We push east. The terrain gets worse—steeper, more exposed, the forest thinning as we gain elevation. The temperature drops as we climb, the air thinning just enough to make each breath cost more than the last. My thighs burn with the sustained effort, and I've trained for this.
Evie has to be dying.
But she doesn't complain. Doesn't slow. Doesn't ask how much farther.
She just keeps moving.
"You're handling this better than most people would," I say, when the silence stretches too long. "Most civilians fall apart the first time bullets fly."
"Is that a compliment or an observation?"
"Both."
She's quiet for a moment. "I've had practice at not falling apart."
There's weight in those words. History. The kind of thing you don't share with strangers, except we're not really strangersanymore, are we? Not after a firefight. Not after that moment by the rocks.
"Bad practice or good practice?"
"Is there a good kind?"
"Sometimes." I think about the things that made me hard. Joey. Carmen. Deacon. "Sometimes the hard stuff teaches you who you are."
"And sometimes it just teaches you to hide."
I look at her—really look, not just an assessment but I give her my full attention. Something in her expression catches. Vulnerability, maybe. Or the edge of something she doesn't show people.
"You don't seem like someone who hides."
"You'd be surprised." She says it quietly, almost to herself. "I've been hiding my whole life."
Before I can respond—before I can figure out what to say to that, how to handle the raw honesty she just handed me—the trees thin out, and the canyon opens up below us.
It's a gash in the earth—sixty feet wide, walls dropping away into shadow. The remains of the rope bridge dangle on the far side, cut clean. On the other side, the terrain levels out.
Safety.
A chance at survival.
And between us and that safety: two hundred feet of granite. Near-vertical, minimal visible handholds, the kind of wall that kills experienced climbers who get cocky.
"Shit," I breathe.
"There's another option." Evie's voice is quiet. Steady. Different.
I turn to look at her. She's not staring at the cliff with fear. She's staring at it with something that looks almost like recognition. Her whole posture has changed—shoulders back,chin up, the careful smallness she's been carrying replaced by something taller. Wilder.
"What option?"
She meets my eyes. The mask is cracking—no, shattering. Something underneath is coming to the surface, something that's been buried so deep I didn't even know it was there.
"I've climbed this wall before."
FIVE
Dead End
EVIE
