It sounds like we're both here. [ Will feels— his chest is tight but his elevated heart rate tastes like eager relief alongside the fear. There's a connection here...but also a denial of one.

Will touches one hand to the ground, pushes aside a piece of wooden rubble. It's exactly the same rough-smooth texture of finished wood that Will's used to...it's just that the broken ends aren't fragmented shards, but snapped-taffy bluntness. Will thinks of Ellie, who he's still never seen, taking the jerky off the ground after he'd laid it out like the world's most generous trap.

Will throws it, and it clatters when it bounces low against the ground. Will the other man see it, too?

But Will goes still after he's released the wood fragment. Instead of scoffing or arguing, he gets...agreement. The relief comes across in his own scoff, a syllable of laugh that's only barely picked up by his radio as he presses the talk button. ] I talked to it.

Or at least I— think I did. I wrote my name on a mirror and asked for the other person's name — I thought I'd be talking to another one of us — but the world...

Answered. In a sense. [ A crackling sigh. ] Not that I have anything useful to share beyond that it just seems...aware.