Gym Bro had been talking to someone out there, someone new. Perhaps, she considered, she might have had the wit to run towards them, rather than simply away.

A vista opened up as the forest thinned out behind her and the riverbanks fell away. The shape of the river was laid out before her as it cut its way through the clear, marshy ground ahead in the brittle sunlight. She saw hills and other watercourses, and a herd of something like tusked elk watched her incuriously from the far side of the river. Its curved course was speaking to parts of her mind not involved in the chase. She thought of standing on Waterloo Bridge, of the opening sequence of EastEnders, of…

I’m still in London, she realized. Or where London will be? Or where it never was? Is this the Thames?

“Mal, here!” someone called from the trees, and her heart jolted. Not just someone. Mal was calling her. She’d recognize that voice anywhere, even at her wits’ end.

“Mal! Here! I’m here!” she gasped. She began clawing her way back to the forest edge. Gym Bro was yelling at her that he was going to shoot if she didn’t stop. But they needed her alive—didn’t they? He sounded pissed off, but also pleading, and that gave her hope.

She reached the trees. “Mal!” she called, and from further within the forest came that beloved voice, crying “Mal!” back at her. She was so happy to have somewhere to head for that nothing else seemed to matter, not even asking why Mal would be crying out her own name. She just blundered madly, bouncing from tree trunks, listening for that voice.

Then she began to slow, because she was hearing voices from more than one place now. Some of the voices were Mal’s, while others were starting to sound like her own.

“Mal, help me!” she shouted, and something cackled from a branch above her head. She looked up, then fell over, raising an arm to defend herself. It was one of them. It really was. One of the things she’d seen, then tried to tell herself she hadn’t, all those years ago.

The Birdman leant down to stare at her. It was grasping a branch in the talons of its hind feet, their sickle claws held daintily up. Its arms were tucked in like chicken wings, and she saw how two of its digits came together like pincers, not quite a thumb but enough to serve as a holster for two sticks with sharp stone tips. Its head up close was not so very birdlike, eyes tilted forwards, beak half open to show serrated teeth.

“Mal,” it said distinctly, in Mal’s voice, except it wasn’t quite. A better mimic than a mynah bird or parrot, but it wasn’t true speech. “Mal, here,” and then, to her utter incredulity, “Clever girl.”