"Sometimes you have to burn a few bridges to keep the crazies from following you."

The wind whipped through her hair and branches scratched at her face as she ran; ran as hard and as fast through the darkened woods as she possibly could. If she kept running, he couldn't get to her. If she disappeared into the darkness of the black night, he would never find her. At least that was what she hoped. What she intended.

A sudden gunshot rang out in the night and the woman yelped as blinding pain suddenly seared through her body. She glanced down at the side ofher body to see that she had been shot in the right side of the stomach. Blood began to seep out of the wound and it stained her white tank top crimson red, but this didn't slow her down. If she paused for even half a second, even to examine the wound, it could mean her demise. She wasn't ready to die yet. And she'd be damned if she was going to give in to death without a fight.

Whistling merrily, his mind thankfully blank in a rare moment of voice-free thoughts, HM Murdock strolled along the wooded path that led back to the base camp where the rest of his team resided, his hands stuffed into his jeans pockets. He had decided to take an impromptu midnight walk into the woods to clear his head, but for once it seemed there was nothing in his head to clear out. So, instead, he just blindly stared up at the briliant array of stars that twinkled in the sky and reminisced on the events that had led him to current job as an Air Force Ranger with the best Alpha team around who had quickly developed into the best friends he had ever known. Friends who accepted him for who he was and didn't try to change him, though they always teased him about the voices in his head and the invisible friends who sometimes visited him in the night.

Murdock laughed as he thought of the first day he'd met BA Baracus, John 'Hannibal' Smith, and Templeton 'Face' Peck. His attempt at escaping the psych ward had been thwarted when Face had stopped him in the hall, thinking he was a doctor-which had been plausible considering the fact that he'd been dressed in a doctor's white lab coat and nurse's scrubs-and asked him to stitch up his friend. He'd then promptly stitched a lightning bolt into BA's arm, which BA hadn't found at all amusing, and then lit Face's arm on fire when he'd smelled gas on him, as any sane-well, not so sane-person would have done at the time. Of course, those two would never let him live that day down. And BA would never forgive him for pancaking his beloved van with an air conditioning unit.

Passing a small, almost imperceptible clearing, Murdock froze at the sound of a small, animal-like moan of pain. He paused for a beat to listen to the now-silent air around him. When no other sound reached his ears, he started to continue on his way. When he was several feet away from the clearing, there was another moaning sound and this time Murdock was able to identify it as an injured human female.

Spinning on his heel, Murdock stalked back to the clearing and glanced around. The clearing was clear-no pun intended-but Murdock could still hear a woman moaning. He strained his ears to listen carefully and then he followed the moaning to the right, coming to a stop almost immediately beyond the flower bush that had hidden the woman from his view. The woman was only half-conscious and lay sprawled on the dirt-laden ground, clutching the right side of her stomach. Murdock's eyes narrowed and he could see that blood was oozing out of her at a rapid rate from what appeared, at first glance, to be a gunshot wound. Murdock had seen many of those in his day.

Crouching down on his knees next to the woman, Murdock brushed some damp hair from the woman's forehead and jumped when she spun around suddenly, her right hand clenched into a tight fist as she swung out at him in automatic self-defense.

"Whoa!" Murdock cried, hands held up in a gesture of surrender. "I'm not going to hurt you. I swear on my dog Billy, I ain't gonna hurt you."

The womand's dilated, glazed-over blue eyes, watery with unshed tears, stared deeply into Murdock's soul and, apparently satisfied with whatever it was she saw in his own green orbs, lowered her arm back to the forest floor.

"May I take a look?" Murdock asked in a soft, calming voice, pointing to the bullet wound in her side. The woman nodded slowly and closed her eyes in pain as she shifted to her left. She lightly, and with great strenuous effort, lifted the bottom of her white tank top above her waistline. Murdock carefully examined the wound-though he wasn't in all actuality a medical doctor in any way, shape, or form, he was well-versed in minute medical care; stitching and things like that-and realized that she had lost too much blood already. If she continued to bleed out without any medical attention, she was going to die.

"Um, I'm going to have to take you to my camp," Murdock informed her in a gentle, kind voice. "We have a surgical doctor there who can help you." He glanced around to see if she had dropped anything or if there were any personal belongings nearby, but he didnt' see a thing. "I'm going to have to lift you into my arms and it may hurt a bit, but I'm goin' to be as gentle as I can."

The woman briefly closed her eyes and when she opened them again, she nodded.

Murdock took a deep breath and carefully slid his strong arms beneath her pliant, limp body. She moaned in pain as she was jostled into his embrace and he apologized, especially as he stood to his feet and jostled her even more. Her head fell limply against his shoulder and he walked as quickly as he could back to camp, determined to see that this woman survive the night.

Face, Hannibal, and BA sat around a large campfire, sharing anecdotes and bottles of beer. Well, they didn't actually share the beer. That would be disgusting and unsanitary. The point being they were having a good time aroung a large fire as the flames licked at the bright starry sky.

"Where did Murdock get off the?" Face inquried once there was a lull in the conversation. He'd watched Murdock wander off a little over an hour ago, but he hadn't questioned it because he'd thought the madman would be back after realizing there was nothing out in the woods to do or see. Even his invisible friends wouldn't be able to keep him entertained out there.

BA opened his mouth to reply when his eyes suddenly widened. "Jesus!" he cried, shooting to his feet and dropping his half-full beer to the ground.

"Bossman!" Murdock shouted as he carried a mostly unconscious woman into camp. "This woman needs some medical attention, sir!"

Hannibal leapt to his feet, worry creasing his brows as they drew together. "Get her to the medical tent. Now!"

Murdock walked as fast as he could to the medical tent, Hannibal, BA, and Face following in his wake. Once inside, Murdock gently set her down upon the portable gurney, his eyes instantly dropping down to the wound in her side. His hand started to inch forward, but Hannibal slapped it away.

"Don't," Hannibal ordered him softly. "We don't know how bad it is and the doctor should be the only one messing with it anyhow."

"Where is he?" Murdock asked, concern and impatience lacing his words.

"Right here," Doctor Hernandez replied as he strode quickly into the tent, pulling on some powder-white medical gloves as he went. He ushered Murdock and Hannibal away from the table and gently lifted the woman's shirt, which he had great difficulty doing as it was sticking to her body via the blood. He reached over into the medical kit that sat to the left of the gurney and pulled out a small pair of scissors. He cautiously cut around the material of the woman's shirt and she moaned.

"Do you know what happened?" Hernandez asked both the woman and Murdock. The woman groaned in response, though she was still somewhat coherent, and managed to shake her head slowly in the negative. Hernandez glanced over at Murdock.

"No; don't know a thing. Just found her groaning on the ground with a bullet hole in her." Murdock's fell back to the woman. "She didn't have nothin' with her neither. No wallet or identifcation..."

"Of course not," Face replied with a slight roll of the eyes. "We're in the middle of the jungle. What would she need those things for?"

"Oh;right."

"So you have no idea how long she may have been bleeding out on the ground, then?" Hernandez ripped the bottom of the woman's shirt and began to examine the wound. He was grateful to see that the wound was no longer bleeding, but it was clear she had lost a generous amount of blood.

"No, sir," Murdock replied.

"She's going to need surgery." Hernandez looked up, his gaze going from Murdock to Hannibal and back.

"Whatever it takes," Hannibal replied as Murdock was a little too shell-shocked from all of this.

Hernandez leaned over the table to stare into the woman's eyes, whose gaze was losing focus fast. "Ma'am, can you tell me your name? Can you tell me that much at least?"

"K..." The woman choked on her own saliva and suffered from a brief coughing fit. "Karina," she whispered just before her head slumped backwards and her eyes fell closed.