Siena

They passed the creek right when they were supposed to.

Cam had been right, but Siena didn't care. Her insides felt uncalibrated, like she'd left a part of herself back at the fork, still obsessing over the blank sign. She should have studied it more closely... done a pencil impression. She could have taken a picture to send to the damn map company so they could fix their faulty merchandise.

All she had now was a memory.

At least her team had picked up speed, clearing eleven miles by late afternoon the next day. They found a camping spot on the ridge near snowmelt and a killer view of the sister peaks.

Siena sat on a small boulder, studying Agnes through her binoculars as Emmett and Isaac left for water and Cam set up the kitchen.

Agnes outshone her sisters—a gorgeous alpine peak as visually intimidating as Whitney or Rainier. Siena had always dreamt of summiting, though she doubted that would happen this trip, given the sad state of their technical gear. It didn't matter—she was certain she'd return to Deadswitch Wilderness sooner rather than later. It was still on her list to hike the path her mother used to take all those years ago with the High Sierra Conservationists, a pilgrimage to the habitats they once protected. One day, she'd have the time.

Siena dropped her binoculars and scribbled a note in her field journal: Alpenglow not visible from Wolf Ridge. Significant melt projected.

Alpenglow Glacier was somewhere in the middle of the cirque pack—not the smallest, but certainly not the most impressive. But the meltwater was unique, teeming with mineral and biological components absent from the rest of the Sierras. CalTech's cabin right beneath the tree line of Agnes was a relic from a twenty-something-year-old study led by Dr. Wilder Feyrer, Siena's mentor. The geomorphology department had abandoned Alpenglow soon after, along with the cabin. Satellites were all that watched the glacier now.

Dr. Feyrer had wanted to change that. He'd put his faith in Siena to ignite a new study.

Don't go.

"What if it's gone?" Siena asked Cam, who sat on the ground next to the prepped camp kitchen while shoving a Snickers into her mouth.

"If the satellites could talk, they'd tell you to quit the hand-wringing," said Cam as she picked some peanut out of her teeth. "I checked the images before we left. There's something, just not a lot of something. Doubt there will be anything in five years, but at least we'll have significant meltwater to analyze now. That's all we need anyway, right? To publish the research and move on with our long and lucrative careers?"

Siena slid from the rock and took a seat next to Cam, grabbing her mess kit, meds, and a bag of freeze-dried beef Stroganoff. "And care about climate change?"

"Caring won't convince corporations to do anything. We're fucked either way." Cam crumpled the candy bar wrapper in her hands. "We know that, Feyrer knew that. He wanted both of us here because it's an easy and impressive PI credit. That's it."

Siena wished she could channel Cam's practicality. Yes, Feyrer had wanted Siena and Cam on this study because he had cared about them, and leading potentially groundbreaking research was an opportunity of a lifetime. But that wasn't the only reason. He'd been obsessed with this place long before Siena came along, claiming to know Deadswitch's secrets.

The research stays in the woods.

Cam's lip twitched as she watched Siena. "Don't overthink it."

"You know that's impossible." Siena disassembled her mess kit, tucked a pill in the lip of her plate, and tore open the bag of food with her teeth. "Mmm... delicious."

Cam gave a faux gag. "Fuck astronaut food."

"Pedigree Country Stew for canines tastes just as good. Don't ask me how I know that."

"Now I have to know."

"Emmett was dog sitting for his brother when the shrink prescribed me new sleep meds."

Now Cam really gagged. "I hope you fired that shrink."

Siena laughed. She pushed away her mess kit and looked over her shoulder to see if she could spot Emmett and Isaac coming back from the snowmelt.

"Is it weird with him here?" Cam asked.

"Emmett?" Siena shook her head. "Nah, we've been working on this project for four years, haven't we? Even after... you know. Things between us won't suddenly become weird just because we're out here."

"Spending every waking moment with him is a little different from showing up to a lab for a few hours."

Siena couldn't argue with that. "It doesn't really matter, though, does it? Both of us have to see this project through to the end because we're equally stubborn. That would have been the case even if he'd done something worse. Tried to murder me, or whatever."

"Or you him."

They shared a smile, and Cam's vanished as her eyes flickered to the woods. "They're coming back."

Siena returned her attention to the powder in her bowl. "I'm more worried about you and him."

"I'll play nice," said Cam, but Siena knew it wasn't a promise.

Siena shot up from her sleeping bag.

Her sweat-drenched bottom layer cooled in a matter of seconds, and she shivered. She patted the surrounding space, searching for her headlamp while clinging to the phantom noise.

That noise. Had it been real, or a remnant of a dream?

She found her headlamp and wrapped it around her wrist, clicking it on. Her breath left her in a cloud until she held it, listening, but even the grasshoppers were quiet.

Siena unzipped her bivy and crawled out, stepping into her loosened and waiting boots. Holding up her wrist, she slowly scanned the perimeter of camp opposite the ridge. Nothing but evergreens. Someone shuffled around in their bivy sack, and she tuned them out to try and remember the noise. A rumble? A growl? The more Siena fought to recall it, the faster it slipped away.

She turned and yelped when her headlamp beam caught Emmett's face.

He grabbed her arm and hushed her. "You'll wake the others. What the hell are you doing up?"

She yanked free of him. "Get off me."

"Sorry," he hissed through his teeth, though his expression told her otherwise. He always looked the same when he was pissed at her, like an overprotective dad with a rare hangover. Authoritative and grumpy, with a hint of guilt.

"Did you hear that noise?" she asked.

"What noise?"

"Out in the woods."

"Which direction?"

"I don't..." She scanned the forest again. It responded with silence. "I don't know. I was asleep."

"An animal?"

She shook her head. "Not an animal. I can't describe it. It sounded familiar, but I'd just woken up, so maybe..." God, she sounded stupid. She turned back to Emmett, expecting his quintessential stinkface, but much to her dismay, he looked worried.

He didn't have the right to be worried about her, and she wasn't obligated to explain herself to him. And yet...

"In case you forgot, I don't suffer from auditory hallucinations."

"I know you don't."

"And I've been taking my meds."

"So it was probably just a dream, Sen."

"Then why are you up, if you didn't hear it too?"

Emmett opened his mouth and shut it again. Siena knew the answer. He was hypertuned to every one of her movements, every shift she made in her sleep. He woke when she woke. It had been that way for years.

"Go back to bed," he finally said. "We have a long hike tomorrow."

"I know that," she snapped.

"What is this, a communal midnight piss?" Cam mumbled from inside her bivy. "Shut the hell up."

Emmett threw a dirty look over his shoulder before returning his attention to Siena. "Night, Sen." With that he headed back to his bivy.

He doesn't believe me.

She opened her mouth, words bubbling to fruition on her tongue. "You're not my fucking caretaker," she muttered beneath her breath. Never had been, never would be.

A cry echoed across the mountainside. Siena's jaw snapped shut, and Emmett jumped back up.

"The fuck was that?" Cam thrashed against her bivy, tearing open the zipper.

Mountain lion. Wait, no...

Not an animal. The sound was distinctly human.

Siena directed her light toward Isaac's open and empty bivy.

"Shit," she hissed, and glanced up to catch Emmett disappearing into the woods.

Siena sprinted after him. Within moments, the forest was thick around her, and she had little time to react to the sudden decline. She slipped and caught herself on a pine branch, the bark skinning her palm. Her headlamp bounced around until she spotted Emmett again. Siena wove through the trees, tripping over brush and her own shoelaces until she joined him in a small clearing.

He'd found Isaac.

In the center of the clearing, Isaac was stone-still, head tilted back and mouth agape. He must have been taking a leak, before...

Siena looked up.

A dead body—a woman—draped over a tree bough like a discarded piece of clothing. Hanging from the waist, she faced the ground, eyes open and flooded with burst blood vessels. Something twitched within her open mouth.

No. Siena's light wavered as she trembled. No, no, no ...

A beetle crawled from the dead woman's blue lips, skittering over a bloated cheek before disappearing behind her ear.