Chase stopped, then turned around to face her friends. They stopped too, surprised. “Sir must not hurt them, and must not hurt you.” Chase put her hands on Alicia's shoulders. “This place safe. Not get hurt when in eyes of tours. Cait, Lin and Leash must stay here. I lead bad cheers off. Take them out, then go find Sir, take her out.”

“No!” said Alicia. “Chase, we can't let you do that!”

“Must,” said Chase. She caught Alicia off guard by wrapping her up in a desperate hug. “Still not quite know what patch do, but not let Sir turn Lin to Bad Lin, or Cait to Bad Cait, or Leash to Bad Leash. Like you best way you are. You change, turn bad...same as you die, to me.”

Chase's arms were dangerous. When she was in them, Alicia felt so safe, so sheltered. She felt swaddled in a blanket of complacency. Alicia trusted Chase so much, considered her so dependable. It would be so easy to just defer to Chase, to let her fix everything. It felt so natural to let Chase fill the role of the protector and herself the role of the protected.

“Chase...” said Alicia, pulling away. She was moved, but somehow frustrated. “You're so...look, we like you the way you are, too! We don't want Serena to get you, either! You said yourself she'll be expecting us to come to her!”

“We know you can handle yourself, and we know we're probably slowing you down...” said Caitlin, “but to see you put yourself in danger, risk your own life, because of US...it's scary! You've done it in the past, and sometimes it's necessary...but this time, it's not!”

“Let's just stick together. Let's come up with something together,” agreed Lindsey.

Chase hesitated. Alicia took Chase's hands and held them in her own. “Lindsey's right. We can do this as a team. We NEED to do this as a team, just this one time. Serena thinks her zombie squad is as good as a squad can get. She thinks she can be a one-woman show. But we need to show her what real teamwork means, and what a REAL squad of REAL friends can do!”

They heard a cold laugh off the trail to their left, and their hearts sank. Alicia let go of Chase and turned around to see Serena step out of the bushes, clapping slowly. A small group of three cheerleaders were with her. “VERY nice speech, captain. Teamwork, the power of friendship. You really are a cute one, aren't you?”

“S-Serena!” said Caitlin, aghast. “What are you doing here?!”

Serena gave them a cool smile. “Well, I was EXPECTING you to come to me. I guess I got tired of waiting.” she said. Alicia's words thrown back at them. How much of their conversation had she overheard? Chase looked down the trail. The group of three cheerleaders was still there, watching them. Seven in all, counting Serena herself.

“I hope you don't mind me joining you,” said Serena. “These trails can get a little confusing if you're not familiar with them. I'd hate for you to get lost.”

The tourists were looking impatient with them for holding up the trail, so the Sunnycrest girls walked on. The procession had changed somewhat. Two Paranske Falls cheerleaders now led the pack. Two brought up the rear, with Serena as the caboose, keeping a watchful eye on everyone. If there was any point in the hike where the Sunnycrest cheerleaders were out of sight of a tourist, she would be there to take advantage of it.

They reached a fork in the trail, and stopped. There were two paths: a lower one and a higher one, which looked to stretch further up the mountain.

“Shall we go higher?” asked Serena sweetly, gesturing to the path. “That trail's less crowded. We can really appreciate the beauty of our surroundings without all these noisy tourists around.”

The Sunnycrest cheerleaders must have hesitated too long for Serena's taste. In unison, Serena and her drones each picked a Sunnycrest girl and forcefully clamped a pair of hands down on her upper arms. “Come on, now. It's a bit of a longer hike, but it's worth the effort,” encouraged Serena, from the back of the pack, clutching Caitlin tight enough to make her wince. “You wouldn't believe some of the views.”

“'Ey, cheahleadah!” said a voice. Serena looked over her shoulder. One of the tourists was standing there, a gum-chewing young woman with an east coast accent they couldn't place. She held out her phone to her. “Can you take our pitchah?”

The Sunnycrest girls instantly took advantage of the distraction. They broke out of Serena's grips and ran away. Serena glared at them out of the corner of her eye, incensed, but could not go after them without arousing suspicion.

Squelching her frustration, she turned to the tourist and tried to look friendly as she took her phone. “Sure, no problem...”

As the woman stepped back to rejoin her group, Serena sent her six drones racing up the trail ahead of her. With their legs she climbed the dirt path, and with their eyes she desperately looked for the Sunnycrest cheerleaders, even while her body was rooted in place, getting the smiling tourists in frame.

Click. Her drones ran. They ran some more. From six different perspectives, Serena saw trees race by her. She did not see her prey.

Click. Serena felt uneasy. Where the hell did those Sunnycrest girls go? They couldn't have gotten that far ahead...Unless...

Shit. They left the trail.

“Here, I took like five,” she said nervously, handing the phone back to the woman. She reduced her drones' speed and sent them into the woods in a loose group, probing the vast, dense forest with great caution.

“Oh my goahd! I look hahrrahble, just HAHRRABLE!” complained the woman, covering her mouth as she thumbed through the pictures. She adjusted her hair imperceptibly, then held the phone back out to Serena. “One moah, one moah!”

Her boyfriend spoke up. “Babe, no. You look goahgeous.”

Serena was getting impatient. “He's right, you look-” Her sentence was cut abruptly short. One of the seven sets of eyes she was looking through...went dark. She had learned what that meant over the course of this tangle with Chase. One of her drones was down.

Her mouth went dry. What got her? She hadn't even seen anything.

“I look what?” asked the tourist woman uncertainly. “Hahrrable, right? I look hahrrable!”

Serena realized she was staring into space. She looked at her, preoccupied, and pushed the woman's hands away. “No, you look goahgeous. I mean, gorgeous. Look, I have to-” she faltered as a second drone hit the ground. Not knocked out. Tripped up by something. She looked around desperately through the drone's eyes, feeling goosebumps rise on her arms in the cool autumn air. “I have to go-”

“One moah! Please?!” asked the woman with a happy grin, dropping the phone into Serena's hands and returning to her boyfriend's side.

Looking through the drone's eyes even as she looked at the phone's display, Serena made the drone rise to its feet. She looked around at eye level. She looked up at the trees. Nothing. Did she just trip? No, it felt like her legs were yanked out from under her.

Then, just as Serena snapped the picture, the second drone's eyes went dark. She was gone.

“There. This one really is perfect!” she said, trying to make her fear sound like enthusiasm as she handed the phone back. She turned and ran. “See ya!”

Her sneakers assaulted the dirt as she sprinted up the trail. The ascent was nothing compared to some of the bleacher drills she'd put herself through in practice, but her heart still pounded harder than it ever had before. Even with all the sets of eyes at her command, she did not catch a single glimpse of her enemy. She had no idea where the attacks were coming from, not so much as a shaking of branches or a rustle in the bushes. What the hell was this Chase girl?

As she climbed higher the mountain eventually got too steep to ask tourists to battle up it, so the trail leveled off a bit, cutting across the slope almost horizontally. She kept running until she reached the area where she had instructed her drones to leave the path. With two of them she searched the downhill side of the trail, and with the other two she searched the uphill side. She was in five different places at once, both hunting...and being hunted.

Unease in her heart, Serena slowed to a stop. With her own eyes, she looked up the trail, then behind her, down the trail. The mountain was very steep here, and both sides of the trail looked forbidding to traverse. The uphill side made her tired just looking at it, and the downhill side...if somebody decided to leave the trail that way and tripped, it could kill as easily as falling down a flight of stairs could kill. It was just as steep, if not more so.

There was a very powerful enemy in these woods, and she wasn't quite sure where. Chase could attack from anywhere, at any time. She suddenly felt very exposed, very vulnerable. At will, Chase could take out any one of her drone bodies, but even scarier, she could attack Serena herself. Whatever Chase was, Serena was sure she didn't want to cross paths with her without her squad at her side.

She decided to converge her four squadmates on her location. She was about to stop searching and turn them back toward the trail when, through the eyes of one of the drones on the downhill side of the trail, she saw something. Movement in a dense cluster of pine trees, including a flash of a human leg. Then, the sound of footsteps running away. Chase!

Serena immediately sent the drone after her, then sent the other three to join the pursuit. Through the eyes of her two uphill squadmates she saw the trail get closer, and then through her own eyes she saw the two gallop over it and continue on downhill. She, herself, hung back on the trail. She knew where Chase was now, and she didn't want to risk getting anywhere near her. She had her on the run. Four of her drones could handle her, no problem.

The drone that had sighted Chase was wading through the thick trees, following an ephemeral trail of branches swinging in Chase's wake. She must have been mere seconds behind her prey.

She pushed through the branches and found herself in a clearing. Serena turned the girl's head left, then right. Where was Chase?

Then, the drone's vision blurred and she fell forward onto her knees. Something struck it from behind. Serena made her body twist, flinging a closed fist wildly behind her.

But she didn't catch Chase. She caught the other one. The redhead captain. Alicia, right?

Alicia managed to block the blow with her forearm, but still whimpered under the impact and shrank to one side. What was she doing here? Clutched in her hand was a large rock. Was that what hit Serena's squadmate?

But Alicia wasn't alone. Serena didn't have time to hit her again or even rise to her feet before the other two came. The blonde and the ponytailed brunette rushed at Serena's drone, tackling her to the forest floor. The brunette reached behind her back and pulled a familiar stun baton out of the waist of her skirt. Serena felt a secondhand fear as the brunette pushed the trigger down, making the baton crackle to primal life.

The brunette drove it into the drone's stomach, and the electricity wrested all control away from Serena as her squadmate's body was possessed with violent spasms. Her legs kicked, and her torso thrashed, turning the faces of the Sunnycrest cheerleaders into a hazy motion blur. For a couple seconds this went on, before she finally lost consciousness.

Sweat itched on Serena's forehead. Her mouth felt very dry.

If that wasn't Chase...then where-

A flash of motion out of the corner of her eye. Up in the trees, on the uphill side of the trail. Chase lunging at her, like a pouncing panther. No time to react.

WHOMP! Chase connected bodily, sending them both tumbling off the path and down the hill.

At first, Chase had Serena squeezed solidly in her arms. But as they rolled and bounced down the steep incline, Serena was jostled free. It wasn't clear whether she was safer outside of Chase's grip or not. With Chase shielding her, Serena was at least somewhat protected. Chase knew how to take a fall like this. Serena didn't.

Serena managed to stop herself, but not without a few bruises and scrapes. Her clothes were dirtied and a rip had been torn in the side of her top. When she tried to get up, her head was jerked back down to the ground. Her long hair was tangled in a parish of thorn-stemmed plants.

Where were her drones? She glanced through their eyes, but couldn't focus on them. The fear she felt tethered her to her own body. The urgency of the situation made it impossible to give attention to anything but freeing herself and keeping her own eyes out for Chase.

She freed her hair and stood up, but the sudden motion left her unbalanced on the uneven ground. She pitched downhill but recovered, looking up just in time to meet Chase's swinging croquet mallet. She blocked it with her forearm against its long, thin handle, sending an acute pain shooting through her wrist bone.