Page 122 of Silent Shadows

I hate that I know what his hand felt like on my hip last night, and now I have to listen to him say things like, “The thermal signature moved northwest between 02:00 and 02:30,” while pretending that sentence doesn’t turn me on.

This is a problem.

“Daisy,” he says, glancing over at me. “Can you pull up the audio you got on your end so we can cross-check it with ours?”

“Sure.”

My voice is normal. Miraculously.

I slide into the seat near the monitors and open the file. A waveform stretches across the screen, spiking in uneven intervals. I put on headphones and listen.

Static. Wind. A branch crack. Then that knocking sound.

The hair on my arms lifts.

Across the Machine, Miles watches me. Not obviously. But I feel it anyway.

“What?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “Nothing.”

“This file is perfect. ”

His eyes warm.

Jax groans from his station. “Can we not flirt with audio files today? Some of us are trying to enhance nightmare fuel.”

My spine stiffens.

Miles freezes.

Maya looks up.

Taylor does not, which is worse.

“I flirt with all media equally,” I say, because survival instincts are real and my go-to is sarcasm.

Once the team is all heads down on work, I decide this is my moment and relegate myself in the kitchen area of the Machine to record my first episode. I’m huddled at the small table with a microphone, wrapped in a blanket.

I thought it would feel ridiculous, recording in the middle of nowhere.

Instead, it feels… electric. Like stepping onto a bridge while it’s still being built.

I talk about the team. Getting settled in the Machine. About the search. About the sound we captured. About the strange, contagious energy of being around people who aren’t foolish at all, but are willing to look foolish in pursuit of something extraordinary.

I do not talk about Miles directly, but he’s in every sentence anyway. In the shape and the pulse of the story. In the question I keep circling without saying out loud.

What if some impossible things are only impossible because we’ve been taught to look away?

When I finish, my hands are shaking.

I listen back to the first thirty seconds, cringe hard enough to nearly fold in half, then force myself to send the file to Marissa before I can spiral.

The second it goes through, my phone feels radioactive.

I stare at the screen.

Sent.