"The smart thing would be to leave," I mutter under my breath.
"Probably."
"Pack up tonight. Drive back to the city. Write a different story."
"You could."
I study the fear coursing through me, turn it over like evidence. It's real—this thing, whatever it is, wants me gone or dead. The threat isn't imagined or exaggerated. Every rational instinct screams for retreat.
But underneath the fear, something else pulses. Recognition. This is exactly what I felt anytime the laughter rippled at my expense. This is what I felt when the camera flashes began. It was this same impulse to shrink, to apologize for taking up space, to make myself convenient for everyone else's comfort.
"I spent most of my life being the person who leaves the room when things get uncomfortable."
"Past tense?"
I look at him directly. "I'm not that person anymore."
“You don’t have to convince me,” Caleb says quietly.
“I’m not,” I reply. “I’m convincing myself.”
He watches me carefully. “And if this gets worse?”
“Then I deal with it bigger, not smaller.”
His brow furrows.
“I’ve spent years making myself easier to overlook,” I continue. “Quieter. Nicer. Less complicated. And it never actually kept me safe. It just made me easier to ignore when something went wrong.”
“This is different,” he says.
“It is,” I agree. “That’s why shrinking won’t work anymore.”
The words surprise me with their certainty. The fear doesn't disappear—if anything, naming my choice makes the danger more real. But I don't mistake fear for inability. They're separate things now.
"Good." He pulls out another map, this one marked with different colored pins. "Because we're going to need your investigative skills to track this thing properly."
"My skills?"
"You found patterns we missed for decades. You connected dots we couldn't see because we were too close to them." He spreads both maps side by side. "You want transparency? Here's all of it. Every disappearance, every sighting, every failed attempt to track this thing down."
I move closer to study the evidence, my fear settling into something manageable—present but not controlling.
"What do you need me to do?"
The radio crackles again, and I catch fragments of conversation—patrol routes, safe houses, containment protocols. All spoken around me, about me, without me.
"Stop."
Caleb pauses mid-sentence, radio halfway to his mouth.
"I said stop." I stand, planting both hands on the desk between us. "You're doing it again."
"Doing what?"
"Managing me. Planning around me like I'm a problem to solve instead of a person who gets to make choices." I tap the map where his marks cluster near the forest edge. "This thing has been watching me since I arrived, and your solution is to tuck me away somewhere safe while you handle it?"
"Ellie, this isn't…"