Three miles into my run—a time when most everyone else had already finished the race—my legs loosened up, and I settled into a nice pace. But then around mile eight, I hit a wall.

“Don’t quit,” I kept telling myself. “Don’t you quit.”

This got me through another couple miles.

Lacy was cheering me on near the ten-mile marker—holding a large poster that read “Choo! Choo! Thomas the Train coming through!”—and I gave her a big thumbs-up as I passed. A quarter mile after seeing my sister, I came to a fuel station. I stopped and slugged back two small waters, and I grabbed for some energy gel. I squirted two of the gels down my throat, and when I went to start running again, my legs wouldn’t budge.

“Um, excuse me,” I said to my legs in my semidelirious state. “What’s going on with you guys?”

“We’re done,” they answered.

“You’re what?”

“We’re done. If you want to go any further, you’re going to have to talk to Arms.”

That was the last time I pushed my body to its breaking point. Now, nine years later, I was doing it again.

“I have to sit,” I said.

Diego and Rix glanced back over their shoulders and stopped. I could only hope they were both impressed that I’d made it this far. According to Holland, most people who contract dengue fever are laid up for a week, sometimes as long as three weeks. And I now realized why.

Dengue was a crippling virus.

Even now, two days after my fever broke, I was nauseous, my joints were on fire, and everything felt heavy, like I’d had a blood transfusion and been filled with AB-granite.

I flopped down in the middle of the forest and took several long, deep breaths.

Early yesterday, when we set out from the pyramid at T4, it had taken Diego and Rix half an hour to find the right trail. There were several tracks leading to and from the ruins, but after careful debate, it was decided the northeastern route had the freshest tracks.

We’d set off in search of the Nsé-Eja and, hopefully, Gina—hiking for eight hours before stopping to make camp. My Garmin inReach had spotty service the entire day, but around dusk, I’d been able to get a signal. I sent Lacy a few messages asking her to do some digging on Belippa for me.