Do not trust the tapping.

It won't be them this time...just don't look out the window. Think of something else. Anything else. Just not It.

Trust me.

...I didn't actually forget to do this, but now I guess now would be a good time.

Branwen is recovering still. See...the paper was blank. The one Fox handed to her. She tested it in any way she could think of to make sure there wasn't a hidden message.

Then wrote "?" on it and proceeded to stick it back in the envelope.

They wrote on the inside. That was the message. She figured it out yesterday.

"D(X)N'T L(X)(X)K (X)UT THE WIND(X)W LITTLE W(X)LF"
"We've sent a crow."
"HE WILL WATCH Y(X)U"
"How is your kitty?"
"THE RAVEN FINALLY FLIES T(X) BATTLE"
"The mates hole up in defense."
"S(X)RR(X)WS(X)RR(X)WS(X)RR(X)W"
"We are more than you know."
"THE OWL WILL TURN"
"It is imperative that you understand."
"N(X) ESCAPE"
"The Master has plans."
"RATTYRATTYRATRAT WILL S(X)(X)N BE UP T(X) BAT"
"How will you ever escape the snow?"

...the rest is scribbles, sketches, and some of that "HE SEES" crap.

I'd be so angry if I weren't terrified...

Crow says "no escape" and Fox mentions snow...

This is why running is difficult...

None of us can drive. Two of us know how...mostly. None of us are legal to.

And this is how we're dispersed.

It was color coded, but we didn't want anybody to be able to pick us out individually...any proxies that DON'T already know where we live...

It's not impossible with the four of us sort of clustered together...just hard to organize. And then the one that's so far away...

Branwen likes to go to Pittsburgh to hide. She feels safe there. But that's about 45 minutes away, even more if you're farther from the border.

We have two cities pretty close by. We'll call the one Phoenix and the other Poverty. (Bran names these things, not me.)

Phoenix is a city "rising from the ashes", as she put it. It was really bad for a while, but the city has been improving. But it still has shady people. It also has a steel mill right next to it, full of really creepy warehouses. And from what I've read, runners have a bad history with warehouses and creepy buildings.

Poverty is the closest to Whelan and I. And it's probably the most dangerous of the two. Seriously. We cannot stress enough how much you should NOT go by yourself at night anywhere in that city. It's even scary in the daytime. But that's because it's "zombie apocalypse empty". Which is pretty accurate, I think. Both down town and east end (the worst parts) are pretty empty then. Because there's no business. That enitre city is on the decline and it's sad. But also hilarious in a really morbid way.

...It's something that's funny if you live here I guess...

But yeah. Poverty is no place to be running from a monster. You'll just end up being shot and killed. Besides that, neither of these places actually LOOKS like a city. Phoenix is still being rebuilt. Poverty is old and crumbling. There, buildings have been repaired with OTHER BUILDINGS. No joke.

And we all have normal lives we're trying to keep up to mask what's really going on...

We can't run. Not yet. Now is not the time.

Something happened yesterday. The 10th. That's what Branwen told me.

I have catching up to do.