The man in the white cowboy hat didn’t move after he spoke.

He stood there like he’d grown out of the street, his boots perfectly square in an almost unnatural stance, one hand resting near the holster but not on it.

The badge on his chest caught the light once and then stayed dull. Zubair didn’t answer him. Sera didn’t either. The truck idled behind them, engine ticking, steady heartbeat against the silence.

Alexei stepped out last.

He didn’t like standing still under open sky, but this wasn’t open.

The sun was wrong here...flat, centered, and completely unblinking. No heat on his skin. No glare in his eyes. Just light.

He scanned left to right, a habit engrained in his blood and as easy as breathing. He needed to know where the exits were, where to take cover if needed and any threat angles.

The saloon to the left had two windows too many for its size.

The post office had a mail slot deep enough for a blade.

The boardwalk was freshly swept, but no broom leaned anywhere in sight.

The entire main street had absolutely perfect symmetry. There was no random pattern, no wind blowing through the trees.

He didn’t trust anything that forgot how to be messy.

The sheriff’s eyes tracked Sera, even if the rest of him didn’t.

"You’re a long way from the highway," the man said again, slower this time. The drawl sounded real until you noticed there was no air under it.

His chest didn’t rise and fall, his body entirely too still.

Sera tilted her head to the side as she studied the man. "That’s fine. We’ll find our own road," she shrugged at last. "It wouldn’t be the first time."

That made him smile—a thin, polite expression that never quite reached his eyes.

He touched the brim of his hat with two fingers; a move rehearsed a thousand times to look natural... but there was something off about it. "You won’t find many that still lead anywhere."

From somewhere behind him, a screen door squeaked. Then another.

Alexei turned just enough to see the movement.

People walked out of buildings like it was time for a parade. Men in dusters and brimmed hats, women in hoop skirts and faded bonnets, their faces clean and perfect.

A preacher came down the church steps with a Bible under his arm, his black robes flowing around him in the absent wind. Even the Bible wasn’t right. The closed pages seemed to ripple just enough to trick someone’s eyes. Like there was a whole other world inside of it.

Elias murmured, "Air pressure’s off."

Alexei frowned. "Nyet," he disagreed. "It’s reversed."

The air pressed inward instead of out, the same way it used to feel inside sealed testing chambers at the orphanage...before they turned the lights off and told the children to find each other in the dark.

Alexei didn’t blink, didn’t so much as twitch.

He measured the weight of the sound around them. Even the echoes had structure, like the town had walls they couldn’t see.

Not liking how it was making him feel, he pushed Psycho up just a bit more. An extra set of eyes, an extra set of senses to help keep track of the threat.

An extra set of claws when it came to keeping track of his treasure.

A horse snorted somewhere down a side street.

Then another answered.

There was no hoofbeats, no tack creak.

Just breath.

Sera took one slow step forward, eyes narrowing on the sheriff. "What’s this place called?"

"Perdition," the man said.

Lachlan gave a low whistle. "That’s a cheerful name."

The sheriff didn’t look at him. He kept his eyes on Sera. "Names don’t matter unless someone remembers them."

Alexei watched the sheriff’s shoulders—no twitch, no shift of weight.

The man’s stance was too efficient. Balanced like a trained assassin’s, not a small-town lawman.

He catalogued the way the fingers rested near the revolver, but not the way most cowboys did. The hand hung too relaxed.

It wasn’t a style from Country S, but that didn’t mean anything. Countries no longer mattered when laws were made up by the strongest.

What he did know was that this man was just as deadly as he was, if not more so.

And he didn’t like it.

The women on the porch of the general store had begun whispering.

Same rhythm, same volume, same little laugh at the end of every line. When one tilted her head, all of them followed a second later.

Not in perfect unison but close enough to look human until you started timing it.

The preacher stopped at the foot of the church steps and opened his Bible. The inside pages were blank. Alexei saw it clearly when the light hit. Just clean paper, no ink.

The man smiled as if it were full of scripture.

Alexei’s fingers flexed once at his side.

Psycho stirred even more, ready to take the wheel when Alexei needed instincts more than training.

They’re not human, Psycho whispered. And we both know it.

He ignored the whisper, but only barely.

"Friendly," Lachlan muttered beside him.

"Scripted," Alexei corrected.

Zubair’s knuckles whitened on the steering wheel inside the cab. Elias still had the map in his lap, eyes darting between the street names and the blank paper.

"There’s nothing here," Elias said. "No record of a town called Perdition within a hundred miles. Not on satellite, not on the old grids, nothing."

"It might not be on your maps, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t there," Alexei grunted.

Sera stepped closer to the sheriff until she was a meter away.

Luci moved with her, silent as ever, his tail hung low, and his eyes were locked on the man’s throat.

The sheriff’s horse shifted its weight on the hitch post, hooves quiet against the packed dirt.

"You don’t get many visitors," she said.

He smiled again, almost kindly. "We don’t keep many."

Behind him, a wagon creaked out of an alley—two horses, driver upright, face shadowed by his hat.

Alexei watched the way the reins didn’t move when the horses turned.

Like they just knew where to go.

Something about the way the street’s edges curved made him frown.

It wasn’t straight.

From where he stood, the town looked like it bent slightly toward the center, every building facing inward as if the whole place was built to keep something in—or keep others out.

He let his eyes drift across the facades.

All the shutters half open.

All the curtains drawn to the same length.

All the lamps unlit but clean.

Too precise.

He had been trained to see traps before they were set. This one was already finished.

The sheriff tipped his head to the side like he’d heard the thought.

"We keep order here," he said. "No guns after noon. No work on the Lord’s hour. No running. No shouting. You stay polite, you stay safe."

"Safe from what?" Lachlan asked. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

The man didn’t answer.

Alexei’s attention flicked to the church.

The preacher had raised his face toward the sky, eyes closed, mouth moving in soundless prayer.

Then came the bell.

It swung once.

No rope moved. No wind touched it.

Everyone in the street stopped. Heads tilted the same way, at the same slow angle, like strings had been pulled from above.

The sheriff’s smile stayed in place. "Curfew," he said. "Time to rest."

"Middle of the day," Lachlan said.

The sheriff didn’t look away. "We keep different hours here."

The crowd began to move, each person turning at the same pace, walking in the same direction—toward doors, porches, corners.

They didn’t speak.

The children didn’t cry, or laugh, or complain.

Alexei watched one man pass by close enough to touch.

The man’s eyes were glassy but not dead—more like there was something alive behind them, pressing against the surface.

His boots left no prints in the dust.

Elias’s hand twitched near his weapon. Alexei lifted a finger—don’t.

"This isn’t a fight," he murmured.

"No," Elias said. "It’s a show."

The preacher closed the blank Bible. The bell gave one last shiver and stilled.

The sun didn’t move. The light didn’t fade. But the street looked dimmer anyway.

Alexei kept scanning.

Movement to the left—barely.

A woman in a blue dress behind the hotel window. She stared straight down at them, lips moving fast like she was praying.

Her breath fogged the glass once.

Then she was gone.

Sera turned back toward the truck. "We’ll play along," she said softly. "See what happens when their clock runs out."

Alexei’s mouth tilted in something that wasn’t quite a smile. "You think it will?"

"It always does," she said.

The sheriff touched the brim of his hat again. "Supper’s at sundown," he said, and walked toward the jailhouse without waiting for a reply.

Alexei watched the sway of the coat, the way the man’s boots made no sound. He waited for him to glance back. The sheriff didn’t.

When the door shut, the entire town exhaled once, like a lung resetting.

Zubair eased the truck forward. Elias kept looking at the empty boardwalk. Lachlan muttered something about déjà vu.

Alexei didn’t move. His hands had gone cold.

The air pressure dropped another notch—ears ringing, chest tight.

Psycho stirred again, pleased. They’re smiling because they already killed and buried you three times in their heads.

Alexei lifted his gaze to the bell tower, watching it sway once more without touching the rope.

The single toll rolled down the street like thunder that had lost its storm.

And then—silence.