NIGHTLY POLL NUMBER TWO:

A) Which team do you feel deserves help the most?

B) And what kind of help?

C) Which team do you think is toughest and best able to deal with difficult challenges?

D) Which two teams would you most like to see meet up?

E) Which two teams would you most like to see in competition?

[She's still in the forest, up a tree, but she's speaking more quietly than she normally does, and it may occur to the watcher that there are no birds singing or insects chirping. The forest is eerily quiet. Her face registers a mix of confusion and wariness that makes her look far older and more mature than her short stature and child's face suggests.]

There are some odd tracks here that I am unfamiliar with, and they do not smell like any animal I have met. I would appreciate another hunter's expertise - what made these?

[She turns the camera so that viewers can look down, catching glimpses of a wolf pack ranging through the brush. She directs it out across a large clearing to a set of those strange, eerie ruins that pepper the forest. The earth had been opened up, here, long ago, where a vein of stone broke the surface. At some point, the quarry had been turned into a dwelling of some sort, cut out of the rock. Broken, rectangular pillars lie near black openings into the fisured stone. There are no rounded edges, despite the years of lying in disrepair. Everything about the place is sharp-edged. On the edges of the quarry, where the stone recedes beneath the dirt, long wild grass lies broken, pressed flat in a circle roughly 10-15 feet across, some yards away from the ruins, and a great trampling path leads from the circle into the ruins where the trail disappears on the broken paving stones. Someone with a modern military background might recognize the area as the place where a helicopter touched down. Aisling's voice comes from off screen.]

There are three places where that strange mark appears - all near abandoned places of men. If someone knows something about what might have made that, please let me know. Any help given will be repaid--

[She cuts off sharply as a flicker of movement around the ruins catches the eye. She manages to zoom in a little so that viewers can see a strange apparition. From one of the openings, a green creature wanders. The wolves beneath Aisling's tree shift and growl, and a yearling wolf breaks cover, running full out across the clearing. He's in among the yawning doorways, throwing himself at the mottled creature with a snarl that can be heard faintly but clearly in the silence. The thing turns toward the wolf as he leaps, burying his teeth in its hide and worrying at it. A soft, ominous hissing slowly filters into the hearing range. The youngling rips a mouthful free of his enemy as though he were tearing a branch free. The hissing grows louder. The wolf comes around for another attack.

Suddenly there is an explosion, impossibly loud, which throws up a cloud of rock dust over the whole ruin. The sound leaves the ears ringing so that one almost misses Aisling's cry of shock and anguish. The PDA tumbles from the tree, giving a glimpse of a tiny, pale figure streaking for the ruins with an escort of wolves and large hunting cats before the device clatters to the ground and shuts off in protest.]

I don't know what the hell is going on, or what's exactly being done, but I'm not going to idly sit by and watch one of my friends on a fucked up version of Survivor.

I'm heading out and I'll tear this city apart if it means finding them. Anyone willing can come.

It was about a year ago we went into the TV to save Nathan, so I guess doing it again isn't the end of the world. Figuratively speaking.