Chapter 14: In the Silence Between Checkpoints II
Time: 8:04 A.M.
The wind had picked up, carrying dust across the pavement, making the world feel even more abandoned.
Aria waited a moment before repeating herself, softer now. "Why me?"
Selene didn't answer at first. She ran the cloth along the chamber of her sidearm one more time, slow and methodical, before finally setting it aside.
"I saw you trying to help a dying man with your bare hands," she said.
Aria frowned, caught off guard.
"At the Zone's intake gate," Selene continued. "He had that infection on his neck. Everyone else stepped back. You didn't."
"That wasn't bravery," Aria said, shaking her head. "It was stupid."
"Exactly," Selene said. "Stupid is honest. And honest people don't last long in a system built on lies."
She stood, stretched her back, and glanced around the parking lot. Everything was still. Still and waiting.
"I thought I could protect you from what it was," Selene added. "But some people… they have to walk through the fire before they learn how to stand inside it."
Aria sat back against the RV. The words scraped something raw inside her. "Do you think I'm strong enough now?"
"I think you don't have a choice."
—
Time: 10:29 A.M.
They headed northeast.
The roads were jagged and narrow, winding past rivers dried to threadbare veins and forests that had turned to husks. No cars. No birds. Only the occasional sign of passage—burnt rubber, blackened tire marks, bullet holes in rusted mile markers.
At one point, they passed a cluster of broken-down transport trucks, all with the Safe Zone insignia burned off or spray-painted over. Aria stared as they passed, reading the red writing on one:
NOT WORTH SAVING
She turned toward Selene, but the woman was already looking away.
The RV rolled over bones—literal bones—scattered across the road. Animal or human, it didn't matter anymore.
The world was done distinguishing between species.
—
Time: 12:11 P.M.
They stopped in the hills just past a collapsed highway interchange.
Selene exited the vehicle first, rifle slung over her shoulder. She scanned the ridgelines, then motioned Aria to follow. The two climbed the slope together, silent except for the crunch of dry dirt beneath their boots.
At the top, the world opened.
Below them, a city lay sunken in fog, half-eaten by time. The skyscrapers in the distance were no more than jagged teeth. Somewhere far off, a column of smoke coiled up into the sky like a warning that hadn't yet reached its target.
Aria stood breathless at the edge of it.
"This was Sector Nine?" she asked.
Selene nodded. "What's left of it."
"They said it was operational."
"They say a lot."
They stood in silence, watching. The air here was colder, more honest.
Aria looked down at her own hands. "I don't think I can forget what I saw in there."
"You shouldn't," Selene said. "The moment you forget is the moment you go back."
Aria shook her head. "I won't."
Selene watched her for a long time, her expression unreadable. "Then it's time to stop running."
—
Time: 3:48 P.M.
They returned to the RV and kept moving, this time toward the canyon's far edge.
Aria finally slept for a few hours—her dreams jagged, filled with white walls, blinking lights, the sound of breathing that wasn't hers.
When she woke, the sun had started to fall behind a veil of clouds, turning the world pale.
Selene handed her a bottle of water and spoke quietly.
"We can't save everyone, Aria. But we can try to make sure they don't lie about it when they're gone."
Aria took a drink, wiped her mouth. "How do we do that?"
Selene looked ahead, where the road vanished into the next ridgeline.
The horizon was cracked open, like it had been shot through and left bleeding.
"We survive. We remember. And we make it cost them something."
Aria nodded.
And for the first time, she didn't feel like a passenger.
She felt like a storm waiting to happen.