Page 200 of Silent Shadows

Maya gives him a look.

“Right,” he says. “Sorry. Delusional.”

The first comments roll in before our food arrives. Then more. Then shares. The tone shifts faster than I expected. People echoing the ethics language. Calling out Ridgefield accounts. Fan pages updating rules. Outdoor creators reposting the boundary message and adding commentary.

A van life creator named Sadie reaches out and asks if I need help getting the message out there to protect public lands, offering her services as a designer. After seeing her work from a Bryce Canyon campaign, I plan to take her up on the offer as soon as I can.

A strange feeling blooms in me. Hope, maybe. The kind that scares me because it asks something of you.

Then the other part of the plan starts working. One of the harmless fake Instagram Stories—a deliberate reference to a canyon system northeast of town—is viewed by Ridgefield. The audio features our general background chatter, including something that sounds like “black mesa.” But it’s actually Jax mumbling “backpack’s a mess” under wind distortion. There’s a visual of a ridge from an older scouting day, cropped tight enough to be useless, familiar enough to look important. It all looks like we’re actively searching and getting closer, but nearly forty miles from where we actually are.

We’re mapping out the latest coordinates when Ridgefield’s latest story updates, just five minutes after we posted. Grant’s crew is loading gear. And based on the highway sign shown, he’s heading the wrong direction. Jax claps his hands together like a villain.

“Oh, that is delicious,” he says.

Taylor’s smile is small and terrifying. “Fuck yes.”

Maya exhales for what feels like the first time all morning.

Owen leans over to look. “They’re really that eager to be where we are?”

“Sure are,” I say.

Miles laughs quietly beside me.

The sound settles under my skin.

The waitress appears with pancakes, eggs, hash browns, toast, and a side of bacon Jax calls “emotionally necessary.”

Taylor holds the energy drink she walked in with for a celebratory cheers. “Here’s to getting those fuckers out of the way! Bigfoot Catfish was a success!”

I smile at her, holding up my coffee and the rest of the crew does the same. My eyes pass from one person to the next, taking in the scene.

“Thanks for trusting me, guys,” I say quietly. Smiles and nods follow, and for a little while, we eat like normal people pretending not to be planning a final expedition into suspicious cave systems while attempting to outmaneuver an aggressive rival crew.

Miles cuts off a piece of my pancake and steals one of my hash browns.

I gasp and he freezes.

“That was a crime,” I say.

His ears go pink. “I thought we were sharing.”

“We are bonded, not merged.”

He slides the hash brown back onto my plate.

It has a bite out of it.

I stare. He looks genuinely uncertain.

Jax whispers, “This is the most intimate thing I have ever witnessed.”

I point my fork at him. “You’re next.”

“I respect boundaries,” he puts his hands up in surrender.

“You do not,” Maya cuts in.