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The world felt stretched and endless as I dragged myself forward, my steps uneven, my feet screaming in protest with every jarring contact against the dirt. The woods swallowed me whole, a never-ending maze of twisting roots and damp earth, my breaths ragged as I forced myself to keep moving. My arms hung limp at my sides, aching, stiff, the remnants of saltwater tightening my skin, the ghost of the ocean still clinging to me like a second layer of flesh.

I had no idea how long I had been walking. Time had lost meaning somewhere between the suffocating darkness of the ocean and the suffocating darkness of these trees. But I knew it had been hours. The world had changed around me, the inky sky shifting to a dull, pale blue, the first ghostly hints of morning creeping over the horizon. I was no longer completely enveloped in blackness; the light filtered weakly through the gaps in the trees, illuminating the damp ground in streaks of dim silver. The cold had burrowed deep into my bones, my body trembling from exhaustion, from exposure, from the endless battle against everything trying to swallow me whole.

Then I heard it. A deep, rolling growl cutting through the silence, something heavy, something alive, something man-made. I forced myself to move faster, pushing through the last of the trees, my breath stuttering as I finally broke free from the grasp of the forest. The road stretched out before me, long, dark, seemingly infinite, and the eighteen-wheeler roared down its length, a hulking beast of metal and power. My lips parted, a soundless cry trapped in my throat as I stumbled forward, my legs shaking, my vision blurring. The truck was already gone before I could even fully register it, its taillights shrinking, disappearing, leaving me utterly alone again.

My lungs burned. My throat felt raw, parched, screaming for water, for relief, for something other than the acrid taste of salt and fear lingering in my mouth. The adrenaline that had carried me this far was fading, replaced by a dull, gnawing fatigue that made every step feel like trudging through wet cement. My clothes were dry now, but my skin still held the memory of the ocean, the invisible weight of it pressing against me, tightening around my chest like unseen hands. I could hear everything—the sound of my breath rasping through my nose, the way it hitched and escaped in uneven bursts, the steady, relentless thump of my heart hammering against my ribs, a deep, muted pulse echoing through my skull.

I blinked, my eyes stinging, my vision swimming. Road. Just road. Stretched out ahead of me, behind me, endless and empty. I squinted, the weak morning light making the asphalt shimmer, making everything feel unreal, like I had stepped into some forgotten, desolate corner of the world.

Where the fuck in New York was I?

Without hesitation, I continued my journey, my legs wobbling as if I was going to collapse. Twenty minutes down the road, I came across the first sign perched by the side of the road, a little too dangly and old, with vines twisted around it, and the sign barely holding up against it. 

The sign barely clung to its post, hanging at a tired angle, as if even the wood itself had given up trying to hold it in place. Vines had crawled all over it, twisting and curling, choking it like they were dragging it back into the ground, reclaiming it, making it part of the land again. The letters were faded, scratched away by time and weather, but I could still make them out through the peeling paint and dirt. "Welcome to Black Hollow." The words sat heavy in my mind, pressing down like something I should recognize, like something I should turn away from immediately, but I didn’t. I just stood there, staring, my lips slightly parted, my breath slowing as my eyes traced every inch of the sign, as if the more I looked, the more it would make sense. But it didn’t. Something about it felt wrong, and it wasn’t just the way the letters seemed to have been clawed at, chipped like something had tried to scratch them off. It wasn’t just the way the vines curled around the words, slithering like fingers over them. It was the name. Black Hollow. It felt like something that didn’t want to be remembered, something lost to time, something buried under stories no one wanted to tell. My body went cold, and for a second, I imagined what kind of people could be waiting in a place like this, what kind of eyes could be watching from behind those darkened windows, what kind of hands could be reaching for strangers like me, hands that had torn people apart before, hands that could pull me into the ground just like those vines, wrap around my throat and squeeze, squeeze, squeeze—

I blinked hard and forced the thoughts away, my pulse kicking up in my neck. It was just a fucking sign. That was all. A forgotten town, one of the many dead places left behind when the world moved forward without them. I wasn’t about to start thinking about ghost stories and backwoods cults, not now, not when I had bigger things to worry about, not when my body was already screaming at me to keep moving. I turned my head, looking down the road leading into the town, but the sight of it only made my stomach twist tighter. The asphalt had given up long ago, cracked open like dry skin, weeds splitting through, stretching toward the sky. The houses—if you could even call them that—were barely standing, the roofs caved in, the wood rotting, the windows gaping and dark, like empty sockets where eyes used to be. I didn’t see movement. I didn’t hear a single sound. No cars, no voices, not even the rustling of trees. Just stillness. The kind that didn’t feel natural. The kind that made you wonder if the whole place had been swallowed up by the earth a long time ago, if the people had just disappeared.

I took a slow step back, then another, my hands balling into weak fists at my sides. My legs ached, my feet throbbed, every muscle in my body felt wrung out, but none of that mattered when every nerve inside me screamed to go. My lips parted, breath slipping out in a dry whisper. “Fuck, no.”

I turned away and pushed forward, dragging my feet down the road, my arms hanging limp at my sides. My head swam, my mouth dry, my stomach twisting so hard I thought I might throw up. Every step felt heavier, my body slowing, exhaustion digging its fingers into my spine, weighing me down. My breaths were shallow, raspy, each inhale scraping against my throat. The cold still clung to my skin, even after all this time, even after my clothes had dried against my body. My hair stuck to my face, to the back of my neck, and my chest felt too tight, like I couldn’t get enough air in, like I was still stuck in that water, still sinking, still choking, still—

I squeezed my eyes shut, forced my legs to move faster. I wasn’t going to stop. I wasn’t going to give in to the burning in my muscles, the dizziness creeping into my skull, the way my vision blurred every few steps. I had to keep moving. I had to get the fuck out of here. 

Manhattan was fucking hours away. Hours. If I had a car, maybe two and a half, maybe less if I drove like my life depended on it, which it did. A train? Three hours, but I wasn’t near a station, and even if I was, I didn’t have money, didn’t have anything on me except the clothes stuck to my skin, stiff with dried ocean water, dirt, and sweat. Walking? Fuck. Walking would take a day, maybe more. And I didn’t have a fucking day. I didn’t have half of one. They were going for him, and I was out here, wasting time, dragging my feet, losing to exhaustion like a weak, pathetic little girl. If Dominic were here, he would have figured something out already. Stolen a car. Beaten the shit out of someone and taken theirs. Gone into that creepy-ass town I passed just to find something with four wheels and an engine. He would have made it work. He always made it work. The thought of him hit me so fucking hard it almost knocked me over, my chest tightening, burning, my body already too far gone to be handling this shit. I shoved it down, pushed it into that deep, dark place in my mind where I kept everything that hurt too much to deal with.

I needed to keep going, but my legs felt like they didn’t belong to me anymore, like they had turned into something separate, something that only moved because I forced them to. My arms felt heavy, my fingers twitching from the constant clench of my fists. My entire body was begging me to stop, to rest, but I didn’t have time. I didn’t have time. I was supposed to be getting closer, but every step I took felt like I was going nowhere, like the road was stretching out in front of me, getting longer, endless. And my fucking brain wouldn’t shut up.

I thought about Vaughn. About how much I wanted to kill him. About how I wouldn’t be satisfied with just putting a bullet in his head. No, that would be too easy. Too quick. I wanted to rip him apart with my bare hands, to feel his skin split under my nails, to break him the way he had broken so many others. I wanted him to suffer, to see it coming, to know he was dying and know that it was because of me. The thought of it sent a pulse of something warm through me, something that made my fingers tighten, my teeth clench. But then another thought hit me, just as vicious, just as strong—my brother. I had to save him. I had to, and yet here I was, walking. Walking. Like a fucking idiot. Like some lost girl wandering around waiting for something to happen instead of making it happen. I felt fucking useless.

The thought was too much, too heavy. My body couldn’t keep up with it. My vision blurred for a second, the edges of my sight going dark, and I stumbled. My foot caught on nothing, my knees buckled, and before I even realized it, I was falling. Then I was just sitting there. On the side of the road. My back against something hard, maybe a rock, maybe just the cold ground, I didn’t know, I didn’t care. My head throbbed, my temples pulsing in time with my heartbeat, my breath coming out in short, shaky bursts. I pulled my knees up, wrapped my arms around them, rested my chin on top. Just for a second. Just to think.

Had I made the right choice? Had I fucked everything up? What if Sophia had lied? What if I had walked straight into a trap? What if I was supposed to stay, fight back, finish Vaughn myself? My mind spun in circles, chasing itself, a mess of what-ifs and worst-case scenarios that I couldn’t stop. The exhaustion pressed down harder, sinking into my bones, making me feel smaller, weaker. I hated it. I hated feeling like this.

I stared at the road in front of me, stretching out forever, empty, silent. The town I passed minutes ago still clung to my mind, sitting there like something I wasn’t supposed to have seen, something waiting for someone dumb enough to step into it. And then there was me. Just sitting here. Like some broken thing, waiting for someone to pass by, waiting for something to happen. What the fuck was I even doing?

Montauk to Manhattan. The words echoed in my head, too big, too impossible. I wasn’t just far. I was at the fucking edge of the world. A hundred and twenty miles, maybe more. Even if I had the strength to walk the entire way, I wouldn’t get there until tomorrow night. I didn’t have that kind of time. I needed to be there now. I needed to find another way.

I needed a car. A ride. Something. Anything. Because if I sat here any longer, I was going to lose my fucking mind.