slow Dog were there, crashing through the brush, each of them swinging weapons.

The moment seemed to slow down, almost to freeze, as Dahlia got a clear look at the face of the man in the camo. He was tall and blocky, with big shoulders and a barrel chest. He wore one of those full ski-masks on his head—a balaclava, Dahlia thought it was called—but she could see his eyes. They were dark and surrounded by crow’s feet. For one fragment of a moment those eyes looked into hers and she couldn’t read the emotions that should have been there. No anger, no fear, no hatred. Instead she saw disappointment and annoyance. As if her whole strike team was nothing more than an inconvenience.

Time speeded up all at once. The figure—the old man, she was sure of it—suddenly seemed to lose substance, to blur as he moved. Or maybe it was simply that he was so fast that she could not track him.

Serena tried to stab him and he punched her forearm, her bicep, her deltoid and the side of her jaw. Bam, bam, bam, bam. The knife fell; the arm itself seemed to die and flop down, and then the lights in Serena’s eyes flickered and went out. She dropped in place.

Slow Dog wore brass knuckles on both of his huge fists and he swung a one-two combination that was as fast as it was brutal. The old man did not evade but instead stepped into the swings so that Slow Dog’s huge arms wrapped around him and rebounded. Dahlia did not see what the old man actually did, but Slow Dog shrieked and staggered backward, blood spurting from his nose and mouth. He dropped to his knees and then fell over sideways.

Then Trash, faster than the others, grabbed the old man by the shoulder, spun him and drove a knife into his guts.