Primal Instinct

The mountains didn't look like escape on the map. On the screen of my old phone, they were just green shapes and gray lines like interstate arteries pulling me away from everything I'd ever known. But out here, in real time, they rose like walls. Endless ribs of earth and trees, ribs of something bigger than me, closing around the narrow road as if the world had decided where I was going long before I put Crystal Lunar Springs into the GPS. "Recalculating," the robotic voice said for the third time in ten minutes. "Ugh, what piece of s**t service," I muttered, tightening my grip on the steering wheel. Fog clung low in the valley, rolling over the asphalt in lazy curls. The early morning light filtered through the canopy overhead, thin and gold, painting the world in soft strokes that didn't match the knot in my chest. It had been two and a half hours since Atlanta disappeared in my rearview mirror. Two hours since I'd watched the skyline shrink and told myself I wasn't looking back. I hadn't believed it then. I was trying to believe it now. "This is good," I told myself, because no one else was there to say it. "Fresh air. New job. No lying cheating ass men. No cheap wine. No crying in traffic on I-75." Just me, my overstuffed GMC SUV, and everything I owned boxing me in from all sides. Freight Technology Distributions. Executive assistant to the CEO. Full relocation package. Corporate housing. It had sounded like a scam the first time I read the offer email. Then I'd looked up the company, seen the numbers, the clean branding, the almost obnoxious level of anonymous wealth and realized they weren't the ones who didn't make sense. I was. 31, fresh out of a five-year relationship that had ended with the words it's not that I don't love you, I'm just not ready for one woman yet and a pair of panties on my bedroom floor that definitely weren't mine. Stuck in a job that paid the bills but ate my soul in fifteen-minute calendar blocks. Watching my life blur into a loop of alarm clocks, emails, and quiet disappointments. So when a recruiter slid into my inbox with talk of "upward mobility," "competitive salary," and "a unique leadership environment," I'd clicked. When the second interview turned into a quick "the CEO wants to meet you," I'd said yes. And when the offer came with enough zeroes to make my throat tighten, I'd signed. The last thing my ex had said when I told him I was moving was, "Crystal what? You don't even know where that is." Exactly. A green sign appeared ahead, rising out of the mist. The letters were white, crisp against the weathered metal, WELCOME TO CRYSTAL LUNAR SPRINGS Elevation: Unknown I squinted. "Unknown?" The GPS chimed once, then went dead. The map froze. The little blue arrow of my truck stopped moving, stranded on the edge of the digital world. "Perfect," I sighed. "Love that for us." My phone bars dropped from two to one to a mocking little x. No service. The air changed as soon as I rolled past the town sign. It wasn't just colder, it felt thicker, like there was something in it besides oxygen. My skin prickled. A low hum vibrated somewhere under my ribs, faint and steady, like distant bass from a club I couldn't see. "Okay," I whispered. "Definitely not weird at all." I flipped the radio on, static. Switched stations, more static. Turned it off again. Trees closed in on both sides of the road, towering pines and oaks and something else I couldn't name, their branches interlocking overhead to form a tunnel of green and shadow. The sunlight narrowed, breaking into thin, shimmering blades through the branches. For a moment, I swore I saw something move between the trunks. It was too big to be a bird and too smooth to be the wind. I blinked. It was gone. "You're tired," I reminded myself. "You got up at four in the morning to drive to a town no one's heard of. You're hallucinating giant squirrels." The hum under my skin didn't care. It rolled through me, slow and insistent, matching the curve of the road, the rise and fall of the mountains. Not loud enough to make me panic. Just loud enough that my heartbeat wanted to sync with it. I glanced at my reflection in the rearview mirror. Same rich brown skin. Same thick curls fighting the bun I'd forced them into. Same warm amber eyes that always looked like they were reflecting sunlight, even on bad days. Except, for a split second, when the light caught them just right, they looked...different. Not just warm amber, but brighter. Like someone had dropped a spark of pink into honey. I frowned and leaned closer. By the time my nose almost touched the glass, my eyes were normal again. "Sleep," I decided. "You need some. After you meet the mysterious billionaire mountain boss, you are going to take a nap so long they'll have to send a search party." The road curved sharply, and suddenly the trees parted. Crystal Lunar Springs unfolded below like something out of a magazine spread. Not a town so much as a private world with rows of sleek, modern homes tucked into the hillsides, glass and stone and dark wood blending into the landscape. Lights glowed faintly in the fog, soft and warm. Further down, the suggestion of a main street: a few storefronts, a café, a cluster of low buildings that looked more like a wellness retreat than anything else. It was quiet. Too quiet. No traffic. No sirens. No blaring music from passing cars. Just the low murmur of the wind through the trees and the hum in my chest, getting stronger. "I moved to a rich cult town," I said aloud. "Amazing." The GPS screen was still frozen, but a new road sign pointed uphill, FREIGHT TECHNOLOGY DISTRIBUTIONS – HEADQUARTERS. An arrow curved toward a paved road that climbed along a ridge, winding up and around the mountain. I followed it, my truck groaning in protest as we climbed higher. My ears popped. The air thinned and cooled. When I reached the top, the trees opened again, and I got my first look at the place that had lured me out of my old life with a salary number and three PDF attachments. The headquarters sat like a crown on the highest point of the ridge. All glass and black stone, it rose three stories from the cliff, wide instead of tall, stretching along the edge of the mountain as if it were part of it. The front-facing side was mostly windows, reflecting the sky and the ocean of trees below. Dark panels framed everything, sharp and clean, broken only by glints of metal and the geometric lines of balconies and walkways. Parking lots were tucked discreetly behind rows of young trees and manicured shrubs. The logo—FTD, a crescent moon curling around the letters—glowed faintly above the main entrance in brushed silver. It didn't look like a place where lives changed. It looked like a place where decisions were made that changed other people's lives. I parked in a designated VISITOR space near the front, hands slick on the steering wheel. "You can do this," I told myself. "You've sat in offices with worse men and smaller paychecks. You've handled screaming executives and grown-ass adults who can't read their own calendars. This is just... more zeros, snow and mountains." I checked my reflection one more time in the visor mirror. My curls were doing their own thing, but at least they were contained. My makeup was minimal but clean. The blazer fit. The black slacks weren't wrinkled. I still looked like me, just a slightly more put-together version. The hum under my skin surged once, like it was agreeing with me. Or mocking me. Hard to tell. Inside, the lobby was all marble and glass, high ceilings and too much open space. My steps echoed softly on the polished floor as I approached the reception desk. A wall of windows behind it overlooked the valley below, the trees rolling out in waves. Everything smelled faintly of something warm and sharp, cedar and smoke and a hint of rain on stone. The woman behind the desk was already watching me. She smiled before I opened my mouth. "Ms. Carter?" I blinked. "Yes. Hi. I'm here to—" "Meet with Mr. Steele," she finished for me. "Welcome to Freight Tech. He's expecting you." That was not intimidating at all. I shifted my tote bag on my shoulder. "Right. Thank you. I didn't realize he—" "Likes to meet his people personally?" Her smile widened just a fraction. "You'll get used to that." Her tone said, if you last. She gestured to a set of black double doors to the right. "Elevator to the executive floor. Top button. It won't move unless you're cleared, don't worry." I tried not to let that last part bother me. It did anyway. The elevator was as sleek as everything else, it had black walls, soft lighting, a control panel with only a handful of buttons. I pressed the top one. For a second, nothing happened. Then the doors slid shut without a sound, and we started moving. No little numbers lighting up one by one to mark the floors. No dings. Just the sensation of motion up, then forward, like the elevator wasn't going through the building so much as sliding along its surface. I smoothed my palms down my thighs. A tiny part of me wanted to hit "door open" and run back to my car, drive down the mountain, and pretend this had never happened. But then what? Go back to Atlanta? Back to the same streets, the same coffee shop where I'd sat watching my ex laugh with someone new two weeks after he'd said he "needed time to figure himself out"? Back to the same job that had quietly eaten five years of my life while I waited for something to change? No. Forward it was.