I was somewhere green.

The plain but wrong, the sky the color of something that had never existed, a sun burning down in a shade I had no name for.

Sherry stood above me. Her face, home. Soft features framed by dark hair that caught the alien light, her eyes full of quiet urgency and love. She reached down toward me. I strained, lifting my arm, but the distance between us refused to close. My limb felt heavy, boneless, like it belonged to someone else. No matter how hard I tried, our fingers never touched.

[LEWD LEVELING SYSTEM]

[Open your eyes. Infected can find you if you stay down long enough.]

The sand arrived before my eyes did. The heat of it against my back, the specific burning of plain ground that had been absorbing sun all day and was giving it back at full temperature.

Someone nearby made a muffled, urgent sound.

I tried to open my eyes. They didn’t cooperate on the first attempt. I tried my hands. Also stuck.

Second attempt. My eyes opened.

The real world returned in harsh detail. The endless plain stretched out under a deepening evening sky, bruised oranges and purples bleeding across the horizon. The Fallen City still sat a hundred meters ahead, its broken towers and skeletal skyscrapers now sharp black silhouettes against the dying sun, indifferent and menacing.

I tried to sit up and discovered I was tied. Wrists behind me. Ankles together. The headache arrived the same moment, the specific deep throb of something that had been hit and was registering it now that consciousness had returned to collect the bill.

Mercury lay beside me in the sand. Her skirt had been shoved all the way up above her waist, bunched uselessly around her midriff like a crumpled belt, leaving her completely exposed from the hips down.

Her smooth, bare skin glowed an angry red from the sun-baked ground pressing against her ass and thighs. The last golden-orange rays of sunset highlighted every intimate curve and fold of her naked lower body in stark, vulnerable detail.

Dark tape sealed her mouth. The moment I turned my head, her wide, desperate eyes locked onto mine, burning with fury and silent pleading.

The car was gone. No Jenn. No Richard. No bag of cereals, no senator’s vehicle, no large bag with beans Richard had been keeping from me since the supermarket.

Of course, I thought. Of course.

I rolled onto my side, the movement clumsy and painful, sand grinding into my skin. Using my bound legs for leverage, I pushed and dragged myself across the hot ground toward her in an undignified, inching crawl.

When I reached her, I leaned in close. My teeth found the edge of the tape on her mouth. I pulled slowly, carefully, peeling the adhesive away millimeter by millimeter so it wouldn’t tear her skin. The sharp, sticky sound of it coming free cut through the silence.

She made a sound when it came free. Pain and relief simultaneously.

"Richard," she gasped, the moment her mouth was working. "That son of a bitch."

"Tape first," I muttered. "Talk after."

"He can actually drive," she hissed, voice raw. "The lying piece of—"

"Mercury. Look at me."

Her eyes met mine, fierce and glistening in the orange dusk light.

"I’m going to get to your hands," I said. "When they’re free you work on mine. Yes?"

She nodded.

I rolled again, maneuvered myself behind her with the specific dignity of a man whose wrists were tied and whose head was splitting, and worked my way down until my face was level with her bound hands. 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

The tape was thick and wound multiple times, thorough, professional work. I bit down hard, teeth tearing into the layers, pulling and gnawing until the first strands gave way. Mercury kept her hands as still as possible, breathing through the discomfort.

Finally, the tape snapped apart.

I collapsed onto the sand, chest heaving. Mercury immediately sat up, tugging her skirt down with sharp, angry movements to cover herself. She snatched a small, sharp stick from the ground and worked it under the tape around her ankles until those bonds fell away too. Then she crouched over me, her shadow long and dark in the fading light.

"That son of a bitch wanted to kill us," she said, attacking the tape on my ankles. "If it weren’t for Jenn..."

I still didn’t know what Jenn’s role had been. Whether she had gone with Richard willingly or been taken. Whether she had known. The outside operated on the rule she had named herself and survival made people do things that looked like betrayal from the outside and felt like necessity from the inside.

"He pulled my skirt up," Mercury said, moving to my wrists. "Let’s hope we don’t meet again."

"You weren’t wearing anything under it," I said.

She laughed. The real kind.

"Everything on full display for the fucking plain," she said. "Credit to Major for the education."

My hands came free.

I lay there for a moment, the plain sky above me darkening toward the color it turned at night, the stars beginning to suggest themselves at the edges.

My whole body had opinions about what had happened to it. I let it have them for a moment and then pushed myself up.

No car. No supplies. No Richard. No Jenn. The Fallen City a hundred meters ahead in the dying light.

"Let’s rest," I said. "We go in when it’s fully dark. See if the team is still in there."

Mercury sat beside me in the warm sand, knees drawn up, both of us battered and silent.

We didn’t say anything for a while. The plain did its quiet thing around us and the Fallen City waited and the stars came out one by one the way they always had, with complete indifference to what was happening below them.

Sherry, I thought, looking at the sky. Azure. Daphne. May. Annabelle.

I’m coming back.