Chapter 45 When dawn arrives

Chapter 45 When dawn arrives

Dawn came so fast, the sun struggling through thick clouds that made everything look washed out and dead.

Mara hadn't slept. None of them had. They'd spent the entire night in tense silence after David vanished, sitting in their positions, listening to the scratching, waiting for something worse that never came. Now morning light filtered through the windows, and exhaustion sat heavy on all of them like a physical weight.

Chen stood first, and moved to the window. Her movements were stiff, mechanical. She raised the binoculars, scanned the forest.

Then went very still.

"He's there," she said, voice flat. "David. He's standing with the others."

Brooks was at the window in seconds. Mara watched his face as he looked through the binoculars, watched the exact moment he saw his partner's body standing among the dead. His face crumpled completely.

"No," Brooks whispered. "No, that's not—he can't be—"

But he was. Sixteenth figure now in the forest. David Brooks, standing perfectly still among the others, just another addition to the entity's collection.

Brooks lowered the binoculars with shaking hands. "I was his partner. I was supposed to watch his back. I was supposed to—" His voice broke. He sank to his knees, shoulders shaking with sobs. "I let him go upstairs alone. I let him die."

Lisa knelt beside him immediately, put her arms around him. "This isn't your fault. This place—it takes people. No matter what we do."

"I should have gone with him," Brooks choked out. "Two years we've been partners. Two years and I let him go alone."

Chen stood frozen at the window, staring at David's body. Her command presence had fallen completely. She just looked small, lost, like someone playing at being a leader and failing.

Marcus approached her carefully. "Captain. We need you."

Chen didn't respond. He didn't move.

"Captain Chen," Marcus tried again. "The team needs you to lead."

"Lead them to what?" Chen's voice came out hollow. "Lead them to more deaths? I've lost one of my people, Rivera. I failed. I brought us here and I failed to protect him."

"We all failed," Marcus said quietly. "This place makes us fail. But they still need you to keep trying. To give them something to hold onto."

Chen looked at him with empty eyes. "What if there's nothing left to hold onto?"

Marcus didn't have an answer for that.

Around seven AM, they forced themselves to eat. Granola bars and canned fruit, rationed carefully. The food tasted like normal and bland, but they made themselves chew, and swallow, to fuel their bodies even though their minds were breaking down.

Aria did the math at the table, writing numbers in her notebook. "Four days of food left. Seven people, plus Sienna, eight If we're extremely careful, maybe we stretch it to five days." She looked up. "After that..."

Nobody wanted to finish that sentence.

"We could try to hunt," Eli suggested halfheartedly. "Set traps, forage…"

"There's nothing out there," Rhett interrupted. "No animals. No birds. Nothing edible. We've looked. The entity has made this area a dead zone."

"So we starve," Juno said flatly. "That's our choice. Get taken by the entity or starve to death waiting for it."

"There are other options," Chen said, but her voice was mechanical, going through motions. "We could attempt another evacuation. Try a different route. Maybe if we…"

"It won't work," Mara cut her off, not unkindly. "We've tried everything. The forest won't let us leave. You know that now."

Chen's shoulders sagged. "Then what do we do?"

No one answered because none of them knew.

Sienna had been awake through all of this, sitting up on the couch with Rhett beside her. She looked more alert than she had in days, with eyes clearer, and movements her own. The possession from two nights ago seemed to have loosened its grip, at least temporarily.

"I'm glad I'm awake for this," she said quietly to Rhett. "Glad I can still think clearly. I don't know how much longer I have."

Rhett's hand tightened on hers. "Don't talk like that."

"I have to. While I'm still me, while I can still understand what's happening…" She looked at him with such sadness. "I can feel it waiting, Rhett. Like something standing just behind me patiently. It's going to come back to take me completely next time."

"We'll fight it," Rhett said desperately. "We'll find a way to…"

"There is no way." Sienna touched his face gently. "We both know that. I just want you to promise me something. When I'm gone, when that thing is using my body, don't hesitate. You do what you need to do."

Rhett was crying silently, unable to speak.

Around eight AM, Juno approached Mara where she sat by the window. Juno's camera hung around her neck but the lens cap was on. She hadn't filmed anything since yesterday.

"I stopped recording," Juno said. "After David. I just….what's the point? Who's going to see this footage if we're all dead?"

"Maybe no one," Mara said. "Or maybe we get out somehow. Maybe someone finds the camera after and learns what happened here."

"You don't believe that."

"No," Mara admitted. "But I'm trying to."

They sat together in silence, watching David's body standing motionless in the forest. Young, dead, and transformed into something that wasn't him anymore.

Eli and Aria had spread the journals across the dining table, going through them again page by page. Looking for anything they'd missed, any detail that might help.

"There has to be something," Aria muttered. "Some weakness, some pattern, some.."

"There isn't," Eli said tiredly. "We've read these a dozen times. They all say the same thing. The entity takes eight people. It feeds on guilt and secrets. It can't be killed, can't be escaped. Everyone dies."

"Then why keep reading?"

"Because what else is there to do?"

Aria closed the journal she'd been holding. "I hate feeling useless. I'm supposed to be smart. I'm supposed to figure things out. But this…." She gestured helplessly. "I can't figure this out."

Marcus moved through the cabin checking everyone's vitals. Taking pulses, looking at eyes, and going through his medical routines because it was all he knew how to do anymore. Something concrete, something he could control.

When he checked Mara, his hands were shaking. "Pulse is elevated. Your blood pressure slightly high." He said it like he was reading from a textbook.

"How are you holding up?" Mara asked him.

Marcus's professional mask slipped. "I became an EMT to save people. That's what I do, I save people. But here, I can't save anyone. I can't stop the infection in Sienna. I couldn't help Theo. I couldn't protect David." His voice cracked. "What good is all my training if I can't save anyone?"

"You're keeping us alive," Mara said. "Managing the medical supplies, and monitoring us. That matters."

"Does it? We're all going to die anyway. I'm just prolonging the inevitable."

Mara didn't have a response to that. Because he might be right.

Around nine-thirty, Brooks had composed himself enough to speak. He sat up from where he'd been curled against the wall, wiped his eyes, looked at Chen.

"David died because I wasn't paying attention," Brooks said. His voice was rough but steady. "Because I let him go alone. I won't make that mistake again. I'll be more careful. More vigilant."

Chen looked at him with hollow eyes. "None of us will. We'll all be more careful."

But they both knew it was an empty promise. The entity would find a way. It always did. Being careful hadn't saved Devon. Hadn't saved Theo. Hadn't saved David.

It wouldn't save the rest of them either.

Around ten AM, they were just sitting. No plans being made, no activities organized. Just existing in the cabin, waiting for nothing, hoping for nothing.

The rescue team had come to save them. Now they were all just waiting to die together.

Brooks looked at Chen and said what they were all thinking: "We're not going to make it out of here, are we?"

Chen opened her mouth to give some reassuring response. Some captain's speech about never giving up, about fighting to the last breath.

But the words wouldn't come, because she didn't believe them anymore.

"I don't know," she finally said. "I honestly don't know."

And that admission, that crack in her authority, in her certainty, might have been the most frightening thing any of them had heard yet.

Because if their leader had given up hope, what did that mean for the rest of them?