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229zmi · 8 months

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MISSION: ACCOMPLISHED

PAIRING: Nagi Seishirō/Reader

CONTENT: holding hands, references to kissing but Does Not actually happen, mikage reo

WORD COUNT: 1.7k

The night of Halloween finds a group of three in your room, underneath the dim glow of your ceiling light.

In one corner, Reo hogs the space in front of your full-length mirror, almost nose-to-nose with his own reflection as he prods at the plastic fangs in his mouth, unsatisfied with how they fit across his teeth like a shoe three sizes too big. His eyebrows look as if they’ve been filled in with black marker by a child learning to colour inside the lines for the first time, and the splotchy white facepaint all across his skin isn’t making things any better.

Despite whatever intentions he may have of impressing people tonight with his DIY costume, you think he looks more unhinged than anything else. More of a jumpscare than a sight to behold, and more clown than vampire, as far as you’re concerned. You whisper your opinions to Nagi, and with a noncommittal nod, he agrees.

Speaking of Nagi, there he is: sprawled on top of your bed, stomach facing down. His head is in his arms, although once in a while, curiosity drives him to peek over his forearms and glance in your general direction, where you’re sitting cross-legged on the floor. With your posture mimicking that of a desk lamp, there’s an expression of concentration on your face that Nagi finds endearing, even though he doesn’t understand why you’re putting so much effort into vandalising a Halloween costume that’s not even yours.

Because in your eyes, simply draping a white sheet of fabric over his head could hardly be considered a costume, so you’ve taken it upon yourself to fix it up a bit with some dry erase marker, drawing in some distorted ovals for eyes and a mouth to make it look a little less… last-minute.

“I’m done,” you declare at the same time Reo does, your purple-haired friend finally turning away from the mirror for the first time in almost two hours. He looks proud of himself.

“How do I look?” Reo wiggles his eyebrows, gaze flitting between his two friends for a response. However, it’s by mere coincidence that Nagi expects you to be the one to respond on the behalf of you two just as you expect him to do the same, so you end up looking off to the side while Nagi shuts his eyes, the both of you purposefully avoiding eye contact with Reo and waiting for the other to say something.

After an agonisingly long minute of silence, you realise what’s going on and internally let out a dramatic groan.

“Reo,” you say finally, “what are you supposed to be?”

Reo frowns, pointing to his fangs. “Can’t you see? And I told you already. I’m a vampire, duh.” He holds his hands up, mimicking claws for some reason. “Rawr, or whatever.”

“Vampires don’t rawr, what the fuck is wrong with you.”

“Then what do they do? Huh? If you’re so genius.”

You grab a pillow from underneath Nagi’s arms, whose face contorts into a frown but he doesn’t say anything else when you proceed to fling it at Reo. You’re aware that him being an athlete sort of comes with quick reflexes and that he’s just allowing you the satisfaction when he lets the pillow hit his face and fall to his lap, but you’d rather believe you caught him off guard this time around.

“I don’t think vampires do that,” Reo says.

With all of your heart, you hope he somehow contracts an allergic reaction from the facepaint he’s using. And his hair falls out from the gallons of gel in it.

Turning to Nagi, you toss the costume over his head.

“What d’ya think?”

“It’s creative,” Nagi comments, with the white fabric obscuring his view. You’ve also taken the artistic liberty of cutting small eye holes into the sheet (with his permission, of course) for him to see out, but he doesn’t bother trying to readjust it, leaving the ghost’s eyes near the top of his head and the mouth somewhere by his left ear.

“Looks great. You really did a lot for his costume,” Reo adds, snickering from the far corner of the room before turning back to the mirror with a pout as he picks at the facepaint, which is now starting to flake off like dandruff. His eyebrows still don’t quite look right.

You shake your head, then scooch closer to the side of your bed. “Sei, you’re supposed to— the black eyes go, you know, where your eyes are. There’s holes so you can see.”

“So much effort just to put my Halloween costume on…” Nagi sighs, and then instead of moving the sheet of fabric around like any sane person would, he uses his arms to lift it up, stopping just above his eyebrows. A pair of ashen eyes centre on you, still sitting cross-legged on the floor as he suddenly drops his hands, letting the fabric drape over your head and shoulders. “Done. I can see now.”

Fighting back an eye roll, you tell him firmly, “No, you cannot.”

“I can see you just fine.”

“Yeah, only me.”

“I’m okay with that.”

You avert eye contact, ignoring the way your face feels tingly with his breath fanning across your skin. “You won’t be okay when you bump into a street lamp or something while trick-or-treating.”

“Hmm…” His expression twists into one of full concentration. Lazily, he grabs another pillow and manoeuvres it so that the side of his face can rest atop it, gazing down at you. “Then you can be my eyes.”

You blink, perplexed by what he means. “Huh.”

“I’ll hold onto your hand, and you can guide me so I don’t bump into or trip over anything,” Nagi suggests, nonchalant as per usual.

“That is—“ You clear your throat, swallowing thickly. You tell yourself: this is normal. Nothing special or unusual or cryptic. There are no other implications behind his words. Do not overthink. (You’re so overthinking it.) “That’s a lot more effort than if you just wear the costume right.”

“Maybe he just wants to hold your hand,” a voice speaks out loud your thoughts, though it sounds less like your subconscious and more like a certain friend— shit, you’ve forgotten that Reo is still in the room. With ears to hear your conversation and eyes to see… “I really hope you two aren’t kissing in there because that’d be real awkward. You could at least have some decency to tell me to leave.”

Upon the realisation that you and Nagi’s current situation could come off as something it’s totally not, you jump away immediately, pulling the sheet off and chucking it away from the both of you as far as you can.

“We were not doing that— shut up,” you splutter. Glowering at him, you latch onto the pillow beneath the Nagi’s head in preparation to throw it at him once again.

“Oh, so you were kissing,” Reo muses with a grin. “You’re all breathless and shit. And Nagi looks like someone just spray-painted his face pink.”

Before you can say anything, Nagi slightly lifts his head off the pillow, and you take that as your signal to hurl it at Reo’s face.

Unfortunately, with some notable prediction and athletic skills, he catches it with one hand. He flashes a smug smile, one that you think will haunt your nightmares for as long as you live, fucked up eyebrows and all.

“Get out.”

“Fine! Fine. I see how it is.” Reo throw his hands up in mock-exasperation, but the way he agrees so easily has you wondering what he’s actually planning. You don’t have to wait long, however, before he reveals it himself:

“Have fun, you two,” he bids by way of a farewell, emphasising the ‘fun’ part by making kissy noises at the air and wrapping his arms around himself to create the illusion of a passionate make-out session as he walks out. The door slams behind him, the loud before the silence that follows after.

You don’t want to look at Nagi. You’re too embarrassed to even move in his vicinity.

“Hey.” You feel a poke in the middle of your shoulder blade. “If Reo’s gone, does that mean we won’t have to go trick-or-treating?”

Considering how Reo, out of the three of you, was the one who wanted to go trick-or-treating the most, you don’t really have an opinion on the matter. Plus, you hadn’t spent that much time on your costume, and neither had Nagi, clearly. “I don’t care either way.”

“Then let’s just stay in and watch a horror movie.” With a satisfied hum, he rolls over onto his back, rummaging with one hand for your laptop that you keep stowed away in one of the drawers of your bedside table.

“It’s in the middle drawer.”

“Thanks.”

After gathering the pillows that you’d thrown at Reo off the floor and placing them back on your bed, you hop into the empty spot right beside him.

A couple minutes into the movie, Nagi speaks up.

“You can hold my hand if you’re scared, by the way.”

You freeze, turning to look at him, but by then, he’s already returned his focus to the screen. This is normal, you try to convince yourself again. He’s just silly like that, it doesn’t mean anything. Figures you find yourself focusing on him more than the actual movie.

(At some point during the movie, a cheap yet convincing enough jumpscare pops up across the screen, and subconsciously, your hand interlocks with his. Nagi’s heart almost drops to his ass, but he thinks nonetheless: mission accomplished.)

[BONUS]

Mikage Reo:

hey you

are you holding [y/n]’s hand yet

i swear if you aren’t… i went trick or treating ALL BY MYSELF just for you two

do you know how #Lame i look dressed in a vampire costume towering over all the other little kids in front of somebody’s house like. Trick or Treat! ^_^

one of the parents asked me if i was too old to be trick or treating. i cried.

and then one of the kids asked me if i was too old to be doing that too T_T

nagi seishirō:

yeah

Mikage Reo:

yeah what

yeah about holding hands or about knowing how lame i look

HELLO?????

read

#i know trick or treating isnt rlly a thing in japan but. i do Not care #this was so fun to write #nagi x reader #nagi seishiro x reader #nagi x you #nagi x y/n #blue lock x gender neutral reader #blue lock fluff #nagi fluff #blue lock x reader #blue lock x you #229ZMI

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rapturesbest · 8 months

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Fort Frolic is becoming more and more popular the longer the games are out, much to my thill, as this means people are looking more and more into the muses, the Disciples, the quartet. Which is delightful. I have seen a lot of posts ranging from early 2015 blogs and art pieces as well as forums to modern, recent takes and character dives.

Of course, fandom is a space in which to explore and grow our own thoughts and theories. Some of the posts I have seen are certainly… choices. I have been putting off a brief character study of the muses until my wife and I have finished editing and splicing together our complete comprehensive history of the Disciples.

I have been working on breathing life into these characters for years now. Pulling from every media as well as looking into any rabbithole I could.

The reason behind this post is not to claim others work and ideas as incorrect but instead is to bring my findings to light. Share with you what is one of my two life’s works.

A brief character study of Kyle Fitzpatrick

Oh where to begin with my beloved boy. His canon appearances are so short lived. With three canonical lines I all but built him from the ground up. He is mentioned during DLC Burial at Sea 1 with no voice lines BUT that does give us where he was on New Years Eve, which I will talk about later in this post. He is not mentioned at all in Rapture by John Shirley. But this doesn’t mean that we don’t have clues and context for him as a character.

Let’s start with his name, Kyle Fitzpatrick.

Kyle is a Scottish-Gaelic name and FItzpatrick is an Irish surname. Coincidence right? No. Based purely on his name we can place his origin in either Ireland or Scotland, which comes into play when we dive further into his place within Rapture’s society.

Now I know what you’re thinking, “Oh but he doesn’t have an accent! In his voice lines he doesn’t have an accent.” and you’re right. He doesn’t. Let’s talk about that.

Kyle was employed by Sander Cohen, we know that as a hard fact. We also know as a hard fact that Sander Cohen was heavily on the side of Andrew Ryan when it came to the Ryan vs Fontaine bias. After the Death of Frank Fontaine who rose up in his place to challenge Andrew Ryan? Atlas. Atlas is a working class Irishman. Now, don’t you think it’s rather unseemly to have someone who is in the inner circle of Ryan supporters having a similar accent to his biggest adversary?

Of course, the scottish-gaelic accent is actually quite different from Fontaine’s accent as Atlas, but we also know for a Hard Fact that there is still racism within Rapture. Therefore by piecing together the racism as well as Cohen’s connection to Ryan we can deduce that Fitzpatrick was trained to cover his natural accent to keep up appearances within Fort Frolic and Rapture as a whole.

Next, Let’s talk about his age. We know Cohen referred to him as “Young Fitzpatrick.” I have seen a million and a half headcanons and ideas on how young “young” is. For this I’m pulling from the book, Rapture, with Martin’s POV. While the Rapture book is not considered Canon, it played a very important part in my construction of Kyle. We know from that that Cohen and by proxy, his disciples, are not only privy but are actively involved in a lot of skeezy, under the table, unorthodox practices and circles. Why does this matter? Because it feeds directly into Kyle Fitzpatrick’s age. In my construction of Kyle I placed him very firmly at the age of 21 when he died. So young right? Yeah I agree, but I have several reasons behind this. The first being that I do not believe that his prefrontal cortex is completely matured; I will touch back on this later. It’s not unknown that I am an avid fan of BaS and I really liked Elizabeth’s line of “This city values children. Not childhood.”

Kyle is the youngest of the muses. Being 17 at the time of Cohen scouting him, 18 when he was made an official disciple and 21 at the time of his death. I’d like to explain my reasoning behind the gap between him being scouted and him being debuted as a proper disciple. We know for another Hard Fact that all four of Cohen’s disciples (as well as others) had a physical, sexual relationship with their employer. Martin mentions it, Silas mentions it. Hector’s audio diary mentions it. Kyle was not excluded from this though I think he was not actively sought after by Cohen as much as other muses were. Cohen is smart, very smart, he knew that bringing on someone under the age of consent would not go over well with Ryan nor a number of the other key players within the social hierarchy. Kyle was groomed for the months leading up to his official debut. Which we know many went through but only 4 have managed to pass. I can go into further detail into his test. But I will spare you the details. He was pushed into the spotlight the second he turned 18 in 1956.

Let’s talk about why he was so young. Kyle is nothing less than a musical protege. He is incredibly talented, especially at such a young age. He is *young* he is not *stupid*. I’ve read a lot of people saying that they think that he’s naive or trusting and I’d like to counter that by saying that he’s impressionable, not naive. Cohen chose him because he knew he could mold him into something special. Which he did. Kyle is brilliant. But don’t think for one second he was stupid. He had three people constantly telling him that he was being manipulated by Cohen, by his Sponsor, by several players in Rapture. But he *chose* to ignore them.

Let’s break that down. Kyle was a victim of love bombing and near constant manipulation from almost everyone around him. I plan on doing an indepth dive into the mental illness within Rapture and the effects it had on those within the city.

Kyle was pulled in two separate directions. After working extensively on fitting him into the world created by 2K as well as John Shirely I chose to have his Sponsor be no one less than Frank Fontaine.

I do have a reason behind this. We know from all media types that Fontaine is an opportunist. Ryan always kept him at a distance. Never really trusting him. Not allowing him into the proper inner circle of Rapture like some of the other businessmen. I think especially in 1956, once things were properly starting to get heated, Fontaine would have looked for a way to worm his way into the inner social circle. He had a lot of people on his payroll, this we know for another fact. But how far did that really spread?

In order to explain the next part of Kyle’s backstory I have to derail to talk about Frank Fontaine. I can cite several occasions where Frank Fontaine openly or internally admits to blackmail, manipulation, sexual favors and paying off several people within Rapture in order to get ahead or get his way.

We know for a solid FACT that he had someone in nearly every part of Rapture with the exception of Fort Frolic. I always found that interesting. Why would the person with his hands in nearly every part of Rapture not be actively seeking out someone within the gossip hub of Rapture.

Unless he did.

I pride myself on fitting my work into being completely canon compliant. Fitting Kyle into the greater canon of Rapture was… difficult. I had to play fast and loose with a lot, backbending and jumping through hoops in order to bring such an insignificant character.

Kyle was young, this we know. Impressionable. I believe that Frank Fontaine saw him as someone he could easily get information out of.

Another solid fact we know is that Cohen didn’t care much for Fontaine or later Atlas. But Sander Cohen is a connoisseur of the arts. He can appreciate people with money, especially when it comes to funding his projects. Fontaine being interested in sponsoring his youngest disciple would have been too tempting a lure to ignore and so Kyle’s ties to Fontaine began.

Let’s dive into the manipulation and abuse within Fort Frolic and Rapture as a whole. Yummy, right? I see again and again people claiming that Kyle was stupid or that he loved Sander Cohen and I firmly stand against these claims. Kyle is young but he’s not blind. Do I think Kyle was once infatuated by Cohen? Yes. He was. Especially for a kid who came from a rocky background. But I think many people forget that Martin had been with Cohen from day one, working for him topside before he joined him in Rapture. Kyle had access and very close relationships with people who had been around Cohen for a lot longer than he had been. But knowledge and outside perspective doesn’t always protect someone from gaslighting, manipulation and abuse. I think that the dynamic between the key players was… difficult. A lot happened out of the public eye, within Fort Frolic, within the Disciples relationships and most certainly the interlocking dynamics between sponsors and their subtle or active gathering of information.

I’m about to step out of my semi-formal setting to get down and dirty real quick. I know y’all Sander Cohen kinnies gonna hate me for this one but that man is absolutely an abuser. We know this. He’s a sadist. And while I *love* that for him, he absolutely took out his artistic (or personal) rage on his disciples. There is a lot of room for disdain between disciple and artist. The prime written example of this is Martin considering just fucking killing Cohen when he first started to splice in 1956. The next example I’m going to pull is from the game with Hector Rodriguez. He says, and I quote, “the things that man made me do”. Which I always found interesting, saying as until the closure of Fort Frolic on New Years, they had *every* opportunity to leave all together. Of course, I could go into heavy detail into why each of the muses stayed but I will spare you. I’m here to talk about Kyle. Why did Kyle stay?

By 1958 Kyle was very firmly rooted within the upper class of Rapture. He was renowned as a musical genius as well as held a lot of social power from his dealings with Fort Frolic as one of Cohen’s Disciples as well as his ties to the essentially untouchable Empire that Frank Fontaine had created.

He was 19 years old and was untouchable by consequences for his actions. If Cohen didn’t bail him out of sticky situations, Fontaine would. Their dynamic is extremely interesting to me and I’d love to really get into the meat of it, but again, I will spare you in this short dissertation. Kyle was feeding Fontaine information he got while in Ryan’s social circles and he was well paid for it. It was an investment, of course, but Kyle gave him valuable information on Andrew Ryan and the inner workings of Fort Frolic as well as started giving him the seeds of ideas for Atlas. Though that’s another rabbithole for another day.

Kyle was very dangerously intertwined with Fontaine, which did not go unnoticed by Ryan nor his associates. After the ‘death’ of Frank Fontaine, anyone who had any ties to him were detained and questioned extensively. Kyle being one of them. But again, a story for another day.

Kyle was young and impressionable, as I have stated before. But he was also constantly being manipulated, gaslit and abused by those who saw him as an asset rather than a person. They took advantage of his love and lust for life. Kyle was burned out in record time but that does not mean that he wasn’t an absolutely awful person. He was a teenager given an outrageous amount of power. He was making extremely questionable decisions and was facing very few consequences for his actions.

I am not defending him as a good person. Anyone who enjoys Bioshock knows that these characters are extremely flawed and that is what makes them so fucking interesting.

I can go on and on about how everyone in Rapture was a simple pawn in a bigger game in a city that was destined to fail, but that’s the beauty of Bioshock.

Kyle Fitzpatrick was not a good person but he was the PRIME example of what Rapture was made for. He was a kid who came from a backwater town in Ireland who clawed, bit and fucked his way to the top. He loved too much and it was taken advantage of, brutally. Do I think that love extended to Sander Cohen? No. Kyle recognized him as a genius, albeit an outdated one, but he did not love him. Not like he loved his fellow Disciples or his work. Cohen was a security blanket for his debauchery, he signed paychecks and Kyle was willing to entertain him until New Years.

It is my belief that it was Kyle’s plan to bail from Fort Frolic after the Civil War started. He was in too deep with Atlas and Ryan knew it. His choices had landed him directly in the spotlight. Secrets were exposed and Kyle was brutally punished for it until his death in 1960.

I plan on posting a complete comprehensive history of him as well as the other Disciples.

TLDR:// Kyle Fitzpatrick is a dirty little bastard man who’s age is being confused for him being naive or stupid. He doesn’t really love Sander Cohen and he got exactly what was coming for him.

#bioshock #rapture #fort frolic #kyle fitzpatrick #fort frolic radio

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quaranmine · 7 months

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The Incandescence of a Dying Light (Chapter Ten)

Grian finds something.

Chapter Ten: 8,359 words

<< Chapter Nine | Masterpost | Chapter Eleven >>

Hi! I finished this a few weeks ago but sat on it for a while so I could write ahead and reference it. I meant to have art ready for this chapter, but it never materialized so I'm posting it without. I'd rather have the writing done than the art. If I do art later I will add it, both to this post and the masterpost.

No CW for this chapter. A lot happens though! :D

February 2, 1989

Grian is not the sort of person to say he believes in fate—this idea that something is meant to happen, or that all roads taken converge on the same location, or that a random coincidence is a sign of something more. He’s not even trying to be a cynic. He just doesn’t think the patterns exist.

Sometimes, though, things do work out like that. Sometimes it’s hard to look at something and not see it for the bright, shining ball of sheer rightness that it is. It’s small, but it’s fate.

It’s meant to be.

He’s having a moment like that right now, in a very strange place for it. He’s standing on the kitchen tile in wool socks, holding today’s copy of the newspaper.

It’s freezing outside, both literally and figuratively. A cold front has moved in this week, bringing with it below 0 temperatures—and that’s Farhenheit, which Grian is still clumsily learning—as well as sleet and snow. The streets are slowly turning white with a thin layer of snow. Grian’s not sure if the temperatures right now are record-breaking or not, but they’re certainly colder than average. The kitchen faucet steadily drip-drips in the background, his effort to keep the pipes from freezing.

He still has work in the morning though, because of course he does.

Grian doesn’t always read the entire newspaper, but he gets a copy of The Denver Post every day anyway. For the past several months he’s been browsing through the want ads in the back. Does he want to quit his current job and get more peace of mind, or does he want to find a second job so that the bills are easier? It’s hard to say, but looking through the advertisements reminds him that there are other options out there. Maybe one day he’ll find something that will dig him out of the hole he’s currently in.

Well, this newspaper seems to be handing him a shovel.

It's the Forest Service logo that catches his eye, with its badge and pine tree in the center. They've taken out a relatively large ad in the bottom quarter of one of the sheets. It says:

Hiring NOW! Seasonal positions in the beautiful Rockies!

There's a list of positions available, along with the GS4 hourly pay rates. Trail crew, concessional employees, interpretative ranger, wildland firefighter, fire line digging, and fire lookout. None of them pay well, but it's all above the minimum wage at least.

And, well, the ad also says No experience necessary.

It's the last one that catches his eye. Fire lookout. He's not 100% what the job entails, but he remembers visiting one with Mumbo a few months after they arrived. Just an hour and a half from Denver, it was located in the Pike National Forest. They'd camped on a roadside spot that weekend and hiked a short trail up a mountain to see the lookout. Grian had been more interested in the view of Pikes Peak than anything else, though.

The ad lists the Pike National Forest as having seasonal positions open, as well as numerous other locations that Grian assumes are also in Colorado somewhere. He recognizes one as being in Montana. Those fade away in his mind though, because of what he notices next. It's like a beacon on the page.

Shoshone National Forest.

There's a plan starting to form in his mind. Is it a crazy one? Almost certainly, but the more he thinks about it the less it seems that way. He's all the way out here, and Mumbo is all the way out there. If he gets a job in the same National Forest, he can close that distance.

If he's there he can search. If he's there he can actually find Mumbo himself and bring him home.

Grian needs to stop relying on the Forest personnel and start relying on himself. He knows of no plans to restart the search in the spring. Right now in the winter, he couldn't even search if he wanted to—most of the roads in the Forest, save the main highway, are seasonally closed due to snow and ice.

Nobody's helping him anymore. Nobody cares anymore, but Grian does. He always does. Mumbo’s family cares too. He can't fix what went wrong for his family and he can't turn back time to go with Mumbo instead, but maybe he can do this.

Fire lookout also just seems like the least strenuous job listed. He certainly doesn't think he's cut out for any firefighting, at least. He also suspects it'll involve less interaction with other people than the others. He's not sure he can take other people anymore. The fire lookout he'd visited with Mumbo was a busy destination, but Grian already knows that the area Mumbo went missing in is nearly pure wilderness.

It's the perfect job. It's everything he needs handed to him in one convenient spot. It's almost like fate.

The ad states to send inquiries to an address listed in Lakewood, Colorado, which is in the Denver area. The first address line identifies this as their Region 2 office. Once they receive inquiries, they'll mail an application for him to fill out. There's also a phone number, with the same area code he has. He thinks that’s probably the fastest way to request an application, short of driving to their office himself.

Grian reaches for a notepad on the counter and starts copying the information down.

»»———-　　———-««

July 1989

Grian flees the Ranger’s station as fast as possible, bouncing down that 19 mile road to the Thorofare trail in record time. By the time he reaches it his teeth are nearly rattled out of his head, his backpack is strewn across the floorboard, and his hands are still shaking. When he throws the vehicle in park, he just sits there a minute, looking out the windshield at the trees beyond.

He’s not the only car in the parking lot this time, but it’s not a busy location by any means. The sun is warm and low in the sky, casting long tree shadows across the gravel.

The manila folder is in the passenger’s seat. Its contents have shifted throughout the journey, and some of the papers have started to slide out. Grian catches a glimpse of words printed on a page, and even that’s enough to cause his heart to stutter.

This is real. This is important.

He takes a deep breath, and then gathers the papers back into their folder neatly. He doesn’t look, not yet. He wants to, but he needs time to examine it. He needs to start back toward his lookout while there’s still enough light to do so. He’s all alone out here. Nobody followed him from the ranger’s station. But he’s still running, in a way.

Grian gathers his things, and starts back down the trail.

He remembers the first time he hiked this trail, heading toward his lookout for the first time. Last time, he’d nearly lost himself in the quiet repetition and the soft rustle of wind in the trees. This time, his mind races and his steps are fast. Last time, it felt like a beginning. This time, it feels like an ending.

Will this be the last time he hikes up here, he wonders? He might find himself getting an escort back to his car in the next few days. He’ll probably get fired after being caught stealing the documents. At minimum, he’s in trouble. But will any of it matter if he finds Mumbo? He’ll be gone anyway as soon as that happens. Maybe this will be the last time he hikes up here because it’s the last time he’ll ever need to.

The shadows continue to lengthen and the trail begins to get dark. The sun sets early in the mountains, and even earlier in the forests where the sky is blocked out. He has to start squinting to even make out the bumps and rocks in the trail so he doesn’t trip.

“I guess it’s time to stop for the night,” he says to himself. He knew he wouldn’t be able to get back to the lookout by the end of the day anyway. He’d just—he’d just wanted to be on the way home, separated from the chaos he left in his wake and in the relative peace of the forest. His car is a link to the outside world. The trail is just him and his thoughts. He had to put some miles behind him.

He sets up his tent in a flat clearing, and thinks about Mumbo doing the same last year. He fires up his camp stove and makes something to eat, and thinks about Mumbo doing the same. How many times has he done something out here in the exact way Mumbo has?

Total darkness falls quickly after that. Soon, the forest is a sea of black, and Grian’s moored only by the single orange light of his lantern. It flickers now and then, casting long shadows. The lighting reminds him of those quintessential campfire ghost stories. He’s solving one on his own right now.

It’s time to look at the folder. He can’t resist anymore.

The first thing at the top of the file is a paper with Mumbo’s face on it. His dark eyes stare blankly up at Grian’s, and for a moment Grian just stares back. The rest of the page just has information about the case written on it. It’s formatted like it could be a poster, but there’s too many details for public release. It’s a bit eerie, seeing this all written down again. The sheet lists when Mumbo was reported missing, his height, his weight, his age, his physical features, his vehicle, his planned route, the square miles searched, the search and rescue team involved, everything.

Grian sets it aside into the darkness, and keeps looking.

There’s that statement from another hiker who said they saw him on the trail. What were they doing on the closed trail, Grian wonders? Do they realize the way they ensured that everyone thought Mumbo stayed on that trail? It’s dated two days after Mumbo was reported missing.

There’s several copies of letters printed on official letterhead. The agency seal is at the top. The correspondence is from several offices. The District Ranger’s office in Wapiti. The Shoshone National Forest Supervisor’s Office in Cody. The Region 2 office in Lakewood, Colorado. The Law Enforcement and Investigations Branch in Washington, D.C.

Grian reads these, but they’re disappointingly dry and full of formal wording. There’s a request for assistance with the case sent to D.C., but everything else in these letters is just reporting. It’s the higher level version of the weather report Grian radios in every morning in his lookout—here’s the situation with the missing person, here’s the actions our office has taken, here’s the results.

Which are none. There are no results. Mumbo’s still gone.

Grian wonders if a person from the D.C. investigations office actually came out, or if Mumbo’s case wasn’t deemed important enough for that.

He flips through more pages. There’s a list of contact information for Mumbo. Grian’s name is first, along with their apartment’s address in Denver and their phone number. Mumbo’s parents are listed next, with their UK address. The page is typewritten but someone has written in pen next to their names to remember the seven hour time difference. Sweet of them.

He’s looking for a smoking gun, here in the flickering lantern light.

There has to be one. He knows he’s missing information, and the file is thorough, and there’s a reason they didn’t want to give him the file, so surely, surely, surely.

There’s correspondence with a search and rescue team that helped out. Grian remembers the matching patches on their jackets. They’d been a volunteer organization. There’s incident command reports in the file too. There’s also a copy of the police report Grian had filed and some correspondence between the Forest Service and the police. It was the Forest’s jurisdiction, in the end. They handled anything that happened on federal land.

There’s minutes and notes from meetings held about the case. There seems to be one from every morning of the search, like a sort of morning goals session. Grian reads over them with interest. They paint an interesting story; it’s a view from the other side. This is what the rangers and search and rescue and the police had thought about Mumbo’s odds. This is where they thought he might have gone, areas he might have hidden, areas he might have gotten hurt, so on. But there’s not a word about Cloud Lake being closed, or any indication of Pinnacles being on the radar at all.

Why? Aren’t these people professionals?

The maps are the most interesting part of the file. Grian pores over the page with care, mentally tracing every topo line. He’s got his own map in his backpack still, with him always. It’s very similar to the ones he’s looking at now, but these feel a bit more clinical. They’re put together by professionals who know the land better than him. The extent of the Mink Fire is also mapped, and for the first time Grian can really see how close it was to some of their search areas.

He’s…glad, almost, that Mumbo wasn’t around there after all when it was burning.

Eventually, Grian gets to the newer stuff. There’s a note written up of all the details the hikers gave when they reported the bike. It includes when they found it, where they found it, and in what condition. They didn’t see anything else nearby, and didn’t investigate much because the bike looked abandoned and not like someone had left it there recently.

There’s a memo that a phone call was made to the Investigations Branch again. There’s an authorization for an aerial search. There’s a note that Grian is to be contacted with updates when he is able to be reached, along with Mumbo’s parents.

Grian reads that, and everything else comes to a screeching halt.

Oh, god. Mumbo’s parents.

Grian hasn’t called them once all summer. He didn’t tell them about the bike. Some stranger told them about that instead. He hasn’t told them anything about what he’s learned. He sent them a note scribbled on the back of a postcard the day he left to start working at the lookout, and never looked back since.

What are they thinking right now? How are they holding up? He didn’t even reach out to them on the anniversary of Mumbo’s disappearance back in June. Are they worried about him? They shouldn’t be, they should worry about Mumbo instead, but he knows they’re worried about him anyway. Oh, god, he didn’t even call them.

He feels sick, but he forces himself to keep going through the folder. It doesn’t matter what Mumbo’s parents think. They’ll be fine if Grian finds their son.

Nestled into the newer materials is an older paper. It’s a copy of Mumbo’s backcountry permit, issued June 9, 1988. It has the dates for his trip, the campsites he reserved, and the price he paid for them.

Stapled to it are several more papers. Grian swallows, and flips through them.

There is an old memo about the Cloud Lake Trail being closed. For the first time, Grian sees more specifics than Scar could give. A rockslide had been triggered over the winter. It wasn’t reported until the spring, when someone first tried to hike the trail after the snow melted. Cloud Lake is an alpine lake, nestled in a bowl surrounded by peaks and inaccessible through other routes. The rockslide had changed the terrain significantly, causing trees to be destroyed and the original trail lost. The trail was to be closed all summer for maintenance. They were going to salvage what parts they could, and reroute others. The new, salvaged trail may no longer be suitable as a mountain biking route given the terrain changes.

Someone’s underlined the part that says the trail is closed all season. Another report is attached to it. It notes that Mumbo was issued a permit he shouldn’t have been, and that he likely became lost after encountering the rockslide. It’s a record of the decision the search and rescue team made—that there was, apparently, no evidence to suggest Mumbo had done anything but stray off-trail, and that the rockslide actually increased the chances he was in the area.

Increased the chances he was at Cloud Lake? Instead of suggesting he might have gone elsewhere?

The report continues, explaining Mumbo might have become confused in the altered terrain and that searches in that area should be increased since it was the most likely place for him to get lost. They’d actually shifted the focus away from where he was supposed to be. They had the right idea but the wrong answer. Grian’s heart sinks.

The final document stapled to Mumbo’s backcountry permit is a letter that orders the reinvestigation of the case based on new evidence. The date is recent, from just one month ago when Mumbo’s bike was found by those hikers.

The last paper Grian looks at is another map. This one is also new, issued just a few weeks ago. It denotes the Pinnacles area in minute detail, each and every wrinkle of the topography important. Grian has a map of the Pinnacles area already, but it isn’t this zoomed in at all. There’s a marker placed where Mumbo’s bike was found, along with the trail and other geological features of interest.

And…that’s it. That’s the entire file.

He can’t help but feel like there’s something missing. There’s a giant hole at the center of this case. How can this be everything? Where’s the answer, the smoking gun? Where are the puzzle pieces that only Grian is smart enough to piece together? Where’s Mumbo in all of this?

He was so certain that he would find something here. No, he can still find something here. There’s got to be things here. This is all the information, so that has to mean something right? He rifles through the papers again, looking for anything he’s missed, but no—there isn’t anything. He’s looked at it all.

It’s just…dry. It’s reports between management chains and records of operation from search and rescue. There’s helicopter authorizations and documentation of search locations that already came up empty. There’s letters and memos and maps and none of it means anything, because Mumbo’s still out there and everybody involved in this case is an idiot, Grian included.

He sets the folder to the side carefully, even though it’s useless. He presses his face into his hands and doesn’t move for a long time. The shadows flicker.

»»———-　　———-««

Grian steps out from trees less than a mile from his lookout, and the first thing he sees is a column of smoke.

He blinks. There’s a ridgeline or two that separates his lookout from the road; it’s part of the reason the hike takes so long. That, along with the canopy of the forest itself, has seemingly obscured this smoke from his view until now, when he’s broken through to the other side. It’s morning, and the sky is otherwise clear and blue today except for the tall smoke that bisects it.

He can tell it’s nearby. A strange mix of dread and adrenaline fills his stomach.

Grian slings his pack onto the ground and begins to dig through it looking for his radio before realizing it’s still in his side pocket. He turns it on and the light blinks yellow. The battery is low from being off the charger for a few days. He’s never pushed its limits, but it’s not going to die any time soon.

“Scar,” he says urgently. “I’m nearly back and I see smoke. West of my tower, I think. Do you see it too?”

“G-man?” Scar says a minute later. “You’re back?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m back,” Grian says. He picks his backpack up off the ground and starts rushing down the trail. He needs to get back to the lookout. “Do you see the smoke?”

“What did you do?” Scar asks.

“The smoke,” Grian insists.

“I see the smoke, I saw it yesterday,” Scar says. “Called it in. Sorry, I got naming privileges even though it’s definitely in your sector.”

This relieves Grian, but only so much. He grits his teeth a little. “Okay, so you’re monitoring it. I just wanted to make sure it got called in. I’m nearly at my tower again.” He sighs. “Is it Jonesy Lake? Was it the idiots?”

He knows it’s Jonesy Lake. He knows it’s the idiots. He knows what lies directly west of his tower and he recognizes the directions by the peaks on the horizon. A spark was thrown two days ago, and this is the consequences of it.

“Yeah, I think it was the idiots,” Scar mutters. “The fire’s on the other side of the lake. They’re sending in a crew for it, I’m surprised you didn’t run into anyone on your way in.”

If it was the idiots’ fault, this fire will be suppressed as quickly as possible. Human-caused fires are in an entirely different category to lightning-caused fires or prescribed burns. With the dryness of July in full force, they’ll have to work hard to keep this one contained. It’s a shame that it had to happen in the first place. Grian should’ve woken up earlier to stop those people.

“I didn’t see anyone in the parking lot besides a few other cars that belonged to hikers. Maybe they’re running behind me or they’ll helicopter the crew in,” Grian says. “I wouldn’t want to hike carrying that much gear. They could land in the meadow.”

“Some smokejumpers went in yesterday already,” Scar says. “But they’ll need a proper crew to hike in too so the fireline can be established.” He pauses, for what seems like a nearly uncomfortable period of time. The trail has descended back into the trees once more, and pine needles form a springy surface below Grian’s feet as he walks. Finally, Scar adds: “So you’re coming back to the tower?”

“Give me like 15 or 20 minutes and yeah, I’ll be there,” Grian says.

“I didn’t think you’d be back,” Scar says.

“Um,” he says. “Not sure why you thought that. I know it's still my time off, but I’m still going to call in smoke I see. I only went into town briefly, I have some places I want to search again.”

“Grian,” Scar says, “you don’t work here anymore.”

He stops dead in the middle of the trail.

“What?”

“They told me you were fired!” Scar says. “My supervisor called me first thing this morning. You’re not a lookout anymore. I didn’t expect you to come back, I thought they’d like get your stuff for you or whatever. I was worried!”

“What do you mean?” Grian says. “I’m not—nobody told me that, what?”

“Grian,” Scar begs, “what did you do.”

Grian’s heart picks up in pace. It shouldn’t be a surprise, honestly, and yet hearing Scar say it nearly knocks him off his feet. He predicted this for himself yesterday. He’d known that this might be the end. His actions weren’t acceptable in any capacity, outside that of saving Mumbo.

It feels entirely different than it did yesterday, though. It’s entirely different because yesterday he had a smoking gun, and today he doesn’t. It’d be different if there was a big red arrow pointing to where Mumbo was, but there isn’t. He thought it would be fine yesterday, because today he would know what to do, but he doesn’t.

That’s it, isn’t it? All of this for a file that has nothing in it.

“I—I have to get back to my lookout,” he says to Scar. “I’ll tell you more there. I just have to get back first.”

He turns the radio off, slides it into his pocket and sets off down the trail again. His thoughts racing. If he’s fired, then he has to leave. He needs to gather his things back at the tower. Most of his things are already with him in the pack, but he still has things he left in the lookout. He’ll need to get all of that before he leaves. He’ll need to leave because someone will probably come today to make sure he leaves and he doesn’t want to still be here. He’s had too many confrontations already.

What about the fire? Will they make Scar monitor it, cross referencing with his other neighboring sectors? Will they bring in a volunteer to finish out the rest of the season?

If he has to leave, where will he go? There’s a map in the folder. It’s the new one, the one that was created after Mumbo’s bike was found. He can follow that. That only gives him a plan for the next day or two, but he can regroup after that.

And what about after that? And after that and after that? The lookout is his foothold, his plan. The lookout gives him proximity and insight into places to search, and a home base close enough that Grian can work on finding Mumbo every day.

He’s back to square one now, and it’s all his fault.

The tower comes into view soon with the frenetic pace Grian is hiking at. It stands tall at the top of the mountain, surrounded by trees. When he looks out the windows, all he sees is sky and mountains and the treetops below him. Now he walks through the trees to its base. He takes the stairs two at a time until he gets to the top, and then pauses at the door.

He puts his key in slowly. It’ll be the last time he does it.

The lookout is exactly as he left it a few days ago, and it’s almost exactly as it appeared when he arrived over two months ago. He hasn’t brought many personal effects with him, not any more than he could carry in his original pack. A person like Scar would have accumulated a little more personality in their lookout after working there for 8 seasons. The posters that line the blank parts of the wall were brought in by somebody at some point. The old paperbacks in the bookshelf were, too.

But Grian? He’s left nothing here. He’s made no impact.

He sets his pack on the bed and sits down next to it. For a moment, all is still except the twisting smoke to the west. He watches it for a moment. It ranges from brown to tan to grayish—the color smoke is when wood is burning. The volume is disturbing. The Trout Fire didn’t escalate as quickly as this one has appeared to. The Trout Fire smoldered in the damp after-storm undergrowth for a long time, but this one looks large.

He pulls the radio out of the pack’s side pocket once more and turns it on. “Scar,” he says. “I’m back at my lookout now.”

“Are you staying there?” Scar says.

“I can’t, can I?” he asks. “Won’t they send someone after me? I don’t want to wait for someone to come tell me I’m fired. I’ll just go. I won’t make a fuss.”

He’s made enough fuss recently. It hardly seems worth it to make more. He doesn’t know if he has it in him to keep fighting this the way he has been.

“Grian,” Scar says, and that’s it. Nothing but his name.

“I’m sorry,” he confesses. “I think I did do something stupid.”

Scar sighs. “What’d you do? My supervisor didn’t tell me. Believe me, I asked. He just said you were no longer working for the agency and that they’d try to find a volunteer to replace you the rest of the season. I think they would’ve left the tower empty if it weren’t for that new fire they want monitored.”

“What’d you name it, anyway?”

“I’ll trade you the name if you tell me what you did first,” Scar says. He never loses sight of what he wants out of a conversation. It’s something infuriating about him.

“I took Mumbo’s case file,” he says. “I stole it out of the District Ranger’s desk and got caught. Might have also jumped through a window.”

Scar laughs, a short bright sound that almost startles Grian out of his funk. “A window? Man, I wish I could’ve been there. How’d you manage all of that?”

There’s a ghost of a smile on Grian’s lips. “I turned in the fireworks to him that morning as contraband. He made the mistake of telling me he was taking a half day. Then I just needed an excuse to get back in there while he was gone.”

“Was it a good one?”

“I got caught, didn’t I?” Grian responds drily. “Don’t think I would have chosen a window as an escape route otherwise.”

“Nah,” Scar says. “You might have a heist movie in ya somewhere.”

“I don’t—I don’t think I had any thought. I just wanted to get that file. I needed to get that file. He told me he couldn’t give it to me, Scar, and I needed that file because I need to know, and I can’t find Mumbo because I don’t know.”

“Do you at least know now?” Scar says quietly.

“No!” Grian cries. “I don’t know what to do with this information! There’s—there’s no obvious path to follow. I don’t know why they didn’t tell me that the trail was closed, but now I know why they kept searching in the same area. And I know what technical concerns the search and rescue team had about terrain, weather, and wildfires, and I know the name of the investigator who was assigned to the case in D.C., and I know what the National Forest reported to the regional office, and I know when they performed new aerial searches this summer, and I still don’t know where Mumbo is.”

“So there’s nothing in there at all? Are you sure?” Scar asks. “I wish I could look through it.”

“I wish you could too,” Grian responds.

Scar is quiet for a long moment, and Grian imagines him in his lookout perched on the rocks. What does his little cabin look like? Are there paintings hung on the walls and a cat sleeping on the blanket? Radios and telephones and stacks of papers and Scar’s hiking boots unlaced by the door? He’s never seen it. It has to be more peaceful than Grian’s own place.

Finally, Scar speaks again.

“I think you need to stop thinking about the past,” he says. “Who cares about Cloud Lake and all that data in the file? It doesn't matter. We know he isn’t there—we figured that out a while ago! Who cares who’s fault it is, or why someone did or didn’t do something a year ago?”

“I just want it to make sense.”

He tries not to remember the way the District Ranger told him that they’d already given him all the results of the search. He tries not to remember the way incident command had run things by him last year, and the way he finally agreed to end the search once he realized they were going to stop anyway.

“It never will,” Scar says. “Things are just like that sometimes.”

“I want it to be someone’s fault.”

“Someone other than Mumbo’s fault?”

“It’s not Mumbo’s fault,” Grian says.

“And it isn’t yours either.”

Grian might have argued about that at some point earlier in the summer. He still isn’t entirely convinced of it. But he’s tired now. He’s so, so tired. Instead he just says, “So it must be their fault.”

“It could be nobody’s fault,” Scar offers tentatively.

“It has to be their fault,” he replies, doubling down. “It has to be.”

“Did they lie to you?”

“They didn’t tell me about the trail being closed or Mumbo being given a faulty permit,” Grian says. “I consider that a lie.”

“I do too,” Scar says. “Sounds like they fumbled it.”

Grian continues. “But…I don’t think they lied about anything else. Scar, how can that be? I’m supposed to be able to figure it out now. I’m supposed to find all the pieces they didn’t tell me and put them together. They were supposed to be keeping information from me. I don’t—I don’t know how to find him.”

“I’m sorry,” Scar says. “I was…I was really hoping you had something.”

Grian pulls the folder out of his backpack again. He stares at it. “There is a map,” he says. “It’s basically the same as the one I already have, but they’ve actually marked the area where Mumbo’s bike was found instead of me trying to piece it together based on what you told me. I think he must have camped there too. I’m going to follow it.”

“Today?”

“I don’t have anywhere else to go, do I?” Grian stops, and then asks in a small voice: “Are they going to arrest me or something, Scar?”

Scar contemplates this for a moment. Actually, a moment too long to keep Grian balancing his anxiety, if he had anything to say about it. He finally replies, “I don’t think so. I don’t think they’d do that. You didn’t take money or commit fraud or leak confidential information, you just took a file for personal use. It’s not allowed and you might never work here again but I don’t think you’ll get arrested.”

“If I got in trouble they’d just send me right back to England, I guess.”

“Would you hate that?”

“If Mumbo was still here, yeah.”

“If he wasn’t?”

Grian’s silent.

“Right,” Scar says. “Well, I don’t think you’re going to be arrested.”

“Good,” Grian says quietly. If there’s any good news of the day, that would be it. It’s not that—it’s not that he isn’t willing to get into legal trouble to help Mumbo. It’s that he can’t be of any help at all to Mumbo if that happens.

And, perhaps, he doesn’t want to be in trouble anyway. He’s so tired. He can’t give up on this, not now, not after everything he’s learned and not after all of his setbacks. He can’t give up. But he’s so tired, and he just can’t let anything more get in his way.

He changes the subject, “I need to go now. I have to get my stuff ready. I can’t stay here anymore.”

“And you’re going to go to Pinnacles again?” Scar asks.

“Yeah. I’m going to follow the map and try to find his old campsite. I don't know what I’ll do next so don’t ask.”

“Take your radio with you,” Scar says.

Against his better will, Grian smiles. “Are you encouraging me to steal more government property?”

“I just think you might need it,” Scar says. “I mean, what are they gonna do? Get you fired twice for stealing something? Just take it with you. I’ll keep an eye on things for you. Talk to me. Be careful.”

Grian swallows, suddenly feeling…something. “Thank you,” he says. Then, before he has the chance to turn it off, he remembers: “What did you name the fire?”

“Huh?”

“The fire. You said you’d tell me what name you picked if I told you what I did yesterday.”

“Oh,” Scar says. “I called it the Nitwit fire. You know, because of the idiots.”

Grian smiles a little, despite himself. Yeah, because of the idiots.

»»———-　　———-««

It’s late afternoon, and Grian is on the Pinnacles trail again.

The hike isn’t bad at all, but he’s growing weary. He’s been carrying around this pack since this morning, and from yesterday. It’s biting into his shoulders and collarbone. The pack carries basically his entire life at this point; he left as little as possible back in the lookout. He straightened up the place, made it neat, took his things, and left.

It is also much more obvious now that there is a fire nearby than it was when he was hiking in this morning. The air quality is poor. This trail normally has good views, but right now the good views are only in a specific direction. If Grian faces anywhere in the vicinity of the Nitwit fire, the entire horizon disappears under the blanket of smoke.

This is not making hiking easier.

He stops to reexamine the map, and then compare it to the compass he carries. Before Mumbo went missing, he was not experienced at orienteering. Since then, he’s basically taught himself. He falls back on that practice now. It’s not the trail he’s afraid of losing; he knows where he is. It’s where the trail is in relation to where those hikers found Mumbo’s bike.

He should be close. He’s got to be close.

This area is mostly forested, except for when the trees break away at points to review a lovely vista that is currently mostly covered in smoke. This is good, because it means it’s sheltered. It’s nicer to camp in a sheltered place than it is an open place—the wind doesn’t mess around on a mountain peak.

This trail does not have any backcountry campsites on it in this section, but free camping is allowed in Shoshone National Forest. While people need a permit to enter the backcountry, it isn’t required to stay in a designated campsite. If Mumbo followed the rules, then his campsite needs to be 200 feet off the trail. That’s what makes this so difficult; it won’t be right next to the trail. In some places in the wilderness the sightlines are so obscured that he wouldn’t be able to see 200 feet.

Grian is operating on the assumption that Mumbo did follow the rules. He’s generally too nervous of a person to blatantly break them, so Grian feels safe in this guess. He is also assuming that Mumbo would have chosen his campsite purposefully and not randomly, so he’s looking for spaces that are easy to access. It’s far more likely that there is an already established spot where people have camped before that it is for Mumbo to have bushwhacked his way into a clearing Grian can’t already see.

Of course, maybe that’s why they haven’t found him. Maybe he is in one of those locations Grian can’t already see.

Still, Grian focuses on places that look like obvious campsites first. He checks several of these such locations, and comes up empty each time. He can determine pretty quickly whether someone has been camping in the area or not. When he finds Mumbo’s campsite, he’ll know when he sees it.

He sees it just a few minutes later.

He's been looking for things that seem out of place, or man-made, in the forest. There, through the trees, he sees what he was looking for: a glimpse of fabric. There’s something red hanging in one of the trees. It’s remarkably well-hidden. If he hadn't looked in just the right direction at the right time, he would have missed it.

Grian is stepping off the trail before his brain can catch up to his feet. He brushes past bushes, crunches leaves, and steps over a log before he’s there, at the base of this tree.

There’s a backpack strung up in one of the branches, dangling several feet above Grian’s head. It’s tied in the way that bags are recommended to be tied in bear country��ten feet from the trunk and fifteen feet above the ground. If you are camping for the night and carrying food, this is how you protect your pack in absence of a bear box.

Grian recognizes this backpack. It’s like the bike all over again. He was with Mumbo when he bought this.

They’d both gotten backpacks on the same day. Grian’s, the one he’s carrying right now, is dark green and tan. Mumbo’s was red and tan. Mumbo had told Grian that red was really more of his color, but Grian could tell Mumbo secretly liked that color the best. He insisted Mumbo buy that one instead.

He insisted Mumbo buy the one that is dangling in front of him right now.

He just stares. The bag moves slightly in the breeze.

It’s worn. The color has faded from months of sunlight. The rope that was used to secure it has deteriorated. It seems more brittle than it should be, the material stiff, inflexible, and faded from sunlight. Another winter season and this bag would be on the ground.

Mumbo’s bag is here, and it clearly hasn’t been moved in a long time.

Suddenly Grian moves toward the tree, nearly tripping over himself in his haste. He struggles to undo the knot that is securing it—his hands are shaky, why are they so shaky? Just when he’s ready to give up and try to dig through his own pack for a knife he gets it, and instead of letting the pack down gently he misjudges the weight. It lands with a thump on the ground, and Grian stares again. Then he’s rushing over to the bag, slinging his own pack onto the ground, and kneeling next to it.

He has to open it. It’s Mumbo’s. If he had doubted it before, he can’t now—there’s a name scribbled onto a tag at the back of the bag. This is something that is tangibly his, something that is actually right in front of Grian. It’s heavy. It might have clues in it. But part of Grian hesitates, the same part of him that is fighting to still stay present in the moment. His heart beats in his ears.

Clearly, the hikers who returned his bike hadn’t been lying. He didn’t realize that he thought they might have been lying until this very moment. Mumbo was in this area. He’d really been on the Pinnacles trail the entire time. But he isn’t here now and hasn’t been for some time. This bag is his, but it’s been abandoned. The bike was rusty and in bad shape, also abandoned.

This is the second item that belonged to him that has been found in this area. The second item that wasn’t with him.

Why are his things here, but not him?

What would make him abandon his things?

Why did he leave them?

Why didn’t he come back for them?

He feels ice cold. Grian opens the bag anyway. There was never an option not to open it, just a moment that he required to steel himself for its contents.

There’s a lot in the bag. There’s too many things. There’s far too many things.

He pulls out Mumbo’s camp stove. He pulls out his sleeping bag, and his sleeping pad. He pulls out some of Mumbo’s food—setting the nonperishable things aside and gingerly tossing the very perishable things further away. The bears can eat that now, he doesn’t care anymore. He pulls out some spare bike tools. He pulls out the tent, and some spare clothing.

There are no water containers in the bag, no lantern or torch, no jacket, no first aid kit, no compass, and no maps.

Grian sits back on the forest floor, and thinks about what he has found. He has packed his own bags enough times now that he can tell which components are missing. This clearly isn’t everything that Mumbo would have taken with him. Mumbo isn’t here, which means that the remaining things are with him, wherever that is.

This isn’t Mumbo’s final campsite, either. If Mumbo had been following the guidelines then he strung his bag up 200 feet from where he had slept. Set your camp 200 feet from the trail, and string your food up 200 feet from your campsite. But the material packed in the bag is telling Grian that there is unlikely to be anything left in the spot Mumbo camped. Maybe the campsite is where the hikers had found his bike, the metal sparkling in the sunshine, far enough away that they didn’t notice the bag hanging from the tree.

He should tell Scar this. He needs to tell anybody this.

He pulls his radio out again, and flicks it into the on position. “Scar?” Grian calls. “Scar? I found the—I found Mumbo’s campsite, it really is on Pinnacles, I found his bag. It’s here Scar, all of it is here. Scar, I—I need you to be with me.”

Scar is ready on the receiving end, like maybe he’s been waiting this whole time. “Grian?” he responds. “Where are you? You found it?”

“It’s right where it was on the map, right where the hikers said it was. I found his bag.” He can’t take his eyes off it. “Scar, it matches mine but it’s red. We bought it on the same day. It’s his. I know it’s his. His name is on it. We bought it at the same time. I found it. It’s still here. It was hanging in the tree. Like for bears, when you camp, right? It was just hanging there. I found it.”

“I can’t believe you found it. Are you okay?” Scar asks.

“What’s he going to do without his tent?” Grian says. His voice is rising in pitch. “He needs that, Scar, he needs shelter. He doesn’t have his tent, or his sleeping bag, or his extra clothes, or his food, or, or clearly his bike—it’s all still here.”

“He left it there?” Scar says. “Why did he leave his things?”

Grian knows. He can piece it together by the negative space. What’s missing is what tells the story. That’s the worst part of all of this. He knows. It’s all he’s ever wanted, to know, and it’s carving him inside out.

He knows. He can’t unknow this.

“I think he went on a day hike,” he says, speaking fast. “I think he camped here more than one night. I think he left his bike during the day because he wanted to go somewhere he couldn’t ride it. I think he strung up his pack because he didn’t want to carry it with him and needed to keep the food away from the bears. He took his water, he took his maps, he took his flashlight, he took his jacket. He left his sleeping bag and tent.”

“He planned to come back.”

“It’s been over a year,” Grian whispers.

“I’m sorry,” Scar says. “I’m sorry he didn’t come back.”

“No, no,” Grian says. He’s holding his radio’s call button down with one hand, but the other hand is just gripping the canvas of the backpack. He can’t let go. “This is not it. I still haven’t found him. This is just one more clue.”

“Grian.”

“Stop it,” he says. “Stop it, it’s fine. It’s fine.”

“Grian,” Scar repeats. “You found his campsite, like you wanted. You did that. Can you—can you come back now? What if you came back and searched it more later?”

“There isn’t time,” Grian bites. “I can’t go back anyway. I’m fired. I don’t have any time left. I’ve been waiting too long, this is progress, I can’t—why would I do that? Scar, why would I do that? Why are you asking me to do this?”

“I just don’t think you should be out there anymore right now,” Scar says. “I don’t think it’s really safe right now. I’ve been on the radio all afternoon coordinating for the Nitwit fire. I’m worried about you being out there. Please come back, you found the campsite, you can do this again later.”

“I can’t,” Grian says.

It has to be now, because this is the most progress he has made in months. It has to be now, because the dominoes are starting to fall and he’s beholden to watch it to its end. He needs to know more than anything else.

Sometimes, his need to know really is more than anything else. It’s more than his desire to keep a job, it’s more than his desire to please his family and friends, it’s more than his desire to not commit a crime. It might be more than his desire to live.

“Please,” Scar says.

“He’s out here. I won’t abandon him.”

“Please,” Scar says. “He isn’t out here, Grian. Not anymore. He hasn’t been for a while.”

This is a gut punch. Because Grian, in defiance of every personal rule he’s set for himself this past year, actually trusted Scar.

“Did you ever believe me?” he asks.

“Of course I did!” Scar says. “I believed in you.”

“But you didn’t believe Mumbo was alive.”

Nobody does. He should have known this, because nobody except Grian does. And Grian, does—does he?

Almost all of Mumbo’s gear is here, and he never came back for it. All of his survival gear is here, and he isn’t.

“I wanted to help you find him, I wanted to help you figure out what happened to him because you deserved to know. Mumbo deserved to have someone know. I never—” Scar stops, and doesn’t finish the thought. It’s for the best. There’s a difference between finding someone alive, and finding them dead. There doesn’t have to be a heartbeat attached to unraveling a mystery. Scar only ever claimed to want to help find Mumbo.

Instead, Scar finishes, “You’re hurting yourself.”

“I’m so close,” he says. “I’m making progress. I’m so close. You can’t stop me, Scar. You aren’t here.”

“I know,” Scar says, and he sounds broken. “I know. Can you just—go back, back to your lookout, back to your car, just anywhere else. We can talk about this later, I’ll talk to you about it later, I’ll help you search more later, I promise I will, but you don’t need to be on this channel anymore. Please switch to the main channel so you can hear everyone’s updates on the fire.”

“You know I can’t,” he says.

“Then be careful,” Scar pleads.

“I’m going to find him.”

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