The plain opened up around us like a vast, indifferent sea.

The heat pressed down on the car like a heavy, suffocating blanket. The air inside was warm and dry, thick with the dust that found its way through the windows.

The cracked tarmac road stretched ahead, a thin black ribbon cutting through endless golden sand and sparse scrub. Heat shimmered off the surface in visible waves, making the horizon waver like a mirage.

No infected visible in any direction, just flat emptiness under a merciless blue sky. After everything we had survived, the quiet felt almost suspicious, like the plain was holding its breath.

Richard was in the front passenger seat, holding court with Mercury. He gestured animatedly as he spoke about some old army story involving a city called Schwaz.

Mercury drove with one hand on the wheel, listening and responding at the same time, her usual easy confidence returned. The wind through the cracked windows tugged at her hair.

Jenn shifted closer on the back seat. Her shoulder brushed against mine, warm, steady pressure that radiated her body heat through the thin fabric between us. The contact was constant and grounding, her skin slightly damp from the heat, pressing lightly into my arm as the car continued forward.

"You’re from the walls," she said. Somewhere between a question and a statement, the way people say things when they already know the answer but want to hear it confirmed.

"Yes," I said. Mercury had clearly filled her in.

"I suspected it," she said softly. "When I found out you were an ability user. Mercury confirmed the rest." She paused, studying my face. "How does it feel? Growing up in a protected place like that?"

"I didn’t grow up inside the walls," I said.

She turned to face me. We were close enough that she didn’t need to move much.

"You remember the girl with the short brunette hair? Sitting next to me at Major’s?"

"Yes."

"We both grew up outside. She came from Goth. I came from the plain."

"The plain?" Something shifted in her voice, a mix of surprise and quiet respect. "That doesn’t sound like anywhere you’d want to be."

The car hit a shallow pothole. The impact jolted upward through the seat and into my spine for a brief moment before the road smoothed out again.

Richard’s voice rose briefly from the front about something that had happened at a bridge, then settled back into the Mercury frequency.

"It wasn’t," I said. "The plain took everything from me."

Jenn sat with that for a long moment. Then, gently: "You had family?"

"My mom," I said. "I don’t really want to get into it."

"How old were you?"

"Ten."

She didn’t push. She simply nodded, understanding the boundary without needing it explained. The car continued forward, the plain sliding past the windows in a blur of gold and pale earth.

"I was eight when my parents died," she said after a while. "I can’t imagine surviving another day after that without someone finding me."

"I’m sorry," I said, and put my hand on her shoulder.

The car slowed.

"Which way?" Mercury asked from the front.

A crossroads appeared ahead, the tarmac splitting at a right angle, each direction offering its own version of the empty plain. Richard’s eyes flicked to the rearview mirror, assessing. He pointed right with the calm authority of someone who knew exactly where he was sending them.

"Safe route?" I asked.

"One hundred percent," Richard said.

Mercury turned right. The road opened up again ahead of us. Jenn shifted slightly, settling back into the conversation.

"How did you make it to the walls?" She asked.

The system had been quiet the entire journey. No notifications, no objectives, no charge countdown. The specific silence of a system that had nothing to flag because there were no ability users in proximity. It felt strange. Like losing a sense I had gotten used to.

"Long story," I said. "Took me years to understand what I was. When I figured it out I walked through the plain to the walls."

"Oh."

"But that’s enough about me," I said. "Tell me about you."

She understood the redirect. She didn’t argue with it. Outside, the plain moved past.

"What about me?" she said.

"Any man in my position would be curious," I said. "A girl like you, surrounded by Major’s people, still a virgin. How?"

"How I dressed helped," she said.

I looked at her.

She smiled, reading the look correctly. The men in the Forsaken City hadn’t been stopped by clothing choices. That wasn’t what she meant and she knew I knew it.

"Truthfully," she said, "there was no one worth it. They were all just surviving. Thinking about the next meal. The next day." She looked at the road ahead. "That’s actually why I went with you."

I had assumed it was the clothes. A small act of kindness producing a debt she felt she owed. Something simple and transactional.

"You’re the only person I’ve met with an actual dream," she said. "Someone who’s pointed at something beyond themselves."

I thought about what she’d said the night before, sitting in the sand against the car. You live beyond yourself. She had seen something in me that I was still working out how to see in myself.

I was about to answer.

"Fuck you, Richard," Mercury said, her voice sharp and sudden, and she hit the brakes hard.

The sudden deceleration slammed me forward. With no seatbelt to catch me, my body slid hard across the seat and slammed into the back of the front passenger seat. Jenn was thrown forward at the same time. Her body knocked heavily into the back of the driver’s seat right beside me.

I forced myself upright and looked through the windshield.

Thousands of infected. Filling the road ahead, moving toward the car, not staggering, running, the specific coordinated rush of Fallen City infected that were a completely different problem from anything we had handled before.

Mercury was already reversing.