He gives the smallest, strangest smile.
“That’s why… it has to be you.”
Every instinct in your body tightens.
You should leave.
You know that. You should take whatever strength you have left, turn back toward the main road, and try to find help before dark. You should not sit in the desert listening to riddles from a dying man with a hidden bag strapped to his chest. You should not let fear and curiosity and exhaustion blur into the kind of mistake people never recover from.
But then he coughs.
A rough, tearing sound that bends his whole body with it. When it passes, you see a smear of blood at the corner of his mouth.
And suddenly this stops being only about mystery.
This man is running out of time.
You lean forward and carefully loosen the satchel strap.
