CHAPTER 47: THROUGH THE INDUSTRIAL BLOCKS [1]

Dawn broke and it was a gray smear, almost like the sky had been erased and redrawn with a tired hand.

The group woke up to the hospital’s quiet, the kind that hums with old machines that no longer breathe. And for the first time since the ambush, no boot falls hunted their heartbeat.

The halls still smelled of disinfectant and mold, remnants of the old word, a ghost of order in a world that had forgotten the word.

From outside, the wind worried the curtains through a cracked window and carried dust that glittered in the thin light.

Jonas tested his ribs with a wince, then rolled his shoulders and stood without help.

He still looked like a man who had been used to teach anatomy, bruises sprawling under his torn cloth, but the tremor was gone from his knees.

"Not pretty," he muttered, flexing his hands, "but functional".

Travis managed a crooked grin from the cot opposite.

The green-gold ember of his Awakening had dimmed to ash at his wrists, but pride found a place in his tired eyes. "Give it forty eight hours and I’ll buff you up pretty good," he said. "Right now you get... warranty service," he grinned.

Jonas snorted, then regretted it as his ribs stung. His hand quickly flew to his side as he grimaced. "No more jokes until after the bridge".

Kara finished knotting a bandage on Reid’s arm and stepped back. "He’s stable," she said. "He’s also going to pretend he’s not dying until we’re clear."

Reid levered himself upright, jaw set, eyes fever-bright. His rifle lay across his lap the way it always did, a promise he refused to break.

"I can walk," he said. "I won’t shoot pretty, but I’ll still shoot straight."

All in all, the group felt ready to complete their escape.

Holt adjusted his sling, checking the bolt like a priest thumbing a rosary, and then he looked to Ethan. "We move now. We’ve got a window before Pike’s net tightens, and it won’t open twice."

Ethan stood at the blown window through which he peeked at the city below.

The city was a puzzle written in ash and rust.

Last night, in the ward’s dim light, he, Holt and Reid had drawn their answer across stolen charts; their route out of here.

Northwest, through the industrial blocks, through warehouses and machine yards where doctrine stumbled and lines of fire died in corners.

He nodded once. "Gear up."

Once they were ready, they left the hospital by a service corridor and stepped back into the city’s throat.

The Northwest sector was once a hub of activity, but now it was just a graveyard of machines. These were once machines built to move weight, to lift, to weld, and to churn, but now they stood like frozen animals mid-step beneath a sky that had learned to hiss.

Warehouse doors hung crooked on their tracks.

Yards lay littered with pallets, rebar, rusted forklifts, and the ribs of cranes. Rift-burn scars marbled everything with black glass, a memory of the sky’s tantrum.

They moved like veterans through it all.

Holt led, reading the scuffs in dust, the lean of soot on a wall, and the pattern where wind had favored one corridor over another.

At a point...

"Left," he said, before a shadow could become a dead end.

At another point...

"Hold," he murmured, and they held while a lumbering silhouette big enough to make a warehouse groan crossed behind a cracked loading dock.

Navigating this city told them once again the importance of having an Awakener with an ability like Holt’s.

The monster that they just avoided was E Rank by size alone, and it kept going with a noise like a wet furnace.

Reid walked in the center with Travis, both of them pale, both of them keeping their feet through a combination of spite and stubbornness.

Jonas took the rear with a purpose; he would not be the first to fall again. As for Kara, she paced the flanks, her spear easy across her shoulders, chin high. If anything fast came close, it would meet her before it saw the rest.

Mira’s wind was a soft pressure on all their skins, a subtle herding of dust and spores away from mouths. Her wind was a way to make the resonant echoes of the Rift lie just enough to give Holt the edge.

They cut through a machine yard where a crane had folded in on itself like a dead spider. It had collapsed into a snarl of steel that blocked the most obvious gap leading through.

Kara shouldered in under a crossbar, setting her feet, then she pushed.

Tendons leapt in her forearms as bone density and will made a lever. The metal groaned, and finally, it shifted half an inch.

Ethan stepped beside her and called the gauntlet with a breath.

Spines inked over his knuckles. He didn’t need Rugged Overload; not yet. He simply sank the spikes into a seam and pried. Steel screamed and snapped as the gap widened, then the crane’s carcass sagged just enough.

"Through," Holt said, already moving.

They threaded the teeth of the yard and came out into a corridor of warehouses that ran west like a gutter.

Twice Holt stopped them for so long that Ethan felt his skin crawl between the seconds.

Once a shadow crossed the mouth of the corridor on cat-legs that were too long. Another time, a cart of something thick and pale slid down a distant ramp without help and tipped itself into a drain too far away than gravity should have allowed.

The city was watching and deciding, keeping them on edge. They chose not to ask for its opinion.

After some time, Jonas drifted up beside Travis as they crossed a catwalk over a yard gone to thistles and glass shards.

Walking side by side with Travis, the sun caught a grin on his face, the one that had gotten washed out of him in blood and bile a day ago when he almost died. But it had returned, battered and proud.

"Hey," he said without looking, because looking at gratitude sometimes made it harder. "Thanks...," he paused, then smiled. "For yesterday".

Travis huffed. "No need to thank me, you did the payments up front".

"It was not my favorite plan," Jonas chuckled. "But who knows? Maybe that works too. I guess being the knight in shining armor pays afterall".

They both laughed, quiet and pained. They didn’t laugh again.

A few minutes later, Holt’s hand went up. "Stop".