"How long have we been in?" Elias asked after what felt like hours of driving.

"Long enough," Zubair replied, his voice tight and clipped. The only thing that comforted him was the fact that the gas needle never dropped since they left the highway.

Apparently, time didn’t matter. The only clock that mattered here was the engine and the rules of the world outside, and those rules had already bent once today.

They found a straight run.

Zubair let the truck breathe. It pulled clean. He glanced at the gauge again. The needle twitched a hair and then returned where it had been.

"The jet blend holds," Alexei said, more acknowledgment than praise.

"Sera?" Lachlan asked.

"Taking what I find," she replied with a shrug. "If they are dumb enough to leave it lying around, I’m smart enough to take it. I really can’t be blamed for the Cartel’s inability to protect what was theirs, now can I?"

The track they were on rose as they climbed a small hill.

The trees around them started to thin out.

Zubair saw brightness ahead that wasn’t a break in the canopy; it was open ground.

He didn’t change his speed. He kept the wheel where it was and rode them out of the tunnel.

But it wasn’t open ground.

It was a town.

There was a main street, straight and long.

Boardwalks.

Angled fronts.

Windows clean.

A saloon on the left with a sign that had been painted recently and then left to sun-fade just enough to look right. A hotel with a balcony rail that still held all its spindles.

A post office with a slot that would jam on any package larger than a letter. A church down the far end with stone that didn’t belong to this country, much less this state—heavy blocks, seams clean, a bell tower that cast a hard-edged shadow.

There were no cars, no wires, no litter lying around or floating in the breeze.

Even the streets were completely bare, not a single person to be seen anywhere.

A curtain moved in a second-floor window and went still.

Zubair took them down the center line at a crawl without touching the brake.

He didn’t want the tail to dip; he wanted the truck loaded if he needed to move.

The engine fan ticked over steady. The temperature stayed where it should. The gas gauge didn’t change.

"This isn’t on the map," Elias murmured under his breath.

It wasn’t worry. It was a statement he needed to put in the air so someone else would own it with him.

"We’ll, it’s here," Zubair grunted. And that was the only truth that mattered.

"Atmosphere," Alexei said, simple, like he was naming a chemical.

Sera leaned forward between the seats, eyes bright. "They’re watching."

"From where?" Lachlan asked.

"Doorways," she said. "Behind glass."

"Raiders?" Elias asked, turning to take one more look at the treeline.

"They stayed where we got off the highway," Alexei answered. "We haven’t seen a single sign of them behind us. They’re not coming through."

Zubair let the truck roll to a stop opposite the post office because the street widened there and the angles were clean. He kept the engine on. If the town closed a door, he wanted the truck already moving.

"Hold," he said. He watched the windows. He watched the gaps between buildings. He watched the church door that was open a hand’s width. You can tell a lot by how an open door sits.

Luci lifted his head and breathed deep through his nose. The hairs along his spine didn’t lift. He listened like he had caught a pitch they couldn’t hear.

"Do we step out?" Lachlan asked.

"Not yet," Zubair said.

A screen door creaked somewhere to their left. Boots hit planks once, twice. Not hurrying.

Sera smiled without baring teeth. Not friendly. Interested.

The screen door creaked again and closed. Silence settled hard. Even the engine felt too loud.

Another door swung on a hinge near the hotel. Slow. No slam. The sound carried because there was nothing else for it to hold on to.

"Feels like we’re a parade float," Lachlan said, low.

"We are," Alexei replied.

Zubair looked to the mirrors one more time. The tunnel of trees they had come through was an opening in the line of green, nothing more. The highway was somewhere beyond that.

He looked back at the street. The wind didn’t show itself. A cut-paper sign in the post office window shifted as if a hand had brushed the other side of the glass.

Sera set her fingers on the door handle.

"Two minutes," Zubair said. "We don’t split up. We don’t step into alleys. We stay where I can move the truck."

She nodded.

The door latch clicked.

Luci stood, big and quiet, and hopped down first, landing soft. Sera followed.

The air outside hit different—cooler by a fraction, but there was a taste to it that she couldn’t put her finger on.

She looked left, then right, and then up at the fixed sun like she was checking to see if it meant the same thing here.

Elias slid across the seat and dropped to the curb beside her. Alexei came around the grill, eyes on the windows, rifle low, safety on. Lachlan took the passenger side and scanned roofs and porches.

No one met them. No one spoke. A rocking chair on the saloon porch moved once and stilled. A strip of shadow under the hotel balcony ran too straight, like paint.

Zubair stuck his arm out the driver’s window and tapped the body panel twice to be sure they heard him if he called them back.

He kept his foot lightly on the brake and the truck in gear. If the town got ready to shut down, he wanted to be rolling before the sound finished.

Sera put a hand on Luci’s shoulder and took two steps toward the middle of the street, not far, just enough to feel the open space.

Her head tilted. She smiled a little, like a woman who had found the threshold of something she wanted to see.

Bootsteps came from their right, regular pace, plank to plank to plank.

A man walked into view from between the saloon and a feed store, white hat clean, coat dusted but pressed, holster low, star pinned to his chest.

He didn’t draw his gun, and he didn’t rest his hand on the grip either.

He looked at the truck as if cataloguing it as a kind of animal. Then he looked at Sera, and his face didn’t change.

"You’re a long way from the right road," he said.

His voice didn’t echo. It didn’t need to. It landed where it was meant to land.

Zubair didn’t move his foot.

He didn’t answer.

He watched Sera’s shoulder for the decision and kept the engine ready.