Page 79 of Silent Shadows

Taylor’s eyes shine. Jax looks away toward the window. Maya goes very still beside her laptop.

And Miles… God. He keeps going anyway.

“Half the things we’ve documented are real regardless,” he says. “Missing person correlations. Environmental anomalies. Sounds we can’t explain.” A tiny shrug. “And honestly? If all this ends someday and all we did was build something good out here together…” His mouth twitches faintly. “That’s still not nothing.”

Something shifts painfully in my chest. Because I know where this is coming from now. The hike yesterday. His parents. The fear underneath all of this.

Who is he if this isn’t real? What happens if he built his life around grief and hope and turns out to be wrong? And worse—I can see him trying to carry the emotional weight of everyone else too.

Taylor wipes under one eye. “You’re not allowed to emotionally devastate me this early in the morning.”

“Didn’t mean to,” Miles says with a sympathetic smile.

The tension breaks after that.

Jax mutters something about needing therapy.

Maya’s quiet typing resumes.

Taylor declares herself “spiritually repaired until further notice.”

And I sit frozen, looking down at my untouched recorder.

When Taylor started talking a few minutes earlier, my fingers hovered over the recorder for one suspended second. I knew where that conversation was going, and I knew it would make incredible audio. Beautiful and human and vulnerable.

The exact kind of emotional honesty audiences connect to.

In the past, I would’ve started recording without a second thought.

Not because I’m cruel. Because it’s my job.

But then I looked at Taylor as she wiped her tears.

At Maya, pretending to look unaffected.

At Miles, standing there trying so hard to hold everyone together while quietly unraveling inside.

And suddenly the idea of packaging that moment for strangers felt…wrong. On a personal level.

I never thought that would be a choice I’d be proud of, but I am.

No recording. The decision feels tiny and enormous all at once. Across the room, Miles glances toward me briefly. Then toward the recorder as I slide it into my pocket.

And something in his expression shifts. Small, but unmistakable.

Trust.

Well, fuck.

By noon, we are all in Coconino National Forest following the new lead.

On our drive to the trailhead, we ascend over 2,000 feet in elevation. The landscape changes fast out here.

Red desert slowly gives way to dense pine and steep canyon terrain, shadows stretching longer beneath the trees while the air cools almost twenty degrees. It feels right in a way. More Bigfoot-like.

The crew split naturally into motion when we got here. Maya, Taylor, and Jax are in the 4Runner. Taylor drives, Maya logs coordinates, and Jax operates the drone. Miles and I are on foot, tracking the report he found. We have plans to rendezvous back at the trailhead before sundown.

Miles leads us deeper along an old game trail, scanning our environment at every turn. I’m glad one of us is confident and present here, because mentally, I’m still back in the Machine.