The sun climbed higher, turning the sand into a blinding golden sheet that reflected heat in waves. We stood in a loose circle, staring at the massive Guardian truck like it was a tomb that still had teeth.

Inside were the maps and infected detectors we desperately needed. Along with roughly thirty former comrades who were now very hungry.

"Let’s open the doors," Code said.

It was the first full sentence he’d offered the group since we left the walls. His voice carried a low, almost intimate hunger. Long hair still half-covering his eyes, but the visible half of his face showed clear excitement. He wanted this.

Sinn scanned all of us, weighing the silence. Nobody argued. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

[Charge: 1840]

Sixty down from last night. Sixty infected dried and dropped in the dark while the cars sat silent. I noted it and moved on.

"How many are inside?" I asked.

"About thirty," Sinn said.

"Just let me open it," Code pressed, blades already flickering faintly at his fingertips. "I’ll handle them."

Sinn gave him a long, measuring look, the look of a commander calculating whether someone was an asset or a soon-to-be casualty in tight quarters with thirty infected. Then he glanced at me, silently asking for complications.

"Thirty is manageable," I said. "The real problem is noise. One of them screams and every infected within a kilometer starts moving toward us. We need them quiet."

They all looked at me with the expression of people who had just been told something they should have already known. The walls had kept this information from them the way it kept everything. The infected were coordinated. A cry from one of them was a signal to all the others.

Owen was already heading for the door.

He hadn’t waited for an order. He hadn’t waited for anything. His hand was on the handle before anyone had spoken.

Oddo hit him like a spear.

No warning. No words first. Just Oddo’s full weight driving into Owen’s side, both of them going into the truck’s exterior and then into the sand, and we were separating them again, which was becoming its own kind of routine.

"What is wrong with you two," Sinn said, the irritation of a man who had used up his patience on the sand dune and had nothing left.

"He was going to open the truck," Oddo said, breathing hard, both of them on the ground leaning against the truck like they’d run out of better options. He turned to Owen. "I’ve got eyes on you. I’ve got eyes on you, psychopath."

Owen said nothing. The split lip had company now. He looked like someone who had done the math and decided that talking was unnecessary.

"Both of you," Sinn said. "Back to the cars. Now."

They went. Not in harmony. Not even in the same direction initially.

"The rest of you as well," Sinn said, turning to the group. "I’ll handle this."

More order than suggestion. Harmione went first. The girls followed. Me and Code stayed.

Sinn turned back. "I said I’ll handle this."

I looked at him. He was a good soldier. He had sat in the sand and processed thirty men going silent overnight and then stood back up and kept going. But thirty infected in an enclosed space was not something a man without an ability handled alone.

Unless he had decided he was done handling things.

"General," I said. "Let me."

He held my eyes for a long moment. Unreadable. Then he exhaled once and walked back to the cars.

****

Me and Code.

I looked at the truck. Charge at 1840. More than enough. The maps and detectors were in there and without them we were walking into the Fallen City without eyes, which was the kind of decision that only got made once.

"I’m going in," I said to Code. "Anything that gets out, hit the throat."

"Please," Code replied, the word dripping with anticipation. His blades extended fully from his hands with a soft metallic whisper. The smile on his face was genuine.

I reached for the handle, gripped it, and pulled. The door opened.

The first two infected didn’t charge—they fell. They had been pressed against the inside of the door by the weight of the others. Gravity took them, and they tumbled out into the sand like sacks of meat. I stepped aside. Code was right behind me, already moving.

I stepped fully inside and yanked the door shut behind me.

The pile of bodies in the back shifted the moment they sensed living flesh. They came for me.

[LEWD LEVELING SYSTEM]

[Charge: 1839. 1838. 1836. 1820. 1813.]

The numbers dropping in real time, each contact leaving something dried and still. I could feel the charge going with each one, the cost of survival made visible in falling numbers.

When the contacts stopped coming fast enough I stopped waiting and started moving, pushing through the pile, forcing a path toward the front of the truck.

I broke through into the front seats, breathing hard. The dashboard was smeared with old blood.

The maps were there. Physical papers, folded into the glove compartment, exactly where mission planning assumed they would be. The detectors I didn’t immediately see but they were somewhere in this cab.

I opened the front door from the inside and stepped out into the plain air.

Code was leaning against the truck exterior with the ease of someone waiting for a bus. Two infected were on the sand beside him. He hadn’t broken his stride for either of them.

I raised the papers.

Sinn was already moving before I had finished raising them, crossing from the other vehicles with the purpose of a man who had been watching and was ready. He took the front door, went in, was back out in under a minute with the detector equipment under his arm.

He looked at me.

"Thank you," he said. Simple. Direct. The gratitude of a man who had asked for something ugly and received it without complaint.

We walked back to the cars in silence. Engines rumbled to life once more. The convoy was smaller now. Bloodied. Distrustful. But we had what we needed.

We were ready to move.