Twigs cracked around the corner from the weight of an unseen walker.

The security man held completely still, keeping his breathing slow and even, and his eyes down as the intruder neared his position. With the Gilli suit, he stood a modicum of invisibility, and he knew his greatest mistake would be to get up and run from the unseen threat. With luck, he would look like a hunk of the bank fallen to the floor of the gully.

The sound of another machine whirring from the forest to the gully masked the sound of the walker, the machine larger in his mind because of the amount of noise. The sound stopped abruptly, and the silence was stunning. Until this moment, he had not realized the woods had gone silent, as if the animals were hiding from an unknown threat.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

In the silence, he heard a slight grind of cloth against dirt, the same sound a man would make if he shifted his position to look closely at a clump of weeds on the floor of the gully.

The walker was standing next to him, its approach masked by the machine.

The walker knew he was here, and he was only waiting on the curiosity of the walker to reach a point where it would reach down and touch his suit, then he would be in a world of hurt.

Slowly, he opened his eyes and tried to see the walker in his peripheral vision. Fear etched into his soul as he tried to find an unobtrusive way to determine his fate. If the walker was stupid, it would think he was nothing more than a bush, but if it was smart, then he was dead already. The action simply had not taken place yet.

A blur of white stood close to his head. Turning his head slightly, he could see it was a foot covered by a rough material that looked like white burlap, if the burlap were of metal.

The toe of the foot pointed directly at his head.