The hum was gone.
So was the light.
But the silence it left behind was louder than anything I’d heard all day.
I stood at the edge of the camp, the fire behind , the jungle ahead. The last traces of twilight faded into blue-black shadows that tangled between the trees like smoke. My ribs ached, my legs trembled from the effort of staying upright, but I didn’t move.
The air felt... charged. Like sothing was waiting. Like the breath the island had been holding all day had finally been exhaled into this mont.
Sienna returned with Evelyn not long after. They ca fast—Sienna half-running, Evelyn pacing behind her with her staff gripped tight in one hand and her eyes avoiding mine and instead scanning the tree line.
"What did you see?" Evelyn asked imdiately as she put her blindfold back on.
"There was a light," I said, still watching the trees. "Red. Small. Blinking. Like a beacon. And a sound—chanical. A kind of low hum, almost like a generator, but... wrong. It sounded old to say the least."
She nodded slowly, not dismissing it. "Direction?"
I pointed. "2 o’clock. Just behind that split in the ridge, twenty ters out."
"Duration?"
"Ten seconds. Maybe twelve. Then it cut out."
"Movent?"
"No. Just... presence."
Sienna stood beside , glancing toward the trees. "I heard and saw sothing, but are we sure we aren’t hallucinating or sothing? We haven’t eaten or drank much since we crash landed."
I hesitated. The doubt itched at the back of my mind. The exhaustion. The hallucinations that sotis ca with System related activities and without it I felt even more lost. But I knew what I saw.
"I’m sure."
Evelyn was already crouching, brushing her fingers through the soil and leaves near where I’d been standing. She reached out and pointed to a shallow impression in the ground—almost nothing, but not quite.
It was a partial bootprint.
Faint. Fresh.
She rose and wiped her hands. "We can’t scout it tonight. Not with this light. Not without backup."
I nodded reluctantly.
"Instead, we trap the periter," she said. "Quietly. I have so ideas."
The three of us worked fast.
Or rather—Evelyn worked with cold, tactical grace. Sienna worked with practiced steadiness. I struggled and limped behind them, doing what I could without drawing too much of their concern.
We strung tension lines from salvaged vines and fishing wire. Shell pieces were tied at the ends with bits of broken electronics scavenged from the lens, each one rigged to rattle if touched. The lines crisscrossed the most vulnerable areas of the camp—through shrubs, between trees, even low along the sand near the lean-to.
As we worked, Sienna slid in close beside and pressed a small cloth into my palm.
"What’s this?" I asked, breath shallow.
"Poultice. I gave Alexis a dose earlier before she left. It’s made from so of the dried root herbs I found earlier. Slls like a rotting potato, but it’ll numb the inflammation."
"You made it?"
"I crushed and soaked it. Alexis helped test it earlier." She gave a small smile. "I’m not useless either."
I let the words sit between us as I sared it across the worst of the scratches on my ribs. It stung like hell. Then... eased. Like the fire behind my skin had been dunked in cold water.
"You shouldn’t be doing this much," she added. "You’re not recovered."
"I can’t sit still."
"So why can’t you relax for a bit longer?" she asked. "We need you to be at your best when you recover."
"I know."
But I didn’t stop.
Together, we finished fortifying the lean-to. We reinforced the support structure with driftwood and scavenged tal rods from what might’ve once been part of a plane fra. The tarp was weighted with stones at the edges and coated with layers of palm leaves to soften its profile. From a distance, it looked less like a shelter and more like a bump in the land. That was the point.
Finally, we returned to the clearing near the fire. Evelyn adjusted the last tripwire and tied it around a thin branch tipped with a reflective shard of glass.
"There," she said. "If anyone shines a light, we’ll see the flash."
Sienna sat beside again as I dropped into the blanket nest.
"What ti is it?" she asked.
I glanced up at the sky, then to the fire. "Maybe seven?"
"Still no return flash."
"Nothing from Alexis or Camille."
We both fell silent.
Then Sienna leaned into my side again, and I let my body relax against hers.
Sowhere Inland...
Moonlight spilled through the canopy in narrow slits, slashing silver patterns across Camille’s face as she crouched low behind a broad fern, its fronds bigger than her outstretched arms. Her breath ca out quiet but sharp, fogging briefly in the cooler air beneath the trees.
"I’m telling you," she whispered, barely moving her lips, "this is 100% not a natural formation."
Alexis stood just behind her, knees slightly bent, gaze fixed on the structure half-sunken into the earth. "Concrete. Poured. Reinforced. Probably part of a larger installation. And it hasn’t been here long enough to erode like this unless sothing covered it deliberately."
The outcropping looked like a piece of a building torn loose and buried in ti. Its walls were choked with moss, vines coiling tightly around the upper edge like nature trying to hide its presence. But the shape was unmistakable—angles too sharp, lines too deliberate. A tallic vent slat jutted from one side, stained but intact.
Camille moved toward it and laid her fingers across the slat. Her hand flinched. "Cold."
She turned toward Alexis. "Whatever this is... it’s still slightly functional, I think."
Then they heard it.
A sound—low and grinding, like machinery struggling to co back to life. Not rhythmic like a generator. Not clean. It was old, labored, the echo of a system failing and trying again. The noise pulsed through the ground more than the air, subtle but deep, like sothing was shifting far beneath their feet.
Alexis reached out imdiately, gripping Camille’s sleeve. "We shouldn’t linger."
Camille’s brow furrowed. "We’ve already lost the sun. If we wait, it’ll be harder to find this place again."
Alexis’s voice was calm, but firm. "If we go in blind, we could walk into a sealed trap. We don’t know if it’s stable. If there’s power, there could be security asures still running. Or sothing worse."
Camille glanced around. Every tree, every vine felt like it was listening. Watching. "But what if we get lost? It’s nightti and sleeping the night in is the smarter move. We can go back to camp during the morning. Not to ntion, what if it has a working radio? Or any other important tools for that matter?"
"We mark it," Alexis said again, slower this ti. "We co back at first light. We’re not equipped to map underground spaces in the dark."
Back at camp
The night was cooling.
The jungle no longer felt like it was holding its breath. It had exhaled—and now it was listening.
I sat beside the dying fire, one hand resting lightly over my chest. I could feel the faint echo of the burn beneath the poultice, the way my body ached not just from injury but from sothing deeper. A kind of fatigue that couldn’t be healed with rest. The fatigue of being human again.
Sienna lay curled a few feet away, eyes closed but not sleeping.
Evelyn stood watch with the mirror in hand, flashing it again into the trees.
No reply.
Nothing moved.
Nothing flashed back.
Then—just as she began to lower it—
A jingle.
Soft.
tal tapping stone.
We all froze.
Evelyn dropped into a crouch. Sienna shot upright, already holding a plank of wood—hers was crude, sharpened from a bone.
I grabbed the closest thing I could—a splintered length of branch, about the size of a forearm. The knife was still there taken by Camille and Alexis, said they’d use it to cut down plants that got in their way.
We moved toward the edge of the periter. Slowly. Careful.
Another jingle. Then the faintest rustle of undergrowth disturbed.
We reached the trigger site.
It was snapped.
The vine trap had been tripped—and whatever had done it was gone.
But not completely.
A footprint.
Human.
Barefoot.
The print was deep in the damp soil, heel first, toes splayed like soone had paused, maybe turned.
Evelyn crouched low. "Fresh."
Then we heard it.
Running.
Not toward us.
Away.
The rhythm of soone crashing through the brush, heavy footfalls muffled by moss but impossible to miss now that we were listening for it.
We didn’t chase.
We couldn’t.
I stared into the dark beyond the vines, the trees, the tripwires.
And I knew.
It wasn’t just wildlife.
It wasn’t just leftover machines or abandoned shelters.
Soone was here, on this island with us. Soone who was alive, experienced and watchful.
And worst of all....they knew where we were.
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