Siena

"Cam ran off yesterday without saying goodbye. Emmett's off looking for her... never came back last night. Which means I have to bury Isaac all by myself."

Siena pushed the stop button on her recorder and rubbed at her tired eyes. She'd slept hardly at all last night, too worried about the only people she loved, and whether she'd ever see them again.

She removed the slide from the microscope and lifted it to the light. Running Isaac's blood was a way to distract herself from the body and the mound of research in the cellar. Expecting to find nothing, she'd instead discovered enlarged red cells surrounded by black membranes. She didn't know what it meant. Not like any of it mattered. She'd probably never see the inside of a lab again.

Not with the deck so stacked.

The cards. She glanced around and found them absent from the desk. Had they disappeared along with the other gear?

Siena left the lab and entered the main room. Bags and gear still cluttered the kitchen table. She moved them to the floor until a scattering of cards was all that decorated the table's surface. Cam and Emmett had covered them with stuff when packing to leave.

All the cards were blank except two. Someone else had played the game.

Siena lifted one card to her face to study it. Black paint covered the card's face, except for the banner, which read The Shadow.

You can't run. I am everywhere.

It shouldn't have taken so long for everything to click into place, but here she was with a card between her fingers, a beam of metaphorical daylight brightening every cobweb-filled corner and dark recess in her brain.

Isaac had been warning her of The Shadow, the same Shadow that had met her in the woods. The Shadow that had burst from Isaac's body.

I am everywhere.

Isaac had said it wanted to kill her, but not until she did its bidding, whatever that meant.

Siena pressed her hand to her stomach. Did it want her body? If The Shadow truly was parasitic, would she feel it entering her like it entered the trees? Would she even know it lived inside her?

Had Isaac known?

She had to believe he hadn't. He'd only been trying to protect her, after all. He wouldn't knowingly bring The Shadow to her.

You need to get out of here, Siena. Just you, without Cameron, and without Emmett.

And here she was, waiting for Cam and Emmett to come back, doing the exact opposite of what Isaac had asked. What Cam had asked.

Don't go.

What Feyrer had asked.

She'd thought he'd lost his mind. In reality, it had been a moment of clarity. Her defiance of his research—his knowledge—was a defiance of the man who had lured her here. If she changed her mind, she still had much of the research saved to her phone. She could bring it home and get help.

But if The Shadow killed her, no one would learn what had really happened. She and Emmett and Cam would be thrown atop the pile of the wilderness's forgotten victims. The truth about the Deadswitch Five would die along with her. More would hike here, and more would fall prey. And the Briardark... the Briardark was bleeding through to her reality. If that wasn't a ticking time bomb, she didn't know what was.

She grabbed the only pen she could find and slid the map from her sweatshirt pocket, unfolding it across the couch cushions. Her eyes flickered to the painting of the Briardark, and the dry trail of blood.

The last way out of this place.

I am everywhere.

She couldn't believe she'd be any safer here than on the path home, even if she was alone. Even if venturing out into this strange wild alone meant leaving Cam and Emmett behind.

If she couldn't return with backup to rescue them, what if she had to live the rest of her life without them?

If something happens, promise me you won't dick around and will find a way out of here.

Siena blinked her burning eyes. "I promise," she whispered to an empty room. "Promise me your choice to go find Avery won't get you killed."

That's what Siena would have said, if she'd known. If Cam hadn't tried to protect her by not saying goodbye.

But Siena, as stubborn as she was, would say goodbye anyway.

"Goodbye, Cameron. Forgive me, Emmett."

She uncapped the pen and pressed the tip to the map, carefully redrawing the trail from the cabin, and out of the Briardark.