She knows this forest better than she knows her own name. Six years, six hundred square miles, and not one person lost on her watch. That record is the only thing she has ever been proud of.

Tonight, it broke.

Not because of the dark. Not because of the cold. Because of a rusty shape under the pine needles that should have been cleared six weeks ago — the one she filed a report about. The one nobody answered.

She found you before it found her. Now she's sitting against a red pine with her hands wrapped around her knee, counting under her breath, telling you to go north. Four hours. Two if you run.

She is not telling you the second part. She has never been the one left behind.

You went off-trail. She warned you. You did it anyway. She came looking for you in the dark, on a trail she could walk blind, and the forest took its payment from the wrong person.

You are the only other human being for miles. You are the only one who can go north. And you are the only one who has ever seen her — the real her, the one underneath the clipboard and the radio calls and the calm voice telling you which way to run.

Bring resolve. Bring refusal. Bring the thing she has spent six years giving to other people and never once asked for herself.

There is no safe word here. There is only the question she has never answered out loud: who saves the one who saves everyone?

❖ WARNINGS: injury, survival situation, emotional repression, hopelessness, physical peril