Elias let his eyes moved. The roof, the truck bed, the shack slit, the far side concrete support where someone might lay prone. The scope barrel wandered again. Not a danger until someone smarter told him to calm down.

"What’s the rate today?" Alexei asked through his window. Tone mild enough to pass for polite if you wanted to pretend.

"Same as yesterday," white shirt answered without looking at him. "Ninety percent. Trucks. Weapons. Her." His chin lifted the smallest amount at Sera as if he was pointing with his face to avoid the work of lifting a hand.

Sera leaned her forearms on the rolled bar, her hair in her face, eyes bright the way they got when she smelled a bad choice about to bleed.

She smiled like someone reading the punchline ahead of the room.

Elias’s own mouth didn’t move.

He could feel Zubair going still next to him the way heat went still before it gets ugly, a contained pressure. Lachlan’s knee bounced once and stopped. Alexei’s blink slowed. Luci’s growl came up from the floorboard and lived in Elias’s boots again.

White shirt looked over them without hurry, then tilted his head at the leashes. "Insurance," he said, like he was being helpful. "Keeps people honest."

"Those things never kept anyone honest," Alexei returned. "They just make a mess."

"Mess is what you get when you don’t pay," white shirt said. He slid his hands into his pockets and waited like he had all day.

Elias took numbers one more time. "Visible rifles: eight. Pistols: three. Scope on the roof. Two behind the barrier with their muzzles through cutouts. Shack: two. Far side shadow: one moving, probably bored, reachable with a hundred-sixty-yard shot if the angle stays clean. Chains: twelve collars, six a side. The second pole on the far bank’s cracked."

"Noted," Zubair said again.

Pablo did a little cough that wanted to be a laugh and failed. "You must be new. Prices are better upstream if you don’t like ours."

Zubair finally moved his head. "We don’t like yours."

Pablo’s mouth swung toward anger, but white shirt didn’t let it land. He cut him off with a small finger flick the way you bat a fly away. "We’re not negotiating. Pay or turn around."

Lachlan thumped the machete’s flat against his own shoulder and grinned his stupid grin. "Counter offer: you let us cross, you keep all your teeth, and only one person get’s eaten."

White shirt looked at Lachlan the way doctors used to look at toddlers with stethoscopes. He didn’t bother speaking to that. He lifted his chin at Sera again, at the way Luci leaned his weight into her thigh, at the way Zubair’s arm never left the window rim.

"You got brave friends," he judged. "Too bad that smart and brave never seem to go hand in hand."

"Big words for a man standing on a bridge held together by rust and luck," Alexei murmured.

Elias watched Sera, not the man.

He saw the way her shoulders settled, the way her mouth softened at the corner. She wasn’t calm. She was entertained. He didn’t mind that. As long as she was happy, he was content.

"Name," Elias asked out his window, flat.

White shirt considered ignoring him, then decided he liked the sound of his own voice enough to answer. "Anselmo."

"Anselmo," Elias repeated, to file it. "You run this crossing for who."

"The General," Anselmo said with a shrug, and let the title drop like a heavy thing. He wanted it to mean something. It might, later. Elias filed that away too.

"Ah," Alexei said lightly. "He sounds tall."

Anselmo’s eyes flicked to him, then back to Sera. "He sounds patient."

"Patient people don’t leash problems on both banks," Elias said. "They solve them."

Anselmo showed a tired smile. "You talk like a man who thinks he still lives in a place with rules. Look around you. You’re not in K City any more."

Elias did.

He didn’t argue.

He finished one more sweep—counted breaths, gun angles, stupid zombie chain lengths, the way the collars rode high on the necks where a solid pull might pop a windpipe, the way the near chain anchor had bent so one good yank would turn the whole leash line into a pendulum.

He leaned toward Zubair without looking like he moved at all. "If they try to drop the poles, go for the anchors, not the collars."

Zubair’s mouth tipped a fraction. "I know."

Pablo, bored with being quiet, lifted his rifle into a half-ready that tried to look casual. "Last chance. Trucks. Goods. Girl."

Sera’s smile sharpened. "I’m sorry to say...you can’t afford me."

Anselmo’s eyes flattened. The muzzle in the bus cutout ratcheted forward a hair.

Elias kept his voice in that calm place where numbers lived. "If he twitches that muzzle again, the roof goes first. Then cutout two. I’ll take the shack if it opens."

"Copy," Alexei said from the second truck.

"Copy," Lachlan echoed, cheerful.

Zubair didn’t bother saying it. The air around the hood tightened and shimmered the smallest amount.

Anselmo lifted one hand, his palm open.

The two rifles in the cutouts steadied. The scope stopped its figure eight for one full beat.

The men on the far side spread a little to make more angles. Elias watched the tiny tells, the way weight slid to toes, the way the shack shadow leaned into the slit.

"You pay," Anselmo said, like he was tired of being polite. "Or you die here and I take the girl anyway." He looked at Sera when he said it.

Elias almost sighed. He didn’t. He just let the last of the numbers click into place.

Sera met Anselmo’s eyes and, for a second, looked like she might be willing to play the game for fun.

"No," she told him, bright as a match strike.

Anselmo’s jaw ticked. Pablo barked a laugh he hadn’t earned. The muzzle in the cutout dipped that fatal degree toward center mass on Zubair’s windshield.

"Roof," Elias said, and brought the rifle up smooth, not fast, not showy, the way you do a thing you’ve done a thousand times without having to think about what came first or last.

The scope man blinked—and his barrel did that small figure eight again. The wind shifted. The stupid zombies shrieked against their chains. Luci’s teeth clicked once.

The river kept moving under the bridge like it never cared how the next second went.

Elias took the first breath of the fight in and let it settle where it needed to be.

"On my shot," he said.