Cameron

CAMERON

Avery's map lay unfolded on the log in front of Cam, doing a piss-poor job of resisting the rain.

Waterproof coating, my ass.

She sat on a stump, the hood of her rain shell up as she sipped an insulated mug of cowboy coffee. She liked this mug. Liked it enough to remember to grab it as she'd bolted out the door of the research cabin before Siena could stop her.

"You're a real shit person," she muttered to herself. Shit for not responding to Avery's texts seven years ago before the Deadswitch Five vanished, and now shit for leaving Siena behind. Cam had to accept she was shit in order to get over being shit in her quintessential spiritual journey of acceptance.

She squinted at Avery's revised legend in the map's corner. Cam had found the map at the top of Mount Agnes, along with Avery's decomposing bag and the knit hat she now wore. She'd given the hat to Avery years and years ago.

Full circle.

Avery's revised legend also contained an updated scale. If Cam read the water-stained Sharpie correctly, the Briardark—Deadswitch Wilderness's alter ego—was twelve times larger than Deadswitch .

She dragged her finger from her location—a few days' hike north of the sisters—toward the isolated peak. On the map, the peak took the form of an upside-down V that Avery had drawn in with a marker. Avery had also circled it and written, Find the Butcher's Daughter .

According to the legend, it would take Cam roughly twenty-five days to reach the peak. She'd seen this mountain twice from the top of Agnes, but now she was too deep in the forested valley to have a good view of anything beyond the understory.

She would keep walking north, because she'd made her bed back at the research cabin. Isaac had told Siena she would die if she didn't hike out of the Briardark, adding that Cam would only hold her back. He'd given Cam the perfect excuse to leave Siena to fend for herself.

But that was exactly what Siena was supposed to do, according to Isaac, assuming he knew what the fuck he was talking about. If Cam would only impede Siena's escape, then Cam wasn't a shit person at all.

This didn't change the fact she felt like one.

It also didn't change the fact that, if Avery's legend was correct, it could take Siena months to get home... if she could get home at all.

But Siena could handle it. She'd often ventured into the wilderness alone when she needed solace or to grieve. In that way, Siena differed from Cam, who went to the woods every time she wanted to avoid grief. Every time she wanted joy. Every time she wanted to pretend she wasn't lazy or irresponsible or distracted or bad with relationships.

Cam lived in the woods. Breathed its air, drank its water. Climbed its mountains, the rigor further sculpting her lean, hardened body. And that was the actual difference between her and Siena. Siena knew how to survive in the woods for long enough. Cam was a resident.

She finished her coffee, then pulled off her hood and pushed her hair back. The ends of her ash-brown locks reached the nape of her neck, and she tugged on them while scrutinizing the drawn landmarks one last time. After shaking the water off the damp paper, she folded the map and tucked it into her rain shell pocket—Siena's pocket. She'd meant to grab her own jacket, but had left the cabin in a hurry. By the time she'd realized the mistake, she was miles away.

The jacket somehow still smelled of Siena's apartment. And CLIF Bars. It was cleaner than the sodden pants sticking to her skin.

Around her, flat-leaf ferns cradled pools of rainwater. She'd traveled through forests all over the world, the bulk of her time in the Sierras, where snow was more of a problem than rain. The rain was a pleasant change for now, but she would hate it the second she began chafing.

A trail appeared as daylight brightened, a rutted, muddy pathway snaking through the spruce. Surprised, Cam consulted the map again, finding no trail here. Avery had charted mountains, rivers, and bizarre landmarks, but nothing here. Then again, it wasn't like Avery'd had the chance to chart the whole damn wilderness.

Cam's boots sank into the waterlogged path, the wet seeping into her socks. Her eyes roved, scanning for anything unusual. She couldn't let the tree canopy trick her into feeling protected, especially not after what happened to Isaac.

And her.

She tried to keep her mind off her descent into this place. The irresistible compulsion to swim in the tarn, the fluctuation of gravity that had dragged her straight to hell. She'd been trapped in disembodied agony for what felt like months. Thinking about it was just as bad as living it.

An unexpected scent prickled her nose, and she inhaled. Woodsmoke clung to the air.

Cam whirled, boots squelching. Trees. Nothing but fucking trees, and an intuitive warning that clung to her like a second skin.

Red flashed through the trees up ahead. Careful .

She crept from the trail and into the woods, approaching the cherry-red color. A tent. Listening, she heard nothing from the glade where the tent was erected. But if anyone was nearby, she didn't want to alarm them.

"Hello?" The word was swallowed by the woods. Cam slipped into the clearing.

A pair of new branded bags lay haphazardly tossed. The tent was also designer, and another lay flat on the ground, half-assembled. Despite the day's dampness, a dry fire pit smoldered.

She approached the fire pit, and her boot nudged the smoldering embers. The embers didn't spark, nor send up a lick of smoke. If it weren't for the smell, she'd have thought they were fake, stolen from someone's gas fireplace.

She turned to the erect tent—both unzipped and completely empty. Whoever's site this was, all their gear was still packed away in those shiny new bags.

A sound unfurled and suddenly quieted. Cam whipped her head around, disoriented before taking a moment to process the noise: a blip of conversation between a man and woman like they sat right here, around this plastic fire. Had the woman been laughing? Crying? The man had said, I can't believe— before the sound bite abruptly ended. Like someone had flipped the channel.

In place of the voices, a ringing grew.

"Hello?" she called again. Vertigo washed over her, and the memory of her descent into the Briardark arose—unforgiving agony, the deep loss as two worlds tore at her.

Cam stumbled from the clearing and back into the forest, jogging toward the path. She reached the muddy trail and stopped to brace her hands against her knees. Her mind raced from the tarn to Naomi Vo dead and dangling from a branch. On their way up to the research cabin, they'd found her frozen in time, seven years after the Deadswitch Five disappeared.

Cam couldn't follow the rhythm of this forest, but she knew one thing: time didn't play by rules she understood. She'd gotten lost on Mount Agnes in the blink of an eye and found Avery's bag in a place that had already been searched. Now, this smokeless fire pit smoldered.

Everything preserved by some fucked-up interdimensional pause button.

Cam ducked beneath a fern leaf and continued along the trail twisting northeast. With a swift tug, she pulled her hood up, then stepped over a log sheathed in a grotesque fungus.

Fucked-up pause button or not, she couldn't dick around at a frozen campsite until she figured out what was going on. And those campers—wherever they actually were—were lucky she didn't rifle through their things and steal shit.

The scent of woodsmoke still clung to the air and grew stronger the farther she walked from the campsite. She scanned the lichen-dressed evergreens and spotted a pillar of smoke up ahead.

Now that was where the smell was coming from.

A sound broke through the rain—a man singing an unfamiliar tune in a voice like full grain leather.

Her hand slipped into her pocket, and her fingers curled around her knife. Its reassuring weight reminded her of what she lacked: the guns left behind in the cabin. Then again, guns were loud, and if she drew attention, she wanted it on her terms.

Tucked away off the path, a shelter made of fir branches materialized. A man sat on a stump beneath its open front and poked at a wet, smoldering fire. Cam dipped behind a tree to watch. The man sang and prodded at the ashes, oblivious to her presence. He was a mess, too, unkempt and disheveled. Like old Isaac, but frailer. Sickly.

She could overpower him if she needed to. She could also pass unnoticed, but if she wanted answers, hiding wasn't an option.

Cam's grip tightened on her knife as she stepped away from the tree, approaching the man enough to study him. He was maybe in his forties, garb variously torn, patched, and resewn. Some of his clothes were modern while other pieces reminded her of dated military or park ranger gear .

He either grimaced or smiled at her—Cam couldn't tell the difference—and extended his leg to reveal torn trousers and an oozing gash covering his shin. The wound was infected.

Her observation sliced through smoke-filled air. "How'd that happen?"

His features were unreadable, his eyes gleaming with an inscrutable spark. "Fell. Need to get to The Tooth." A gruff urgency tinged his voice.

She had no idea what the fuck The Tooth was, but this man's leg needed attention, and quickly. "I can help. I've got medical training. Should be able to clean and dress it here."

He laughed, a harsh, grating echo through the forest, punctuated by a single word. "Newborn."

Cam prickled at his casual dismissal. Before she could respond, he shot a question her way. "You out here alone?"

She knew better than to admit she was, but he nodded anyway, as though sensing the truth. "There are folk at The Tooth."

Did he know she was searching for someone? No... he couldn't. She'd mentioned nothing of Avery. She'd hardly said anything at all.

"Can't survive out here alone," he continued. "Help me, and I'll help you."