Breathless.
Thick and heavy under the weight of lungs.
hyperalert for the sound.
All the senses had to function with precision. an operating system that had no room for error. She was not a machine. A mere mortal is made of flesh and blood rather than circuits and wires. She did not have a multi-core processor able to run split-second calculations. Her brain was a mash of tissue thrown together under a cacophony of misfiring synapses, barely able to keep her feet from tripping over uneven ground.
It played the same fucking script over and over again... Fucking run, bitch! Run! Run! There was no elegance to the code that fed her fear. Fear was a gentle word. She was fucking terrified, and it fueled every decision.
She was a pretty brunette under better lighting, a shower, and a fresh pair of clothes, but not under this moon and in these woods. She wasn’t used to running, period. much less in the middle of a forest in low light. She was well off the trail. It was designed that way. It's all part of the plan.
He was behind her, but not far. She heard the howls getting closer and then, after a few minutes, ebbing away. He was toying with her. This was his playground. Her shoes, not equipped for running through the thick brush and creek water she had encountered, were soaked, and the soles were starting to rip away from their structure. She was certain her left ankle was bruised and possibly bleeding. A nasty hole had seen to that. There was no refuge. There was nowhere she could hide.
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