Abe couldn’t hide it if he’d tried, which he didn’t -- he was terrified. He was shaking so much the bulky French man growled at him to ‘get a grip.’ And since that same man was pressing the barrel of a pistol against his head, Abe did his best to acquiesce.

"Let him go, or you’ll be dead,” Cece warned. Even now, her voice sounded like a purr. Abe couldn’t help but marvel. Did nothing ruffle her?

“Put down your gun, or your friend here will be dead first,” the man replied. “Three...two…”

But he never got to one.

In the course of the next two and a half seconds, more happened then Abe could have actually observed, and so he was left rather confused by the end of it all. With three successive, painfully loud shots, the man with the gun fell to the ground. Abe’s ears rang--he couldn’t hear a thing--and his head hurt immensely. He gingerly touched his temple and his palm came back covered in blood.

Cece’s cry came like a distant, quiet echo, despite the fact that she was right next to him. “Come on!” She grabbed his arm and pulled him deeper into the woods. He turned back weakly, back the way from which they’d come, knowing they had to get back to the timepiece, but Cece wouldn’t have it. Abe didn’t understand what she wanted -- the man she’d shot was still on the ground, apparently with a shoulder wound. He squirmed in pain and his mouth twisted in a scream that Abe still couldn’t hear.