The staircase Major led me up was narrower and dustier than the main one, tucked away in a forgotten corner of the old hotel. Each step creaked under our weight, the wood groaning like it hadn’t been disturbed in years. The air grew thicker, heavier with the scent of aged plaster and abandonment.

"You’re one hell of a lucky bastard," Major said over his shoulder, his voice echoing softly off the walls. "Four pussies in your team, and they all like you."

"Not really," I said, giving him nothing to work with.

He almost missed the next step, twisting to stare at me. "Abram. I saw how the blonde one watched you when you were talking to the other one. And that redhead..." He kept climbing. "All fine women. You can have whoever you want out here."

I didn’t answer. We had different worldviews and I wasn’t going to close that distance in a stairwell.

We reached the third floor, the guest wing. The corridor was quieter, almost reverent. Doors stood closed along both sides, sealed by years of disuse. The carpet was thick with dust, and faint cobwebs caught the weak light filtering through cracked windows at the far end.

"My God," Major muttered, pulling something from his pocket as he walked.

A small piece of red fabric. A woman’s underwear. He held it up between two fingers with a half-amused, half-impressed expression.

"Mercury’s," he said. "She’s probably looking for this."

I looked at him and said nothing. I was still learning his character. Whether he had produced it to show off or for some other reason was information I was going to keep to myself.

[Ability user closing proximity.]

I noted the system alert but set it aside. No ability users among Major’s people. Whoever it was had to be one of ours. Not an immediate threat.

Major pushed open a door at the end of the hall. The room beyond was pre-catastrophe luxury preserved in amber. A large bed dominated the center, its once-elegant linens now gray with dust.

A massive broken screen hung on the far wall. Heavy velvet chairs sat in the corners, and tall windows looked out over the ruined city. Cobwebs draped everything like delicate silver lace. The whole floor felt like a museum no one had visited in decades.

Major crossed to the windows and pulled the heavy curtains aside with a dramatic flourish. Dust exploded into the slanted light.

"Come see this," he said.

I joined him at the glass. The view was striking despite the grime on the panes. The forsaken city stretched out below us, clusters of intact high-rises standing like broken teeth against the sky, while others had collapsed into skeletal ruins.

Golden evening light painted long shadows across streets overtaken by sand and scrub. It was hauntingly beautiful in its desolation.

"My favorite place in this whole building," Major said, his voice quieter now. The boastful showman had momentarily disappeared. "I used to come up here when things got bad. Just stand here and look out." He paused. "But those people downstairs... they haven’t given me reason to need it for a while."

We stood in silence for a moment.

"Have you ever wondered what the world was like before?" he asked.

"All the time," I said.

"That’s out of our reach now." He gave a soft, bitter laugh. "The real enemy was the walls. Sometimes I think they enclosed the ability users on purpose. To watch the rest of us die. If there had been no walls... if the gifted had been out here with us... we would’ve cleared the infected years ago. We’d be living normal lives."

"I hadn’t thought about it that way," I said.

He had been holding that for years. I could hear it in how the words came out, not constructed, just released.

He turned from the window.

"That offer you made me," he said. "It’s a good one. I have a lot of mouths to feed. But what do your people say about it?"

"They want to leave as soon as possible," I told him truthfully.

"Yeah." He smiled, a little sad. "I figured that the moment I saw you all." He looked back out at his broken kingdom. "I’m not holding anyone captive, Abram. You gave us food. We’re even. You can leave whenever you want."

I hadn’t expected it to be that simple. I had prepared for negotiation, for a longer conversation, for something more complicated.

"I’d have one request, though." he added.

"Go ahead."

"Let the lady stay."

Mercury. He had moved fast and apparently so had she and he was now asking me to leave her behind in a forsaken city, which was either very sweet or very complicated and I genuinely wasn’t sure which.

"If she’s willing," I said. "I can’t make that choice for her."

"She is," he said, with the specific confidence of someone who had already had that conversation. "I can’t force her either. But she is."

I looked out the window one last time at the ruined city bathed in dying light. Major’s kingdom. Held together by two hundred souls and one man who came up here when the weight became too much.

He’s more reasonable than I expected, I thought. We can leave. We can actually leave.

I turned to tell him we had a deal. Code walked through the door.

Nobody had heard him coming. He moved like a shadow. He passed Major without breaking stride. There was a flash of steel.

Major dropped.

No scream. No warning. Just a wet sound and the heavy thud of a body hitting the floor. Fresh blood already spreading across the dusty carpet.

I stared at the blade in Code’s hand, glistening red.

Then at Major’s crumpled form. Then back at Code.

"What have you done?" I said, voice low and tight.

Code looked at me with that same detached, faintly amused expression he’d worn since we left the walls. The one that found violence interesting. Almost beautiful.

He moved toward me.