Danger. I dropped the focus and turned just as the first man came around the side of the tree. His flashlight was up: he’d been expecting me to flee, and the ferocity of my attack caught him off guard. I hit him in the stomach twice, then as he doubled over, kneed him in the face hard enough to feel something break. I turned on the second man to see him backpedalling and I closed in on him, swift and wolflike. He struck out with what looked like a club; from the futures in which it hit me I knew it would discharge a stunning shock. I let it slide past and caught the arm. The torches were dazzling but narrow-beamed, and the other man couldn’t see what I was doing. I closed my eyes as he shone the light into my face, ducked his attempt to club me over the head, then threw him. The fall knocked the torch and shock stick out of his hands, and while he scrabbled for them I had time to draw my stun focus; he’d just made it to his knees when I discharged the focus into his side. He went down and didn’t get up.

Shouts and lights moved through the trees. My fight hadn’t gone unnoticed, and others were closing in. I ran back to the tree where I’d been hiding, scooped up my pack, and scanned the futures: there were people coming from behind and to the left, and going right would bring me up against the perimeter fence. Forward. I wove through the woods, relying on my second sight to keep me from tripping and falling on my face. A couple of men were at risk of cutting me off: I reached down without breaking stride, scooped up a rock in the darkness, and threw it blind. A few seconds later there was a distant tak as it hit a tree. The futures of the men to my left shifted as they homed in on the noise, leaving me a clear path.

I came out of the trees and started up a grassy slope, wind blowing in my hair, the overcast sky above. To my left, I could see the bright lights of the White Rose estate. These grounds felt like the size of a national park, but it meant that I had more space to hide, and that was to my advantage, not theirs. For a second I thought that I’d lost them.

Then I heard the arrh-arrh-arrh sound from behind me, followed by the sound of crashing vegetation. It was close—too close. I ducked behind a bush, blending into the shadows and looking back down the slope.

A shape moved in the darkness under the trees. It looked something like a huge dog, but the proportions were wrong, the shoulders too large. Its lines were solid light in the futures: a construct. There were men with it, though, catching up fast, and they weren’t constructs. As I watched, the shape came out onto the slope and started trotting uphill, head low to the ground, heading straight towards my hiding place.