Holden

As Frank's Jeep crawled up the washed-out clay road, Holden held on to the ceiling handlebar with a white-knuckled grip, his other arm wrapped around Francis. The dog sat between him and Angel in the back.

Maidei sat in front with her hands in her lap, relaxed as she stared out her window, even as they hit a rock and the entire Jeep bounced.

"Hey, Frank," Angel said as she stroked Francis's head. "Is your name short for Franklin or Francis?"

"Francis. Who's asking?"

"Oh, just thought you'd be delighted to know you share a name with Holden's dog."

Frank chuckled. "You know, I always got along with dogs better than I did people." He nodded at the German shepherd through the rearview mirror. "He can keep the name. Never fit me, personally."

"Frank suits you much better," Maidei said.

Old friends,thought Holden. If Frank was a Deadswitch ranger back when Cameron Yarrow was interning, then he must have been the ranger during Maidei's project. He took comfort in the connection. Maidei vouching for Holden meant Frank was more likely to believe him. If there was any hope of finding the research team, they'd need to have the ranger on board... whatever that ended up meaning.

The incline steepened even further. The Jeep rocked on the uneven clay, and Holden held his breath until they'd made it over the hump into a dirt clearing.

Hidden behind a cluster of pines was a vacation house down on its luck, aged and gray, with a crumbling stone chimney. He counted three stories, the windows grimier the higher they were, and imagined the rental listing: Entire residential home - Great location, charmingly rustic, probably haunted. $190/night.

They parked, and the five of them climbed out, Francis circling Holden's legs before finding a tree to pee on.

Angel held up her phone, wiggling it in her hand as Maidei and Frank headed toward the porch. "You let your sidepiece know where you were going?"

"Chelsea? I doubt she cares. Why?"

"Doesn't look like we have service." She studied the screen of her phone. "Mine isn't even telling me Emergency Calls Only near the signal icon. It's just blank." She shuddered. "Sort of creepy, right? I'd prefer a Fuck you, I'm out message to nothing at all."

"Do you think we'll be actually staying here?" Holden asked.

"Not like we have options. Neither of us can afford a hotel."

Angel was right; they hadn't exactly thought that part through. And Holden wouldn't have guessed their only realistic option would end up being the setting of a horror movie.

They joined Maidei and Frank, and Frank knocked on the door, his hand still raised when the door swung inward. A skinny man stood in the entryway, scruffy beard covering his jaw, his salt-and-pepper hair pulled back into a ponytail. His eyes were dark and beady, but kind, and when he saw Maidei, he grinned wide enough to show off a pair of silver caps.

Maidei embraced him, and they hugged long enough for Holden to realize the reunion was significant. Zaid—Maidei's old research partner. She probably hadn't seen him in years.

As soon as they parted, Zaid waved an arm to all of them. "Come in, come in. These are the folks you were telling me about, yeah, Mai?" Zaid patted Holden on the back as the group funneled into the house. "Can't believe you kept 'em a secret for so long."

"You understand my hesitation." Silent words brewed beneath Maidei's statement. Holden wished she would say the quiet part out loud, but settled on patience.

The dark foyer smelled of woodsmoke and breakfast. With the others behind him, Holden followed Zaid to a big open space that served as both the living and dining room. Old topographic maps and framed yellowing articles decorated the walls around a pair of large bay windows. A mounted buck glared down at them from above the dirty fireplace, and a slab table extended from the kitchen tile through the living room. A laptop sat in the center of a mess of papers, wires, textbooks, and stained coffee mugs. Zaid hurried to it and sat.

"You own this place, Zaid?" Maidei asked, her voice a mix of awe and horror.

"Yes, yes. Bought it a few years back as a stakeout fort, furniture and everything."

Holden glanced at Angel, who mouthed, Stakeout? Holden shrugged.

"I'll give you the full tour later," Zaid said. "But there is something I need all of you to see now. Even you, Frank."

Frank huffed. "If you caught something on fire, again—"

"Such little faith in me." Zaid waved his hand with more urgency. "Come, come."

Francis took off into the kitchen, his nose glued to the ground as he swept back and forth across the floor. Holden and the rest of the humans crowded behind Zaid.

"I haven't been up here for quite some time," Zaid said. "Life gets in the way, you know? It especially gets in the way of things that don't pay me."

"So your grant money ran out?" Maidei asked.

Zaid laughed. "Grant money? No, I haven't seen grant money since they pulled the last of ours all those years ago. I paid for this in cash."

"Cash," Maidei repeated.

"Teaching summer classes, liquidating assets, stealing from dead parents. The usual. Anyway, I was letting things just run on their own, like I often do. But when you called me last night, Maidei, and I came back this morning, well..."

Zaid pulled up a new window on his screen, some kind of surveillance application with four black video feeds, all with the same text in the center: Lost Connection.

"I don't get it," Frank said.

"They're the feeds from four cameras I placed in parts of Deadswitch years ago."

"I don't believe we have a permit on file for that."

"Frank. Frank. You know how I work. That doesn't matter right now, anyway." Zaid held one finger in the air as he dragged back the toggle on all four feeds to two weeks prior, and then sped up the video to 228X.

"Glass Lake Trailhead, Triplet Lakes, Mount Charlotte, and Ranger Station 5E. Just watch."

The cameras were placed in trees and trained on one forest trail or another. Other than the position of the sun, nothing in the videos changed until all four of them went out at once. The Lost Connection message displayed again.

"Whoa," Angel whispered, elbowing Holden like he hadn't seen the feed for himself.

"Exact same time," Zaid said. "Down to the millisecond."

Everyone looked to Frank, who shook his head. "Downed satellite."

"I did some digging. No outages reported," Zaid countered.

Frank seemed more irritated by this than anything. "Did you contact the maker of the cameras?"

"I did everything, Frank. There were no issues with the network, and no problems with the hardware that could explain this."

An awkward silence fell over the group. The malfunctioning equipment was clearly causing Maidei distress, but Holden couldn't tease apart why.

"So what does this have to do with Dr. Dupont?" Holden asked.

"I have a feeling we all own pieces to a larger puzzle," Zaid said. "Fitting them together may take a while."

"A while?" Angel rubbed her chin with her thumb. "We talking a couple hours here, or..."

Maidei sighed. "I don't think we know the answer to that. Might as well get your things from the Jeep and settle in." She turned to Zaid. "I'm guessing you haven't made up the rooms yet?"

"Shouldn't take too long." Zaid stood. "Just strip the beds when you go up, yeah? We'll toss everything in the wash. Frank, stay as long as you want. I'll get some coffee going."

Holden and Angel headed back out to the Jeep alone. As they grabbed their bags from the back, Angel asked, "Why do I feel like we've gotten ourselves into something even freakier than we first thought?" The excitement once in her eyes had darkened into something warier.

He shut the back of the Jeep. "You don't have to stay here, you know that, right? I'm sure we can scrape together enough for a one-way ticket back home. I'll drive you to the Fresno airport and everything."

"Me, alone? And you, stay? I don't think so, Holden. I can't leave you to your own devices. Who knows what you'll try to do? Probably hike into the Forbidden Forest to find the research team yourself." She lugged her backpack over her shoulder. "Plus, I have nothing to go back to. We already talked about this. Come on, let's go see our rooms. I'm sure I'll have to thoroughly disinfect wherever I sleep."

Holden followed Angel back up the steps to the house as she lamented about needing to locate the cleaning supplies. He'd spent a lot of time with her the past few months, and even though she talked a lot about herself, he still hadn't figured her out completely. But he knew one thing: she rambled when she was nervous.

"Room on the first floor is off-limits, but everything else is up for grabs," Zaid called from the kitchen. "The higher up, the more privacy you get. Just don't complain about the cold."

The untreated wood stairs creaked beneath Holden's feet as they ascended. The upstairs hall was stuffier, the sconces near each room layered with cobwebs. Angel made a dissatisfied noise as they passed each open door, the small spaces crammed with '90s log cabin decor that looked undusted since purchase.

"This one has the least crap in it." Angel tossed her bag inside the room at the end.

Holden headed back toward the staircase. "I sleep hot. I'll see what's upstairs."

He climbed to the third floor, where the rooms were sparser and somehow dustier. A mildewy stench permeated from the bathroom—he'd clean that later.

An extended pull-down staircase at the end of the hall caught his attention. The trapdoor was open. Holden's curiosity got the best of him, and he carefully climbed the rickety steps, expecting an attic crammed with all sorts of abandoned, moldering furniture and boxes.

Instead, he found a spacious loft beneath an A-frame, a double tucked under the dormer window, and a nightstand with a desk lamp. The air smelled less bad, too.

As Holden neared, he noticed the bedspread and stopped.

The quilt was thin, its yellow patches faded with wear. Alarm flushed his body. His hand shook as he touched the blanket, the fabric as supple as he remembered... when he and Becca lay wrapped in it during their mountain getaway in the Cascades. The taste of salt and sweat, the glide of cotton against his skin... The memory wasn't real, and yet the quilt and all its familiarity was.

Right here, of all places, waiting for him.