Since she first heard it, Isolde had been tinkering with her radio, trying to catch that elusive signal again. It came frequently, and not just to her own -- Demian had been trying, too. It came out garbled and hissing with static when they caught it, always asking odd questions.

“Did you wash your hands after you buried the evidence?”

Demian wrote that down and tore the page out of their notebook. They recorded none of the messages digitally -- at least not on anything provided by the DPIP. Isolde wasn’t stupid. She knew they were piecing something together that would be best kept under wraps. She wanted to know, too. Demian was suspicious, but they had never so much as harmed her by accident. Their interests aligned with her own. 

The radio crackled to life once again in her claws. It was silent, just the static of an unclear signal, and then --

“Who 

are

you”

The pseudoplastic casing of the radio creaked as Isolde’s claws tightened on it. She loosened her excited grip immediately, scrambling for her own transmitter. Before she could speak, the voice came again.

“WHY

are

they”

“Who are you talking about?” Isolde asked, claws trembling on the dial. The radio was silent -- or was that breathing, hidden in the mess of the jumbled signals?

“I don’t want to be alone anymore”

The radio signal cut off with a hum. Isolde stood frozen, staring at it for a moment, before jumping into action.

If the tower is here, then the signal wouldn’t have made it that far, so it had to be --

She circled a large area on a paper map Demian had bought somewhere -- they had multiple of them, and enjoyed marking a specific one on the wall with the locations of their friends, tracing the most ideal travel route to visit on each. It was a web with their own home at the centre. This one, Isolde was nearly certain Demian had noticed her pilfer and pretended not to notice -- just like Isolde pretended not to notice the small tracker they had pinned to her pack. 

Over the next few days, Isolde kept an ear out for the strange signal, but it didn’t reappear. Her initial guess was the most she was going to get. She copied the results from her map, and headed off.

Her destination: somewhere on the border between Mireh and Issiq. It was only one of many possibilities, but a start was a start.