The jungle closed tighter the deeper I walked. Not in so poetic, taphorical way—it literally narrowed. Vines looped between tree trunks like snare wires. The canopy above shifted from gaps of moonlight to solid blackout curtains, each step muffling the world more than the last.
I gripped the strap across my chest. The satchel Evelyn had packed was light, but it pressed against my ribs like it had weight enough to split them. The pain was constant now. Background radiation. Not debilitating, but enough to remind of everything I didn’t have—strength, speed, skills, a flashlight, functioning lungs, take your pick.
The ribbon Sienna had tied to my arm fluttered faintly as I moved.
Stay tethered, it whispered. Co back.
But my mind was ahead of . Two hours ahead. Four. A voice saying "We’ll be back by then," and a trail gone quiet.
I didn’t know how long I’d been walking. Ti in the jungle is abstract. Especially at night. But I knew I was heading in the right direction. Not just because of the subtle markers—twigs laid at angles, shallow divots in the moss—but because I wanted to believe I was.
The first sign was a snag of cloth caught on a branch. It was navy blue, frayed at the edge—Camille’s satchel strap. I rembered her adjusting it half a dozen tis before they left.
The second sign was a faint heel mark pressed into a patch of damp earth. Small. Flat. Alexis.
The third sign was a partially crushed fruit—yellow, overripe, stomped carelessly into the ground. And nearby, a sar of sothing that looked like it could’ve been blood.
Or pulp.
Probably pulp.
Hopefully pulp.
I kept going.
I found more signs of sothing else the further I moved. Not Camille or Alexis.
Scrape marks along a tree trunk. The kind a blade might leave when used for balance or clearing brush. Too low for a machete. Too deliberate for an animal.
There were drag marks too—brush parted in a way that didn’t make sense. No tracks after. Like sothing had stopped, pivoted, then vanished.
My thoughts spiraled.
I pictured Alexis trying to shield Camille from a feral attacker with a cracked bone for a knife. I imagined Camille throwing a stiletto heel like a throwing star and imdiately regretting not packing more footwear. I imagined that human, that thing—no na, no face, just the blur of a faded image—dragging them into so hole in the earth while I sat back at camp feeling sorry for myself.
I hated how vivid it was. How easy it was to imagine.
I picked up the pace.
My breathing shortened, pain clawing down my left side. My legs hated . My brain hated more.
Five hours left before my system reactivates.
Then I saw it.
A glint.
Just a flash of light through the trees—angled and wrong. Not moonlight. Not starlight. It didn’t flicker like fire. It shone once, then disappeared.
I crouched low. My movent was clumsy. Untrained. The last ti I’d felt this human was before I had gotten my job title, and I hadn’t missed the sensation.
The trail was clearer here. I could see the signs more easily: vines tied together, not by nature, but hands. Camille’s work again. It was like following breadcrumbs left by soone who wasn’t sure she’d get the chance to leave a second set.
I saw the structure two minutes later.
Buried halfway in the hillside, shrouded in moss and hanging vines. Concrete edges smoothed over by years of rot and rain. A single tallic vent barely poked from its side, like the ruin of so sunken machine.
And in front of it: fresh disturbance.
Leaves crushed. Dirt unsettled. Sothing—or soone—had passed through here. Recently.
I took two cautious steps forward.
Then froze.
A voice.
Faint—barely audible over the rustling canopy and the beat of my own heart. Muffled. Feminine.
I couldn’t make out the words, not clearly. Just the rhythm of them. The cadence. Urgency without panic. The way soone might sound when speaking through gritted teeth or across a thick wall.
My breath caught.
Camille?
Alexis?
Or soone else?
I strained to listen, tilted my head, but the jungle swallowed the sound again. Nothing now but the shifting hush of wind threading through the leaves, and the faint, ever-present ache of my ribs as I stood still, squinting into the dark.
It could’ve been anyone. It could’ve been nothing. But I knew that tone. That kind of hush-asured voice that cos when soone’s trying not to be overheard—or when they’re not sure they’re alone.
I took another step forward.
Carefully. Slowly.
Then my foot caught on sothing low and gnarled—maybe a root, maybe a vine—and I went down hard. No grace, no way to stop it. Just instant gravity and a very sudden reminder that falling while already injured is like adding a second insult to an old wound.
I hit the ground like a sack of regret and bad decisions. The impact jolted straight through —ribs flaring in pain, my left shoulder slamming into the dirt at just the wrong angle. It knocked the breath out of , left my limbs twitching in shock and my vision montarily full of blinking stars that weren’t in the sky.
I didn’t get up right away.
Couldn’t, really.
For a mont, I just lay there, cheek pressed to moss and grit, breathing in sharp, uneven gasps while my body decided whether to let move again.
I blinked dust from my eyes, squinted forward—
And that’s when I saw it.
The red light.
Up close.
Pulsing softly in the dark, not sharp like before, not distant and threatening—but steady. Controlled.
It wasn’t a weapon.
It was a cara.
Old. Battered. Frankensteined together from too many generations of tech. Its casing was worn down to raw plastic and dented tal. Wires looped out the side like exposed veins, knotted into a crank-operated generator that soone had clearly built by hand.
The lens was round, cracked on one side.
And it was pointed straight at .
Not just pointed—tracking, slightly, as if being adjusted to fra the shot.
And the one holding it?
Definitely not Camille.
Definitely not Alexis.
The woman behind the cara looked like she’d been carved out of everything the world forgot. Her posture was low, wary—feral, almost—but not entirely hostile. Not yet.
Her skin bore the kind of scarring that cos from years of fire and blade, left to heal without care. Raw patches, discolored tissue, seams of pain that never quite closed right. Her hair was a ss of uneven clumps, so torn out, so cut with sothing dull. Her shirt was a makeshift patchwork of fabric and fiber, stitched together with vine and thread. Every inch of her radiated tension—but it was practiced. Not new. Not panicked.
Her eyes—
One was nearly swollen shut from a scar that looked years old.
The other was sharp. Wild. Intelligent in a way that made my stomach twist.
She didn’t move. Just watched .
The cara whirred softly in her hands, the red light pulsing against the green of the leaves behind her.
I didn’t move either.
Couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Every instinct scread stay down.
Then I heard it.
Footsteps.
Two sets.
Soft. Confident. Familiar.
I turned my head, neck aching, breath still shallow from the fall.
Camille and Alexis stepped into view.
Whole.
Unhurt.
Alive.
Camille was holding a mug—yes, a literal mug—of sothing steaming. Where the hell did she even get a mug? In contrast, Alexis had her arms crossed, her expression that classic blend of bemused concern and the deep, soulful weariness of soone who knew I’d be doing sothing stupid again eventually.
They were both fine.
Perfectly fine.
I blinked.
Camille raised an eyebrow. "Are you—?"
The woman holding the cara tilted her head, finally speaking. Her voice was hoarse, but clear.
"Is your partner always face down on the ground when he arrives?"
There was no sarcasm. Just genuine curiosity.
Camille didn’t even miss a beat. She sipped her drink, casually, and replied:
"Lately? Yeah. Kind of his thing."
Alexis added, "It’s how we know it’s really him."
I stared at them.
Then I closed my eyes.
Let my head fall back to the dirt.
And muttered what I truly felt in that mont:
"I hate this island."
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