Brigadier stooped and skidded down at a forward angle from a surprise misstep in the slippery dark. Challis grabbed at the halter for fear of pitching off the horse and getting squashed under its bulk. Drunnel fell against her from behind and, being the one without the stirrups, Challis pitched off the horse and got squashed under its bulk.

Except, by some miracle, she didn't. Drunnel's hand was still partly caught in the reins, and when Challis broke through, she spun on the axis of the knee she landed on until she was on her back. Brigadier's scrambling charge was only inches to one side of her.

Then the mud vanished. Horse, rider and rider plummeted in freefall long enough for Challis to give up for lost her perfectly sound neck. Then, a shattering splash enveloped her deep in the River Vagrant.

The shock turned her limbs to jelly, and it was a fight to force her hands over nose and mouth. What little air had been in her lungs after the fall was gone in a rush of bubbles when she went under. Challis struggled, disoriented. She had never learned to use the thickness of water to her advantage, so her kicks flailed uselessly. Then rain became pour as the tripwire, tugging at her neck, joined in the fun and erupted in her face. Seething, concentrated clouds of flux boiled into the water, stabbing into Challis' ears and flooding over her brain. Flux pressed into her skin as if she were a sponge and sent violent shivers raking up and down her body.

Then her shoulder struck something. Not the soft mud of the bottom, but a rock-jarring solid object. Her knuckles scraped a square corner of stone, then she seized a ridged handle. Swarmed with fresh adrenaline, Challis used it to wriggle upright and slog both legs into a crouch. Then she pushed as hard as she could, streamlining salmon-fashion toward heaven.

She broke free with a raucous spewing and coughing, then floundered to keep her head above water so she could suck in that glorious spicy-sweet air of the jungle.

Another minute of that would have been wonderful, but someone rudely interrupted by whacking her shoulder. Drunnel, gasping beside her, gave her arm a yank before splashing his way forward. Apparently, the expedition's Director couldn't swim any better than the average dog either. Challis paddled after him and kicked at the water in fat thrusts until she was scraping on land. She curled her fingers around stringy plants and lay facefirst in them, panting.

Drunnel sat slumped in front of her, and the berated snorts nearby told her that Brigadier had made it out too.

That was something, at least. They were all alive. But she would have to tell the Director sometime. If only her head wasn't still buzzing.

"Come on," Drunnel panted before she could say anything. "Can't stay here."

"But sir, when I went underwater –"

"That's an order."

"All the flux burst out," she finished loudly. "Maybe three seconds after it was submerged. Sorry, sir."

He cursed, but it was half-hearted. "Was afraid of that," he went on grudgingly. "Just puts us on a tighter timeline. A week for me. Don't know how much for you."

She wouldn't last a day, Challis thought in bitter silence. Not if the last time she lost it had told her anything.

"I – don't have it."

He snapped to attention, so sharp of an efflux that Challis winced.

"What?"

"It's gone. I lost it in the water."

"Damn you!" Drunnel got to his feet and stood staring at the black surface. Challis stayed where she was, still too shaken to be angry, or tired, or much of anything.

Until the teeth sank into her leg.

She screamed and tried to twist away. The bite deepened into lances of pain, which jerked and jerked at her again until she was up to her neck in water. Whatever had her was impossibly strong. It dragged her relentlessly, methodically, back down into the Vagrant until she was swallowed up by death for the second time that night.

She had only ever heard of blackwater caimans in textbooks. The biggest of the beasts was more than twelve feet long, with a nasty habit of drowning their victims before consuming them. Huge jaws didn't let go once they were locked on, and it wouldn't be long before ferocious twisting would dismember her into croc-sized bites.

Pain ripped up her leg, roaring in her lungs. In fading desperation, Challis did the only thing she could think of, though there was no real moment of thought or even of decision. There was only one possible reaction, and it never would have come if she hadn't just been doused in heavy floxogelene. She shoved her way into the mind of the caiman, hauling its life energy up to snap together with her own. A grindstone-solid block of savagery, a crushing weight of drowned bloodlust, plowed over her senses. Challis struggled to control it.

The next thing she remembered, as if a cloth had blotted away a full sixty seconds from her mind, was her body lying uneaten on the bank. Challis choked on air and rolled onto her side. Her mind pieced together the energy in front of her. Drunnel stood about six feet away, his Willerton 20-mag Tangent pointed at her head.