Morning arrived and Maverick packed. He never even heard Cushing approach. Maverick jumped a little to see someone standing so close.

"Where's the camera?" Maverick asked.

"Don't need it. We got seventeen versions of your final speech, Brian's splicing them together right now."

"Ankles almost completely healed up. Look, Jet and Roman have already tried to talk me out of it, I'm going," Maverick said.

"I'm not trying to talk you out of it." Cushing watched Maverick fill his pack. Cushing dropped the backpack he had slung over his shoulder.

"Of course not," Maverick said. "We need the big finish."

"I'm just hoping it's not a finale," Cushing said.

"It was a stupid accident, it won't happen this time," Maverick said.

He didn't plan on going too far. In fact, just on the other side of the creek, in quadrant nine. A handful of acres Maverick left unexplored since the day he fired that shot. He hoped quadrant nine held some absolution for an old monster hunter.

"I have another offer for you," Cushing said. "Before you say no, hear me out."

Dropping to his knees, Cushing unzipped the bag he brought with him and pulled out two wooden feet he ordered online, which clattered to the ground.

"We fake it," Cushing said. Maverick shook his head and walked away. Cushing scooped up the feet in his arms and followed.

"Wait, wait, just listen!" Cushing jumped in front of Maverick.

"I'm not a fraud," Maverick said.

"We have a suit, we have cameras. The trick is to make the footage just detailed enough to be intriguing, but just shaky enough to be inconclusive. Come on, just think about it."

"What will that prove? Nothing."

"That's not the point," Cushing said.

"That's exactly the point!" Maverick said.

"This way, you save face. You bring back footage! People will believe you!"

"They'll all believe me, huh?" Maverick asked.

"Well, not most people, but it will help," Cushing said.

"No one will be suspicious that I get this footage after hanging around the American Myths and Monsters guy?" Maverick asked.

"I'll say I never believed you. I'll say I'm just as surprised."

"You don't believe me!" Maverick said.

"That's not the point! I'll say the footage is compelling, and we need further expeditions. Think about it: What your dad tried to do? We'll do it! No more reservoir."

"Even if that worked, and it wouldn't, we'd have to keep it up, keep faking pictures and prints."

"We won't," Cushing said. "Look, people see what they want to see. You get a bunch of Bigfoot hunters out here and I promise you they'll start telling stories of howls, and wood knocking, sightings, the whole nine yards. It will be in their heads, but what do you care?"

"I'd know. Everyone that knows me, Roman and Jet, they'd know I sold out."

"I promise you they'll be happy for you," Cushing said.

"And my dad?" Maverick asked. The great explorer, the joker, the man he hated and loved in equal measure.

"We don't know what happened. You can keep looking, but you don't need to go out there for days on end. You don't need to die out there."

That's something that can't be avoided any longer, Maverick thought. "You think my dad's out there? What's left?"

"I-I don't know. I really don't," Cushing said.

"You think my mom thought that too? That I killed him? See, I always thought they had problems, shit I didn't know about. Maybe there was more behind their fights than I remembered. But if I did...she hated me. She could barely look at me, even years later. She fucking hated me, James."

"No," Cushing said. "If she hated you, you would be in jail. She wouldn't have bottled it inside until it metastasized and killed her."

"Maybe so."

"Maverick," Cushing said.

"I'm going," Maverick said. He picked the bag up, the weight pulling on him more than before.

"Fine. Just give yourself another week. Deal? Just one more week! Look at you, you're still weak. You look worse than you did in the hospital. Let me go too! Seriously, I've been camping, I even hiked a little once."

"Sorry, James. This is just me," Maverick said.

Cushing rubbed the back of his head.

"I get it. I do! I get it. You need this, I'm not saying don't go out there ever, just not right now," he said.

"Creeks are rising. The bottoms are being cleared out. You saw it," Maverick said. He felt exhausted, even after sleeping for fourteen hours. The thing inside drained his life away, gorging itself on Maverick's final weeks.

"I'll erase the tapes! That's right, no more documentary."

"Please." Maverick opened the truck to sit down. "You need them as much as I do."

"Mav, please," Cushing said. "Come on, man."

"Look, don't tell anyone, or at least give me a head start," Maverick said. "I just need to catch my breath and I'm off."

"You'll get a head start, that's all I'm promising," Cushing said. "How long you going to be out there? Do you need Brian?"

"As long as it takes. No cameras. I don't want to risk scaring the monster. If there is one. Hey, you know that stuff about alternate universes you were talking about?"

"Yeah," Cushing said. "I'm fucking loaded in one of those, you know."

"I wonder if there's one where I never saw it. I wonder what happened in that universe?"

"Nothing exciting," Cushing said.

"You're probably right," Maverick said.

"And hey, don't die, okay? Because I may have to dub some of your audio when we start editing. That will be a pain in the ass if you're dead," Cushing said.

"Fair enough." Maverick closed his eyes. Cushing left him there, alone in his truck, catching his breath before he went into the bottoms again.

"Where you headed, son?"

"Exploring," Maverick said.