The Trail Mix-up

The jungle had the audacity to hum. A low, thrumming bass note that vibrated up through the soles of your boots as you stood at the edge of a clearing, map in one hand, machete in the other. The parchment in your grip was crisp, the ink fresh. You'd known within the first ten minutes it was a forgery—the cartographer's mark was off by a millimeter, and the "ancient" trail it promised was barely a deer path.

"Beautiful country," Lord Alistair Winthrop said, fanning himself with a silk handkerchief. His pith helmet sat at a jaunty angle, and his boots had never seen mud until an hour ago. "Very... green."

You didn't answer. You were listening to the jungle instead—the wrong birds, the wrong silence. Somewhere behind you, maybe a mile back, Vex's crew was moving fast. You'd caught a flash of steel between the ferns before the canopy closed.

The map was a decoy. The client was a con. And the real map—the one Vex wanted—was currently sewn into the lining of your pack, a fact you intended to keep that way.

"Lord Winthrop," you said, folding the fake map away. "When I say run, you run."

He laughed. The sound was swallowed by a wet, sucking noise from the ground ahead—a patch of mud that rippled like it was breathing.