Kenna Esters's Arc

Chapter 5 of 13

Kenna climbed higher through the jungle, searching for elevation and better light. The backup camera hung from her wrist, still scratched but functional. She needed something worth the film she had left — two exposures on the vintage camera, and whatever charge remained in this digital one. She broke through a wall of ferns onto a ridge and stopped. Below her, cutting through the canopy in a straight line, ran a cleared path. Not natural. Too uniform. At the far end, a metal tower rose above the trees, stark and angular against the green. Radio equipment bristled from the top platform. Kenna raised the camera and zoomed in. Rust streaked the frame, but the structure stood solid. Someone had built this. Someone had been here. She descended toward the path and found the first marker flag — neon orange, impossible to miss. Then another thirty feet ahead. They led toward the tower in a deliberate line. Kenna followed them, counting. Twelve flags total. At the base of the tower, she found a crumpled page half-buried in mud. She pulled it free and smoothed it against her thigh. Oil One Corp. Assessment methodology. Instructions for soil sampling and core extraction. The text blurred where water had soaked through, but enough remained to understand. They'd been drilling here. Testing. Mapping. Kenna photographed the page, then the tower, then the flags stretching back into the jungle. Her hands moved automatically, but her mind was working faster. This island wasn't undiscovered — it was claimed. Someone knew about this place and its value, and they'd left infrastructure behind to prove it. She had her evidence now, but the shot she'd been hunting felt smaller. The island had already been seen, already been measured and catalogued by people who wanted what they could take from it. She lowered the camera and looked up at the tower. The question wasn't whether she could capture something new anymore. It was whether anything here had ever been untouched at all.