Take the longer path

Fifty total men on this island, Jade thinks. Some have undoubtedly dropped out by now, but there's still probably at least twenty of them between me and that final safe house. And Enrico... can't forget him. He's got one of the Taser rifles and he can take me down at a distance. I have no idea what the range on one of those is, but it's a lot longer than I can swing this stick! If he gets the drop on me... well, there's nothing I'll be able to do about that, so I just have to hope it doesn't happen.

The jungle starts off easier to navigate than the more direct route looked, but it quickly becomes just as thick, and Jade begins to wonder if she's made a wrong move. One of her sandals gets mired in mud, and when she tries to pull it free the strap breaks. She keeps the other one on her foot for a while, but the unevenness makes her stumble, until she finally pulls it off and throws it away into the bush.

Am I even going the right way? Jade thinks to herself. She looks up when she gets to what passes for a clearing, but the brightening sky no longer shows any stars, and she can't see enough to know where the Sun is rising. I'm making way too much noise, but there's just no way to move through here quietly! And on top of everything else, I'm already getting thirsty.

Jade sits down on a fallen tree for a moment, to rest and try to calm her thoughts. "I'm really starting to hate this place,* she mutters... and then chuckles, in spite of herself.

The laughter dies in her throat when she realizes that the noise of crashing through the brush hasn't entirely stopped!

Shit! Jade jumps up and starts moving again, plunging recklessly on into the jungle lit by the gray twilight. It would be relatively easy to stop and hide... but then she'll be trapped, unable to move back out again without being heard or spotted. I've got to get through this crap while it's still hard to see, she thinks. As soon as the Sun comes up, I'll be visible! They're close behind, really close, my only chance is to- "YAHH!!"

The exclamation bursts out of her involuntarily, as the ground suddenly slips out from under her feet. Jade falls onto her bottom, not as hard as she might have, because the ground is soft and wet and because she's still falling! Jade barely manages to keep hold of her stick as she slides down into a deep ravine, mud splattering up into her face and foliage slapping at her. A big rock juts out in her path and Jade frantically rolls to the side, dodging away from it, but unable to stop her uncontrolled ride down the hill.

"Hey - oh SHIIIITT!!!"

She hears a man yell out high above and behind her, as one of her pursuers likewise takes a step too far. Up ahead, Jade can see where her slide ends, in a muddy torrent gushing along the ravine floor. With a brown and slimy -splat-, she tumbles into what only barely passes for water, scrambling to get out of the way of the man who's hurtling down behind her. She somehow manages to get to her feet and starts running the only way she can, in the gushing brown stream, following it down towards an open salt marsh at its end; there's certainly no way to get back out of the pit, even on the much shorter side opposite the one she came down.

She hears a soggy splash behind her, and an exclamation of disgust. Then, a moment later, a voice shouts, "You can't get away from me, Foxy! I don't care if you're covered in muck, I'll still fuck you six different ways!"

Jade doesn't waste breath responding, doesn't turn around. Instead, she plows on into the soft and sticky mud of the marsh, pulling herself through by grabbing reeds and scraggly bushes, all the while resisting the impulse to drop the stick she's managed to hold onto the whole time. The man behind her seems to be getting closer!

"I gotcha, I... Yaaargh!!

The sudden cry of pain makes Jade turn back to see what happened. The man has fallen down into the swamp, and seems to be swatting frantically at a dark vine that's somehow tangled around his leg.

That's not a vine, Jade realizes, a chill running up her spine. That's a snake!

The serpent looks to be about four feet long, black with a bright yellow underside, and its jaws have clamped firmly into the meat of the man's calf. Jade scrambles up out of the water onto what passes for dry ground, a grassy mound which stands clear of the muck. The man gets a grip on the snake's body and pulls hard, dislodging it from his flesh and hurling it as far away as he can... but the damage is done. He's able to stumble over to another grassy patch before collapsing, his body convulsing as the venom makes its way quickly into his system.

For a moment, Jade stares at him, unsure of what to do... then she sets her jaw and bounds over to him, ripping open his pack and digging out his pager. She flips up the cover and presses the button down, hearing it click and seeing the red light come on.

"That's all you get from me," she says to him, showing him the pager. "And it's more than you deserve, asshole. But if you make it through this, just remember that I could have left you to die, and I didn't, even though you were ready to **** me. So while you're waiting to see if they get here in time to save your sorry ass, think good and hard about whether your life was worth saving in the first place."

Jade grabs up her stick and the man's pack, and jumps onto a larger mound, where she holds onto the twisted tree growing there and looks back. A few other men had made their way into the marsh, but stopped and retreated when they saw what happened. Jade glares at them, puts up a middle finger, and then continues through the swamp - stepping a LOT more carefully than she had been.

They said they'd eradicated all the poisonous snakes from the island, Jade thinks to herself as she navigates her way through the treacherous marsh. Well, of course they'd miss a few, it's a big piece of ground. I guess I should be grateful... but that could just as easily have been me!

The sound of a helicopter rises over the wind. Jade sees that the water of the marsh has grown clearer, the muck now mostly sand, and she dares to plunge back into it to take a more direct route over to the shelter of a large volcanic boulder. Her feet mire in the wet sand, but by levering her stick against firmer ground she's able to wade through, until at last the ground supports her feet. She huddles under the rock as the helicopter emerges from behind the trees and sweeps over the beach, blowing sand all about and forcing her to hide her face from the wind. The noise fades somewhat as the helicopter heads away from her, but it's still going at almost full throttle. Of course, they can't land in that swamp, she thinks. They'll have to hover over him and try to pick him up in a sling or something.

Jade waits behind the rock, holding her ears to block out the noise, until the engine roars up and the helicopter takes off, flying back toward the other side of the island. There's no way of knowing whether they picked up a living body or a dead one... probably she'll never know. I'm glad I did it, she thinks. I'm glad I called for help. That means they haven't broken me, I'm still a decent person even after all this. Maybe he deserved to die, who knows what he might have done to the other girls... but that's not my call. They haven't made me forget that.

Jade stands up, and sees that the rock suddenly has a distinct shadow; dawn has broken. Day three, she thinks to herself. They said it was a three-day hike across the island, and here I am. Of course, I've only really been going for two days total. That means I'm likely in the lead. The zipline, and then the tunnel, that really helped me get ahead. Well, maybe... I've really got no way of knowing, of course.

Far down the beach, Jade can see the final safe house catching the rays of the rising Sun. The building is nearer than it was before; she's closed at least half the distance, and for the first time she can see a clear path leading all the way there. The seaweed-draped beach is mostly open, but the treeline offers some cover.

That's not just cover for me, though, Jade thinks. If anyone's waiting for me, that's where they'll be. That means if I go in there, I'm walking right into them. I could go in deeper, but that's going to take up more time and I might lose my way. There's one other choice; I could just make a run for it, right out in the open, on the beach. At some point, I'm going to have to; it's not like there's cover all the way up to the safe house.