Siena

If Siena brought Emmett's attention to the busted doorframe now, he'd make a deal of it. He'd insist on entering the cabin first in order to protect her, as he always did, like he possessed some sort of power that made this situation less dangerous for him than it was for her.

His only power was brawn. She preferred stealth, instead.

She rested her hand on the doorknob. If someone had broken in, they likely weren't here anymore. Thru-hikers and weekend backpackers didn't often travel Wolf Ridge Trail. It was too long, difficult, and didn't have a discernible exit other than hiking back out.

Siena stole a quick glance over her shoulder. Emmett and Isaac continued to sort through the goods left by the mule packer. Cam stood behind them, shielding her eyes and gazing up at the top of Mount Agnes, distracted.

Siena pushed open the door and slipped into the dark cabin. A wood plank creaked beneath her foot. She froze and listened, but heard nothing other than Emmett giving Isaac a lesson in gear.

Avocado-colored curtains hung over the windows in the empty common room and in the kitchen, the space cast in dim green light. The dust covering the floor was free of footprints, and when she inhaled, she caught no hint of food or body odor. In fact, the place smelled spectacularly stale, untouched since the '90s. Alpine storms were intense, after all. It was possible that one had blown open the door.

In the kitchen, a utility sink stood between a wood stove and pine-paneled counter, a pair of rickety cabinets anchored to the wall. Benches flanked a slab table that comfortably seated four. There was nothing else—no clutter or anything—just a shotgun hallway in front of her with two branching rooms.

Siena crept deeper down the hall to investigate. Four compact bunk beds with vinyl pads filled the room on the left. The right door was shut. She turned the knob and pushed, wincing as the rusty hinge screamed.

A big dirty window broadcasted the dense forest. Two adjacent plywood desks took up most of the room, their surfaces covered in dust and old equipment, a ham radio, notebooks, and loose yellowed papers. Papers, everywhere. The desk, the chair, the floor. It was like someone had opened a window during a storm and hadn't bothered cleaning up, or the previous team had left in a whirlwind of chaos. Feyrer had never mentioned that.

Siena plucked the papers from the floor and stacked them on the desk, and coaxed a toppled chair back to its feet. A stain on the doorframe caught her attention, and she crouched for a closer look.

Only rust. The hinges had gotten wet, perhaps in the storm that had busted the front door and blown the papers all over this room.

No... evidence of such a scenario was too tenuous. The stain was darker than rust. Fingers had clearly dragged the smear of color across the wood.

Backpackers cut their palms on rocks, sticks, and pocket knives all the time, didn't they? The researchers before her had trudged up and down Agnes during their projects, just like she would. It was nothing. It had to be nothing.

"What happened to the door?" Emmett boomed from the common room.

"Broken," Siena yelled. "No one's here, though. And nothing's stolen... I don't think."

The ham radio was all that mattered, anyway. She needed to get a message out so she could stop thinking about the body, and start on the glacier.

After they tucked away the gear in various corners of the cabin, and Siena had scrubbed herself raw with a bar of degradable soap and a bucket of water from the storage barrels, she sat down in front of the ham radio as Emmett boiled water for dinner. The transceiver and tuner were both the size of small bricks and easily thirty years old. She replaced the corroded external battery pack with a rechargeable lithium from the packer supply.

She knew little about radios, but more than the rest of her team combined thanks to a technical course she'd taken in college. Luckily, she found a list of repeaters and the last user's call sign in a small notebook next to the radio.

Cam joined her at the table, a hydrating dinner in one hand and whiskey in the other. "This'll be exciting."

Siena flipped the power switch, set the frequency and offset of the first repeater in the notebook, and picked up the mic.

"This is Whiskey Six Lima Delta, does anyone copy? Over."

Nothing.

She tried the next repeater in the book.

"Whiskey Six Lima Delta, is anyone there? I need help. Over."

Siena waited. No tone and no response, just like the last. Either the repeater list was bad, or the radio was busted.

"You probably just need a larger antenna." Isaac sat across from her with a deck of cards he'd found in a kitchen cabinet.

Siena bit back her irritation. "And where do you propose I find one of those?"

Isaac shrugged and began shuffling the cards. "You can make one out of anything, really. An empty paper towel roll and some paper clips, a hanger... Learned all about it in fifth grade."

"Fifth grade?" Cam popped open the whiskey. "I can't remember anything from fifth grade."

"I figured out I wanted to be a scientist in fifth grade," Isaac responded proudly.

Cam and Siena shared an entertained look.

"What made you decide that?" Siena asked.

"Parents are Messianic Jews." Isaac grinned.

Cam sighed. "I love me a good ol' fashioned act of rebellion."

Isaac pulled his field journal toward him. "I've been obsessed with geologic formations since I was a little kid." He flipped through the pages of his sketches. "I wanted to know why they were there. The real reason, not the Genesis 1:1 reason. But I didn't just want to be some douchey, selfish bro either, figuring stuff out just to satisfy myself. I want to help people, too. And glacial research is climate research."

"Douchey, selfish bro." Cam nodded, though it was clear she was trying not to laugh. "That's... admirable of you."

"I think it is," Siena said with a bit more sincerity. "It's important to find that intersection of something you love and something meaningful. My mom was a conservationist. It's the reason I became a scientist."

Isaac shut his book. "She must be proud of you."

Siena's throat tightened for the second time that day. "She's..."

"Very proud," Cam finished, raising the bottle. "Cheers to that."

Siena smiled at her in thanks, and Cam winked at her.

"My brother Levi's proud of me... I think he's the only one," Isaac said with a shrug. "I still question my decision every day."

"We all question it every day," Siena said. She remembered what it was like at his age, educated enough for a career but so young that everything seemed daunting as hell. She was lucky enough to have had a true mentor in Dr. Feyrer. Despite the trip's early setbacks, Agnes Cabin was exactly where she belonged, and she wouldn't be here if it weren't for him.

She just wished he were here, too.

Emmett plopped a bowl of rehydrated chili slop in front of her.

"Gross. I mean thank you, but gross."

"Eat," he replied. "Where are your meds?"

"The pouch near my bed. I'll grab them when I'm done."

"I'll get them for you."

"Thanks, Dad," Siena muttered when Emmett left for the bedroom. Isaac snorted, and Cam smirked around the whiskey.

Siena choked down her dinner before returning to the radio, trying every receiver on the list. When she restarted from the top, the novelty of the radio evaporated, and the others drifted into the bunk room one by one until only Siena remained at the table with the camp lantern.

She'd read through the reports of previous studies that had taken place at Agnes Cabin. Too many studies. If the researchers had experienced trouble using the radio, they would have made a note. Then again, the radio was old, and twenty-something years had passed since the last expedition. Maybe the repeaters had changed.

Calling out of these woods was becoming harder than getting ahold of her absent father on a good day. And that was saying something.

With the defunct phone and radio, hiking out of Deadswitch was the only way they could report the body. And then what? All they had were coordinates to the location of the dead hiker, who was no longer there.

"Come on," Siena muttered, rolling the dial on the radio until the speaker popped with static. She paused and listened, and then carefully rolled the dial back and forth until a tune broke through the noise.

The song was a little flat, almost as though it was playing off a warped record. It sounded like something from an oldies station. She couldn't tell the exact era, but the tune reminded her of "Dream a Little Dream of Me." Soft and melancholy.

She wasn't even on the FM broadcast band. Why would someone be transmitting music on a shortwave frequency?

"Meet me in the briardark, beneath a moon we will embark, deeper till we've lost our way, until the sky turns bright as day. And then I'll follow you way down, the moment we're about to drown, we'll meet a mother pure and gold, she'll know our will and save our souls."

Siena dropped her mic and flipped the radio's power switch.

Blood pulsed through her ears, and she couldn't think around the sound. She could only feel—the sweat prickling the back of her neck, the inexplicable dread building inside her like an approaching train horn.

The radio mic hung off the side of the table. Siena focused on the way it bobbed at the end of its coiled cord, trying to dull the primal, bone-deep fear the song had stirred within her.