Nothing.
I wait too, crouched in the shadows beneath a jutting rock.
One hour.
Then two.
And then the wind comes.
A shriek that strips the ridge clean, peeling back the topsoil like flesh. I shield my eyes, dig my claws into the stone, brace myself.
When it passes… she’s gone.
No body. No blood. Just sand. Miles and miles of it, shifting like a breathing thing.
She let it take her.
I back away, heart pounding in my throat, each step slow, deliberate. My claws twitch. My fur rises along my shoulders. This isn’t war. It isn’t chaos. It’squiet. Too quiet.
The kind of quiet predators make before they pounce.
I don’t returnto camp.
Not yet.
I go to the cave instead—the one Jill and I used. The fire pit’s cold now, stones still blackened with the memory of heat. Her scent still lingers here. On the blankets. In the air. It’s grounding. Stabilizing.
I sit.
Try to make sense of what I saw. What I felt.
That girl didn’t die from fear. Shechoseit. Walked into it. Smiling.
And the others? They didn’t evenaskwhere she went.
They didn’t look for her.
Didn’t notice.
They’re infected. All of them. And it’s not the kind of infection that makes you sweat or seize or scream.
It’s the kind thathollows.
I check my own senses. Run diagnostics from the symbiote embedded in my neural link. Pulse is steady. No fog behind the eyes. No sluggishness. No emotional flattening.
I’m still me.
But Jill…
She went back.
She’s surrounded by it.
Sheknows, I can smell it on her fear—but she hasn’t said anything outright. She’s being careful. Too careful.
She’s trying to help them.
But they’re already gone.
