(Jerome's POV)

     My mind is whirling as Lachlan's wings disappear around the corner. How did they find us? Rob grabs onto my arm and spins back around towards the hole I made. "Can we m-make it into the r-river if we jump!?", he stutters. He can't see what's happening, can he? It's too loud for him to make any sense of what's going on. "Not you, but I can", I say, looking up at the humans recovering from Lachlan's attack. I pick Rob up and sling him over my back. "Not again....", he groans. I stick my head out of the building, trying to get into a good position to jump. Rob yelps and squeezes my back when I do jump. A stupid dart hits my shoulder just as I leave the ground. That's gotta be the forth one.

     For a terrible second, I think that we might land in a shallow part of the river. But then we crash into the water and go under. Rob immediately lets go. My wet fur tries to drag me down as I sputter to the surface. Baccas are not designed for swimming. Dammit! I flail around in the water, trying not to go under again. 'Just swim! It's not that hard', I scold myself. Something suddenly swims up from underneath me, holding me up above the water. Rob smirks at me, his neck spots glowing. His tail easily keeps as afloat. "Now you have to hang onto me! Hold your breath", Rob laughs. I do as he says right before we go under again.

     I force my eyes open to watch the water streaming past. Even with me on his back, Rob cuts through the water like and arrow in the air. His webbed spine flexes and helps to guid him through the water. It's like riding a dolphin. Just when I'm about to breath in the water, Rob suddenly changes direction and brings us back up to the surface. I cough and greedily gulp down the fresh air. This is crazy! Everything's happening so fast. My ear twitches as a whooshing sound suddenly starts up. "Duck!", I scream at Rob, turning over and pulling him under. A long spear slams down into the water where we just were. It's dragged back by a long rope. They're trying to harpoon us!?

     Rob's glowing spots flash rapidly, while he looks around with his blind eyes. His head snaps up the second another spear breaks the water. Rob jerks us both to the side and swims deeper into the water. I feel his skin almost crawl when blue scales appear, quickly turning to brown. We both look like mud at this point. The next time we break the surface, it's only for a few seconds. Three spears are hurled in our direction almost instantly. Rob dives out of the way of two of them, and I grab the shaft of the other. Another spear comes right after, this time grazing my side. My blood instantly pools around in the water. It'll heal fast enough, but it hurts like hell fire. Did they put some sort of poison on those things!? Rob suddenly stops moving. He slowly turns and moves back the way we came. I look back in confusion, only to see spears still being thrown into the water. They don't know where we are. Everyone up there must have assumed Rob would just keep swimming. I almost inhale a bunch of water when Rob suddenly shoots up into the shallows. My grip even almost slips. Why do I suddenly now have butterfingers?

"Come on, they won't look for us out of the water", Rob whispers once we break the surface. He quickly scrambles up onto the bank. I try to do the same, but my leg buckles underneath me when I try to stand. I look down to see my wound still open, dark blood all over my side. "I'm not healing?", I ask out loud, somehow managing to get to my feet. I can hear Rob making his clicking sounds, coming back to me and sticking his hand to my side. He gags and pulls away. "O-Ok, just lean on me. We can cover it or something when we g-get farther away", he stutters. Rob puts himself underneath one of my shoulders, trying to take as much of my weight as he can. I'm surprised he doesn't snap in half. I'm not exactly light.

We quickly go into the trees, me limping and clutching a hand to my side. I've never had to deal with an injury before. I feel weak on top of the pain. Would the poison have killed anyone other than me? They really don't want us to escape this time. Why would they rather have us dead then wandering around? It makes sense for them to want to capture us, but why do they suddenly want us dead instead of having another chance to catch us? "Something strange is going on, Rob", I mumble. He grunts, still trying to hold me up. I don't remember when his scales disappeared. The darkness hides us well enough; with my dark fur and Rob's deep blue hoodie.

     We must have slowly worked our way through that forest for about an hour. My cut had finally started to heal, and I insisted to walk on my own to give Rob a break. Now is when I finally have time to comprehend everything that's happed. It's so great to see him again, but what happened to Preston and Lachlan? Why wouldn't Preston immediately head towards the exit with me? How did the other two even find us?

     I get one of my answers when Rob's head shoots up. I hear it almost at the same time, not even having time to cover my face as a sliver and black shape crashes through the tree canopy and lands on top of us both.