They descended faster than protocol recommended. Not running. NEVER running on loose volcanic gravel. But close enough to running that Zara could feel the rules flexing under her boots. The mountain sloped away beneath them in long, uneven breaths, switchbacks dissolving into suggestion rather than instruction.
Zara counted her steps. It was an old habit, one she'd picked up years ago in a different kind of dangerous terrain, labs where mistakes didn't bleed immediately, but always eventually.
Twenty steps. Check footing. Twenty more. Breathe.
Behind her, Mahdi slipped once, caught himself, swore under his breath in Persian that sounded almost affectionate. Farid steadied him without comment, palm firm on his shoulder, eyes never leaving the slope ahead.
The wind shifted again.
Not stronger. Directed.
Zara felt it along the back of her neck, a subtle lateral push that didn't match the topography. Wind followed ridges, valleys, pressure gradients. Strange.
She told herself she was overtired.
That was the polite explanation. The scientifically approved one.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. Not a call this time. A message.
GOOD. KEEP MOVING.
She didn't respond.
She didn't slow down either.
Mahdi came up alongside her, breathing harder now. "Dr. Rezai," he said, keeping his voice low. "You want to tell us what's going on?"
Zara considered lying. A clean lie. Something about equipment anomalies, communications interference, safety margins.
But lies had a way of expanding in hostile environments. You fed them a sentence, they demanded an entire ecosystem.
"There's pressure building," she said instead. "Not eruptive. But not… normal."
Mahdi frowned. "That's not an explanation."
"It's the only one I have that doesn't insult your intelligence."
He snorted despite himself. "Fair."
They reached a flatter section, a natural bench cut into the slope by time and erosion. Protocol said stop here. Reassess. Hydrate.
Zara kept walking.
Mahdi grabbed her sleeve. "Zara."
She turned. He rarely used her first name. When he did, it meant the system was screaming at him too.
"We're tired," he said. "We push too hard, someone breaks a leg. Then we're really stuck."
Zara scanned the terrain. Looked at the sky. At the plume rising from the summit, still pale, still deceptively gentle. Taftan's fumaroles had been documented for a long time; the mountain had a reputation for sulfurous vents and hot springs, the kind that made the summit look like it was smoking even when it wasn't erupting.
Her phone buzzed again.
STOPPING IS A BAD IDEA.
She closed her eyes for half a second.
Then she made herself sound reasonable.
"Five minutes," she said. "No more. Drink. Check laces. Then we move."
Mahdi nodded, relieved. Farid crouched immediately, pulling a thermos from his pack like he'd been waiting for permission to be practical.
Zara took the offered cup. The tea was cooler now, tannic and grounding. She hated that it helped.
Farid's tea wasn't the polite kind you drank for the aesthetic. It was the kind that arrived because someone believed you were a guest even when you were being foolish. Baloch hospitality, what Zara had glimpsed of it in the last day wasn't ornamental. It was duty, offered like a tool.
She stepped a few meters away, pretending to check the GPS receiver, and brought the satellite phone back out.
The call history showed only one incoming record. Masked number.
She dialed it.
It rang once.
Then the voice returned, unchanged, as if nothing unusual were happening. As if he weren't calling her on the side of a volcano that had just started behaving like a closed fist.
"Dr. Rezai," he said.
"Who are you?" Zara asked quietly.
"I'm someone who would prefer you not die today."
"That's not specific enough."
A pause. She imagined him somewhere clean and controlled, listening to her breath through a headset.
"You're being monitored," he said. "By people who don't like improvisation."
Zara's jaw tightened. "I'm a volcanologist. Improvisation is half the job."
A faint sound on the line. Not laughter. Something closer to approval.
"Then listen carefully," he said. "Taftan is not escalating toward eruption. It's stabilizing."
Zara frowned. "That's not how stabilization looks."
"No," he agreed. "It's how containment looks."
The word landed badly.
Zara looked up at the mountain again. At the way the fumaroles clustered near specific fractures. At the uncanny regularity of the uplift curve in her head, even without the tablet.
"You're telling me," she said slowly, "that this volcano is… managing itself."
"I'm telling you," he replied, "that it's responding."
"To what?"
"To stress."
Zara let out a sharp breath. "Everything responds to stress."
"Yes," he said. "But not everything chooses how."
Her grip tightened on the phone.
"This isn't funny," she said.
"I know," he replied. "I don't joke at work."
That line, flat, unadorned, sent a chill through her that had nothing to do with altitude.
"What do you want from me?" Zara asked.
"For now?" he said. "Compliance."
"I don't do that."
"I've noticed."
Another pause. Longer this time. The kind of silence that wasn't empty. It was someone deciding what to risk telling you.
"Then," he said carefully, "I want you alive long enough to argue with me later."
Zara almost laughed. Almost.
"Fine," she said. "We're moving."
"Good."
The line went dead.
Zara stood there for a moment, phone still pressed to her ear, listening to nothing.
Then the ground beneath her boots vibrated.
Not an earthquake. Not the deep rolling thunder she'd felt before during fieldwork in places where the earth announced itself properly. This was shallow. Localized. Like a truck passing underneath the surface, close enough that you could feel the weight without hearing the engine.
Mahdi stiffened. "Did you feel that?"
"Yes."
Another vibration. Stronger.
Farid was already standing, eyes on the slope above them. "Mountain is shifting," he said calmly. "Not falling. Turning."
Zara didn't like the word choice. She didn't correct him.
"Pack up," she said. "NOW."
They didn't argue this time.
They moved downhill again, faster, cohesion replaced by instinctive spacing. Zara kept her eyes on the ground, but her awareness stretched upward, unwillingly mapping the summit she refused to look back at.
Her phone buzzed.
This time, no words.
Just coordinates.
They matched the trail.
A guide without a face.
They descended for another fifteen minutes before the vibrations stopped as abruptly as they'd begun. The wind slackened. The sulfur smell thinned, retreating upslope like a tide reconsidering its timing.
Mahdi slowed. "I think… whatever that was, it's done."
Zara checked the tablet as soon as she had enough signal for it to populate properly. New data streamed in.
Uplift rate: unchanged. Seismic noise: baseline. Gas emissions: stable.
It was as if the mountain had cleared its throat and decided not to speak after all.
"Everyone okay?" she asked.
A chorus of nods, murmurs.
Farid met her eyes. "You listened," he said.
"To what?"
He shrugged. "The part that tells you when not to stay."
Zara didn't answer.
Because she didn't want to admit that she wasn't sure she'd listened at all. She'd obeyed. Those were different. Sometimes.
They reached base camp just as the sun dipped low enough to throw long shadows across the plain. The generators hummed. The tents stood untouched. Normality, carefully preserved.
Too carefully.
As they dropped packs and peeled off gloves, Zara noticed something she hadn't on the way up.
A vehicle she didn't recognize, parked beyond the equipment line. Matte black. Unmarked. Dust-free in a place that punished cleanliness within minutes.
A man stood beside it.
Tall. Broad-shouldered. Hands clasped loosely in front of him, like someone waiting for a delayed appointment rather than a returning expedition.
He looked up as she approached.
Their eyes met.
There was no surprise in his expression.
"Dr. Zara Rezai," he said aloud this time, voice matching the one from her phone. Calm. Measured. Humane in a way that felt rehearsed.
"I'm Marcus Okonkwo."
Zara stopped three paces away.