CHAPTER 36: A NEW CITY [2]

"We’re being watched," Holt said under his breath. "There’s no glass shine, no reflection, but I think we’re being watched".

They adjusted without making it a conversation.

When they resumed walking, Reid bled a little Rift Energy and let his world slow on a pulse every time they turned a corner.

Jonas drifted to the back, the kind of rear guard that could pick a car up and throw it if needed. Mira nursed the wind into a long, slow curl around them to keep sound from traveling far.

As afternoon faded, they found a grocery store.

It looked like what had once been a neighborhood anchor, a squat rectangle with cheerful murals on cinderblock walls. Now the murals were smoke-stained, the automatic doors fused into a half-open yawn.

Glass and ash dusted the entry. Inside, shelves lay on their sides like toppled gravestones. But someone had been here, and recently.

There were footprints in the dust, fresh drag marks, and a stack of cans behind the customer service counter, hidden by a blue tarp.

Travis’s entire soul brightened. "Supply fairy!"

"Careful," Holt said, moving first.

He tracked the angles, the likely shot lines, the way debris would funnel bodies. He moved like he expected someone to shoot him for enjoying this, but thankfully, no shot came.

He tugged the tarp back and found beans, corn, and tuna. Not a bounty, but enough to say someone was coming back to collect, and soon.

They didn’t clean the store out.

They took two cans each and left the rest exactly as found. Jonas set a spare bottle of water on the stack, because he was Jonas.

"Someone will appreciate that," Mira said.

"Or kill us for it later," Kara said, but she looked pleased anyway. She always looked pleased when they chose to be human on purpose.

The Wheel twitched in Ethan’s eye. No spin yet, just a hairline vibration. But then, a panel bled up like an uninvited thought.

DING!

~----~

[Optional Condition Detected: Awakened vs Awakened Combat]

[WARNING: System Drop Mechanics Apply]

~----~

’Huh?’ Ethan blinked. The words stuck behind his eyes like a stain.

"Any problem?" Reid asked, catching the way Ethan went still.

"Just... noise," Ethan lied.

He didn’t know how to explain what he’d seen, not yet, not until he could put a shape to the dread the words left behind.

He didn’t want the group panicking because of a false alarm.

They pressed on until the light thinned to the bruised color that makes even strong people want walls, it was late. Holt found them a building with three good corners and one that faced a barren lot.

The door was locked, but once Jonas shouldered it twice, even the lock had to give up and admit they were stronger than it was.

They climbed two flights, and walked past motivational posters still stuck to walls with curling corners.

[TEAMWORK MAKES THE DREAM WORK]

That was definitely written by smiley people who had never seen a maw.

They scouted offices empty of anything but old desks and dust. The roof access was welded shut, and they didn’t bother to force it. Better to let that barrier remain; it could act as a protective film.

They made camp in a corner office where three windows had blown and one still held. Ethan improvised mirage-thread tarpaulin, a shimmering sheet that echoed the Ashroad’s shimmer just enough to make their outlines fuzz to anyone watching from across the street.

Holt dusted a thin ring of resin powder along the threshold, while Mira tuned the air to a low vortex that caught dust and let it spiral out the broken window instead of settling in their lungs.

They ate cold and quick; beans, tuna, and peaches.

Reid managed four forkfuls before his hands started to shake, and then he stopped because he hated when other people saw his hands shake.

"Watch rotation," Kara said, already unrolling a pad that was more wish than padding. "Who’ll keep watch first?"

"Jonas," Reid rasped, "Then Kara, Holt, Ethan, and Mira. I’m out."

"Doctor’s orders," Travis said, laying a hand over his own heart. "Reid has to sleep now. He sleeps or I riot."

"Your riots are very soothing," Jonas said.

He took the first watch with the cheerful cruelty of a man who preferred to be awake where trouble could see him.

The city made new sounds at night.

Somewhere, a metal sign tapped an arrhythmic beat against brick. Wind went through a busted pipe and made a flute. At another time, a herd of something spindly and many-legged ticked across a parking structure and went away again.

Once, a scream cut off fast and didn’t come back. No one moved to check, the city had a million ways to mimic a person being hurt.

Experience thought them to stay where they were, and to stay quiet.

Between watches, Travis talked because silence made him antsy. "Before the Rift," he said softly to whoever had the next shift, "I thought the worst people did was cut in line." He laughed. "Well, I guess lines got shorter."

"Sleep," Holt told him without looking up from the window slit. "Talk later."

"Later’s a myth," Travis said. "What if we never see later?" Despite his words, he slept anyway.

The night didn’t find them.

The mirage-thread tarpaulin did its work. The resin dust kept little crawlers puzzled, and Mira’s wind smudged their breathing out into the dark.

Reid dreamed of tight, green walls that night. He woke up drenched and hyperventilating, but without disturbing anyone, he slept again because he was not allowed to stand watch.

At dawn the city looked softer.

They packed in practiced silence. Holt swept the resin with his boot to scatter it, while Ethan peeled the tarpauline and felt the Wheel sigh at the lost trick.

They left the office as they had found it; empty, except now it was lighter by six cans and a little fear.

They headed west.

As they walked, they did not see the figures on the roof across the street.

Seventeen of them, stretched along the parapet like crows on a fence. Eyes glowed a little in the shade, in different colors; some bright with Rift Energy, some dull and hungry.

Their clothes weren’t uniform but their posture was. A woman with hair buzzed to the scalp and a scar like a comma at her mouth watched through a cracked rangefinder.

"They have 5 F-Ranks," she said into a radio that was mostly tape. "One Unranked, another one ordinary. They move like they don’t want to die yet," she grinned

A voice crackled back through the radio. "Drops?"

"Drops," she said, and her grin made the scar deeper. "And supplies."

The seventeen shapes melted backward from the ledge, leaving only the empty roof and the wind. In the street, Ethan and the others stepped into a block where every second-story window could hold a Rifle and every alley a tripwire.

The city watched them go and did not say a word.