MothAkai: The Western board is lagging like a drunk snail.
MothAkai: Please fix it before everyone logs on tonight to thirst post about spring hormones.
Behind his text, another pings from Ozark in the admin channel.
Howl4U [admin]: Getting 504s on event sign-up page.
Howl4U [admin]: Is this a sign?
Howl4U [admin]: Like an omen sign?
Howl4U [admin]: Because I do NOT have the energy for another cursed Solstice.
I close my eyes and let my head thunk softly against the tree trunk. Of course it’s the Yellowstone node. It always is. Too much geothermal interference, too much demand, too many monsters trying to stream human dramas and live-blog their crushes at the same time.
Another buzz follows.
SYSTEM: Automated restart FAILED. Manual intervention required.
“Fern forbid,” I mutter.
If I don’t handle this, half the US cryptid population is going to descend into chaos before lunch. The last time we had a significant outage, three thunderbirds started a rumor that the Network had been discovered by humans, two chupacabras tried to “liberate” a server from an actual data center, and someone in New Jersey accidentally took down the power grid for a block trying to “piggyback” on a transformer.
I look back at Elias.
He’s sitting cross-legged on the rock now, notebook open on his knee, pen flying across the page. The wind ruffles his hair. His nose is pink with cold. He’s talking quietly as he writes, some rambling commentary about soil moisture patterns and snowpack anomalies and how he will “absolutely cry” if his north slope station is gone.
I want to stay.
I want to watch him pack up and move on, see how he reacts when he finds the microclimate station I braced with extra stones last fall. I want to count how many times he trips, how many times he laughs, how many times he talks to himself like the forest is listening.
But the phone buzzes again, insistent.
Duty snarls with desire, and duty wins. It always does. That’s the curse of being in charge of things: You don’t get to ignore the alarms.
I take one more long look at him. “This is your fault,” I tell him quietly, even though he’ll never hear it. “You’re the one who made me weird about humans.”
He tips his head back, eyes closed, face turned to the sun like he’s soaking it in. For a heartbeat, I let myself imagine he’s sensing me. That some part of him knows he’s not alone. Then I turn away.
The forest closes around me as I slip back into deeper shade, feet moving faster now, mind already flipping throughthe mental map of our server relays and hidden access points. There’s a maintenance node two ridges over, nested under an old root system where we run part of the fiber through protected ground.
I’ll reroute traffic. Kick the Yellowstone node remotely. Talk Akai down from whatever dramatic ledge he’s on. Remind Rex, the Ozark Howler, that not every glitch is a conspiracy. Again.
Behind me, Elias hums to himself and starts packing up his gear, unaware that his quiet human trek has just been rudely interrupted in my head by monster-scale tech support.
“The Network isn’t going to fix itself,” I grumble, thumbing over to the admin console.
The screen lights my face as I vanish deeper into the shadows, leaving one very oblivious human alone on the ridge.
I tell myself I’ll come back before the sun sets. Just to ensure he doesn’t twist an ankle on the descent.
Purely practical.
Absolutely nothing else.
CHAPTER FOUR
ELIAS