Chapter 1: Chase

It was dark in the forest. The early sunset in winter and the thick cover of trees made it seem like night had already arrived even though it was barely dusk. There was enough light to see the ground but not enough to look too far ahead in the distance. I had just entered the threshold of the forest and it took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the dark but I didn't stop running. Didn't stop chasing.

The forest ground was uneven with too many tree roots partially above ground. It would be hard to chase someone through here if it was your first time running in this forest. This was a well-planned kidnapping. But I didn't have the time to appreciate it.

There were two of them and both of them seemed to be familiar with this forest. They knew exactly where to step and where not to. They seemed to have an advantage on me and they also had my three year old son who was unconscious.

After sometime, the dead weight slowed the speed of the man carrying him. They weren't used to running then or maybe they weren't expecting anyone to chase them this far. Not so good planning then.

I kept an even distance between me and the kidnappers, and waited for both of them to be tired to close the distance. I could keep this up for hours, but don't know about them. I don't know how much time passed but eventually both of them had slowed down and they were sweating visibly. I would like to say they were getting nervous about the fact that I was still chasing them but they were probably just sweating because they were tired. They wouldn't be worried about me catching up to them considering I was a five foot-six inch, not too muscly woman and they were both six-foot-whatever giants with arm muscles that were bigger than my thighs.

They had to be trained for them to even attempt this and they had to be trained exceptionally well to come this far. But I knew something that they didn't, I was trained better.

The forest area had been a blur of the same till here but we were approaching a less denser area now. They would probably decide to get rid of me once and for all here. If they didn't, I would decide to get rid of them here.

As I approached the less denser parts, I could see a bit of a clearing there. A small area without trees-the ground comparatively even because of the absence of above the ground tree roots-was coming up on the right. The clearing wasn't too big to be unusual in a thick forest but it wasn't too small for a fight between three people. I made a decision then.

I had been following exactly in their footsteps till now since the forest was unfamiliar to me. I increased my speed and deviated a bit from the path they were taking. Trying to approach them from the left and forcing them towards their right. One of them turned around to look at me again and spoke to the other guy. I caught up to them when they had just reached the clearing, stepped on a tree root and then jumped off the tree trunk to kick one of them on the back of his left leg, right where his thigh ended and knee began.

They were expecting me to catch up so the other guy had already stopped but this one, the one carrying my son, didn't. I suppose one of them was to engage while the other ran away with my son. Not on my watch. So I broke his fucking leg.