Page 18 of The Mountain Man's Curvy Trick-or-Treat

EVERETT

The world hums differently now.

I wake on the forest floor beneath Mother Tree, the scent of scorched metal and damp soil thick in the air. My regulator has gone silent—dead or hiding, I can’t tell which.

The quiet isn’t peace. It’s pressure. Without the regulator, every cell in me hums too loud, light bleeding through cracks I can’t seal. My skin flickers when I breathe, my pulse throwing sparks beneath it.

But above the chaos, I feel the echo of her.Eden.Her resonance still trembles through my chest like a heartbeat that isn’t mine.

I carried her home before dawn, guided by the hum of her pulse, the soft flicker of her dreams. Left her safe in the warmth of her dwelling—human walls too fragile to understand what they’re sheltering.

Then I came back here, to the only place that felt remotely alive. The tree steadies me, dampens the static screaming through my system. Without it, I might have lost control entirely.

This is grief. I’ve studied the term, seen the human expressions for it—but I never understood the weight until now. It’s heavier than gravity, quieter than death.

If the regulator failed, Command already knows. A null signal this strong will ripple through the network, and the trackers will come to investigate.

Not for me—they can’t risk killing one of their own without sanction—but forher.The human whose frequency broke protocol, logic, and maybe the very code that binds our species.

I touch the soil where her light last pulsed, the dirt still warm. The tree answers, roots shifting faintly beneath my hand, humming a frequency I can’t translate. Maybe warning. Maybe promise.

I rise, call the cloak around me. It resists, threads of light snagging under my skin like static. The regulator used to smooth the shift; now the frequencies scrape raw, leaving afterimages in the air.

It isn’t invisibility, not really—just a controlled collapse of photons and frequency, the air bending to mask my signature. Without the regulator, I feel my way through it like muscle memory I never earned.

“If they’re already coming,” I whisper, “then they’ll find nothing but ghosts.”

I move through the trees until I reach the clearing where my comm-cradle lies half-buried under moss and leaves. The larger relay tower is dead, its core dark and unresponsive. But the cradle’s pulse still flickers, a heartbeat so faint it could be mistaken for memory.

When the regulator failed, every construct linked to me should have gone dark.

Yet a single frequency still circles above the canopy, ragged and searching.

Rook.

My first. My command unit. The alpha among the swarm.

The one they sent to finish me.

I kneel beside the cradle and open a manual port, rerouting the signal through Mother Tree’s residual harmonics. The field hums, ancient and aware, the air trembling as the recall ping goes out.

At first, there’s nothing. Then the forest shifts—branches whispering, shadows strobing. A cloud of faint lights swirls overhead, dozens of insectile drones descending in eerie synchrony, their wings chiming like crystal rain.

When the swarm descends, the strain hits like voltage. The failed regulator stutters, trying to firewall the incoming frequencies, and pain sears through my skull. I keep my posture steady, but light leaks from my palms—betrayal in every photon.

Rook drops last. His wings shimmer silver-violet, his lens trained on me. The targeting reticle dilates, searching for confirmation.

“Everett of Sentinel Unit Nine,” he intones through the comm layer. “Directive: terminate compromised host. Authorization confirmed.”

Static claws at my skull. Command’s voice hides behind his, a thousand-mile echo.

I brace myself. “Do it, then.”

Rook hesitates. The lens narrows, flickers.

“Directive conflict detected,” he says softly. “Primary target emits familiar frequency. Secondary parameter: preserve core architect.”

Something in that last phrase shatters the cold within me.