Siena

SIENA

The man's name was Ren, his safe house Outpost 5.

Though couldn't pinpoint why, his name bothered her, a feeling she blamed on the intuition goblin she continuously failed to exterminate from her brain.

"Tell me about yourself... Ren ," she asked as they sat and ate at the table he'd cleared off and pulled away from the window. Smoked and salted meat kept appearing to close her nutrition deficit, both tough and utterly mouthwatering. At mealtimes it was accompanied by an herb porridge and a mushroom tea that almost satisfied her coffee craving.

Across from her, Ren chewed carefully and swallowed, setting his fork and knife on the plate. The utensils were unexpected given their wild surroundings, and he held his set properly when he cut and ate, like he'd taken an etiquette class.

"What do you want to know?" His voice was hesitant and mellow, like it had been with her since she'd regained enough strength to hold her own body up.

"You weren't born in the Briardark." Not a question, though she wanted him to confirm it.

"No."

"What was your life like? Before? "

There was a long pause as he watched her. "Simple. Often lonely."

She waited for him to continue before realizing that was all he would provide. Simple and lonely. It seemed, well, it seemed more palatable than busy and complicated, and she understood the lonely part. Life had been lonely for her too after she broke off her engagement. Sure, there was Cam, but Emmett had been 's person. Confidant. Keeper. The one she'd reach out and touch at night to ground her. And she'd been so lonely after they'd separated.

In a way, that loneliness had prepared her for the loneliness she'd battled as she navigated the black forest alone.

"Did you get trapped here by accident?"

"I was looking for someone who went missing," he said. "That's how many of us end up here."

Many of us . The promise of others intrigued her, especially given how isolated she'd been on her journey.

"Did you find them?" she asked.

He took a long sip of tea, set down the chipped floral-patterned mug, and glanced out the window into the faint green light. "I did. But they're gone now."

A lump formed in her throat. She wanted to know more about this missing person, but sensed the topic was painful for him. "You know the way out, but you're choosing to stay. Why?"

She chewed on a piece of greasy fat as she waited for him to say something. Today, Ren was dressed in another knit sweater, this one navy blue and unpatterned. His clothing came from a large trunk behind the bed, which she'd missed upon studying the room for the first time. Inside were not just clothes that fit him, but an array of sizes. She currently sported worn UCLA sweatpants and an oversized baseball tee, both from the chest and left by others .

"There are a few of us who have been here so long, we feel beholden to it." He returned his attention to her. "It's dangerous... You know this better than anyone could. It's evolv— changing."

Evolving . He stuttered on the word like he was afraid to use it.

She tucked the fat between her gums and her cheek. "Are you trying to learn how this place is evolving? Searching for answers?"

"I have enough answers, for now." The firelight glittered in his dark eyes. "I know that's not the same for you." He stood and brought back two small bottles, then set them in front of her. They were shaped differently; one looked like it had once held a skincare product, the other a hot sauce. Murky concoctions filled both.

"This is what I've been giving you for your infection." Ren pointed to the hot sauce bottle. "Fungal compounds that kill cellular processes." He pointed at the skincare bottle. "Hybrid plant-animal antibodies."

blinked at the bottles, but it didn't help her sort out a conclusion. "I'm not a biologist, but how does someone synthesize a hybrid plant-animal antibody in a place like this?"

His upper lip twitched. "It's watered down tree sap."

She stared at him.

He smiled. "I don't know a lot about the details, sorry. But I'm sure you've seen some evidence for yourself. Plants not behaving like they should."

Heartbeat roots. Heliotropic trees. No, plants here didn't behave like she was used to. But hybrid antibodies in tree sap?

She picked up the bottle and swiveled in her chair, groaning in discomfort as she leaned toward the fire. The bottle's contents glowed a deep amber.

"You put this in my tea?" she asked.

"And on your side."

Her side. She hated thinking about her side, and the third-degree burn the size of her hand. It was numb now, but eventually she'd start feeling the pain.

She replaced the bottle on the table. "So, tree sap and fungal compounds to heal a fungal infection." She shook her head in amazement. "How do I know it's working?" When Ren didn't respond right away, she glanced at him, and panic fluttered in her stomach at his wary expression. "You know it works, right?" She lifted her cup to her lips.

He slowly nodded. "The infection isn't fungus. Mycelbacteria is the fancy word for it."

almost spit out her tea. " Mycelbacteria? As in—a microorganism that's both fungus and bacteria?"

"Something like that." His eyes carried a cautious glint, like he was worried about what she'd do with this information.

"That's..." She trailed off. Impossible. Just like plant-animal antibodies. Maybe with the help of genetic engineering from some talented synthetic microbiologist, but not in the natural world.

Everything about this place was physically and biologically impossible. That was why Feyrer's team had drafted stacks on stacks of research notes.

sat straight in her chair. "My stuff... the backpack I had on me—where is it?"

Ren frowned. "You didn't have a bag with you when I found you."

"I did! It was right next to me... It had to?—"

Oh god .

She stood, almost collapsing at the sharp pain in her feet. "We need to go back and get it."

"Sit down. You're hurting yourself."

"I need my things!" She grimaced, leaning against the table to disperse her weight.

Ren eased to his feet. "You collapsed half a day's hike north from here. I'm not even sure I could find the place again."

attempted to push herself from the table, but her legs trembled just to bear her weight. An onslaught of hopelessness crushed her as she sank to her chair. "There's no point in me getting out of here, then. No point in going back home if I don't have that bag. "

He glared down at her, surely angry, given all the work he'd put into saving her. But she'd never asked for his help. She didn't even know who he was.

"Why not?" he finally asked.

's nose burned, and she blinked the moisture from her eyes. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. She took a deep breath and composed herself. "Because of the research, and the photos. I have a record of mental illness. Delusional disorder. And I ran out of meds. If I don't come back with evidence, no one will believe what happened to me. They'll think I made it up, and then no one will help me rescue my—my research partner."

Ren didn't look at her with pity, which she appreciated. "Where's your research partner?"

"She . . . she left me. Went north."

"Does she want to be rescued?"

wiped her nose with the back of her hand and looked out the window at the dark emerald infinity. She hadn't been able to bring herself to accept the glaring truth: Cam had forfeited rescue to go north— deeper .

"There's nothing waiting for me back home." She'd primed everything in her life for this study. She'd lost her research... her loved ones... "Everything. I've lost everything."

A strange weight lifted from her chest. Was escape something she'd ever really wanted? No... it was something she'd been told she needed to do to save herself. But what was the point in saving only herself when nothing waited for her? She'd have to start over. She couldn't...

Ren cleared the utensils and plates from the table, and took them to the sink with the mysteriously running water. "I want to show you something." From the end of the counter he picked up a cluttered tray and carefully brought it over, then set it on the table.

Not a tray. A game . A painted map of the forest covered a board. 's eyes traveled over its details—valleys, mountains, connected forests, zones of danger like open wounds on the landscape—the whole fitting together like an organism.

"I know who painted this," she said, the work clearly Isaac's. He followed her everywhere. She looked at Ren, who kept his head lowered toward the board. "Do you?"

"I do."

Her chest warmed at the shared connection. Before she could ask Ren how he knew Isaac, he said, "You play chess?"

One corner of her mouth pulled into a crooked grin. "Enough to know this isn't chess." studied the pieces. Dozens of small black and red cubes carved from hardwood scattered the board, the only other objects a piece of tooth-shaped obsidian and a quartz crystal, which sat on opposite ends.

"You're right." Ren tapped the top of the quartz piece. "But what if you expected it to be chess just because that was the only game you knew?"

Riddles. She may be a thinker, but she hated riddles. "I'm not following."

"Everyone who enters this forest expects it to be like a chessboard," Ren said. "They expect the same rules and logistics. If they identify as a bishop, they expect to move across the board like a bishop. Except they can't. They can't even learn a new way to move, because the rules keep changing and the board keeps evolving."

The board was the forest. Now the metaphor felt too obvious. "Alright."

He tapped a black cube. "Most of the individuals and small communities in the Briardark merely cope. They create religions, make alliances, fight for scraps until they die." Ren shifted his hand from the quartz to the obsidian. "There are no monarchies. No one is born into power here. The kings and queens are the ones who do more than cope. They figure out how things are changing and exploit whatever they learn."

"New money versus old money," she said.

He met her eyes. "The currency is knowledge. "

That kind of wealth she understood. "Those who understand this place know how not to die from a mycelbacteria infection as they starve in the middle of a soaking-wet, pitch-black forest."

He smiled. "You made it far by yourself, you know. Deeper into the Edge than most. You know how to stay alive."

But in the end, she wouldn't have. Not without his intervention, which made her feel like a damsel. She wasn't; her real strengths simply lay elsewhere.

"There's social power," she said, veering their conversation back on course.

Ren nodded once, his eyes searching hers like he was waiting for her to string more together.

"Gods?" The word left her mouth as a question.

"Something's following you," he said.

"You," she replied.

"Something else," he said gently.

She swallowed, shifting her back against the chair in search of a more comfortable position. Some position that would make her less nauseous. "The Shadow." She met his finger with her own at the obsidian piece.

"So why would The Shadow want you?" Ren asked.

"I must have currency." She shook her head as she said it. "But I don't know how, especially now, with no data." She looked at him for answers, as if he could tell her what gold nugget of her knowledge this Shadow coveted.

He will use you, and then he will kill you .

"What if I don't have what he wants?" she asked.

"I don't think you want to find that out."

sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose, a strong headache coming on. Ren swept up her mug and walked around the table to the fire, where he knelt and filled her cup from the kettle on the grate. He handed it to her, and remained kneeling at her feet, picking up the poker to stab at the coals.

She sipped her tea, then asked, "What is he? He looks like the absence of something. Not a person. He's figured something out about the forest, which changed him. Or made him able to change his appearance."

"I think you're right." Ren set the poker down, then took a brush to the grate. "I think he was once a man."

"A man who gained a lot of currency." She shifted her eyes to the obsidian piece. In this metaphysical space, this Shadow treated physics like Play-Doh. "He always knows where I am. I've seen him. He's... he's spoken to me."

Ren's eyes darted to her. Despite his outward calm, she could tell this surprised him.

"He told me I wasn't imagining things. It almost felt like he was trying to comfort me. Why would he do that? And why would he let me get closer to escaping?"

His shoulders softened in a defeated, tired way. "I don't know."

She could read him well. "He's been unpredictable before. Done things you can't follow."

"Always," Ren said. "It's why we feel so beaten by him."

We . picked up the quartz piece. She lifted it for him to see. " The Mother Reigns ."

Shame flickered across his face. She knew what he'd done to that mule.

He may have saved her life, but she didn't know Ren. Didn't know the level of truth in what he told her, nor how violent he really was. Maybe those tinctures would cure her of this mycelbacteria, if that truly was what she suffered from. Or maybe they were poison.

Still, she liked something in the way he looked right now, kneeling at her feet and staring up at her.

rolled the quartz between her fingers. "Who is she? The Mother."

"A symbol," he said, watching her face closely. Waiting for a reaction .

"A symbol," she repeated.

"A symbol for the rest of us. The resistance against him, all who know how dangerous it is for one man to control an entire dimension."

An entire dimension . And if one man could use a dimension as a playground to be a god...

"He could get out," she whispered.

"Yes," Ren said.

She opened her eyes to the board full of black and red pieces, and picked up a red cube near the bottom, where a forest faded into darkness. "So this is you." She studied the cube, the simplicity of it. "And you've come to make sure I escape because The Shadow is following me, which means he wants something from me. Something that may give him more power."

"That's the plan."

"But what if whatever I know can help the side of The Mother?" Hope bloomed in her chest, so foreign that she pressed her free hand to her heart. "What if I'm supposed to stay?"

If what Ren said was true, then she had currency. Maybe she was supposed to remain here, in this horrifying, deadly, wondrous place. Make discoveries. Help the right people.

Something like anguish struck Ren's face. "I can't let you do that."

clenched her hand into a fist atop her chest. "There's nothing for me back home."

"Listen to me." Ren rested both his hands on her knees. They were warm and heavy and carried the familiarity of a safety blanket, and she could feel her cortisol levels lowering by the second.

"There are hundreds of people here," he said.

She shook her head. "I would have seen them."

"They're north of us." He glanced at the board and back to her. "If you stay here, it's not just your life at risk. The Shadow will get what he wants."

"Won't he find a way, regardless? If he's letting me get away, then he must be doing it for a reason."

His hands fell from her knees, and he stood. "It isn't my decision to make. My job is to take you home. "

Her eyes burned as he walked back to the counter, and she stared at the fire. "Is it The Mother's decision?"

He didn't answer.

That night, discomfort lingered in her trembling muscles and the wound on her back. Staying still was torture, as was tossing and turning. Her mind burning with a thousand questions didn't help the insomnia.

She watched Ren asleep on the floor. He trusted her not to slit his throat in the middle of the night and take over the cabin as her own. Trust felt inorganic in the Briardark, as if the forest itself bred only hostility.

He was so strange . To come out of nowhere in her most vulnerable moment with his perfectly divine timing, saving her from death. Coincidence, maybe, but there was something to him she hadn't figured out yet.

. . . Something he hid from her . . .

. . . Though he'd promised to tell her everything he knew . . .

" ! "

She startled awake. The fire had died down to a bed of glowing coals, the silhouette of a sleeping Ren in front of her.

" They aren't here. Dr. Dupont! "

She shook the sleep from her brain, eyes darting around the dark cabin. The voices—they sounded like they were coming from a television close by. Either that or her own head.

She'd been off her meds for at least two weeks, but it was impossible to tell withdrawal, starvation, and mycelbacteria infection apart. The festering deer she'd seen in the woods, eaten by some invisible predator—she still had no idea if that was real or in her head.

Maybe she was sick after all, and without her meds, the delusions were returning .

She listened for her name again, but sleep claimed her too quickly.

A week passed before her feet were healed enough to walk about the cabin. She spent most of the time sleeping, eating, and prying for answers about the north. Ren was often vague, giving away little about the other red cubes, only that small settlements and communities studded an otherwise desolate landscape. But he provided no details—his attempt to keep her focus on escape.

One morning, after fit her feet into a pair of boots that didn't quite fit right from the chest, Ren showed her outside. Two gloomy structures stood behind the cabin and detached outhouse: the bathhouse, where Ren had nearly drowned in a natural astringent to sterilize her body, and the storage shed, an airtight space that housed the meat, chests of supplies, and a pump house.

"There's so much here," she said as he resealed the storage shed. Her voice drowned in the ambience of the outdoors—the rain, the deep caws from the boughs, the amphibians soaking in the marsh between the trees. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness and the faint green light streaking through the canopy. The distant leaves reminded her of plant cells.

"It's not only for me," he said. "A few of us—those willing to brave the darkness for The Way Back—rebuilt the outpost together." He pointed toward the canopy. "This is the brightest point in the Edge. Whether you're coming north or south, you're bound to be in bad shape."

"A respite," she said.

"Something like that."

She looked south, as far as she could before the light faded, and wiped the rain from her forehead. "How much farther? "

"Twenty miles. We can clear it in one day, but there's no trail. It won't be easy for you."

"I can't imagine it's worse than what I've been through alone." Even with the lingering pain in her bones, the growing ache of the burn on her spine. Even with her torn-up feet and ill-fitting boots.

When she turned, he was watching her, shadows pooling beneath his cheekbones and in the hollows of his eyes.

"The heart of this place wants to be a forest," he said. "Wilderness. But south of us, the Briardark doesn't know what it wants to be. A playground, a dream. Rapid evolution. Paths to nowhere. Quantum entanglement. Lapses in time. Impossible life forms. The end keeps people stuck here. We need to be careful."

nodded, though morbid excitement stirred inside her.

At the end of this world, reality cannibalized itself. And she would witness it with her own eyes.