Chapter 4: 10-12: 212,759
Chapter 10: The Ash
The plaza had gone quiet in that particular way that felt less like peace and more like held breath. The newsstand loomed behind them, its rusted frame catching the last of the gray light, the stack of tomorrow’s newspapers still sitting in their glass case like an accusation. Rebecca couldn’t stop looking at them. Tomorrow’s date. Tomorrow’s headlines. A tomorrow that had never come for anyone in this city.
“Alright.” Wayne’s voice cut through the stillness. He’d stood up from the curb, boots back on, vest zipped, already moving toward the pile of duffel bags they’d hauled from the shops. “We need to gear up. Properly. Before the timer runs out.”
“How much time?” Arthur asked.
Becca checked her controller, thumb tracing the crack that split the screen like a lightning bolt. “Nine hours and change. Maybe less if the signal degrades.”
“Then we move fast.” Wayne grabbed the first duffel and unzipped it with a sound like tearing fabric. “Everyone gets new clothes. Layers. We don’t know where the next jump is taking us, but I’m not freezing my ass off again.”
Rebecca’s fingers found her thigh and tapped. Tap-tap-tap. The rhythm was faster now, driven by something that felt almost like hope. They had supplies. Real supplies. The kind that could mean the difference between survival and a frozen grave in some unnamed dimension.
She grabbed a duffel of her own and dragged it toward the newsstand, using the counter as a makeshift table. The bag was heavy, stuffed with things she’d grabbed on instinct, things that might be useful, things that might just weigh them down. She started pulling items out, sorting them into piles.
Thermal shirts first. Dark gray, long-sleeved, the kind of synthetic blend that wicked moisture and held heat. She stripped off her denim jacket, the frayed edges catching on her cargo pants, and pulled the thermal over her vintage science tee. The fabric was soft against her skin, warmer than anything she’d worn in weeks.
She heard Wayne behind her, doing the same. The zip of his new jacket was loud in the quiet plaza, a sound that felt almost obscene in a city that had forgotten what noise meant.
“These boots are actually good,” Becky said. She’d found a pair of combat boots in the sporting goods store, proper ones, not the scavenged oversized pair she’d been wearing. She sat on the curb, lacing them up with quick, efficient movements, the double-knots tight and secure. “Steel toe. Waterproof. Where the hell did these come from?”
“Same place as everything else,” Rebecca said. “A world that stopped.”
Becky didn’t answer. Just finished tying her boots and stood, testing her weight, rolling her ankles. The new boots made her look different somehow. More solid. More ready.
Rebecca pulled spare shirts from the duffel, folding them with the kind of precision that came from years of cramped apartment living. Two thermal layers. Three pairs of wool socks. A spare pair of cargo pants, darker than her current ones, reinforced at the knees. She stacked them neatly beside the newsstand, ready to be packed into her bag when they moved.
“Hey.” Becca appeared beside her, arms full of batteries. “Where do you want these?”
“Divide them. Half in my pack, half in yours. We can’t afford to lose everything if one bag gets separated.”
Becca nodded and started sorting, her movements quick and practiced. She’d done this before. Eight years of scavenging had taught her the value of redundancy, of spreading resources, of never keeping all your eggs in one basket.
The batteries clicked against each other as she worked, a small, rhythmic sound that filled the silence. AA. AAA. 9-volt. D-cell. She sorted them into small pouches, the kind that clipped to belts, then tucked the pouches into the duffels with the same care a surgeon might use with instruments.
Vance had found a wool coat somewhere. He stood apart from the group, buttoning it up with trembling fingers, his tweed jacket discarded on the ground beside him. The coat was dark gray, almost black, and it hung on his thin frame like a shroud. He looked older in it. More tired. More human.
“Professor.” Rebecca crossed to him, her new thermal shirt warm against the cooling air. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.” His voice was hoarse, scraped raw by days of dust and cold. “Just. Adjusting.”
“To what?”
“To all of it.” He gestured vaguely at the city, at the empty street, at the stack of newspapers that promised a tomorrow no one had lived to see. “The scale of this. The implications. A world that stopped. A billion people gone. And we’re just walking through it like it’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing.”
“No. It’s not.” He adjusted his spectacles, the cracked lens catching the gray light. “But we have to keep moving. Keep surviving. That’s what they would have wanted.”
“Who?”
“The people who disappeared. The ones who left all this behind.” He looked at Rebecca, and something in his eyes shifted. Something that looked almost like determination. “We can’t save them. But we can make sure their world doesn’t become ours.”
Rebecca didn’t know what to say. So she just nodded, once, and went back to packing.
Arthur had found a pair of boots in the menswear store. Proper hiking boots, brown leather, scuffed but sturdy. He sat on the curb, struggling with the laces, his injured knee making the simple act of tying his shoes into a production.
“Need help?” Becky asked.
“No. I’ve got it.”
“You don’t have it. You’re making a mess of those laces.”
“I said I’ve got it.”
Becky knelt beside him anyway. Took the laces from his fumbling fingers and tied them herself, double-knotting them the way she did her own. Arthur watched her, his expression unreadable.
“Thanks,” he said. The word came out rough, like it cost him something to say.
“Don’t mention it.”
She stood and walked away before he could respond. Arthur looked after her for a long moment, then down at his boots, then at the cane propped against the curb beside him. He picked it up, tested it against the ground, and pushed himself to his feet.
“Timer,” Rebecca called out. “Someone check it.”
Three controllers beeped almost simultaneously. Rebecca’s Frankenstein creation. Becca’s cracked and taped disaster. Becky’s military-issue brick with its aluminum plates and mismatched screws.
9:23.52.
“Nine hours.” Wayne zipped the last duffel closed. “We need to decide what we’re doing with that time.”
“Sleep?” Arthur suggested. “Actual sleep? In a bed?”
“Beds are a luxury. We need shelter. Somewhere defensible. Somewhere we can rest and eat and not worry about something sneaking up on us.”
“Something like the jewelry store?” Becca asked. “Small. Back room. One entrance.”
“Too small. We’d be trapped if anything came through the front.”
“The hardware store,” Becky said. “Big open space. Multiple exits. We could barricade the front, keep the back clear in case we need to run.”
Wayne considered it. Rebecca watched him think, watched the way his jaw tightened and his eyes went distant. He was weighing options, calculating risk. The same thing he’d done in the electronics shop, every time she’d brought him a new component and asked him to help her build something impossible.
“Hardware store works,” he said finally. “It’s defensible. It’s got supplies. And it’s close.”
“What about food?” Arthur asked. “I ate my last protein bar two jumps ago.”
Rebecca reached into her duffel and pulled out a can of beans. “Grocery store. Becca and I cleared it. We’ve got enough to feed everyone for a week.”
“It’s not going to be a gourmet meal,” Becca added. “But it’ll keep us alive.”
“Alive is good.” Wayne shouldered his duffel, the weight pulling at his shoulders. “Let’s move.”
They walked through streets that had gone darker, the gray light fading to something closer to black. The lanterns in the pre-industrial city had been replaced by nothing, by absolute darkness, by the kind of emptiness that made Rebecca’s skin crawl. No streetlights. No porch lights. No glow from windows. Just the blinking red traffic signal and the distant, fading hum of something she couldn’t quite identify.
“Flashes,” Wayne said. “Everyone who has one.”
Rebecca pulled her hand-crank flashlight from her belt, cranking it three times before the beam steadied. Becca had a small LED, bright and focused. Becky’s was military-issue, heavy, the kind that could double as a baton if needed.
Wayne didn’t have one. He was still carrying the dead flashlight from the frozen wasteland, the casing cracked, the lens broken. He hadn’t replaced it.
“Here.” Rebecca pulled a spare from her bag, one of the battery-operated models she’d grabbed at the hardware store. “Take it.”
He looked at her for a moment. Then he took it, clicking it on, watching the beam cut through the darkness.
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
They walked in a loose cluster, Wayne and Becky in front, Becca on the left, Rebecca on the right, Vance and Arthur in the middle. The hardware store was three blocks away, but every block felt longer in the dark, every shadow felt deeper.
Rebecca’s fingers tapped against her thigh as she walked. Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap. The rhythm kept her grounded, kept her focused, kept the fear from crawling up her throat and choking her.
“Something moved,” Becky said.
Everyone stopped.
“Where?”
“Alley. Left side.”
Rebecca turned her flashlight toward the alley. The beam caught empty dumpsters, scattered trash, a stray cat that froze in the light before bolting into the darkness.
“Just a cat,” she said.
“Sure?”
“Sure.”
They kept walking.
The hardware store appeared ahead, its sign still hanging, its windows still dark. Wayne pushed the door open and stepped inside, flashlight sweeping the space, checking corners, checking shadows. Then he gestured for the others to follow.
“Clear.”
They moved inside, dragging duffels and baskets and the weight of everything they’d gathered. The store smelled like dust and oil and old wood. It felt like a sanctuary.
Rebecca set her duffel on the counter and started unpacking. Canned food, stacked by weight. Water bottles, wrapped in cloth to prevent clinking. The medical bag, double-checked, sealed, with bandages tucked beside antibiotics. Crossbow bolts, counted and bundled. The rifle that Becky had strapped across her back, leaning now against the counter. The hatchet that Wayne had clipped to his belt.
Multi-tools, distributed, one each. Flashlights, tested, batteries confirmed.
“We should eat,” Rebecca said. “Before we sleep.”
They ate cold beans from a can, passing it around the circle. No one complained. No one had energy to complain. They just ate, and drank water, and sat together in the dark of a store that had once been full of people who were now nowhere.
“Nine hours,” Arthur said. “Then we jump again.”
“Nine hours,” Rebecca confirmed.
“And then what?”
“Then we find out where the portal takes us next.”
“Anywhere has to be better than here.”
Rebecca looked at the empty street outside, at the blinking red signal, at the stack of newspapers that promised a tomorrow no one had lived to see.
“Or worse,” she said. “But we’ll face it together.”
Wayne reached out and took her hand. Squeezed once. Let go.
And they waited.
The dark had teeth. Becca lay on her back, staring at the ceiling she couldn’t see, listening to the sounds of five other people breathing. Wayne’s snore was a low, steady rumble, punctuated by the occasional whistle. Arthur muttered in his sleep, soft, nonsense syllables that never resolved into words. Vance had found a corner farthest from the door and had curled into himself like a question mark, his journal clutched against his chest even in sleep.
She’d been lying there for hours. Or minutes. Time had stopped meaning anything the moment they’d stepped through the portal into this dead city. The hardware store smelled like dust and old wood, and the floor was hard against her back despite the sleeping bag she’d spread beneath her. Every joint ached. Every muscle screamed. But sleep wouldn’t come.
The countdown on her tablet glowed in the dark, a small, insistent reminder that they were running out of time. She’d propped it against her bag, the screen dimmed to conserve power, the numbers ticking down with mechanical indifference.
She turned her head.
Wayne and Becky were tangled together a few feet away. Not in a sexual way, just proximity. Necessity. Becky’s head rested on Wayne’s shoulder, her arm thrown across his chest, her breathing slow and even. Wayne’s hand was in her hair, fingers tangled in the choppy strands, holding her close even in sleep.
Becca watched them for a long moment.
She remembered a different Wayne. Her Wayne. The one who’d died protecting her. The one whose face she’d seen in the crowd when the gate opened, the one who’d pushed her behind him, the one whose blood had stained her hands as she tried to stop the bleeding.
This Wayne had the same jaw. The same hands. The same way of standing, feet planted, ready. But he wasn’t hers. Had never been hers. Would never be hers.
And that was fine.
She sat up. Slowly. Carefully. Her boots were beside her, laces still tied from the last time she’d taken them off. She’d learned to do that years ago, in the early days of the collapse, when every second counted and every moment of vulnerability could be your last.
She pulled them on. Stood. Stepped over Arthur’s sleeping form, around Vance’s curled shape, past Wayne and Becky’s tangled bodies. No one stirred. No one noticed.
The front door of the hardware store was still open, just as they’d left it. She slipped through the gap, into the street, and the night swallowed her whole.
The air bit. Not sharply, not like the frozen wasteland, but with a constant, gnawing chill that settled into her bones and stayed there. Becca pulled her jacket tighter, the patched denim stiff against her skin, and started walking.
The street stretched in both directions, empty and dark. The cars sat where they’d been abandoned, their doors still open, their windows still gaping. The traffic light still blinked red. Red. Red. Red. The rhythm of it matched her heartbeat, slow and steady.
She walked.
Her footsteps echoed off the buildings, the sound bouncing back at her from windows that stared like empty eyes. She’d never been alone before. Not really. Even in her own timeline, even after everyone disappeared, she’d had the hum of her failed experiments and the crackle of her dying equipment. Static and silence.
This was different. This was a city full of nothing.
She kicked a rock. It skittered across the pavement, disappeared into a drainage grate with a clang that echoed for blocks. She winced. Stopped. Listened.
Nothing.
Just the wind. Just the red light, blinking. Just the distant hum of something she couldn’t identify.
She kept walking.
The buildings grew taller, the streets narrower. She was heading toward the financial district, toward the skyscrapers that loomed above like tombstones. The glass facades were dark, the interiors black, the doors hanging ajar on the ones she passed. She didn’t go in. Didn’t want to know what was inside.
A shape moved in an alley to her left. Quick. Small. Just a flicker in the corner of her eye, there and gone.
Becca froze.
Her hand went to her belt, to the knife she’d scavenged, the blade she’d used a hundred times. But she didn’t draw it. Didn’t move. Just stood there, breath held, listening.
Silence.
Then a sound. Soft. Scraping. Bare feet on pavement. Slow and unsteady, like whoever was making it wasn’t sure they wanted to be heard.
Becca turned.
The alley was dark, but she could see the shape at the end. Small. Thin. Almost skeletal, backlit by nothing, hugging the wall like it was trying to disappear into the brick.
“Hey,” Becca said.
Her voice sounded wrong in the silence. Too loud. Too harsh. She softened it, tried again.
“Hey. It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.”
The shape didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just stood there, pressed against the wall, breathing fast and shallow. Becca could hear it now, the sharp, panicked breaths of something terrified.
She took a step closer.
The shape flinched.
She stopped.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” she repeated. “I promise. I’m just. I’m like you. I’m alone.”
A pause. The breathing continued, ragged and desperate. Then a voice, small and cracked, barely above a whisper.
“You’re not real.”
Becca’s chest tightened. “What?”
“You’re not real. You’re. You’re a ghost. A hallucination. I’ve seen them before.” The voice wavered. “I’ve seen lots of things that aren’t real.”
“I’m real.” Becca took another step. “I’m as real as you are. I promise.”
The shape peeled away from the wall. Moved into the dim light that filtered down from the street, from the blinking red traffic signal, from the endless, empty dark.
It was a girl.
She couldn’t have been more than eleven. Thin. Almost skeletal, the kind of thin that came from years of not enough food. Her hair was matted, stiff with mud and something darker, something that might have been blood. Her face was streaked with dirt, cracked lips, hollow eyes that looked too large for her skull.
She wore clothes that hung from her frame like rags. An oversized jacket, torn at the sleeves. Frayed pants, held up with a length of rope. No shoes. Her feet were black with grime, the soles cracked and bleeding.
She swayed on her feet, like standing was an effort, like she might collapse at any moment.
Becca’s throat closed.
“Hey,” she said again. Softer this time. Gentler. “Hey. It’s okay. You’re okay.”
The girl flinched at the words, retreated a step. Her eyes, large and hollow and utterly empty, watched Becca like she was waiting for the trap to spring.
“Are you real?” the girl whispered. “Are you really real?”
“I’m real.”
“People don’t exist anymore. They all went away. I looked. I searched. They’re gone.”
“I know.” Becca took another step, slow and deliberate, her hands raised where the girl could see them. “I know. I searched too. In my world. Everyone was gone.”
“Your world?”
“It’s complicated.” Becca stopped, close enough to see the girl clearly now, close enough to see the faint scar that ran along her collarbone, old and faded. “I’m not from here. I’m not from this city. I came through. A portal.”
The girl’s brow furrowed. Confusion flickered across her face, breaking through the emptiness.
“A portal?”
“Yeah. It’s. I don’t know how to explain it. But I’m here now. And you’re here. You’re not alone.”
“I’m always alone.” The words came out flat, matter of fact. “I’ve been alone for three years.”
Becca’s heart cracked. Just a little. Just enough to let something in that she’d been holding out for a long time.
“Three years?”
“Since the silence. Since everyone went away.” The girl’s voice dropped, barely audible. “I was in the basement. Hiding. My parents, they. They were upstairs. Then they weren’t.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Sorry doesn’t help.” The girl tilted her head, a strange, birdlike movement, watching Becca’s mouth as she spoke. “You talk like they did. Before. Normal.”
“I am normal. Or I was. Before all this.”
“Are there others? Others like you?”
Becca hesitated. Thought about the group back at the hardware store. Thought about Wayne and Becky, tangled together. Thought about Vance and Arthur, the professor and the businessman, so far out of their element. Thought about Rebecca, the other version of herself, the one who was probably awake right now, wondering where Becca had gone.
“Yeah,” she said. “There are others.”
The girl’s eyes widened. Just a fraction. Just enough to show that something was still alive in there, some spark that three years of solitude hadn’t quite extinguished.
“Others,” she repeated. “Others like you.”
“Like me. And like you. Survivors.”
“I. I haven’t seen anyone. Not since. Not since the silence.”
“I know.” Becca took a chance. Extended her hand. “Come with me. I’ll take you to them. We have food. Water. Safety.”
The girl stared at the offered hand. Her own hands, cracked and bleeding, black nails and broken skin, hung at her sides. She looked at Becca’s hand like it might bite her.
“You’re not real,” she whispered. “You can’t be real.”
“I’m real.”
“People don’t help. People don’t. It’s every person for themselves. That’s what I learned. That’s what the silence taught me.”
“The silence taught you wrong.”
The girl flinched again, like the words had physically struck her. But she didn’t run. Didn’t retreat. Just stood there, swaying, staring at Becca’s outstretched hand.
“I don’t. I can’t.” She shook her head, a quick, sharp movement. “I can’t trust you. I can’t trust anyone.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know. You don’t know what it’s like. Being alone. Being. Being nothing.”
Becca lowered her hand. Not in defeat. In understanding.
“You’re right,” she said. “I don’t know what it’s like to be you. But I know what it’s like to be alone. I know what it’s like to wake up every day and wonder why you’re still breathing. I know what it’s like to have no one.”
The girl’s eyes, hollow and empty, flickered.
“How long?” she whispered.
“Eight years.”
The words hung in the air between them. Eight years. A lifetime. An eternity.
“That’s. That’s longer than me.”
“Yeah.”
“How did you. How did you survive?”
Becca thought about it. Thought about the failed experiments and the endless calculations. Thought about the journal she’d kept, the notes she’d scribbled, the desperate, clawing need to fix something that couldn’t be fixed.
“I kept working,” she said. “I kept trying. I kept telling myself that if I just worked hard enough, figured out the right equation, solved the right problem, everything would be okay.”
“And was it?”
“No.” Becca laughed, a small, broken sound. “No, it wasn’t. But it kept me alive. It kept me moving. And then one day, the portal opened, and I found people. Real people. People who were alive.”
The girl was quiet for a long moment. Then, slowly, she took a step forward. Then another. Her bare feet scraped against the pavement, the sound loud in the silence.
“You’re real,” she said. Not a question this time. A statement. A decision.
“I’m real.”
“And there are others.”
“Five others. Six, now. Including you.”
The girl stopped again, close enough that Becca could reach out and touch her if she wanted. Close enough that she could see the individual streaks of dirt on her face, the individual cracks in her lips, the individual hollows beneath her eyes.
“I don’t have a name,” the girl said. “Not anymore. I forgot it. I forgot everything.”
“Then we’ll give you a new one.”
“You can do that?”
“I think so. What do you want to be called?”
The girl considered this. Her eyes, still hollow, still empty, flickered with something that might have been thought.
“Something that isn’t nothing,” she said finally. “Something that means something.”
Becca thought about it. Thought about the girl’s thin frame, her hollow eyes, the way she moved like a startled animal, always ready to bolt. Thought about the three years she’d spent surviving, alone, in a world that had forgotten her.
“How about Ash?” she said. “Like what’s left after something burns. The stuff that survives.”
The girl, Ash, repeated the word under her breath. Testing it. Weighing it.
“Ash,” she said. Then, softer. “Ash.”
“Do you like it?”
“Yes.” She looked up, met Becca’s eyes for the first time. “I like it.”
“Okay.” Becca nodded, once. “Ash. Let’s get you inside.”
She turned and started walking back toward the hardware store. Behind her, soft footsteps, bare feet on pavement, following.
She didn’t look back. Didn’t want to spook her. Just walked, slow and steady, the red light blinking in front of them, the empty street stretching in both directions.
After a moment, Ash spoke again.
“Your friends. Will they hurt me?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Because they’re like me. They’re survivors too. And we’ve all been alone long enough.”
Ash was quiet. Then, so soft Becca almost missed it, “I hope you’re right.”
“Me too.”
They walked.
The hardware store loomed ahead, its darkened windows, its open door. Becca paused at the threshold, listening. Still just the same soft breathing from inside. Still just Wayne’s rumble and Arthur’s mutters and the absence of any other sound.
She turned to Ash.
“Wait here. Just for a second. I’ll wake them. Introduce you.”
Ash’s eyes went wide. “No. No, don’t leave me alone.”
“It’s just for a second.”
“Don’t. Don’t.” Her hand shot out, grabbed Becca’s sleeve, held on tight. “Please. Don’t leave me.”
Becca looked at her. At the panic in her eyes, the raw, animal terror of being alone again. And she understood. She understood so well it hurt.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay. We’ll go in together.”
She took Ash’s hand. It was cold, thin, the bones too sharp beneath the skin. She squeezed gently.
“Ready?”
Ash swallowed. Nodded. Didn’t speak.
They stepped inside.
The hardware store was dark, the sleeping bodies arranged around the space like a campsite. Wayne and Becky by the counter. Vance and Arthur near the back wall. Rebecca. Wait. Where was Rebecca?
Becca’s eyes adjusted. Her heart skipped. There. Near the far side rack, Rebecca sat upright against a display of paint cans, wide awake. She was watching. Watching the door.
The hardware store breathed around them, old wood and rusted metal settling with soft groans that might have been the building shifting or might have been something else entirely. Becca felt Ash’s fingers tighten around hers, the grip desperate and too strong for someone so thin, bones pressing against her palm like a warning.
Rebecca rose from her spot against the paint cans with the kind of slow, deliberate movement that came from years of dealing with volatile experiments. Her hazel eyes, sharp and assessing, moved from Becca’s face to the girl behind her and back again. She didn’t speak. Just raised one hand, palm up, fingers spread, a gesture that said bring her closer and be careful all at once.
Becca took a step forward. Ash didn’t move.
“Hey,” Becca whispered, turning her head just enough that Ash could see her mouth form the words. “It’s okay. That’s Rebecca. She’s like me. Like us.”
Ash’s hollow eyes darted past Becca, taking in the dim shapes scattered across the hardware store floor. Her breath came in short, sharp bursts, the kind of breathing that came from someone who’d spent three years expecting violence around every corner.
“She’s watching me,” Ash said. Her voice cracked on the last word, barely audible.
“Yeah. She does that. It’s not personal.”
Wayne stirred first. Not because of any noise, the man had an internal alarm that seemed to go off whenever something changed in the room. He pushed himself up on one elbow, his hand already moving toward the hatchet on his belt, fingers finding the handle with the kind of muscle memory that came from expecting the worst.
Then he saw Ash. His hand stopped.
“Becca,” he said. Not a question. Just her name, flat and careful, the way you’d say it to a bomb disposal expert who’d just walked in carrying something ticking.
“She’s alone,” Becca said. “She’s been alone for three years.”
Wayne’s jaw tightened. He looked at the girl, really looked at her, taking in the matted hair and cracked lips and bare feet and the way she stood half-hidden behind Becca like she was trying to phase through her body and disappear.
“Okay,” he said slowly. “Okay.”
Becky was next. She sat up in one fluid motion, her blade appearing in her hand like it had grown there, the metal catching a sliver of light from the cracked window. Her eyes, tired and ringed with dark circles, fixed on Ash with an intensity that made the girl flinch backward.
“Becky,” Becca said. “Put it away.”
“Who is she?”
“She’s nobody. She’s just a kid. Put it away.”
Becky’s fingers tightened on the blade. Her jaw worked, muscles shifting beneath the faint scar that ran along her jaw. Becca watched her calculate, threat assessment, escape routes, worst-case scenarios, all the things that living through the collapse had hardwired into her brain.
Then something shifted. Maybe it was the way Ash trembled against Becca’s side. Maybe it was the hollow emptiness in the girl’s eyes, the kind of emptiness you only got from surviving something that should have killed you.
Becky lowered the blade. She didn’t put it away, but she lowered it.
“Fine,” she said. “But I’m watching her.”
“She expects you to.”
Vance sat up more slowly. He’d been sleeping with his journal clutched to his chest like a child with a stuffed animal, and now he held it tighter, his spectacles slightly askew on his face. His gaze moved from Ash to Becca to Rebecca and back, cataloging, analyzing, filing her away under whatever category his mind had created for unexpected variables.
“How did she.” he started.
“I found her,” Becca said. “In an alley. She’s been here. In the city. Surviving.”
“Since the disappearances?”
“I think so.”
Arthur, poor, bewildered Arthur, made a small startled sound from his corner. He’d been sitting up quietly, the way he always did, trying to make himself invisible in the hope that whatever was happening would pass without requiring his participation. But the sound escaped him, a soft, involuntary intake of breath that might have been surprise or fear or just the simple realization that the world had become even stranger than he’d thought possible.
Ash flinched. Hard. She pulled away from Becca, stumbled backward, her bare feet scraping against the concrete floor as she pressed herself against the nearest shelf. A can of paint wobbled overhead, then steadied. Her eyes were wild now, darting from face to face like a cornered animal looking for a way out.
“I’m sorry,” Arthur said. His voice came out too loud in the quiet. He winced, tried again, softer. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to, I was just surprised. That’s all. Just surprised.”
Ash didn’t respond. She just stood there, pressed against the shelf, her chest heaving with short, panicked breaths.
Rebecca moved.
She didn’t approach quickly. She didn’t approach directly. She just shifted, slowly, deliberately, putting herself in Ash’s line of sight without getting any closer. Then she crouched, bringing herself down to the girl’s eye level, her movements the kind of slow and careful you’d use around a wounded animal.
“Hey,” Rebecca said. Her voice was low, even, the voice she used when she was trying not to startle someone. “Hey. It’s okay. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”
Ash’s eyes locked onto her. Rebecca’s fingers, resting on her thigh, began tapping, soft, rhythmic, a steady beat that seemed to fill the silence without breaking it.
“I know you don’t trust us,” Rebecca continued. “I know. You don’t have any reason to. We’re strangers. We showed up out of nowhere. Everything about this is wrong.”
Ash’s breath hitched. Her fingers, clenched at her sides, twitched.
“But we’re not going to hurt you. We’re not like whatever you’ve been running from. We’re just...people. Tired people who’ve been through some things. Same as you.”
A long pause. Rebecca kept tapping. Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap. The rhythm filled the space between them like a bridge.
Then Ash spoke. Her voice was small, cracked, barely above a whisper.
“You have water.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a statement of fact, delivered with the kind of flat certainty that came from someone who’d learned to recognize resources at a glance.
“Yeah,” Rebecca said. “We have water. And food. Are you hungry?”
Ash’s cracked lips parted, then closed. She didn’t answer.
“I’m going to reach into my bag now,” Rebecca said, still in that same even tone. “I’m not going to pull anything out that could hurt you. Just water. Just food. Okay?”
She waited. Ash watched her, unblinking, her hollow eyes fixed on Rebecca’s face.
Rebecca moved slowly. She reached for the duffel bag beside her, fingers finding the zipper, pulling it open with a soft rasp. She pulled out a bottle of water, still sealed, still beaded with condensation, and a strip of dried meat, vacuum-packed in plastic.
She set both on the floor between them. Then she pulled her hand back.
“Go ahead,” she said. “It’s yours.”
Ash stared at the offerings. Her hands, black-nailed and trembling, stayed at her sides. She looked at the water, then at Rebecca, then at the water again. The war inside her played out across her face, need against fear, survival against trust, the two things that had kept her alive for three years now pulling in opposite directions.
Her cracked lips parted. Closed. Opened again.
“You’re all real,” she whispered. “You have to be real.”
“We are,” Rebecca said. “And so are you.”
That seemed to do something. Something small, something fragile. Ash’s hands unclenched. She took one step forward, then another. Her bare feet left prints in the dust, the kind of prints that would still be there tomorrow if anyone came looking.
She knelt. Her fingers closed around the water bottle. Then the meat.
She stared at them for a long moment, as if she’d forgotten what they were for.
Then she lifted the bottle to her cracked lips.
The water spilled. She couldn’t help it, her hands were shaking so hard the bottle wobbled, and the water sloshed over her chin and down her neck and she didn’t care, didn’t stop, just drank in desperate gulps that made her cough and sputter and drink again.
“Slow down,” Rebecca said. “Slowly. You’ll make yourself sick.”
Ash slowed. A little. Her throat worked, muscles visible beneath the pale skin, and when she lowered the bottle, her eyes were wet.
She didn’t say thank you. Maybe she didn’t have the words. Maybe she’d forgotten them, sometime in the three years of silence. But she looked at Rebecca, and something passed between them, a recognition, a promise, a small thread of trust spun out into the dark.
Then she tore into the meat.
Wayne had been watching the whole thing from his spot near the counter, his hand still resting on the hatchet but no longer gripping it. His jaw was tight, his eyes dark with something that might have been pity or might have been memory.
“Where did you find her?” he asked.
“Alley,” Becca said. “About four blocks east. She was just...there. Watching me.”
“She’s been following you?”
“I don’t think so. I think she was already there. Scavenging.”
Wayne nodded slowly. He looked at Ash, at the way she ate, fast, efficient, tearing the meat into strips and swallowing without really chewing, the way someone ate when they’d gone to bed hungry too many times.
“Three years,” he said quietly.
“Three years.”
“Jesus.”
Ash’s head snapped up. “What?”
Wayne blinked. “Nothing. Just...nothing. Sorry.”
She watched him for a moment longer, then went back to her food. But something had shifted in her posture. She was still wary, still ready to bolt, but the edge was slightly less sharp.
Becky had moved closer. She’d put her blade away, finally, tucking it back into the sheath on her hip, but her hand kept drifting toward it like a reflex. She circled the group, putting herself between Ash and the door, and settled against a shelf of power tools with her arms crossed.
“The timer,” she said. “Someone check the timer.”
Becca reached for her controller. The screen flickered weakly, damaged pixels making the numbers a jagged mess, but the countdown was still there, still ticking down.
“Seven hours,” she said. “About seven hours until the next jump.”
“I’m not sa.” Rebecca cut herself off, glancing sideways at Ash. The girl was watching her, eyes suddenly alert again. “Things could be rough when we move. It’s always rough.”
“Jump?” Ash asked. The word came out thick with meat, but her tone was sharp.
“Portal,” Becky said. “We’re traveling through portals. It’s why we’re here. It’s why we’re not...from here.”
Ash’s eyes went to the controller on Becca’s arm, then to the one on Rebecca’s, then to the one on Becky’s. Her cracked lips parted.
“I thought...I thought it was the end,” she whispered. “I thought the silence was the end. That there was nothing left.”
“Not the end,” Rebecca said. “Just...complicated.”
“Complicated.”
“Yeah.”
Ash was quiet for a long moment. She finished the meat, wiped her fingers on her pants, a gesture so automatic it looked like it had been worn into her by repetition, and looked at the group one by one.
Six people. Three versions of the same woman. A technician. A professor. A businessman. And now her.
She pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapped her arms around them, and made herself small. But for the first time since Becca had found her, she didn’t look like she was about to run.
“There were others,” she said. Her voice was flat, empty. “Before. Before the silence. Before everyone went away.”
“What happened to them?”
“Gone. All gone.” She stared at the wall. “The whole world was full of people. Millions. Maybe billions. Then they weren’t.”
“Same as here,” Wayne said. “Same as everywhere we’ve been.”
“Yes.” Ash’s voice stayed flat. “But I was still here. I don’t know why. Maybe I was supposed to be the last one. The only one left over.”
“Left over from what?”
“I don’t know.” A beat. “I don’t know.”
Vance had been listening, his journal open on his lap, pen scratching across the page. He paused, looked up, his cracked spectacles catching the light.
“You’ve been alone for three years,” he said. “Completely alone. No other survivors.”
“No.”
“No signs of others. No traces. Nothing.”
“Nothing.” Ash’s eyes met his. “I looked. For months, I looked. I searched the whole city. Every building. Every block. I called out. I screamed. I got nothing back.”
“Extraordinary,” Vance murmured, half to himself. “The isolation, the psychological impact, the sheer resilience required to survive...”
“Professor,” Rebecca said.
He stopped. Glanced at Ash. “Apologies. I was...thinking out loud.”
Ash watched him with the same unblinking stare she’d used on everyone else. Then she looked at Rebecca, at Becca, at the three identical faces with their three different expressions.
“You’re the same,” she said. “But not the same.”
“Yeah,” Becca said. “We’re...versions of each other. Different timelines. Different...everything.”
“Different worlds.”
“Yeah.”
“Which one is real?”
Becca opened her mouth. Closed it.
“That’s a good question,” she said finally.
“It’s the only question,” Rebecca said quietly. “And we don’t have an answer.”
Silence settled over the group. It wasn’t comfortable, it never was, but it was something close. The kind of silence that came from people who’d run out of words and were okay with that for a moment.
Ash took another swig of water. Then she curled into a tighter ball against the shelf, and her eyes drifted closed.
“She needs sleep,” Wayne said. “Real sleep. Not this...whatever we’ve been doing.”
“We all need real sleep,” Becky said.
“Then someone should keep watch.”
“I’ll do it.”
Everyone looked at Ash, who’d spoken without opening her eyes.
“You sleep,” she said. “I can’t. Not right now. I’ll watch.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m always watching.” A pause. “Even when I’m not.”
Wayne looked at Rebecca. She nodded. Barely. Just enough for him to see.
“Okay,” he said. “But wake me if anything happens.”
Ash didn’t answer. She didn’t need to.
She just sat there, folded into herself, her eyes half-open and utterly still, a sentinel in borrowed space.
The group settled. Sleeping bags rustled, boots thudded softly against the concrete floor, breaths slowed and evened out. Wayne and Becky curled together again, closer this time, and Arthur found a spot near the wall with his back against it, because old habits died hard.
Rebecca stayed awake for a while longer. She’d moved closer to Ash, not threatening, just present. Her fingers tapped lightly against her thigh, the rhythm slowly winding down as the hours passed.
“You can sleep too,” Ash whispered. “I won’t run.”
Rebecca looked at her. At the dirt-streaked face and hollow eyes and the small, still body that had survived three years in a world that had forgotten her.
“I know,” she said.
And she closed her eyes.
She didn’t sleep. But she closed her eyes, and she stayed. That was enough.
Dawn came slow and gray. Light leaked through the broken windows, and the world outside started to take shape, empty cars with their doors still open, buildings with dark windows, a street that stretched in both directions.
Ash hadn’t moved. She was still curled against the shelf, eyes half open, watching the door. But she wasn’t rigid anymore. She wasn’t ready to bolt.
And when the others stirred, when Wayne stretched and Becky checked her blade and Arthur groaned at the stiffness in his back, Ash watched them with something that might have been curiosity.
They were real. She was real.
And for the first time in three years, she was not alone.
The tablet timer continued to count down, 0:01:21, 0:01:20, 0:01:19, 0:01:18.
“What does this portal look like?” Ash asked, holding Becca’s hand, looking up at her.
“You’ll see in just a minute,” Becca replied, grinning, squeezing Ash’s hand.
Chapter 11: No Turning Back
The words had barely left Becca’s mouth when the air changed.
It wasn’t subtle. It wasn’t gradual. One moment the hardware store smelled like dust and rust and old wood, and the next it smelled like ozone and burning copper and something else, something that had no name, something that tasted like the color violet would taste if colors had flavors.
Rebecca’s controller screamed.
The sound cut through the quiet like a blade, high-pitched and insistent, the kind of alarm that meant run or fight or both. The screen flickered wildly, the three-dimensional grid on her main dashboard spinning into chaos, the telemetry monitor’s sine wave spiking into something that looked less like a wave and more like a seizure.
“Timer,” she said. Her voice came out flat, controlled, the voice she used when things were going wrong and she needed everyone to stay calm. “Timer’s at twenty seconds.”
Wayne was already on his feet. He’d been sitting with Becky near the counter, their shoulders touching, their hands not quite holding but close. Now he was up, vest zipped, hatchet in hand, his eyes scanning the store like he expected something to come through the walls.
“Where’s it opening?” he asked.
“Outside. Street. Same as before.”
“How much time?”
“Fifteen seconds.”
Becky had her blade out. Not because she thought she’d need it, but because holding it made her feel better, made her feel like she had some control over a situation that was spiraling into chaos. She moved toward the door, her boots loud on the concrete, her jaw set.
“Everyone grab your bags,” she said. “Now.”
Vance was already moving. He’d been sitting against the wall, journal open on his lap, pen in hand. Now the journal was closed, tucked into his coat pocket, and he was on his feet with the kind of speed that belied his age.
Arthur struggled upright, his knee protesting, the cane shaking beneath his weight. He’d been dozing, or trying to, his back against a shelf of paint cans, his face pale and drawn. Now he looked like a man who’d just realized the nightmare wasn’t over.
“It’s early,” he said. “The timer said seven hours. It said.”
“It changed.” Rebecca was already at the door, her duffel over her shoulder, her controller clamped to her forearm. “Something’s wrong. Something’s different.”
“Different how?”
“I don’t know. But we need to move.”
Ash hadn’t moved.
She was still curled against the shelf, her knees drawn up, her eyes wide and fixed on the door. Her fingers had found something in her pocket, something small and hard, and she was gripping it so tight her knuckles had gone white.
Becca crossed to her. Knelt. Put her hand on Ash’s arm, gentle, careful.
“Hey. We have to go.”
“I can’t.” Ash’s voice was barely a whisper. “I can’t go out there. Not again.”
“You can. You have to.”
“I’ve been alone for three years. I’ve been hiding for three years. I can’t just.”
“You’re not alone anymore.”
Ash looked at her. Her hollow eyes, those eyes that had seen too much and trusted too little, flickered with something that might have been hope or might have been fear.
“You don’t know that,” she said. “You don’t know anything.”
“I know you’re here. I know you’re real. I know we’re not leaving you behind.”
The controller screamed again. Ten seconds.
Wayne was at the door, Becky beside him, both of them scanning the street. The gray light had gone strange, tinted violet at the edges, and the air was thick with that ozone smell, that burning copper taste.
“It’s forming,” Wayne called back. “Same as before. Right in the middle of the street.”
Rebecca grabbed her bag, checked her straps, checked her controller. The countdown timer in the top left corner had gone red, flashing, the numbers ticking down with mechanical indifference.
Eight seconds.
“Becca, we have to go.”
Becca didn’t move. She was still looking at Ash, still holding her arm, still waiting.
“I know what it’s like,” she said. “To be alone. To think you’re the only one left. To wake up every day and wonder why you’re still breathing.”
Ash’s jaw tightened. Her fingers, clenched around whatever was in her pocket, twitched.
“But you’re not alone. Not anymore. And if you stay here, you’ll be alone again. Forever.”
“I’ve survived alone. I know how.”
“Surviving isn’t living.”
Five seconds.
The light outside had gone from violet to emerald, ribbons of green twisting through the gray, electric blue arcs snapping at the edges of the doorframe. The portal was opening.
Ash’s lip trembled. Just once. Just a crack in the armor she’d built around herself.
“I’m scared,” she whispered.
“I know.” Becca squeezed her arm. “So am I.”
She stood. Held out her hand.
Ash looked at it. At the offered hand, the open palm, the fingers that had held hers in the dark. She looked at Becca’s face, at the hazel eyes that were so much like her own, at the stubborn set of her jaw.
Then she took the hand.
Becca pulled her up. Pulled her toward the door. The others were already moving, a loose cluster heading for the street, bags bouncing, controllers screaming, the light outside growing brighter and stranger with every passing second.
They hit the street just as the portal tore open.
It wasn’t subtle. It wasn’t gradual. One moment there was nothing, just empty asphalt and abandoned cars and a red light blinking its useless warning, and the next there was a wound in the world.
Violet and emerald. Electric blue. Ribbons of color that twisted and braided and dissolved, reshaping into impossible geometries that hurt to look at. Sound arrived wrong, stretched and doubled, echoing back from angles that shouldn’t exist.
Gravity vanished.
Rebecca felt it first, that horrible lurching sensation of up becoming down becoming sideways becoming nothing at all. Her stomach climbed into her throat as her feet left the ground, as her body tumbled forward, as the world dissolved into streaks of light.
She reached out. Found Wayne’s hand. Locked on.
Behind her, Becca grabbed Ash, pulled her close, wrapped her arms around the trembling girl like a shield. Becky reached for Wayne, her fingers finding his wrist, holding on with the kind of grip that came from years of holding onto things that mattered.
Vance grabbed Arthur’s collar. Again. The same grip, the same determined set to his jaw.
“I hate this part!” Arthur yelled. His voice came out wrong, stretched and doubled, like two versions of him were shouting at once from different directions.
“Don’t we all!” Vance yelled back.
The portal swallowed them whole.
Inside, there was no floor. No ceiling. No direction that meant anything. Just an endless corridor of fractured light, violet and emerald and electric blue braided together like liquid glass in motion.
Rebecca tumbled forward, her ponytail whipping behind her, her controller clamped tight against her forearm. The screen flickered wildly, the three-dimensional grid on her main dashboard spinning into chaotic nonsense, the system log scrolling too fast to read.
Error codes. Unhandled exceptions. Voltage spikes.
She didn’t care. She’d seen it all before.
Wayne was beside her, or above her, or below her, orientations had stopped meaning anything. His hand was still locked around hers, his fingers digging into her skin hard enough to bruise. His jaw was set, his teeth clenched, his eyes fixed on something in the distance that might have been the end of the corridor or might have been nothing at all.
Becky was against him, her forehead pressed to his chest, her fingers digging into his arm. The scavenged blade was still in her hand, useless in this place, but she couldn’t let it go.
Becca held Ash.
The girl was screaming. Not words, just sound, raw and animal and terrified. Her fingers clawed at Becca’s jacket, her body thrashing against the chaos, her hollow eyes wide and wild and utterly lost.
“I’ve got you!” Becca shouted. Her voice came out wrong, stretched and doubled. “I’ve got you! Just hold on!”
Ash didn’t answer. Just screamed. Just held on. Just clawed at Becca like she was the only solid thing in a world that had forgotten what solid meant.
The ribbons of light twisted. The corridor spun. Gravity came and went in violent pulses, one moment weightless, the next wrenching sideways with bruising force.
Rebecca’s controller screamed. The power draw gauge needle bent against its ceiling limit, the telemetry monitor’s sine wave spiking into something that looked less like a wave and more like a heart attack.
Energy wave frequency: .0008112 Hz.
Different from the jump systems she’d designed.
Different from anything she’d calculated.
The temperature spiked. Heat pressed in like a living thing, and for one horrible moment Rebecca felt her skin begin to blister. Then the cold returned, worse than before, frost forming on her eyelashes and the tip of her nose.
This was the decay. This was what happened when the fabric of reality stretched too thin.
Fragments of other realities bled through the walls of light. Rebecca saw a skyline she didn’t recognize, all glass and chrome and desperate ambition. Becca spotted a field of bioluminescent plants that pulsed with colors outside the visible spectrum. Becky caught mathematical equations scrawled across the darkness like a forgotten language.
Wayne saw his apartment. Just a flash. His couch. His coffee mug. The stack of electronics manuals he’d never gotten around to organizing.
Arthur saw his office. His desk. The photo of his parents in the top drawer.
Vance saw his classroom. Empty chairs. The whiteboard still covered in equations from his last lecture.
They all saw things they’d lost.
They all saw things they’d never have again.
And then, just for a moment, Rebecca saw something else.
A city. Pre-industrial. Cobblestone streets and gas-less lantern light and horse-drawn transport. A cathedral rising against a sky the color of old parchment. Narrow winding streets, stone and timber, a central square dominated by a town hall.
It was there and gone in an instant. But she saw it. She saw it.
The corridor twisted. Reality inverted. Gravity returned with a vengeance.
The void twisted.
Rebecca felt it before she saw it, that horrible, wrenching sensation of reality folding in on itself, space and time and matter all dissolving into something that had no name. The corridor of light spun around her, ribbons of violet and emerald and electric blue braiding together, then unraveling, then braiding again. Her stomach lurched. Her fingers dug into Wayne’s hand hard enough to bruise.
Then the world changed.
Frozen ocean. Black ice stretching to a horizon that curved wrong, toward a sky the color of old bruises. Ships locked in place, their hulls shattered, their masts splintered, frozen mid-scream like insects in amber. The cold hit like a physical blow, not the dry cold of the wasteland, but something wet and bitter that crawled into lungs and stayed there.
“Hell no!” Wayne’s voice, stretched and doubled by the void, but unmistakably his.
Becky was already pulling him back, her fingers locked around his wrist, her boots scrambling for purchase on nothing. “Don’t look at it! Don’t.”
The scene shattered.
Jungle. Red leaves, blood-colored, hanging from trees taller than towers. Mist coiled between the trunks, thick and heavy, carrying the smell of rot and something sweeter underneath. The air was wet. Hot. Alive. Somewhere in the distance, something screamed, not human, not animal, something in between.
Ash was still screaming.
The sound hadn’t stopped since they entered the portal. It was raw now, ragged, barely human. Her fingers clawed at Becca’s jacket, her body thrashing against the chaos, her hollow eyes wide and wild and utterly lost.
“I’ve got you!” Becca shouted. Her voice came out wrong, stretched, doubled, echoing back from angles that shouldn’t exist. “I’ve got you! Just hold on!”
The jungle dissolved.
City of glass. Towers reflecting endless sky, their surfaces seamless, their forms impossible. No doors. No streets. No windows. Just light, refracted and reflected and multiplied until it became something blinding. Rebecca squinted, her free hand coming up to shield her eyes, and through her fingers she saw nothing but light.
The city flickered. Vanished.
Desert. Shifting sand, dunes rolling to a horizon that seemed to breathe, rising and falling with each gust of wind. Ruins half-buried in the sand, walls, columns, the skeletons of machines long dead. Metal bones. Glass eyes. Silent.
“Nope,” Arthur said. His voice was thin, strained, barely audible over the chaos. “Absolutely not. I’ve had enough deserts. I’ve had enough of everything.”
Vance’s grip on his collar tightened. “Hold on, Arthur. Just hold on.”
The desert crumbled.
Floating archipelago. Islands drifting in violet air, their undersides trailing roots and vines and waterfalls that fell into nothing. The water sparkled as it fell, catching light that came from nowhere, disappearing into a void below that had no bottom.
Wayne saw it and felt his stomach drop. Not from the height. From the wrongness. Islands shouldn’t float. Waterfalls shouldn’t fall into nothing. Gravity shouldn’t.
A swamp opened before them, long wetlands crowded with massive trees.
The portal didn’t so much release them as vomit them out.
One moment they were tumbling through that endless corridor of fractured light, violet and emerald and electric blue braiding together like liquid glass, and the next they were falling. Not through nothing, not through the void, but through air that was thick and wet and tasted like rot and copper and something older than either.
Rebecca hit the planks first.
Her shoulder took the impact, hard wood biting through her denim jacket, and she rolled, or tried to, her body screaming from the dimensional turbulence. The bridge beneath her groaned, warped boards sagging under her weight, slick with something she didn’t want to identify. Black water lapped at the edges, inches from her face, reflecting a bruised sky the color of old blood.
She scrambled upright. Grabbed for her controller. The screen flickered, dimmed, then blazed back to life.
Countdown timer: 43:19:37.
Same as before. Frozen. Counting down.
But the energy wave reading had shifted. .0008117 Hz. Not .0008112. Not .0008124. Something in between. Something wrong.
Wayne landed behind her with a grunt, his boots slamming into the planks hard enough to send a shudder through the entire bridge. He was up in an instant, hatchet in hand, eyes scanning the fog that pressed in from every direction like a living thing.
“Where the hell are we?”
“Somewhere wet.” Rebecca checked her telemetry monitor. The sine wave was spiking again, irregular, chaotic. “Somewhere with different resonance. I don’t recognize this frequency.”
“Great. Fantastic. Love that.”
Arthur came down harder than either of them, his knee buckling on impact, his cane skittering across the planks. Vance caught him by the collar before he could slide into the water, hauling him back with a grunt that betrayed his age more than his gray hair did.
“I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
“My shoe.” Arthur’s voice was breathless, almost petulant. “My shoe is in the water.”
“Forget the shoe.”
“It was a good shoe.”
“It’s gone, Arthur.”
Becky landed last, her boots finding the planks with practiced ease, her body absorbing the impact like she’d done this a hundred times. She had. That was the thing about surviving a war zone. You got really good at landing on your feet.
Her blade was already in her hand. Her eyes were already scanning the water.
“There’s something down there.”
Rebecca followed her gaze. The black surface was still, reflective, almost beautiful in a horrible way. But beneath it, something moved. Not the gentle ripple of wind on water. Something heavy. Something alive.
“Could be a fish.”
“That’s not a fish.”
Ash was screaming.
Chapter excerpt truncated at the edge.