He burst through the door, rushing in front of her, shielding her body right up to the rail. Isabeau refused to look down. She leapt and was astonished when she landed adeptly with both feet onto the rail and then she was sailing over it. She was aware of Conner right beside her, keeping his larger frame between her and the narrow path leading to the small clearing. There was a kind of singing in her veins, as if adrenaline had found a symphony and played the crashing notes as it rushed through her body. Strangely, there was a rush in her body, like the flow of the wind, the sound of the trees. She landed in a crouch, utterly astonished.

The buzz of a bee was loud in her ear. As if at a distance, she heard Conner shout, his hand caught hers and yanked her into motion. She didn’t have time to analyze the shocking way her body reacted, muscles flowing like water. He pulled and she felt the coil of her body, the leap that covered more than half the distance to the tree line. A second leap and she was inside the cover of the broad leaves, running along a narrow rodent path.

Her sight grew strange, as if she was seeing in bands of color, yet everything was totally clear. Her range of vision seemed enormous, as if she could see, without turning her head, a good two hundred and eighty degrees around her. Her vision was amazing to the front. Isabeau judged her ability to see at least one hundred and twenty degrees straight ahead. Her eyes didn’t blink and detected movement in the underbrush as she ran—small rodents and insects as well as the fluttering of wings overhead. The deeper into the forest they went, the darker it became, but she could see quite clearly.

Sounds were enhanced, as if someone had turned on a loudspeaker. Her own breath rushing through her lungs sounded like a locomotive. Her heart thundered in her ears, but she could also hear the rustle of movement in the underbrush and knew, as she ran, exactly where other animals were. She caught the scent of a man’s sweat and the arid smell of smoke. She could hear the crackle of flames and the screams of the monkeys and birds as they fled ahead of the blaze.

Her heart seemed to beat in rhythm with the forest itself, absorbing the frantic energy of the other creatures as she moved fast through the trees, deeper and deeper into the interior. She was acutely aware of Conner’s hand pressing on her back, urging her to move even faster. She heard the whistle of a bullet and then a thunk as it slammed into a broad tree trunk a few feet to their right.

“They’re firing blind,” Conner said. “Keep going.”