Less than five minutes' walk away from the big city. An unstable culprit with a loaded gun. Brand new walkie-talkie that decided not to work. No signal on the phone. No colleague in sight. Dark night in a forest and thunderstorms drowning out sound.

This was the worst possible combination of anything that could happen when a murderer was on the loose. I let out a silent, shuddering breath, steadying my fingers on the gun.

My eyes were slowly getting used to the darkness, and so were the culprit's. I raised my gun to chest level, holding my breath, listening for any rustle of leaves, just anything.

Blood was thick and fast in my temples, but I felt calm, so strangely calm I was unnerved. Here I was playing hide and seek with someone who'd killed his friends and a complete stranger, and feeling less nervous than I was for my first interview with the police force.

Then, I felt it. The small hairs on my arm stood, and even with the lack of any sound, I was fully convinced he was behind. I swerved around on my heel with my flashlight in one hand and gun in the other, aiming straight at the culprit himself, aiming his gun at me.

"Mr. Miller." My voice was calm, still.

A flash of lightning struck across the sky, and I saw the culprit's face, brick hard, lips pressed together in a thin line. He was nervous, scared.

"Mr. Miller. We don't have to do this."

I needed to buy some time. From the way our team was moving, I knew I had at least one team member within a few meters. Just one more person, just one more gun on our side-

"I know who you are. Alice Edwards. And I know what you're trying to do. All of you are trying to kill me. I didn't kill them, I swear. I told you." His voice quavered through another clap of thunder. "This is all a plan to put me in jail."

"...Do you want to tell me what happened?" We all knew what happened. His fingerprints all over the weapons, caught straight on the CCTV. But I needed time.

I could make out his features more clearly in the darkness. His shifting, nervous eyes, quavering lips. The two hands clasping onto his gun lowered ever so slightly, and his lips shifted. "That day-"

In that ever short moment when there was no thunder or lightning, when there was silence, a big rustle of leaves came from just behind my heel. And then, a flash of lightning struck, and from his eyes, I knew. I knew he was going to shoot.

First came the shock. It was like someone over 6 foot and many times heavier than me- maybe someone like Lieutenant Tanner on my team- had hit me real hard on my ribs with a closed fist. I was on the dirt, and then the burning pain came, the kind that made even breathing painful.

I couldn't even moan, couldn't even shift. Only my eyes caught the culprit on the ground, too, from my shot, writhing, letting out a groan. Mine had hit him on the shoulder, where I'd aimed.

All the strength seemed to have immediately left my body. My fingers felt the cold, rough leaves on the dirt, and my eyes rested on the 11pm sky of New York. With the energy gone my lips parted, and the cool November breeze entered into my body through my agape mouth.

The only thing that warmed me, was the hotness of my blood seeping through my shirt, and pooling inside my half zipped-up jacket.

No thought, nothing passed through my head. With no strength to even put into my fingers, I closed my eyes, and let out a soft breath.

~ * ~

My eyes opened to a cream white ceiling.

It took a few seconds of recalling, followed by a few more of thinking. I felt no throb on my ribs. That meant it had probably been a while since the night of shooting. What had happened to the culprit? If I was alive, I'd probably been found within a period short enough for the hospital to revive me, despite the blood loss. Would that mean the culprit would've been within distance too?

I blinked hard, and took a short inhale. But wait. No smell of alcohol swabs or the familiar scent of hospital sheets.

With some effort, I put my hands on the uncomfortably cushion-y bed, and raised my upper body slightly, scanning my surroundings. And then, I froze.

A high ceiling, large ceiling-to-floor windows covered with white lace curtains, an unnecessarily large bed with velvet purple sheets. Beside the bed was an oak writing table with some papers and a quill pen. A quill pen with feathers?

Dazed, I rubbed my eyes, and then looked up. Directly facing the bed, was what I presumed was a make-up table with some perfume-like looking glass bottles and a table, and a large mirror. And staring into the mirror was someone utterly unfamiliar.

Unable to even let out a breath, I looked down at my hands, once again unfamiliar. Not the calloused hands that Lieutenant Tanner joked were "excellent for holding guns", not the hands with scars and bruises, but alabaster white, pale hands with long fingers and perfectly trimmed fingernails.

Staring back at me in the mirror was a young woman in her early twenties, with smooth light blond curls streaming down to her hips, startling blue eyes and a marble-pale face, in a white silk night dress.

My mouth gaped, and so did hers. All thought stopped in my head, and I raised my hand to my face. So did she.

Then, we both let out a scream.