The host's voice arrived before Proxy had fully decided to be awake, which was becoming one of its more reliable habits as a broadcast.
"Good morning, contestants. The four-hour location update. Proxy and Nyx remain confirmed in the jungle interior. The jungle remains quite large."
A pause placed carefully enough to land after people had finished deciding whether they were supposed to feel grateful that morning had come.
"Twenty-nine competitors remain. We are watching."
The speakers let the morning go back to the trees.
Proxy stayed where he was for a moment. Two announcements since they had entered the cabin, both keeping the two of them in the jungle with that rough vagueness, the dry remark about the jungle's size, the refusal to give coordinates.
Either the corporation's drone coverage truly could not hold through the canopy, or it could, and had reasons to prefer pretending otherwise. The difference mattered enough that he noted it away for later, once he had better information than instinct and annoyance.
The cot beside him was empty.
He noticed that with the reflex he had developed over two days on the island, Nyx first, everything else second, because that was how his attention had learned to move. The empty space caused the pause that any unexpected absence did.
He sat up, checked the pack, checked the handgun out of habit, and stepped outside.
She was in the stream, about fifteen meters from the cabin door, and he spent one second of realization before shifting his eyes to the far bank.
The trees there were dense and entirely unhelpful, which gave him a respectable reason to keep looking at them.
"Good morning," she said. He could hear the water.
"You could have said something before leaving the cabin," he said.
"The door was open," she said, with the certainty that suggested she considered that a complete answer.
He found a tree on the far bank that seemed stable and watched it with the seriousness of a man interested in botany.
After a moment she looked up at him, and he was not looking at her when she did it, but he knew she had done it the way he knew most things she did near him.
"I don't mind if you look, you know."
She said it the way someone might mention the weather, as a fact that existed whether or not anyone found it convenient.
He made a short sound that failed to become anything and kept studying the far bank with more concentration and seriousness that he had put in anything in their stay in the island.
The warmth that crept up the back of his ears was simply a physical fact, so he left it there and did not inspect it further.
"There's a ration block in the pack," he said, because he felt he should say something
"I'll have it when I am out," she said.
He kept watching the treeline while she came out of the stream, dried her hair with her hands, and started to work on her clothes, putting them on piece by piece with the speed that suggested she very made sure every second was a temptation.
And that was the end of that.
They packed up in the few minutes the cabin required, and neither of them had a good reason to go back inside for the table.
So they ate their rations outside, standing in the morning air.
Proxy thought for a moment, then looked at Nyx.
"We are heading for the mountain ridge," he said.
She tilted her head toward him seriousness, or as serious as she could get in a situation like this.
"Right, there's a mountain. I remember it from our suite view." she said.
"Yes..." he said. "The high ground will make it harder for anyone to attack us by surprise. That's the first reason."
He looked up into the canopy above the cabin, where morning light came through in uneven pieces.
"There are also communication towers on the ridge, they were faintly linked to the resort network. I couldn't reach them from there, but I want to know what's in them before someone else does."
She was quiet for a moment with that, eating her ration and watching him in a way that she cared less about their destination and more about his thoughts.
"It feels like you already had that idea in mind for a while," she said.
"Since before we left the resort," he said.
She made a small sound that suggested she had expected that answer and found it made sense with everything else she had learned about him.
"Do you always do that?" she said. "Like, plan ahead to something before you are anywhere near it?"
"Frequently," he said, which was true and still didn't cover the whole answer, and she probably knew both parts.
"Mm," she said, accepted that for what it was, and looked ahead at the trees.
Then, after a moment, "I want to be ahead of you on the uphill parts."
He looked at her.
"Why."
"Because watching you work your way up a slope sounds nice... sweaty, exhaling roughly." she said, with the warm and complete sincerity he could imagine.
He deadpanned at her.
"It's also good to you! You can stare at my butt all you want~"
He flickered her forehead before she could lose herself further.
By his estimate the ridge was northwest from where they had already been, but estimates in dense jungle gathered errors the way wet cloth gathered weight, and he had no network to correct them from.
"Could you climb something first," he said. "I want to confirm the direction before we move."
She looked at the tree line and picked a tree taller than the others with the quick efficiency. She went up it the way she did most things involving her body, without visible thought and with complete success.
He watched her reach the canopy level and stop into a fork high above where the light changed.
He waited.
"There's buildings to the east," she said from above. "It looks like a power plant?"
A slight shift in weight, the branch adjusting under her.
"The ridge is northwest. You can see bare rock above the canopy line from up here. And something built above that. Tall, with metal, I think."
"How far?" he said.
She was quiet for a moment.
"Today-close," she said. "Close enough!"
"Come down," he said.
She came down and stood beside him and brushed bark from her sleeve.
"There are towers on it," she said. "I couldn't see that far, but they are up there."
"That's enough," he said, and they moved.
The jungle didn't change at once.
It changed the way things change when they are going steadily in the same direction, collecting differences quietly until the differences are already there by the time you notice them.
The canopy above loosened in small steps.
The undergrowth thinned.
Nyx stayed ahead, half a step ahead when the space allowed it and back at his shoulder when it did not.
Her two-finger grip found the back of his sleeve each time the growth narrowed enough to force them close.
After a while she slowed and tipped her face upward toward a gap where the canopy had pulled back and the morning sky showed through in a band wider than anything they had seen in hours.
"More light."
"The canopy is thinning," he said. "We are getting close to the base of the ridge."
She made a small sound and looked ahead, where the open sky was already visible above the thinning treetops.
Above that, the ridge.
And above those, the angular shadow of something built that did not belong to any natural growth.
"There they are," Nyx said.
Proxy looked at the structures on the ridge. The cyberware ran its loop and returned nothing.
The chip was in his pocket.
The towers were there, today-close, which was close enough.
He kept moving.