The cracked tarmac hummed beneath the tires as the convoy pushed deeper into the forsaken city.

Old pre-catastrophe roads, weathered and split by decades of neglect, with weeds and pale grass pushing up through the fissures like fingers from a grave.

On both sides, silent buildings watched us, hollow-eyed husks of shops, apartments, and offices stripped of life. Windows shattered or boarded. Doors hanging crooked on rusted hinges. The specific, oppressive silence of a place that had once been full of voices and was now only full of memory.

General Sinn’s car led with Harmione, Code and Oddo inside. We followed in Mercury’s car. Me, Sherry on my right, May in the front, and Owen on my left.

Owen couldn’t ride with Oddo. That arrangement had been made without discussion.

He smiled the whole journey. Not at anything specific. Just smiling, the way certain people smile when they have information they find privately entertaining.

"Pretty girl," Owen said suddenly, eyes fixed on the rearview mirror toward May.

"Her name is May," I said evenly.

May caught his gaze in the mirror and smiled back without a trace of discomfort. "It’s okay, Bram. I’m fine with being called pretty."

Owen shot me a look. The look of someone who had won a small thing and wanted me to know it.

"What do you want to say, egg head?" May asked casually.

Mercury laughed, a bright, genuine sound that filled the cabin. Owen’s smirk faltered for a split second, he clearly hadn’t expected the pushback.

"You talk too much," he recovered, leaning back. "I actually love talkative girls though."

"Thank you," May said. "Though I’m not into bald guys."

Mercury laughed harder. Sherry’s shoulder shook silently against mine. Even I cracked a smile. Owen reassessed the energy in the car and went quiet again, though that eerie little smile never fully left his face.

"You think that’s funny?" he muttered.

We laughed again.

"Got a boyfriend," May added, twisting the knife.

"Where, in the Stray town?" Owen tried to cook.

Sherry gave me a sideways glance. We were both being entertained.

"That quiet guy sitting next to you," May said, nodding toward me.

Mercury adjusted the rearview mirror like she needed a better angle for this information.

"Which one?" Owen said. "Thought he was an outsider."

"I am," I said, helping May’s point along.

Owen looked at Sherry’s head resting on my shoulder and started to say something and then let it go. Which was its own kind of answer.

***

The road grew narrower. Abandoned vehicles, rusted and stripped, lined the sides like skeletal monuments. The convoy slowed.

"Why are they stopping?" Mercury said.

The last time we stopped, Speed went down and over thirty Guardians went quiet. Nobody said that out loud but it was in the car with us.

Sherry lifted her head to look ahead. The movement brought her face close to mine and she caught my cheek with the corner of her mouth.

"Sorry," she whispered, pulling back slightly. Her breath was warm.

We both focused on what was happening ahead.

Sinn’s car had come to a full stop. A long, tense minute passed with no communication. Then the driver’s door opened. The last remaining Guardian driver stepped out, walked around to the front of the bonnet, and stared ahead at something we couldn’t yet see. He muttered to himself, then started walking back toward his door.

"General Sinn," Mercury said, activating the radio. "What’s going on?"

I watched the driver walking back toward his door.

The arrow took him in the side of the head in horrifying slow motion. One moment he was walking. The next, a feathered shaft protruded from his skull. He dropped without a sound.

"Mercu—" Sinn’s voice cut through the radio. "Close that door. Now."

"What’s happening?" Mercury’s hands were already moving, shifting into reverse.

"Road block ahead," Sinn snapped. "Reverse."

I checked the side mirror.

Six figures in ragged clothes and crude masks were dragging a heavy thorn barrier across the road behind us. They worked with practiced speed, then sprinted back into the cover of the buildings the moment the trap was set.

"We’re blocked from behind too," Mercury reported, voice steady but tight.

Not infected. Men.

The outside operated on the logic of survival and these were people who had survived long enough to develop ambush tactics in an abandoned city.

Which meant they were experienced and they were organized and they had seen vehicles like ours before and had decided they wanted what was inside them.

"Abram." Sinn’s voice. "Who are these people?"

"Never been in this city," I said. "But they’re organized. Thieves. Raiders. They’ve done this before."

"Let’s get out and cut their throats," Code said, from somewhere in Sinn’s car, with the energy of someone suggesting lunch.

"Do they know we’re from the walls?" Sinn asked.

"Nobody expects anyone to be stupid enough to leave the walls voluntarily," I said. "So no."

"Mercury," Sinn said. "Remove the Guardian uniform."

A volley of arrows hit both cars simultaneously. Coming from one direction, the east side of the buildings, which told me they had positions and arcs of fire already established. The arrows stopped dead on the armored surfaces.

They paused. Reassessing.

"These men can be negotiated with," I said. "They’re not infected. They have something to lose."

"Agreed," Sinn said. "Mercury, you changed?" 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

Mercury had already switched the radio off.

"Close your eyes, boys," she said, pulling her Guardian shirt over her head. "Didn’t wear a bra today."

I looked at the ceiling of the car.

"Those," May said approvingly, "are genuinely impressive. Nobody would guess your age."

I was almost tempted. I didn’t. Mercury changed and switched the radio back on.

"Ready," she said.

"I’m going out," Sinn said. "Nobody leaves the vehicles unless I say so."

"General," I warned. "Right side only. All the arrows came from the east."

The door opened and Sinn stepped out on the right, the car body covering him completely from the building positions.

"Hello," he called. "We are not looking for a fight."

The ruined city answered with heavy silence.

Then a rough male voice echoed from somewhere inside the shadowed buildings.

"Hello."