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Trevor Herbert is trying to hunt something again.
Basira bites back her annoyance and follows in his wake.
He is out of her sight but his footsteps are easy to follow. Heavy boots making mulch out of tall grass, furious stamps that crack branches and kick rocks. He was just moving, keeping up his momentum to try and outpace his pursuer, when she heard his stance change, when he picked up the trail of something else sorry enough to get lost in this brackish, overgrown place. The stamps became shuffles, his touch on the choking plant-life in his path lighter, leaving barely a trace. Old instincts guiding him even at the end.
It’s not the first time it has happened since Basira started following him and she knows how it will play out even as it starts. Trevor will stalk whatever scent he has picked up before he either loses the trail or shows his hand too quickly, striking out at whatever is in front of him and letting it get away. He is impatient, his frustration and fear getting the best of him and whatever it is he follows always gets away.
Some small part of her can’t really blame him for still trying though. He is unmoored, desperately searching for any semblance of control that he can cling to ever since Julia was killed.
Basira didn’t see Julia Montauk die but she saw the aftermath.
The smell of blood and the sounds of violence were easy to follow, even though the fight was long over by the time she stepped into the dark clearing. Solid trees had been cracked in two, sods of earth had been ripped from the ground and stained muddy red, and Julia was-
Well.
Julia wasn’t.
It was only from the agonised howls of Trevor Herbert in the distance that Basira knew who the messy mass of gore used to be.
She changed the plan as soon as she saw it. Following Trevor in his wounded grief would be easier than trying to pick up the trail she had lost in the tangle of pawprints in the clearing.
Besides, Daisy would probably want to finish what she started.
It had been about a week since then. Basira was sure it had been about a week. Time slipped out of her hands like sand these days. Not that there were days anymore. Or nights. Her body clock was no use either, having been thrown off entirely without any markers like hunger or exhaustion to guide it. She tried to keep count in her head but keeping her eyes and ears focused on what was immediately in front of her took priority.
All she could know for certain was she had been following Trevor for longer than she liked. Long enough that he knew she was.
He knew someone was, at least. When he first realised, he thought she was Daisy and screamed curses over his shoulder, told her how he was going to kill her, how she would suffer a thousand times over for what she had done. His growls had scared unseen birds from the trees and made him easy to stalk.
Now though, after his anger had run its course and time had trickled on, he was silent. Dread and anticipation curled between them, linking hunter and prey as he kept putting one foot in front of the other and wondered when he would feel teeth in his throat.
Basira was trying very hard not to wonder the same thing. She didn’t care whether or not Trevor died exactly, but if Daisy hunted him down, Basira would be close enough to finally catch her. Hell, if she killed him before Daisy, that might work as well- the smell of her prey’s blood reeling her in.
It’s hard to not think like that these days. To think like hunter, to think like prey. Especially here, in this muggy, cluttered mire. The plants cling and stink of rotten vegetation, make themselves a nuisance with intent. Basira has heard the call of the Hunt more than once here. The certain knowledge that if she just crouched a little lower, moved on all her limbs, used her nose as much as her eyes and ears, how much simpler all of this would be. She could catch up with Trevor immediately, he is old and easy to pick off. She wouldn’t even need anything but her own hands to kill him, nails cutting into his neck and slicing his jugular. She would know the blood intimately and wouldn’t that make it oh so much more straightforward to lure in her real prey. To watch that great bloodied beast slouch into her trap and spring it with deadly precision.
Instinct warped by the chase howls at her to submit, belly-up.
Basira has always been good at ignoring her instincts.
She walks upright. She uses the dregs of her police training to track her target, following dry bloodless rules step-by-step. She keeps a hold on her handgun at all times, the most unnatural death she can grant in a place like this.
It’s been working so far. The bark and bray of the Hunt held back by the leash of logic she had wound. But she can feel it fray as she pushes on, through the endless path of footprints Trevor has left behind. Even the maybe-a-week she has spent in pursuit is getting to be too much. She double-checks her ammo to ward off any creeping, clawing thoughts and sees that the clip is full. The clip is always full no matter how many times she shoots.
She needs to take care of Trevor now, for her own sake.
His footsteps are slowing, a stream of hushed water trickling to a stop, as he gets closer to what he has been following. She hears him pause and stops as well. A few more steps and she would be able to see him. She will wait until he pounces to move, the instant he is focused on his target, all his mind seized with victory, she’ll have her chance to strike.
Basira can practically hear the creak of old tendons as he winds himself up, stays still for a breathless moment, then leaps out of cover.
She rounds the trunk of a thick dead tree in the same second and aims the pistol.
There is a scream. More shock than fear, but a human scream.
Her ears catch up before her eyes as she hears more than one voice as Trevor growls threats through sharp teeth.
She sees him pressing a body to another tree, a cousin of the one she stands behind, and frowns.
If Trevor has actually caught someone that makes things a little more complicated. He could turn from prey to hunter in an instant, the weird logic of this particular pocket of Hell giving him back the same power it so easily stripped from him.
Basira considers taking out his target first. If he doesn’t have anything to hunt, he can’t revert back. She adjusts her aim, bringing it past Trevor’s arm up to the neck that he presses his hunting knife against.
Oh.
Oh.
That makes things a lot more complicated.
Martin Blackwood looks about a decade older than when Basira last saw him, mostly due to the streaks of white running through his dirty blonde mop of hair. His fringe flops over his eyes and his little goatee has grown into a short, shaggy beard that wraps around his face. A huge travel pack digs into his back from where Trevor has shoved him into the tree and his clothes look about as grubby as Basira’s feel. He’s muttering something about being completely calm and she has to admit, it’s a pretty good impersonation.
She has heard voices before here, whispers between the gaps in the trees and the feeling of familiar breath on her neck. She’s seen flashes of what could almost be people from the corner of her eye. They aren’t hallucinations, she is pretty sure, but quiet, lithe things native to these woods and born to trick and trap.
An idle thought slips out of her grasp- is this monster mimicking Martin to trick Trevor or her?
A low voice cuts through her head, impossible not to listen to.
“If he were still a Hunter.”
A proclamation from the mouth of the Archivist. Words as certain as a death sentence.
Trevor protests, of course, and with a knife pressed to his throat Martin is quick to agree with him.
Basira moves a silent inch and broadens her view of the flat patch of ground this little drama is taking place in.
If Martin looks older, Jon looks ancient.
He has cut off the long mane of hair he let grow idle after his coma and it’s so short now it’s almost a buzzcut. He has kept the ratty little moustache, run through with even more grey than before. In another life, she would be keen to tell him how ridiculous he looked. Now, she only stares. Trevor is telling the pair of them about Julia, about Daisy, but Basira barely listens. Something about Jon is wrong and it takes a good long moment of puzzling it out before Basira can put her finger on what it is.
His scars. The marks all over his battered body. From the tiny round worm bites, to the creased burn on his right hand, to the sharp, clean cut Daisy left on his neck- they’re all wrong.
And then she sees it.
Eyelids.
A myriad of eyelids, mercifully closed, pepper his skin where his scars once were. The largest one rests in the centre of his forehead, vertical, almost like a wrinkle.
Basira didn’t know what she expected from the Archivist at the end of the world, but the monster mimicking him is giving her a damn good idea.
And he is still talking.
“For putting us all in this situation. I had hoped you’d go for me, but – well.”
A pause.
“I’m sorry I’ve reduced you lower even than prey…”
“Jon…?” Martin teeters on the edge of fear as Trevor snorts like a mad bull.
Even as he spits out denial, Basira feels the hair rise on the back of her neck. She recognises an opportunity when she sees one.
Another silent shift. Repositioning her aim. Her finger finds the trigger.
“To bait.”
There is relish in the word.
Trevor’s head turns on a swivel, hatred and pain in every inch of him as he glares at Jon and the back of his skull lands directly in Basira’s line of sight.
“Don’t-!”
She takes the shot.
Trevor is dead before he hits the ground.
Martin doesn’t scream again but his voice raises high and loud with shock even as Jon looks towards her. The foliage should give her absolute cover but she knows already that he has probably been Looking at her this whole time.
“Hello Basira.”
She keeps the gun trained on them. They are very convincing mimics and she cannot afford to drop her guard.
She demands proof that they’re real, starting with Martin. She aims the barrel between his eyes as he rambles.
“Prove you’re really Martin Blackwood.”
“How?!”
“...you could do a poem.”
“Shut up.”
The monster pretending to be Jon even copied his awful sense of humour. She would roll her eyes if it was safe to.
Martin- not Martin- is still dithering and she cocks the gun, ready to end it.
“No-no-no-no-no-no-no-no, wait, wait, uh – I – oh, I don’t know, we’ve never hung out much! I’ve no idea what you know about me!”
That’s… a fair point.
Even before he threw his lot in with Peter Lukas and she carried the rest of the office on her shoulders, they never actually had a one-on-one conversation. He could tell her anything about himself and she would have no way of knowing if it was true.
She changes tact, rotating to point the gun at the new eye on Jon’s head.
“What about you?”
“I mean – I can know literally anything, so – ask away I guess.”
This time, she can’t hold back the eye roll.
“You understand how unhelpful that is for proving identities.”
“I’m sorry to be an inconvenience.”
He is trying not to smile. She can hear it in his voice and sees it in the twist of his mouth.
He has to be real, no creature could copy how good he was at annoying her so effectively.
It’s a stupid thought, reckless, and nowhere near good enough for proof. She keeps the gun up.
Until he says what she is thinking, lays out the feeling in her gut that knows they are both who they say they are, speaking truth into reality.
“I told you before not to look into my head.”
“So you do believe it’s me, then.”
She holds the gun up for a heartbeat more before slotting it back into the holster on her hip.
“Know-it-all prick.”
And there’s his smile.
It lights up his face, crinkling the corners of more than one set of eyes. Basira is hit with the oddest thought that despite everything -the gun in his face, the scowl on her’s, the world crumbling around them- he is happy to see her.
She has no idea how to feel about that so she just tells Martin he can put his arms down instead.
Martin groans as he rolls his shoulders back and glowers at the pair of them, more annoyed than anything else. He touches the shallow cut Trevor’s knife made on his neck and Jon hands him a handkerchief from his pocket to blot it even as he asks Basira how sure she is.
“If you were monsters, that would mean I’d finally get to kill something with your smug face. No way am I that lucky.”
The quip spills out of her like water and after who knows how long of not talking to another living person, she isn’t exactly comfortable with how easy it is.
“Can’t fault your logic.”
She glares. Logic has kept her alive and he damn well Knows it.
She lets herself feel annoyed just for a moment more before she lets it go with a sigh. Trevor is dead and nothing came of it apart from knowing that Jon and Martin are alive and, for the most part, okay. Not the result she was hoping for and, realistically, it doesn’t change much. She still has a job to do, a trail to pick up, a promise to keep. She has to move forward.
If her newly-found hangers-on happen to move with her, she won’t stop them.
“Come on. You’ve wasted enough time already.”
She carries on through the brush, even as Martin sputters and Jon chuckles under his breath.
“After you.” She hears.
Martin sticks close as Jon brings up the rear, placing a target firmly on his back for anything else that might plan to stalk them. Basira thinks it’s the least he can do.
She sets their pace and draws her gun again as her hunt resumes.