The far bank had the same tired weeds and rusting signposts as where they just were, but the air felt different.

The moment the wheels kissed clean asphalt beyond the barricade, Alexei breathed a fraction deeper and let his shoulders drop to their proper level.

He wasn’t relaxed—never that—but he was definitely aligned. 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

He parked the second truck at an angle so the bed faced the road and the cab faced the fields.

Better to load quick, shoot quicker, and not give anyone an easy lane into their teeth. Elias did the mirror of it with the lead truck—habit turning into choreography.

The checkpoint on this side had been a living thing thirty minutes before.

Plastic chairs were kicked over. A folding table was now on its face. A fifty-gallon drum blackened by old fires stood under the bridge’s support beams, and a clutch of skewers leaned inside it like the last men had intended a lunch that never arrived.

There was even an empty bottle of hot sauce lay on its side with the cap on, neat to the end.

Alexei hopped down and went through the shapes with calm hands.

Pistol, mag, mag, knife.

He found a box under the table with spare batteries, a pouch of zip ties, a coil of wire, and a cheap handheld radio with a cracked antenna.

He turned it on; it hissed at him and then went to a quiet channel where someone breathed and didn’t realize their thumb still held the transmit key.

"Inventory," Elias prompted, already lifting crates out of the bed of a stalled cartel truck with quick economy.

Alexei popped the back of the gun truck beast that Zubair and heat had bullied aside.

Inside, there were belts of ammunition for the gun that would never fire right again, tools, a rag, a book of saints’ pictures tucked under a wrench as if someone thought icons warded malfunctions.

He took the wrenches, the rags, pocketed Saint Michael without comment, and brought out a grease pencil because his fingers liked to have one.

Zubair ghosted past him carrying a crate of mixed ammo like it weighed nothing.

He set it in the lead truck and went right back for more. The heat around him had dialed down to "simmer," but the air still bent a little at the edges of his hands.

It was a trick Alexei pretended not to notice because privacy still existed inside a horde if you cared enough to leave it alone.

Sera walked the line of bodies and didn’t linger.

She looked at wrists for bracelets worth taking, boots for soles worth salvaging, holsters for pistol fit.

A knife slid out of a sheath on a dead thigh; she tested the balance with three neat flicks and tucked it away. Luci shadowed her and laughed his dog laugh when she let him have a single torn glove like a toy.

Lachlan kicked a toolbox open and made a pleased sound that could have belonged to a pirate. "Spanners. Actual sizes. Someone was civilized."

"Someone knew trucks," Alexei corrected, flipping the grease pencil between fingers. He swept the shack with a glance and jogged that way.

Inside, the ledger waited where he’d left it under his jacket.

He set it on the desk and flipped pages while the radio on the crate popped and fizzed and tried to make announcements through the crackle.

Columns, dates, tolls paid, tolls taken, heads counted.

Anselmo’s neat little world mapped in a hand that didn’t tolerate mistakes.

A mark stood out in the margin—three letters stamped clean with a custom inkpad: GEN.

He ran a finger down a page. GEN next to shipments of diesel. GEN next to "courier—north road." GEN next to "ten heads—east farms." The mark wasn’t pride. It was ownership.

Elias leaned in the doorway and tracked the pencil in Alexei’s hand. "Anything immediate?"

"Patterns," Alexei answered. "Nothing we need to worry about today." He tapped the ink. "He likes his initials. Or his bookkeepers do."

"General," Elias translated, and his eye moved to the next page like he could read threats without words. "Not even a name."

The handheld radio coughed. A new voice came through—cleaner, closer to human. "Forty-six, respond. Status. Anselmo, where are you."

Alexei lifted it and hit transmit. He looked at Sera through the shack gap. She met his eyes and lifted one finger—not "wait," not "no"—just the sort of delicate restraint that meant don’t waste this.

He looked at the ledger again, flipped a page, checked the column for today. He keyed up the radio. "Heavy traffic. Bridge inhibited," he offered in a casual accent that belonged to men who thought they wore uniforms. "Processing."

Static. Then: "Processing what."

He looked out at the flames still chewing the barricade and the way Zubair had laid a curtain of heat to keep sparks off their tires.

"Problems," he answered, and let the transmit key off. He didn’t want to pretend to be a dead man longer than he had to.

The radio didn’t try again.

Elias drifted back to the trucks and resumed his favorite task: order out of mess. Magazines clicked into neat rows.

Bottles were nested under tie-downs, and tools went where hands could find them in one grab without thinking.

He trusted systems more than luck. Alexei trusted angles and the joke that showed up at the wrong time to save a life.

Sera stepped into the shack and put her palm on the ledger like it might try to run. "Anything fun?"

"Bridges and teeth," he answered with a shrug, and flipped to a map pocket at the back.

Someone had tucked a page of photocopied county roads into a sleeve. Ink X’s marked more than a toll. They marked food. Fuel. People. "He has a mouth on every route we’ll need," Alexei judged. "He chews slowly."

"Might be a good time to bite back," she returned, her tone as dry as dust.

He folded the map and slipped it into the inside pocket with the ledger. "With pleasure."

Zubair poked his head through the doorway. "We’re loaded enough for now. Thirty minutes and cousins grow into uncles." Meaning: new, larger, angrier problems.

"We’re going," Sera agreed.

Lachlan jogged up with a grin and a rifle he had liberated and tuned on the spot. "They had decent taste. Loose trigger, clean break. I might marry it."

"Ask permission first," Elias deadpanned.

"I’ll bring flowers." Lachlan waggled his eyebrows at Sera and didn’t pretend not to enjoy the tiny eyeroll she gave him.