Sera decided she liked the way Region T slled on the surface.
Not because it was pleasant—nothing in this world seed to be pleasant anymore—but because it was different. The air tasted sun-baked and dry, with a faint underline of fuel and old tal that didn’t belong to labs or cages.
It was different, and that made it... fun.
The town ahead was bigger than the border settlent she’d imagined.
It wasn’t just a handful of houses clinging to the fence line. Low buildings sprawled in layers, pushed out across the flat land like the town had once tried to grow into a city and then forgotten halfway through.
She stepped off the cracked service road and onto the main street without slowing. Luci trotted at her side, his tail low, his eyes bright, and his paws were silent on the grit beneath their feet.
The n shifted around her without needing a word—Zubair to her left, Lachlan and Alexei behind, Aerenyx at her right, close enough that if she turned her head she’d bump his shoulder.
Her creature stood up inside her ribs with lazy interest. Look at them all hiding, Trouble. New toys. New rules. Sa fear.
’They’re not toys,’ Sera thought back. ’They’re... background noise.’
That made the creature laugh. It liked that better.
Region T’s first town had the skeleton of order. Street signs still clung to poles, though the paint had peeled enough that only the first letters were clear. Buses sat nose-to-tail along one curb, their windows opaque with gri, tires half-sunk into the cracked asphalt.
A row of stores lined the main road—pharmacy, hardware, a small diner with its front windows smashed in and chairs still bolted to the floor inside.
Nothing moved in the open.
Everything watched.
Sera could feel eyes behind glass, behind blinds, behind yards of fabric that had been pulled down and never lifted again.
Breathing thickened the air inside those houses. Even if she hadn’t had a creature, she would have felt it. Humans were loud even when they tried to be quiet.
Lachlan tipped his head toward a second-story window where a curtain had just shifted a few centiters. "They’re going to break their necks craning like that," he muttered. "Might as well co out and stare properly."
"Fear doesn’t like direct light," Alexei replied. "It prefers corners."
Aerenyx smiled faintly at that, eyes tracking the line of houses like he could see straight through the walls. "They’re trying to decide if you’re their rescue or their problem," he said. "They’ll pick wrong. They always do."
Sera watched the way the town had been rearranged.
Soone had dragged concrete planters into rough barriers at intersections. Sandbags still sat in front of a bank door, though the glass had been blown out anyway.
A set of tal drums marked with faded biohazard symbols lay tipped over near the end of the street, whatever they once held long since dried into flaky residue.
"This isn’t collapse," she said. "It’s... stale."
Her creature purred. That’s boring. You can’t have a real apocalypse when people keep trying to tidy it.
The sun sat higher than she’d expected.
In Region O, the sky had turned on itself without warning. Day had snapped to night with no warning bell, bringing storms and monsters and all the teeth the world had been hiding. Here, the light felt... normal.
And now, that seed wrong in its own way.
Zubair glanced at the sky, as if tracking the sun’s angle. "Feels like the afternoon," he said. "We’ve got hours before dark...if night even cos here."
"No rain," Lachlan added. "No tornado forming out of nowhere. No frogs or falling body parts. I’m almost disappointed."
In fact, he did sound disappointed.
"They built sothing that dampens it," Alexei murmured, more to himself than anyone else. "rcer ntioned environntal controls in his notes once. Maybe they actually work up here."
Aerenyx rolled his shoulders, as if the air sat differently on him. "They don’t work on everything."
They passed a small square where a park once sat. The playground equipnt was rusted in place, swings hanging still, sandpit half turned to mud and stone. Soone had put up a rough wooden sign at the entrance.
ESSENTIAL PERSONNEL ONLY.
CIVILIANS RETURN HO.
CURFEW: SUNDOWN.
Sera paused long enough to read it. "Curfew," she said. "They still think they own the dark."
Aerenyx’s grin sharpened. "They can have it, if they want. We’re not afraid of it."
Her creature humd, pleased. Besides, night likes us better than it likes them.
Sera started walking again.
At the next cross street, the sll changed.
It beca sharper, filled with disinfectant and old cigarette smoke. A cluster of white tents had been set up in a parking lot—field clinic style—though the sides were now mostly rolled down and secured. Only one showed light under the seams. A faded banner snapped in the breeze.
REGION T HEALTH TRIAGE
CDC PROTOCOL ACTIVE
Two soldiers stood outside the nearest tent, their masks on, and their rifles slung over their shoulder.
They watched the group with full-body tension and the brittle posture of people who had already had a very bad day and suspected it was about to get worse.
Sera t their eyes through their visors and kept going. She wasn’t interested in whatever they were triaging. Not unless it ca looking for her.
"You’re not going to check?" Aerenyx asked quietly.
"For what?" she replied.
"New mutants. Variant strains. Interesting mistakes."
"If they were interesting," she said, "the building under us wouldn’t have been so boring."
Her creature laughed outright at that, pleased by the dismissal.
As they moved deeper, the town shifted again. The small houses gave way to slightly taller buildings—two-story offices, a logistics hub, sothing that had once been a school with its windows boarded and its playground fenced off.
The farther they walked, the stronger the sense of organization beca.
Soldiers had been here recently. She could see it in the boot prints in the dust, the scuff marks on concrete where heavy crates had been dragged or stacked, the fresh welds on so of the tal barricades.
This wasn’t a dead place. It was a controlled one.
A loudspeaker crackled sowhere above them.
"—all residents of Sector C are reminded that outside movent is restricted to approved personnel only. Any unauthorized activity after curfew will be treated as hostile. Report symptoms imdiately. Do not conceal possible infection."
The voice was flat and tired. It sounded like it had been repeating the sa ssage for months. It also sounded like it didn’t expect anyone to listen anymore.
Lachlan snorted. "They’re going to have a stroke when they realize what just walked into their nice, contained little map."
"They already know sothing’s wrong," Alexei said. "Half the systems will be screaming at them. rcer’s gone. The lab’s offline. They’ll be trying to decide whether to run or double down."
Zubair’s heat edged up enough that Sera could feel it at her left flank. "They always double down."
She didn’t disagree.
At a four-way junction, the street opened up. Ahead of them sat a wider plaza with a low, squat building at its center.
It had the ugly, functional look of sothing designed by committee—no decoration, just thick walls, narrow windows, reinforced entry. A makeshift tower had been built above it from shipping containers, a nest of scaffolding, and a mounted spotlight that currently pointed at nothing.
Sera’s creature perked up. There. There’s your spine. Break that, and all the nerves lose their orders.
Similar to what Alexei had said earlier, but more pleased with the idea of breaking things.
Aerenyx followed her gaze. "Command core," he murmured, raising a single eyebrow. "Surface edition."
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