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JENSEN

I follow the echo of Lainey’s voice through winding passages, the beam of my flashlight bouncing off wet stone walls as I move deeper into the cave system. The air grows colder with each step, carrying that metallic tang that seems stronger in the depths. My mind races with questions, with the impossibility of what I’ve heard. Lainey Wells, alive after three years in these caves. Not just alive, but singing—clear evidence of remaining humanity, in stark contrast to what Hank became so quickly.

The passage widens slightly, allowing me to move faster. Every instinct screams to hurry, to find Aubrey before something else does. Before Lainey—or whatever she’s become—finds her first. The guilt that’s been my constant companion for three years intensifies with each step. I should never have let them enter these caves. Should never have agreed to guide them in the first place. Should have searched harder, longer after they disappeared.

I round a corner and the passage opens abruptly into a chamber. My light catches movement—two figures facing each other in the center of the space. One of them I recognize immediately: Aubrey, her gun drawn, face set with determination. The other…

“Lainey,” I breathe, the name escaping me.

Both women turn at the sound of my voice. Aubrey’s face floods with relief, but it’s Lainey’s reaction that stops me cold. Her features—changed but still recognizably hers—shift through a rapid series of emotions: surprise, recognition, and something more complex I can’t immediately identify.

“Jensen McGraw,” she says, my name in her mouth sending a chill down my spine. Her voice is both familiar and strange, the timbre altered by whatever transformation she’s undergone. “You came back.”

I step forward cautiously, my light fully illuminating the scene. Lainey stands at Aubrey’s side, close but not touching, her posture somehow both protective and predatory at once. The changes in her are immediately apparent—the unnatural paleness of her skin, the blue cast to her eyes, the subtly altered proportions of her face and limbs. But unlike Hank or Red, she’s still recognizably the person I remember.

“Never stopped blaming myself,” I manage to get out. “Lainey, I’m so sorry. I should have?—”

“Don’t,” she interrupts, raising a hand that ends in slightly too-long fingers, nails curving into points. “You couldn’t have known.”

Aubrey moves toward me, bridging the distance between us. Her hand finds mine, squeezing briefly before releasing, the simple human contact grounding me in this surreal moment.

“She’s been fighting it, Jensen,” Aubrey says, her voice low and urgent, her eyes full of hope. “The transformation. She can control it, at least sometimes. Just like Nathaniel. It’s because of the McAlister blood. Because they are the originals.”

I study Lainey, trying to reconcile the woman before me with the desperate hiker I’d guided three years ago, with the nightmarish creatures we’ve encountered since entering these mountains. The hungry ones move with a feral, jerking quality, all humanity burned away by their transformation. Lainey stands differently—still too graceful, too still at times, but with a consciousness behind her eyes that the others had lost completely.

“How?” I ask simply.

“Not easily,” Lainey answers, a ghost of a smile touching her lips to reveal teeth slightly too sharp. “I remain in control most of the time.”

“Most of the time,” I echo, unease coiling in my gut despite the miracle of finding her alive. “What about the rest of the time?”

Something flickers across her face—shame, perhaps, or guilt. “I lose control,” she admits softly. “The hunger takes over. I wake up later with no memory of what I’ve done, who I’ve…” She trails off, unable to complete the thought.

A sound echoes from one of the passages leading into the chamber—a low, guttural call that raises the hair on my arms. Lainey freezes, head tilting like an animal scenting danger.

“They’re coming,” she says, her voice dropping to a whisper. “Adam. The others. We need to move.”

“Which way?” I ask, surveying the chamber’s multiple exits with growing alarm.

Lainey moves to a narrow fissure partially hidden behind a stone formation. “Through here. It leads to a passage that goes to the surface.”

I hesitate, years of mountain survival instincts warring with the need to trust our only apparent ally in this nightmare. Lainey notices my reluctance, her transformed eyes narrowing slightly.

“You don’t trust me,” she states, no question in her tone.

“I want to,” I reply honestly. “But you just admitted you can’t always control the hunger. That sometimes it takes over completely.”

“Jensen,” Aubrey says sharply, stepping between us. “She’s my sister. She’s helping us.”

“She’s also one of them ,” I counter, keeping my voice low but firm. “The same creatures that tore Cole apart, that would have killed us at the cabin if we hadn’t escaped. I’m not saying she’s lying about wanting to help—I’m saying she might not be able to control whether she helps or hurts us.”

Lainey watches this exchange with an unsettling stillness, neither defending herself nor denying my concerns. When she finally speaks, her voice carries a resignation that’s somehow more disturbing than anger would have been.

“He’s right,” she says to Aubrey. “I am dangerous. Unpredictable. The hunger could take over at any moment, and if it does while I’m with you…” She shakes her head. “It takes so much energy and strength to keep it at bay. But right now, I’m still me. And right now, I’m your only chance of getting out of these caves alive.”

Another call echoes through the chamber, closer now, followed by another from a different direction. Then another. A cold realization settles in my gut.

“They’re surrounding us,” I say, scanning the passages with mounting dread. “Coming from multiple directions.”

Lainey nods grimly. “Adam’s coordinating them. He knows these caves as well as I do now, knows exactly how to cut off every escape route. We need to move. Now.”

The urgency in her voice decides me. Whatever risks Lainey poses, the hungry ones closing in around us present a more immediate threat. At least Lainey can be reasoned with, and there is only one of her, if push comes to shove.

Sure fucking hope it doesn’t.

I gesture toward the fissure she indicated earlier. “Lead the way.”

Relief flashes across her face, quickly masked by determination. She slips into the narrow opening with ease and Aubrey follows immediately, no hesitation in her trust of her sister.

Axe at my side, I squeeze into the fissure just as a guttural snarl echoes from the chamber behind me. The space is tight, forcing me to turn sideways at points, my broader frame making progress more difficult than it is for the women. Ahead, I can hear their movements, Lainey’s voice offering quiet directions to Aubrey.

“Watch your head here…step down carefully…just a little further…”

The passage opens abruptly into a narrow but traversable tunnel, allowing me to move more freely. I catch up to find Aubrey and Lainey waiting, their flashlight beams creating overlapping pools of light in the darkness.

“How far to the surface?” I ask, falling into step beside Aubrey, axe in one hand, rifle in the other. “Cuz I think we have company.”

“Not far,” Lainey says over her shoulder. “But the way isn’t easy. There’s a vertical section we’ll need to climb, and after that, a water passage.”

“Water passage?” Aubrey questions.

“Part of the cave floods seasonally, especially when it snows,” Lainey explains. “Creates a natural barrier the hungry ones avoid—they don’t like water, especially moving water. We’ll have to swim a short distance, but it leads directly to a hidden exit on the eastern slope.”

The tunnel begins to angle upward, the path becoming steeper, the ground beneath our feet transitioning from smooth stone to rough, broken rock that shifts treacherously with each step. Progress slows as we pick our way carefully upward, using hands as well as feet to navigate the increasingly vertical terrain.

“How many of them are there?” I ask, the question that’s been nagging at me since we saw the settlement area.

Lainey’s pace falters slightly, her silence stretching long enough to become concerning. “More than you think,” she finally says. “The transformation has been happening in these mountains for generations, not just since the Donner Party. Some of the oldest hungry ones have been here for several centuries.”

The implication chills my blood. How many missing hikers and pioneers and natives, how many unsolved disappearances over decades, might be attributed to these creatures? How many people have been slowly added to their ranks, transformed by the hunger that spreads through bite and blood?

“Here,” Lainey announces, stopping at what appears to be a solid wall. But as she directs her light upward, I see it—a vertical shaft rising straight up into darkness, barely wide enough for a person to shimmy through. “We climb from here. The water passage is at the top.”

I study the shaft dubiously. “How far up?”

“About thirty feet,” she says. “There are natural handholds, but they’re not obvious. Follow exactly where I go.”

Without waiting for a response, she begins to climb, moving with that unnatural agility that speaks to her partial transformation. Her hands and feet find invisible purchases in the stone, her body seeming to flow upward rather than climb.

Aubrey looks at me, her expression a mixture of determination and fear. “After you,” she says.

I shake my head. “You go. I’ll follow, spot you in case you slip.”

“Alright, but that’s not happening.”

She turns to the wall and begins to climb, following the route Lainey established. Her movements are less fluid but competent. It’s obvious she’s climbed a lot, and while I don’t know a lot about FBI training, my mind is having flashbacks to Clarice Starling at the beginning of the Silence of the Lambs . I make a note to ask her realistic that was, see if that movie inspired her to join the FBI.

If we get out of here.

I wait until she’s made it about ten feet up before I start my own ascent, keeping close enough to catch her, if necessary, but not so close as to crowd her. The climb is challenging but manageable, the stone offering more handholds than were immediately apparent.

From somewhere below and behind us, a screech echoes through the tunnel—the hungry ones, finding our trail. The sound reverberates off the stone walls, seemingly coming from everywhere at once.

“Hurry,” Lainey calls from above, her voice tight with urgency.

We increase our pace, fingers scraping against rock, muscles burning with the effort of the vertical climb. I can hear Aubrey’s labored breathing above me, see the trembling in her arms as fatigue sets in. She might be well-trained, but this is a lot in the best of circumstances.

“Almost there,” I encourage her, though I can’t see the top myself, trusting Lainey’s assessment of the distance.

Another screech sounds from below, closer now, followed by scratching sounds—claws on stone, the hungry ones beginning their pursuit up the shaft.

“They’re coming up after us,” I call, glancing down to see movement in the darkness below—pale shapes flowing up the wall with terrifying speed, far faster than our human climbing pace.

“Here!” Lainey’s voice comes from above, followed by the sound of splashing. “I’ve reached the water passage. Aubrey, keep coming, you’re almost there.”

I look up to see Aubrey disappearing over the edge at the top of the shaft. Relief floods through me, giving fresh strength to my tired muscles. Just a few more feet. Just a little further.

The closest of the hungry ones is gaining rapidly, its movements unnaturally quick and sure on the vertical surface. I can hear its breathing now, harsh and hungry, see the flash of blue eyes reflecting in the dim light.

I reach the top, pulling myself over the edge onto a narrow ledge where a pool of dark water stretches away into darkness. Aubrey and Lainey wait at the edge, their faces tense with concern.

“They’re right behind me,” I gasp, scrambling to my feet.

“Into the water,” Lainey urges, already wading in. “It’s not deep at first, but it drops off quickly. The current is strong—let it carry you. Don’t fight it.”

Aubrey follows without hesitation, trusting her sister implicitly. I pause only long enough to see the first of the hungry ones emerge from the shaft—a creature that might once have been a man, now transformed into something monstrous, its blue eyes fixed on me with single-minded hunger.

I turn and plunge into the water, the cold a physical shock that steals my breath. The current catches me immediately, dragging me away from the ledge, away from the hungry ones, but also away from my only source of light as my flashlight flickers and dies in the water.

Darkness swallows me completely as the underground river pulls me deeper into the mountain’s heart, Aubrey and Lainey somewhere ahead in the blackness, the hungry ones left behind—for now.

But in these caves, I’m learning that nothing stays behind for long. And not all dangers come from obvious enemies. As the water carries me through the darkness, I wonder which poses the greater threat—Adam and his pack of hungry ones, or Lainey herself, caught between humanity and hunger, able to help us or harm us with no warning of which it might be.

Either way, we’re committed now.

The current gives us no choice but forward, into whatever waits ahead.