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I pull out my phone. I could call 9-1-1, but the Stillwater PD dispatch logs are public record. Local Scientist Trapped After Failing to Account for Up is a headline I don't need, especially when I'm currently investigating the department for a twenty-year-old cover-up.

Thankfully, there’s a better option. I hit the contact. It rings twice.

“Serena?” Mara’s voice is clipped, punctuated by the crackle of a radio in the background.

“I… need your help,” I force the words out, slightly embarrassed about my predicament. “I’m stuck inside the utility enclosure near the old iron mine.”

There’s a long, heavy silence. I can almost hear Mara’s eyes rolling through the receiver. “The one with the 'No Trespassing' signs the size of billboards?”

“Uhm, yes. That one,” I admit sheepishly. “The gate is on a timer, I think. I’m on the wrong side of it. And the shale path I used to get down here just... liquidated.”

“Serena,” Mara sighs.. “Stay put. Don't try to climb the fence. I don’t want to spend my lunch break stitching your skin back together.”

Fifteen minutes later, the flashing lights of a cruiser cut through the midday glare, blue and red strobing harshly against the quarry’s muted earth tones.

The siren gives a short, mocking whoop as it pulls up to the gate. Mara climbs out, her sunglasses pushed up into her hair. She looks through the bars at me—sweaty, red-stained, and utterly trapped—and just shakes her head.

She doesn’t say a word. She just reaches for her belt, pulls out a heavy master key, and slots it into the gate’s manual override. The gate groans in protest as it slides open.

I walk out, trying to maintain some semblance of dignity despite the red dust coating my legs.

“The bolt cutters of justice stayed in the trunk today,” Mara leans against the door of her cruiser. “You’re lucky. Utility was through here this morning. Somebody must’ve propped the gate while they were working and forgotten to take the block out when they left.”

I frown. “It locked behind me.”

“That’s what it’s designed to do. Condemned mine shaft, remember? The county prefers its hikers undrowned.”

She crouches beside the gate and picks up a fist-sized chunk of stone lying just inside the fence. “This.”

I stare at it.

She wedges the stone beneath the bottom rail, and the gate stays put when she lets go. Then she kicks it free.

The gate immediately starts its slow crawl toward the latch.

“The ground shifts. Rock works loose.” She looks at me. “Gate closes.” A metallic click punctuates the demonstration. “And locks.”

I stare at the gate. Then at Mara. “Excellent system.”

“It worked.”

“I was on the wrong side of it.”

“Still worked.” She shrugs.

“I was clearing my head,” I say, leaning said head back against the cool metal of the cruiser. “The air is better up here.”

“The air is full of iron dust and apparently bad decisions,” Mara counters.

She looks at me properly then, the way my hands are still slightly shaking from the adrenaline, maybe the lack of sleep written across my features.

“Get in the car, Serena,” she opens the passenger door. “Before someone sees me escorting you out of here like a trespassing teenager.”

The cruiser takes the rutted quarry road at a speed its suspension can only partially compensate for, every hard jolt making my teeth clack together.

Mara’s hands are at ten and two, her knuckles white. “I’ve got three reports to file before noon, and now I have to figure out how to explain why I was resetting a utility gate for a civilian who should know better than to play mountain goat on loose shale.”

“I was processing,” I say, the adrenaline finally curdling into a dull, throbbing pulse. “I don’t process particularly well while stationary.”