The sea air cuts her lungs like a knife and her heart beats in her head. Her hand falls to her blade. She can feel it humming with malice within its sheathe, screaming for blood.

Not yet, she tells it. But soon.

The pursuit has been hours in the making. She has kept her profile low as she darts between palms and rocks that dot the sparse beach. They lift their skinny hands like antennae to heaven, some radio signal from space that she will never know, never cares to know. But the frequency of the sea, the sand, and the clouds overhead, they fill her mind with a static that buzzes so harshly she can focus only on the trail, everything else but the pursuit drowned out into some colorless, lifeless backdrop for the chase at hand.

Eyes trace the dunes, and she finds what she is looking for.

Tracks.

A man. Two feet. And a canine. Four.

She is close now. So close it almost makes her giddy.