Julian brought down the club with all the force he could muster. It glanced off Antoine's temple and landed hard on the shoulder. Antoine stumbled and went down to one knee.

"Naughty, naughty little Julian," he chided, pushing himself up with one hand.

Julian's wrists smarted from the uncushioned blow. Hopefully Antoine was feeling a lot worse. He raised back for a second swing.

Antoine swept with one foot, tripping Julian and throwing off his aim. Julian's wild swing still connected as a body blow; he heard Antoine grunt and something clattered to the floor.

Julian finished falling, his elbow hitting the ground first. White spots swam across his vision from the pain of impact. His other hand had landed on a large piece of glass from the bottle. Thankfully it curved downward, otherwise he might well have lost a finger.

"That will be enough." Antoine wrenched the club from Julian's grip with one hand, fumbling at his pocket with the other.

Julian slashed out with the shard of glass, but Antoine deflected the swing with a cross body block. He lost his grip on the shard and it sailed away.

Antoine countered with the club, Julian rolled just in time to avoid having his skull crushed.

Something hard pressed against his hip. He grabbed for it. A pistol - it must have fallen from Antoine's pocket.

Julian had only fired a gun once. His phantom of a dad had shown up on Julian's 16th birthday and insisted they go to a firing range. Something about 'being a man.' Turned out Julian had a knack for it - he landed a nice tight cluster of holes on the center of the silhouette. It was also the only time he had seen his father smile.

He pictured that paper target as he squeezed two rounds into Antoine's torso. His tormentor fell backward, unconscious or dead. Blood pumped thick and steady from the wounds. Julian wondered if Dad would be proud.

Slowly, he got back to his feet. He stared blankly at the pistol, struggling to understand the answer to a question he hadn't meant to ask: What does it feel like to kill a man? His thumb flicked a stud that was probably the safety. The gun fell from his hand.

Julian stumbled into Antoine's room, the world reduced to flashes of comprehension. An unmade bed. A door to the bathroom. A swirl of thin vomit in a toilet bowl, a sour taste in his mouth.

Hot steam rose from the shower, a pile of wet bloody clothes kicked to one side. The stream of pink water on the floor gave Julian an intense compulsion to cleanse. He scrubbed his whole body pink, continuing long after the hot water was gone.

Sanity gradually returned. He had done what he needed to do. No more, no less. The details were unimportant. And now he needed to press on, or it would all be for nothing.

A ring of keys sat on the dresser, he grabbed them. The drawers held a larger man's clothes; pants too big, shirts too long. Nothing that couldn't be solved with a belt and cuffs. The shoes were another matter. In the end he did his best to wipe the blood from his own sneakers, then reluctantly slipped them back on.

Crossing the living room required a careful non-focus. Julian stepped around the pooled blood, trying his best not to understand what the man-shaped object was, or how it got that way.

He gave a longing look to the front door and the freedom it promised, then turned into the kitchen and headed down to the basement. He needed something that told him where he was, and where he might go.

The basement was small, little more than an underground closet. There were office supplies, a shelf with the laptop and cell phone, and another with the duffel the Blackmountain soldiers had dropped off with Julian. Insider was Julian's headset and controller, undamaged. Old friends.

Logging on seemed risky, for all he knew they'd hacked the device to spy on him, but he couldn't exactly run blindly out the door and expect to get anywhere. He needed information.

Julian pulled his glasses from the duffel and risked connecting long enough to download a map, then turned the network back off. Apparently he was in Slovakia.

Next he turned on the old cell phone and tried calling his mom. Straight to voicemail - was she really dead? He thought of texting then changed course and sent an email with the old laptop; easier to check the response in case he had to burn the phone. When he was done he tossed the computer and phone into the duffel, along with a pad of paper and a couple pens.

As he was leaving he noticed a schedule posted by the door. Looked like a staff rotation schedule. Under today's date it said: 'Artem: 12:00.' Shit. Less than an hour away.

He ran up to the kitchen, taking the stairs two at a time. A hasty search of the cupboards turned up two bottles of water. He added them and a random assortment of canned food to his bag and headed out the door.

Farmland stretched out from the tiny cabin, the robots of modern agriculture crawling across it like so many steel bugs. A gravel drive snaked between fields and into the distance, though he couldn't see the road it joined. As the only path in it was far too risky anyway; whoever 'Artem' was Julian didn't want to meet him.

That left traveling through the fields.

The surrounding countryside was dotted with villages spaced a few miles from each other. He wasn't keen to visit any of them. For all he knew Artem and Antoine were local boys, and word travels fast in small towns.

No, he would need to avoid roads and people until he neared Bratislava. It wasn't so far to go, plenty of time to make it by nightfall. He slung the duffel across his body and stepped out into the dirt.

Walking through the fields wasn't half bad, especially compared to what he'd been doing lately. The sky was overcast, the weather warm, the plants and fresh air invigorating. Once he'd put a couple hours between him and the compound he stopped for a snack of corn, crouched between rows of plants. The ear he'd plucked was crisp but sweet. Probably just about ready for harvest.

The sky darkened and Julian started to worry about shelter. According to the map there should be a farmhouse with a barn about ten minute away. Maybe he could sneak in and wait out the storm.

As he was getting oriented a grid of swirling green dots appeared, covering the ground around him. His pulse raced - had he been found? He dropped the corn and broke into a run. A drone swooped in from above and harangued him with recorded bird calls.

He stopped. The drone continued projecting its light show and chattering insistently. Some kind of pest deterrent. He laughed out loud at his own skittishness. Him and the blackbirds, flushed from the corn. A gunshot rang out from the barn he was headed toward and he stopped laughing.

It might be an innocent thing, a bored farmer doing some target practice. But given today's events, Julian wasn't inclined to take chances. He needed to quiet the drone before it attracted the wrong kind of attention, if it hadn't already. He tried grabbing for it, but it darted nimbly out of reach. He already missed his makeshift cudgel.

If he couldn't disable it maybe he could outrun it? He sprinted laterally toward a nearby field, corn stalks and leaves whacking him in the face as he poured on speed.

The drone buzzed off as soon as he crossed out from the corn, but looking back he could see a clear trail of broken stalks where he'd fled. More than obvious to anyone who looked.

The field he'd emerged on was nearly bare, with only tiny green shoots poking out through the rows of dirt. If he tried to cut across he'd be an easy mark, but turning back would attract the squawking of the anti-pest drone.

An automated tractor rumbled toward Julian, towing a fertilizer rig. A small deck held a triangle of upright tanks sloshing with liquid nutrients. It looked like there might be a gap in the center of the barrels big enough for a person to hide.

Paranoia goaded him into action. He dashed out behind the tractor and grabbed the rig's access ladder, pulling himself up and over the tanks. Sure enough, he could squeeze into the middle of the barrels, hidden except from the sky.

Narrow gaps between the tanks were his only window to the world. He continually checked each in turn, watching for signs of pursuit. The tractor had made it to the end of the field and was coming around when he saw them. Two men in all too familiar Blackmountain uniforms emerged from the broken corn stalks. They ignored the persistent drone hovering above them.

The taller of the two took out a pair of binoculars and scanned the field. Julian held his breath as he swept over the tractor. The man paused, binoculars pointing squarely at the tanks. Julian held perfectly still.

The moment passed. The man finished his scan, said something to his companion, and they turned and walked back into the corn. Julian exhaled.

It began to drizzle. There wasn't anything to be done, not with those men out there. He put his windbreaker over his head and got progressively soaked as the sprinkle turned to downpour.

He spied them twice more as the tractor plodded up and down the field, but they gave no indication of noticing him.

Hours later the machine finished its circuit and turned off onto a dirt path, presumably heading back for a refill. Julian worried there might be a technician waiting for it, or worse. When the tractor rolled alongside a stand of wheat Julian hopped off and took cover among the stalks.

According to his map he was still five hours from Bratislava. That'd take him past nightfall. Dangerous to travel in the dark, but riskier still to try a town. Julian took a swig of water and started walking.