Phil slithered in behind me, extending his vine-body to inspect various corners of the room. I moved straight to the command console—because of course there was a commandconsole, complete with holographic displays that flickered to life as I approached.
“Jackpot,” I breathed.
The latest comms about the fugitive was onscreen, along with his specs and visuals. A gaunt, silver-skinned humanoid with disturbing black eyes that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. Cydarian, according to the translated text. Vaskari. Weapons smuggler, suspected terrorist, responsible for at least twelve confirmed deaths across three systems.
And there was a map—a topographical rendering of the jungle with markers indicating sightings, suspected movements, potential hideouts. One area was highlighted in pulsing red—the Burning that Lor had mentioned. The place where the jungle feared to grow.
My pulse spiked. If only I could help do something…
I traced my fingers over the display, zooming in on the Burning. The readings were strange—energy signatures that didn’t match the natural patterns of the jungle, concentrated in what looked like a network of underground tunnels. And there, at the center of it all, a blinking indicator of a massive power source.
Something clicked.
A fragment of Lor’s earlier words, something about the fugitive being drawn to signals that could be from dangerous weapons of mass destruction. The bunker’s computer had detected it, mapped it, but hadn’t yet connected the pattern I saw so clearly.
The underground tunnels Phil had shown me earlier weren’t just natural formations. They were strategically positioned, leading inward toward the Burning from multiple directions. Like spokes on a wheel. Or like... a trap.
Suddenly, a ton of data became available to me, scrolling across the screens faster than I could consciously process. Butsomehow I did process it—absorbed it all, my mind expanding with the neural network that Phil provided. It was like the jungle itself was feeding information directly into my brain, bypassing my eyes entirely.
And now that I’d seen the tunnels and caverns beneath us, the echoes of how the jungle moved...it all made sense. I looked at the map where Lor had marked the sightings of his fugitive.
The pattern was obvious once you knew what to look for. Lor was walking into a distraction. The Burning wasn’t Vaskari’s hideout—it was a lure. The real operation was happening right beneath our feet, in the network of tunnels that Phil had revealed to me.
Lor didn’t know it, but I felt it. Maybe it was the jungle whispering again. Maybe it was just gut instinct honed from years of chasing stories no one else believed in. Either way, I was not going to sit this one out.
“Alright, Phil,” I said, turning to the vine that was now coiled around a support beam, watching me with what I swore was anticipation. “Time to be my backup dancer.”
Phil’s tip wiggled enthusiastically. The jungle was with me. And maybe, I could save Lor from whatever Vaskari had planned.
I turned back to the console, fingers flying across the alien interface that somehow felt intuitive under my touch. If I could reconfigure the comm system, boost its signal using the jungle’s own neural network as an amplifier...yes. There. A plan formed in my mind with crystal clarity, as if the jungle itself was helping me think.
Lor was heading into danger, but I’d found another way. A better way. And this time, the human was going to save the alien.
The bunker’ssystems were rudimentary, but the speakers? Salvageable. With a little rewiring, a few jury-rigged cables, and some very creative use of Phil’s vine extensions as grounding rods—don’t ask me how I knew what I was doing; this was pure cryptid-podcaster energy—I got the system humming.
“Perfect,” I muttered, watching the ancient comms system flicker to life with a satisfying blue glow.
Phil seemed impressed, his vine-y self undulating with what I’d come to recognize as excitement. He extended several tendrils into the console’s ports, forming living connections between the Legion tech and the jungle’s neural network. The screen pulsed with new information—vibrant pathways appearing where before there had been only static maps.
“You’re a genius, Phil,” I told him, gently patting his vine-body. “And possibly the world’s best USB cable.”
I accessed the audio system, calibrating it to broadcast through the small speakers Lor had positioned around the perimeter. These weren’t meant for music—they were tactical tools, designed to confuse enemies or mask movement. But they’d work perfectly for what I had in mind.
I recorded my voice. Not screaming. Not pleading.
Taunting.
“Hey there, Vaskari,” I purred into the makeshift microphone. “I know what you’re looking for. The human has what you want. Come find me, you piece of space trash.”
I played it back, grimacing at how my voice sounded—higher than I thought, but with an edge that might just convince a desperate fugitive that I knew something worth investigating. I’d spent years interviewing people who believed in everything fromlake monsters to alien abductions. I knew how to sound just credible enough to be intriguing.
“This’ll work,” I said, more to reassure myself than Phil. “He’s looking for dangerous alien tech, and what’s more alien on this planet than a human?”
Phil gave a skeptical wiggle.
“Trust me,” I insisted, fingers flying over the controls as I programmed the transmission pattern. “Cryptids and criminals have a lot in common—they both think they’re the smartest one in the room. Tell them you know their secret, and they can’t resist proving you wrong.”
With Phil’s help, I scattered the playback across the jungle, bouncing it between vines and rock crevices, letting it echo like ghosts through the undergrowth. The sound would seem to come from everywhere and nowhere, disorienting but irresistible to someone in hiding. A digital will-o’-the-wisp leading straight to our trap.
